My dad loves the Beach Boys, so I grew up listening to “Sloop John B.” In the song, Brian Wilson sings, “This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on.”

That was how I felt at approximately 8:15am on Tuesday, November 17, 2009.

Let me give you a short prologue.

Back in August, my friend Elizabeth had asked me to take a look at the website of a luxury resort in Turks & Caicos where she and her husband, along with several of their friends, owned a condo. I made some recommendations, and over the following months, what began as a favor for a friend grew into a six-page proposal for online marketing.

Elizabeth called me on Thursday the week before to tell me that my proposal had been approved. The Tuscany was my biggest client to date, and represented a major turning point in my career as a freelance marketer and copywriter.

I was very excited.

The next day, Elizabeth booked plane tickets for herself, Paul Hassell, and me. Paul is a talented outdoor photographer who would be taking the pictures and shooting the videos that would bring the spice to all The Tuscany’s marketing initiatives for the next eight months.

Synchronizing the schedules of four busy people had taken hours of phone calls and emails, but by the grace of God, we had managed to carve out three full days to work between two days of travel.

I was working out the final details with Elizabeth on the phone—everything from international cell phone coverage to sunscreen—when she reminded me to bring my passport.

Still incredulous that so many variables had worked to our favor, I hung up the phone and bounded up the steps to my room. I keep my passport in my humidor whose humidifier I never remember to fill. At least my passport smelled like a pipe-smoking old man.

I opened it up to reassure myself that everything was in order, and that’s when my stomach did a back flip: as of May 20, 2009, my passport was expired.

On Monday at about 4:55pm, I gave Elizabeth, my friend Ben’s mother-in-law, the worst possible news, given our unique circumstances. Her response was two words: “Oh —!”

Use your imagination.

We agreed that the first order of business was to drive to the Post Office before it closed and see if they could offer any advice. I pulled in the parking lot four minutes later and slipped through the door before the woman locked it.

“Oh, you’re a sneaky one,” she said.

I smiled.

I waited in line for the woman on the far left to finish up with an elderly woman.

While I was waiting, I noticed that the post office worker had a cross taped to her plastic name plate. Cards with scriptures printed on them were also taped in several places.

This was encouraging. As a Christian, she might be more willing to help me.

“What can I do for you?” she asked in a voice thick and sweet with molasses. This was the voice of a woman who was happy because I was the last customer of the day.

“Well, I’ve got a big problem,” I said.

“Don’t tell me that!” she said. “It’s the end of the day.”

I went on to explain that my flight for Turks & Caicos left at 9:30 the next morning and my passport was expired.

The smile on her face sank into a frown.

I finished with the backstory. “Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“Oh, you’re screwed” was her answer.

Thank you for your help, ma’am. And for the encouragement.

I’ll see you at church on Sunday.

We were sitting at a Subway just off the Athens, Tennessee exit on I-75 North.

I was enjoying a $5 Footlong, buffalo chicken this time, rather than the usual Spicy Italian. Travis was having the same, and Joe was eating the Spicy Italian.

We were just three travelers on our way home from the Atlanta airport. This was the final “automobiles” phase in our “planes, trains, and automobiles—and buses” tour of the East Coast, from New York to Knoxville in a day.

I look out the window and see a young Caucasian male bent forward at the waist, running awkwardly back to the Pontiac sedan still idling.

The car tears out of the parking lot.

I take another bite.

Travis is talking to the middle-aged woman at the next table. Listening to their conversation, I realize that I’ve missed something.

“What happened?” I asked.

Travis and the woman take turns telling the story.

The guy I saw scuttling back to the car had run up to the window, pulled down his pants and underwear, and pressed his genitals against the glass. The problem was that he came in too fast on his approach and smashed his testicles. In effect, he junk-punched himself with a plate glass window.

What I had seen was a man who had just set on fire one of the major nerve centers in his body because he wanted to play exhibitionist on a Monday night doubled over in pain as he returned to his getaway car.

A total of five customers and two employees were present in the restaurant. Only two of them saw what happened, and only one of those, Travis, saw the teenager’s mistake.

The woman at the next table said, “You know what we call that? A pervert.”

The only evidence was a foggy smudge on the window.

Joke’s on you, Mister Backfiring-Public-Exposure-Aching-Groin-Idiot.

Last night, I stopped a homeless man from choking a crack ho.

When my roommate Adam Brimer and I came out of Barley’s after swapping stories about our transformative wilderness experiences and our girlfriends—rest assured, there were no measuring tapes or trophy cases involved—we heard shouting.

An older man was chasing a heavy-set woman wearing heels and a gold blouse around my 4Runner.

“Gimme back my money! You stole my thirty dollars!” He was brandishing his cane in the air. He must have had bad knees because he kept his legs straight, and that caused him to wobbled from side to side as he hurried after her.

“I didn’t do nuffin!” the woman shouted back, beating a hasty retreat down the sidewalk.

“You took it out of my pocket!”

This kind of shouting match is no extraordinary occurrence in the Old City. The shelters and ministries like Knoxville Area Rescue Ministries and The Volunteer Ministry Center on Broadway and Central are less than a mile away, and many of the homeless men and women hang out and panhandle on Market Square or along Jackson Avenue. Men wearing several musty layers of mismatched clothing and missing several teeth are a part of the landscape, the same as the historic brick warehouses and the famous JFG sign.

At first, I slid into the driver’s seat and started the car while Adam stood on the running board and watched the fracas.

She underestimated how quickly the old man could move even without his cane to steady him. He caught up to her, pinned her up against Adam Fulton’s white sedan, and clamped both of his hands around her neck.

“Uh-oh,” Adam said.

I looked over my shoulder and saw what was happening.

We both sprinted over there.

Adam grabbed the man’s backpack and one of his arms. I grabbed one of his thumbs and used it to wrench that hand from the woman’s neck.

She was wimpering, “Help me, help me.”

After a few moments, we got the two separated. The woman adjusted her clothing, then turned around and walked away.

The old man was beside himself. “Don’t let her get away. She got into my pocket and took my $30.”

“I didn’t take nuffin from you,” the woman said.

“What reason would he have to accuse you then?” I asked.

She just looked at me then kept on walking away.

At that point, I was pretty sure the old man was telling the truth. He was probably only in his fifties, or maybe early sixties, but life on the street ages people prematurely. His lips curled in over his gums, and his eyes had that rheumy, yellowish look of constant irritation and addiction.

I learned in a course in college that the vast majority of people on the streets end up there on account of mental illness, substance abuse, or a combination of both.

“Man, she stole my money, man!” he threw his metal cane on the ground. At least while it was down there he couldn’t whack me with it.

I asked him to tell me what had happened, but he kept saying over and over, “She got in my pocket and stole my thirty dollars and, man, you just let her get away with it.”

“We weren’t just going to stand there and let you choke her,” I said.

“She stole my money, man.”

“I believe you, but it wasn’t right for you to choke her.”

“Was it right for her to steal my thirty dollars?”

“Of course not.”

“Man, it’s not fair,” he said and stamped his foot.

At this point, Adam Fulton and Cade Benedict came out of Barley’s. When they walked up, they were wide-eyed, looking back and forth between Adam, the homeless man, and me.

“Do you mind if we take my car?” Adam said, so we took a few steps back. They left.

“Call the Po-lice,” the man said. He just wasn’t going to let it go.

“I’ve got three dollars,” I said. “You can have it. It’s all I’ve got. What do you need?”

I offered him food.

“I want my money back. Let’s go find her.”

“You know she’s long gone.”

“Man, if you hadn’t come along, I’d have my money.”

I realized we weren’t going to get anywhere. He was going to blame me for stepping between him and what he saw as the quickest way to get his money back—depriving that woman of oxygen. I understand that people on the street live by a different code of ethics, one based on survival, not niceness. If Adam and I had simply driven away, however, my conscience would have eaten at me.

What was the right thing to do? Simply not get involved?

The theme of Sergei Bondarchuk’s Soviet film adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace has something to say about such situations:

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

I handed the homeless the three dollars, and said to Adam, “C’mon, this conversation is over.”

“Man, why’d you get involved, man? She stole my money, and you did nothing. Call the police, man. You came in, and now I ain’t never gonna get it back.”

I think having compassion for the homeless, for the down-and-out, for the bums, whores, and junkies, is a rare trait indeed. I don’t claim to be the most compassionate man living in North Knoxville. More rare than compassion, though, is the willingness to speak truth to people who are accustomed to being ignored, or at best, bribed to go away. I hope that’s what I did.

I turned back around.

“Listen,” I raised my voice this time, “I don’t know what happened before we got out here, but I do know that when I saw you choking a woman, I wasn’t going to stand idly by and let you do it. I don’t care if it’s you or anybody else, it’s never right to choke a woman. She may have stolen your $30. I’m not saying that’s right, but what I am saying is that it was wrong of you to do that to her. You’re not going to blame me for what happened. She stole your $30, huh? Well, you must have given her the opportunity.”

Once we were in the car, all Adam and I could do was laugh at the incredulity of the situation. Adam works for Knoxville News Sentinel, and one of his gigs was shooting a prostitution sting. He now knows one when he sees one. We had just wrestled a toothless homeless man with a cane off of a prostitute who probably outweighed him by fifty pounds.

That just doesn’t happen every day, so we laughed.

While weaving through the desks and chairs inside her portable with bluish-green aluminum siding the color of a corroded penny, Mrs. Menefee fanned herself.

“Is hot in here? Is anyone else hot? I’m burning up.” She’d open up the windows and double-check to make sure the air conditioner was on full blast, even in winter. We could see our breath, and we wore our winter coats.

Now I realize she must have been going through menopause, hot flashes and that sort of thing. She perspired as though she were playing a game of pick-up basketball. Beats of sweat quivered on her upper lip, and when with one of her hands planted on my desk and the other on my shoulder, she’d come by to offer an encouraging word or check our progress, I couldn’t help but stare at them. They quivered. They could roll off and splash on my homework at any second.

She had given us tapeworms to dissect.

Tapeworms could regenerate damaged parts, which sounded like something straight out of a Marvel comic. The body of the rowdy, incorrigible Wolverine healed almost instantly from wounds that would kill a non-mutant without an adamantium skeleton. If you cut a live tapeworm an inch from the tip of its arrow-shaped head down the middle of its body, it would grow back two heads. Other than this remarkable ability to become even more disgusting, the tapeworm was boring.

Frogs, which came next, were a different story. For some reason, Mrs. Menefee told us all to them.

Trying to choose a nickname for the hard, chemical-smelling frog on my dissection trays seemed strange. We were about to cut them open after all, though I suppose that I, like most boys, welcomed any opportunity to get away with something, to pull a prank or test a boundary. The hard part was not thinking of names but deciding which one of my least favorite teachers would receive the honor, and with it, a scalpel in the anus.

Nothing makes for an exciting day in science class like dead amphibians, razor-sharp knives, and Mrs. Ferguson, the saggy-breasted librarian, whose translucent white belly would soon regret the demerits that she gave me for talking.

Despite the morbid humor of my group of friends, we all enjoyed finding the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, stomach, and the more elusive parts of frog anatomy.

Mrs. Menefee must have understood our need to destroy because after we had played Operation with our frogs, she told us that we could do what we wanted with them for the last five minutes off class.

My response was to take a pair of shears and cut mine up into little bits. Unsure of what to do next, I then stacked them in the middle of the tray. At the table next to mind, Carter Bradley was being admonished for putting part of his frog on a girl’s bare skin. Many of the other kids had simply thrown what was left of their unfortunate pets, mostly skin and skeleton, into the garbage cans.

Though I’m sure those frogs were bred and raised for the purpose of wide-eyed faces hiding sick senses of humor, opening them up, removing their miniature organs, and dumping them among the snotty tissues still seems like a waste.

Not to say I was a great respecter of life at that point in my life, but to say that my friends and I were in-between: we had retained enough of our childish wonder to marvel at the frozen architecture of their delicate bodies which had at one point enabled them to eat bugs, jump, and swim. At the same time, we jockeyed for position, who could be funniest and secure the girls’ admiration; who could shock the other friends and show boldness by pushing the limits of decency.

How strange to touch the preserved body of a creature once living! Perhaps some educator back when decided that dissecting frogs could teach the double lesson of anatomy and mortality—the fragility of living, breathing, pulsating existence.

Dissecting a frog would mean more to me now, that dear members of my family have died; people in high school and college with me; a girl I took to homecoming one year; a girl I studied with in Vienna, Austria; my father’s father who bequeathed to me his bony brow, his love of the written word, and his gregariousness. Dust animated for a day or for one hundred years inevitably completes its journey where it began. The rest of us are left to wonder where they are, if the stories of heaven are true.

In the seventh grade, we held death in our hands, yet we waited impatiently for the signal to sever the webbed feet and crack the tiny skull. We couldn’t wait to peel back the clammy skin and glimpse the fine, white muscles underneath before shredding them. I’m afraid the mysteries of biology and locomotion were lost on us.

I don’t know what I would do differently, whether if I were the teacher, I would speak in terms of science or faith; whether as the students slid their frogs out of its plastic sleeves, I would tell them to the dead creatures a number or a name.

Perhaps, instead, I would place a live frog, kicking and croaking, in each pair of  upturned palms and say, “You decide whether this frog lives or dies. If you decide to save its life, you must find it a good pond or river, then let it go. If you decide to kill it, you must do so at the front of the room where everyone can see. That’s the cost of being human.”

I wonder, if Mrs. Menefee had tried to teach that lesson, would we have learned it. Would one of my classmates squeezed out a fart and ruined the seriousness? I suppose it’s never too late to start learning the cost, the danger, of deciding for ourselves which life is sacred and which should be snuffed out.

What happens at a place is made more dramatic by the expectations we bring into it.

I went to college at a small, private, liberal arts school called Lipscomb University. Two theologians, David Lipscomb and James A. Harding, founded it in 1891, and over a hundred years later, many of the doctrines defining the Restoration in general and Stone-Campbell Movement in particular were still evident in its rules, practices, and traditions.

Students attended chapel every day. Boys were allowed in girls’ dorms only during designated hours, and vice versa. We were prohibited from using any form of tobacco on campus and from drinking while we were enrolled in classes, regardless of whether or not we were of age. Curfew for weeknights was 12am, but the administration graciously extended it to 1 on the weekends.

For the most part, it was a wonderful place to get an education. I’m convinced that the rules forced us to be more creative—in how we broke them.

On weekends, I’d sign out of the dorm to my parents’ house, fifteen minutes down the road, and on Friday and Saturday nights, I’d sneak back into the dorm through a first-story window left open by my friends Justin and David for that purpose.

Both semester of my freshman year, which was the only year I lived on-campus, I lived on the second floor with another alum of David Lipscomb High School, David Binkley. We’d played football together. On some Friday nights, my mom would cook dinner for five or six of us sophomores, then full of spaghetti or Taco Ring or another one of her delicious recipes, we’d put in the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack and speed to the field to get dressed out.

A few more of my high school friends were on the second floor of High Rise, and others were scattered throughout. We had a good mix of locals and out-of-towners, so that those of us who had grown up in Nashville could show the newcomers around. They could return the favor on weekends when we’d take road trips to their parents’ houses.

All in all, I’d say Lipscomb University fostered a wholesome environment. The professors were required to be members at churches of Christ, so if we went to church, we’d see them in worship on Sunday mornings.

No matter what faith or code of conduct the faculty and administration endorsed and enforced, one variable was always outside of their control—students.

This became clear one night in the commons area of the second floor. Our RAs, Kyle and Sean, called a floor meeting on a Thursday night.

When I walked in, many of the guys were already standing around in clusters, talking and cutting. Two of them were shooting pool.

“Does anybody know what this is all about?” I asked no one in particular.

No one had a clue.

More guys drifted in, and at 7pm sharp, Sean walked in with his clipboard and took roll. He was frowning.

A couple of people were missing, and he made a note of this.

Kyle was about 6’8” and played Center on our basketball team. We’d just gone Division I that year, so our chances of a long season were slim. He was leaning against the hand railing. You could see down into the lobby where two guys were watching SportsCenter and playing ping-pong.

“Okay,” Sean began, “I don’t know which one of you thinks he’s an artist, but this is not cool.”

We all looked around the room. What was he talking about?

“Kyle and I—“ he nodded at his fellow RA, who hadn’t yet spoken a word, “had the pleasure last week of cleaning up your crap. By crap, I mean crap, literally, feces. Was it on the floor in one of the bathrooms? Oh no, you freaks, that would be too predictable. No, one of you decided to smear it on the wall like a chimpanzee.”

He scanned our faces while shaking his head in disgust.

“Did the culprit stop there? Oh no. He decided that once wasn’t enough. Kyle and I thought that perhaps this was an isolated incident, so you can imagine our—how should I say it?—irritation when we discovered that the bandit had struck again. I mean, seriously, whoever you are, what is freaking wrong with you? That’s just messed up. We don’t really expect that you’ll turn yourself in because the kind of person who does this sort of thing in the first place probably isn’t the kind of person with that kind of balls. Be that as it may, if it happens again, we’re going to make it rain. Does everybody understand?”

We all said yes, then the meeting broke up.

I don’t know what kind of childhood causes someone to make a magic marker of a turd, but as a group of us walked over to the cafeteria for dinner, I think we were all secretly impressed. That’s really sick, and I kind of wish I’d thought of it, albeit with the appropriate tools like a face mask and yellow dishwashing gloves.

You never know what to expect at a Christian school. You could be un- or pleasantly surprised, depending on how warped your sense of humor is.

Farkle forces people to gamble with their comfort. That’s why it’s my favorite game.

It is similar to Truth or Dare, only without the truth option. Before the night is over, all the players know that someone will have to do some undesirable task or challenge. If, rather than bullets, Russian Roulette involved drinking the hair stripped from a hair brush then submerged in eight ounces of water, then it would be the same as Farkle.

The following are some of the consequences I have endured:

· licking a dirty basketball a full revolution
· eating a katydid
· drinking a concoction of such ingredients as Papa John’s garlic sauce, whey protein, pickle juice, habanero pepper sauce, and mayonnaise
· imitating different animals for 30 seconds
· a swirly
· spankings
· putting alligator clips on my nipples for thirty seconds
· Sharpie mustache
· a variety of activies involving various degrees of nudity
· running up a half-mile long hill in cowboy boots without a shirt on in below freezing tempature
· giving or receiving a snorkel
· wetting my face then putting it in a fireplace full of ash
· doing laps in a salt water pool in the middle of winter

All of these pale in comparison to the consequence suffered by my friend and roommate at the time, Greg Hill, on one fateful night in the spring of 2007.

Lucas had invited the eleven freshman guys in the bible study he led to come over and play Farkle. They would start showing up at our apartment in half an hour. We were trying to convince Greg that he should play with us. On his way upstairs to change into more comfortable clothes, he let out a deep breath and told us that he was tired. He’d had a long day with the after-school care program at the YMCA. Staying up late trying not to lose a game he’d never played was the last thing he wanted to do.

Your chances of losing were slim, we reasoned. After all, we would have a total of fourteen players, if he joined us.

The odds encouraged him.

“Okay, guys, I’ll do it,” he said with characteristic bravado, a smile spreading across his face. “Just don’t let me down.”

He punched me in the shoulder. He must be feeling good now. Nothing like gambling with your hours of sleep to cheer a man up.

He thumped up the wooden stairs to his room to get ready.

The pack of freshmen guys showed up soon after he came back down. We cleared the coffee table, and Lucas and I explained the rules of six-dice Farkle to all the first-timers:

· 1s and 5s always count as 100 and 50
· You can’t get on the board with a score of less than 1000 points, but once you’re on the board, you can end your turn at 50, if you want.
· Three of a kind are worth the number times 100. (For example, three 3s are worth 300.)
· Straights are worth 1000 points.
· If all the dice are scoring dice, you have to roll again. If you farkle, then you lose the point total you just earned. If, however, you roll more scoring dice, you add these points to your total.
· If any dice roll off the table, then you must roll all the dice again.
· 6 of a kind is the number times 1000. (For example, six 3s are worth 3000.) If you roll six 1s, then you score 10,000, and the game is over.
· The game goes to 10,000. After one player reaches that score, the rest of the players drive up their scores in the consolation round so as not to be in last place.
· In the game of Farkle, the point is not to win so much as not to lose. The last-place loser is the only one who suffers the consequence.

We began.

With so many players, the game started to drag. Some of the guys had trouble getting on the board, and as the other players drove their scores higher and higher, they participated less and less in the banter, and they wore the same weak smiles that you might see on a guy’s face when he runs into his ex with her new boyfriend. Greg was among these.

I hated to see him not enjoying himself. After all, I’d helped Lucas talk him into playing. He was probably cursing himself for choosing a raucous party with teenage boys instead of his pillow. He finally squeezed above 500 on one turn, and his face lit back up.

Someone broke the 10,000 ceiling, so all that was left was the consolation round.

Greg wasn’t last, but he also wasn’t out of danger.

What is it about really wanting to win or at least really not wanting to be the loser that sets us up for failure?

Greg’s turn came about halfway through the last round. His first roll produced 300 points, which, if he had stopped there, would have proved to keep him ahead of the last loser. Everybody was yelling advice at him—eleven experts who’d only just learned the rules and strategy themselves.

I tried to get Greg’s attention and persuade him to stick with what he had, but he was too distracted. It was like a scene from Wall Street, noise and mayhem, every man screaming what he wants another person to do.

Rather than silence everyone to clear his head, Greg panicked and threw the last of the dice. Nothing. He’d farkled and lost the 300.

One by one the other players rolled better scores, and in an awkward moment of silence, Greg realized his stupidity and started cursing.

That was not the moment to say I told you so.

Our apartment in Sequoyah Village was situated in the middle of Sequoyah Hills on the corner of Kenesaw and Keowee. Kenesaw ran up and over a hill and t-boned the dog park. On the other side of the park was the Lake Loudon.

Because he had lost, the male code of Farkle honor obligated him to take off all his clothes, ride three-quarters of a mile to the park, run through it, and jump in Lake Loudon.

His set jaw and deliberate stalking movements around our den were a warning that any trash talking or sarcastic congratulations might provoke violence. After putting a plastic grocery bag over the seat of my Gary Fisher, I piled in with the rest of the guys, and we drove to the park to wait for his arrival.

After about ten minutes, a tall white shape crested the hill. We started cheering. Encouraged by our support, Greg gave the air a couple of punches. He must have started enjoying himself because he was putting on a show, weaving side to side while picking up speed going downhill.

That moment of glory while he was bathed in streetlight and feeling the crisp air rush across his skin was about as good as it was going to get for Greg that night. He soon saw the same thing we did: to his right and to our left, a car was curving around the bend on Cherokee Boulevard.

I could almost see the gears turning in his head: Do I slow down and wait for the car to pass or do I try to beat it?

You already know what he chose.

Greg stood up again and started hammering the pedals. He was cranking them as fast as he possibly could, his legs a yellowish blur.

At first, we thought he was going to make it. He hit Cherokee Boulevard and was almost through the walking trail before the car’s proximity spooked him.

You’ve probably seen how cars in the distance will seem to move very slowly then all of the sudden appear right next to you. “I never even saw the car coming” is something people say after car accidents.

As Greg crossed the walking trail, the car was right there, thirty feet away.

Everybody knows you don’t hit the front brakes when you’re going really fast. Everybody knows that you always double-check which is the front brake before you go down a hill in the first place. Greg must not have reacquainted himself, because he panicked and mashed the front brakes. The disc brakes on my bike are much more responsive than ordinary v-clamp brakes. The bike kicked up onto its front wheel like an angry bronco bucking up on its two front legs.

Greg’s momentum carried him over the handlebars, and he landed right in the middle of the road.

The black Chevy Camero screeched to a stop about five feet from one of the strangest sights the driver must have ever seen: a big heap of naked man picking itself up and limping off the road. I hustled across the street to pick up my bike and waved at the driver as way of an apology. He honked the horn twice and drove off.

At this point, Greg was standing in the grass just within the curve of streetlight cutting into the darkness of the dog park. He was bent slightly forward, had his hands on his hips, and was rocking slowly backward and forward, moaning, “Uhhhhh aaaahhuhhhhh. Uhhhhh. Awwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhh.”

“Somebody please put a towel on him!” I yelled.

One of the freshman guys ran and got a towel from one of the cars, and Lucas gave it to Greg who put it around his waist.

The rest of us approached with caution.

Greg had a tear below his chin where he’d bitten through his lower lip. His left shoulder was bright red and oozing lymph where the asphalt had scraped off the skin, and his left knuckle and knee had also made contact with the road.

We all stood in a semi-circle of awkward silence, waiting for him to say something.

“Do I still have to get in the river?” he said, his voice sounded thick from his swollen lip.

“No!” we all said in unison.

It was so pathetic it almost wasn’t funny.

The other guys all piled back into the cars, and I rode my bike home. Most of them had already left by the time I pulled up.

Greg and Lucas were upstairs where Lucas was down on two knees dabbing Greg’s knee with hydrogen peroxide and then Neosporin.

Five minutes later, Greg was in his room, and Lucas and I were in the room that we shared.

Complete silence.

“What—just—happened?!!” Lucas hissed in the dark.

“I don’t know!” I whispered.

Our laughter and incredulity had been pent up for too long. We didn’t want to laugh in front of Greg and upset him even more, but what had happened was one of the funniest and most bizarre occurrences either of us had ever seen. We hated that he’d gotten hurt, but 6’4” of naked man tumbling through the air was too good. Laughter rocked us both for the next half hour. We had to be quiet so as not to wake Greg, but trying to suppress that kind of hysterical giggling makes it even worse. Contents under pressure will explode. We laughed harder for our relief that our stupid game hadn’t resulted in Greg getting hit by a car.

How do you explain that to the ER doctor?

Every family develops its own mythology—stories that help explain what happens around the house, on vacation, out in the yard.

I could say the following to any member of my family and get either a laugh or exasperated sigh:

· “Don’t knock out my contact.”

· “Stuffed crust pizza isn’t any good.”

· “I’ll have the chicken filet.”

· te-TAN-us

· “Your face looks like you got attacked by a squirrel.”

· Paco

· Bubba

Maybe for you it’s an old college injury of dad’s: his knee cap came out of place and slid around to the back of his knee. That’s why he never runs, only walks. Oh, he’ll run down a Frisbee or trot after one of the grandbabies, but you’ll never see him sprint. He doesn’t have an MCL.

A family also builds its own private vocabulary.

About halfway through high school, I made up the word “stoinker.” It sounded bodily, euphemistic, vaguely offensive. My older sister Elizabeth was in college at the time and was so pleased with my neologism that she drew a sign on poster board and put it in her dorm window:

“HAVE YOU CHECKED YOUR STOINKER TODAY?”

The response was favorable.

Certain personality traits lend themselves to mythologizing, and in light of certain events, even common words can take on mythic proportions and special connotations. Most of these small, quite ordinary happenings take place on the way to the grocery or church or baseball practice.

One of my family’s favorite stories took place my eighth or ninth grade year. Elizabeth was in the car, which meant she was still in high school. We were all riding in the blue Suburban one Sunday morning on our way to church.

Across Hillsboro Road from Hillsboro Church of Christ is my favorite field in Nashville. A small stream lined with tall hardwoods forms two of its angles and Tyne Boulevard forms the other. A scattering of large trees grow in the field and throw pools of shade over the tall grass. When autumn comes, huge bales of hay appear. Any breeze blowing from that direction smells of sunlight, and clover, and faintly of cows. Too few of these fields exist now in Green Hills and Forest Hills. One by one, they have morphed into developments with enormous brick houses sprouting like so many warts or toadstools.

Not this field though. This is the field that in your dreams draws you into its golden center. Your eyes feast on its tiny, delicate flowers; your hands, on its springy grasses; your ears, on noisy grasshoppers and happy birds. Even the purple-headed thistles are welcome, like an awkward cousin.

This is also the Field of the Wolf.

That morning, just before my dad turned right into the church parking lot, my mom drew all of our attention to a dark dot in the distance. It appeared to be moving.

“Look! A wolf!”

“A wolf?” my dad asked.

“Yes!” my mom said, “A wolf.”

My dad took his foot off the accelerator. We all got a chance to take a good look.

“I don’t think that’s a wolf, Mom,” I said.

“Yes, it is!”

“It’s probably a coyote or somebody’s dog.”

“No, it’s a wolf! I can tell by the sleek look of the fur around its face.”

“Mom, it’s a hundred yards away. You can’t even see its face. We can barely even tell that it’s in the canine family, let alone talk about its fur. Besides, I read in Field & Stream that wolves haven’t lived in Tennessee for a hundred years. They’ve only recently reintroduced small numbers into the Smokies with hopes that they’ll survive, and I doubt that one made it all the way over here.”

“Well, I don’t care what ya’ll think. I know it’s a wolf.”

She folded her arms, and by this time, the car was parked. We all went into church.

My mom has lived to regret that conversation. Her side of the family is known for—how should I say this?—their tenacity. Okay, stubborness.

To give you another example, my great-grandmother, Nanny—married name “Pearl Legate,” no joke—told my maternal grandfather, “There is no room for sons like you in heaven.”

Ouch. This happened after he took her keys away because she vanished for hours one day. She’d gotten lost in her car and couldn’t remember how to get home.

I don’t guess any of us likes having our independence taken away.

In the years following the wolf incident, whenever we see an animal that is obviously a horse or cat or whitetail deer, one of us will point and shout, “Look! A wolf!”

Though she is finally able to laugh, my mom maintains to this day that the creature, possibly canine, did, in fact, though we could barely tell whether or not it was an animal, possess the texture and suppleness of fur characteristic of wolves.

Has my mother ever seen a wolf? No. Has she ever seen a nature show on television about wolves? Possibly. Is she willing to stake her credibility on superhuman vision and esoteric zoological knowledge? Absolutely.

Stubbornness. She may as well have said, “I could tell it was a cockatiel by its brilliance of its emerald plumage and the dramatic curvature of its beak.”

 You can’t get away with anything in our family.

If you’ve got any of your own myths to share, please do so in the “Comments” section below.

The iPhone has created buzz for some time now. Its applications, or “apps,” will do everything from make a fart noise at your cocktail party to straighten your pictures on the wall.

A new app will enable parents to talk to their children even less and instead turn their brains to mush with flashing lights and colors. It’s like Baby Einstein on the go!

iStoryTime reads stories to kids. Six stories are currently available for $1.99 each. They have fascinating titles like “Fred the Fish and the Squash That Goes Squish” and “Mommy and Daddy Are Going on a Trip.”

“You’re So Special That I Never Spend Time with You,” “What Mommy Means When She Says You Were a Big Accident,” and “My Daddy is angry, and My Mom’s Depressed” are due to appear in the spring.

iStoryTime offers some obvious advantages over real books. First, the obvious: parents can now focus on all the things they loved to do before their offspring ruined everything. Second, since there are no pages, the children don’t have do lift a finger, thus exacerbating childhood obesity.

FrogDogMedia, the company that designed the app, plans to release a dozen more apps targeted toward children. The LoveMe app will give kids the verbal affirmation that they need to become well-rounded, mature adults.

The HugsKissesAndOtherNonSexualizedNonIncestuousAffection app will warm the glass and plastic of the eye phone to 98.6 degrees, the body temperature of a healthy human being. Combined with the synthetic skin iPhone cover, this app mimics human touch and gives youngsters what they most need—intimacy and security.

Other apps, such as MommyCanYouHelpMeWithMyPooPoo and UhOhIJustThrewUpMyLunchable, will take care of those nasty messes that make one’s spawn less than desirable housemates.

A child never has to snuggle up in your lap and point to the pictures again! iStoryTime takes all the hassles out of putting kids to bed. Buy it today.

“Like using bricks to open windows.”

Known for his quotable quotes and colorful aphorisms, my friend Steve Loy delivered this little beauty while surveying the damage.

Let me start from the beginning.

Five holly bushes grew in front of the large, yellow American Four-Square house in which I live. My landlord and friend, Patrick, thought that “Big Bird”—as his wife has dubbed the house—would look better without the misshapened holly bushes crowding the steps up the front and left side porches.

Pretty soon after moving in, Patrick and I were able to yank two of the bushes out of the ground, using my 4Runner and a ski rope borrowed from Patrick’s father-in-law. The rope broke on the third holly bush—dry rot.

Worse things can happen.

Ten months later, the three remaining holly bushes were a constant reproach. Still intact, still ugly, they taunted me ever time I walked up the steps—“We’re still here.”

Big Bird was built in 1899, and 110 years later, he’s a little worse for the wear. He sometimes collects water in his basement, he has cracks in his ceilings, and his porches are—how should I say it?—sagging. Patrick is a pastor, and his pastor’s income stands before these major and minor renovations like David before Goliath. Patrick sometimes feels the burden of responsibility that comes with faithful stewardship of a historic building. He’ll sometimes say things like, “Why did I buy this crappy house?” We laugh as though he doesn’t mean it, but we both know better.

I thought the absence of the three remaining holly bushes might cheer him up. We’re trying to “live in community,” and to me, that sometimes means taking care of an undesirable task for a close friend, especially if he is dreading it. If you’ve ever painted a room, or even an entire house, you know that volunteering to do something for somebody else for free is a lot more enjoyable than doing it for yourself or getting paid.

On a Monday morning, I decided to “eat the frog” and rip up the holly bushes, meaning cross it off my list first thing so that I could focus on other tasks.

Steve loaned me his $300 rope with carabiners, the Arnold Schwarzeneggar of ropes, 5800 pounds of tensile strength! The rope was actually growing chest hair.

Steve offered two words of caution:

1) Use the carabiners attached to the rope, and you won’t have knots to untie.

2) An objects in motion will travel toward its anchor point.

Apparently, he had earned this wisdom the old-fashioned way: time wasted on loosening knots and a huge dent in the tail gate of an otherwise new truck.

Glad to have friends with more life experience than I have, I nodded and did what any full-grown man would do: I ignored his advice.

Neither of these outcomes could possibly happen to me. I was, after all, invincible. I didn’t have my master’s in English for nothing. Too bad about the dent though.

The first and smallest bush came out easily. This boded well.

For the second, I backed the 4Runner into the yard and wound the rope a few times around the trunk of the largest bush then passed it through the carabiner.

Tying the other end to the towing package on my truck, I had too much rope to spare, so I doubled it over and used three cinch knots to make it fast.

Here comes the fun part.

I dropped the truck into low gear and gave it some gas. The engine roared, the tires tore up the grass, the rope creaked, and the bush…

stayed.

Crappers. I thought I might get lucky, have to dig around the roots first.

When I went back around to the back of the truck, I saw the error of my ways. I should have listened better to Steve: a fist-sized rock of rope had replaced my knot.

My fingers came nowhere close to budging any of the pieces of rope. Who would have thought that the force of a V6 engine and the grip of new Michelin tires could do that?

Idiot.

How was I going to pay for that rope if I had to cut it? A master’s in English doesn’t go as far as you might think. Or as far as I thought, I should say.

Over the next forty-five minutes, I used the following items in an attempt to loosen it: two hammers, a flathead screwdriver, a wood chisel, the arm to a car jack, a pick ax, WD-40, a crow bar, and a spattering of bad language.

Much more was on the line than having to pay for a new rope if I cut off the old one.

Knowing how to use tools is a kind of credibility with men, like winning an arm wrestling contest or charming women. None of these is something you could put on a resume, but “I can crush this can on my forehead” is certainly more impressive than “I can do your accounting” on your average Saturday night.

Though I suppose you can get paid for a operating a backhoe is worth something, the lack marketability of using many tools doesn’t discourage us from placing weight on the ability.

My friend Bear can get just about any machine started. He’ll tinker with it, adjusting the choke and throttle, checking the oil and gas, making sure the sparks plugs and wires are clean and tight, and then he’ll yank a cord or flip a switch and the engine will come to life. I, on the other hand, might need fifteen or twenty minutes. I’ll succeed eventually, but he just has the knack. I respect that.

The bottom line is that men love to exude an aura of competence, confident control, inexhaustible resourcefulness.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not haunted by feelings of inadequacy. The question, “Do I have what it takes?” doesn’t plague me. I know my worth isn’t tied up in changing a flat tire in five minutes or less. However, I’d still rather my hands be skillful allies than a source of embarrassment. I think most men would agree, and I challenge you to find a man who doesn’t care whether or not he can build a good fire. If he really doesn’t care, I guarantee that he owns a pair of high heels.

Remember in cartoons how when one of the characters was facing an ethical dilemma, a six-inch-tall blue angel and a red devil of similar height would materialize on either shoulder and give their arguments for right or wrong. Instead of the angel and devil, my peanut gallery is a group of older men who stand in the corner of my mind and evaluate my performance.

If I excecute well, they say nice things:

“That boy can swing an ax!”

“That man can certainly use a hammer.”

“That guy knows how to back up a trailer.”

If I screw up, they shake their heads and glance knowingly at one another.

None of us can possibly be good at everything, but even though the ability to code a website is much more lucrative these days than building a deck, there’s some mysterious authority in sweat, brawn and deftness with tools. Being called incompetent is close to being called a coward.

A scene from Castaway speaks to the heart of this seeminly innate desire to be capable, physically strong, dextrous. Tom Hanks’ character finally succeeds in building a fire, and then dancing around it, he cries, “Ah, look what I have created!”

I’d like to believe that if the world to revert to the Stone Age, or Bronze Age, or feudal Europe, I wouldn’t end up with my skull staved in and my woman somebody else’s concubine. I’d like to believe I could survive in the wilderness. I’d like to believe I’d survive a war.

Why is “expertise” such an attractive word?

I don’t think I’m alone in this. If you don’t know how to hunt, fish, cook over a fire, land a punch, and romance a beautiful damsel, then what have you got going for you? A high-definition television? Leather upholstery in your luxury sedan? Perhaps these measures of our substance are the residue of gender roles reinforced by centuries of patriarchy.

Women have another type of inheritance altogether. How is a woman made to feel about herself if she can’t have children? Can’t cook? While men are off winning bread with the sweat of their brows, women run the household. One woman receives a compliment on her dress, and she responds by confiding what an incredible deal she found at T.J. Maxx. Of course, she doesn’t want the other woman to go buy the dress, she merely wanted her to know that she knows how to shop, how to stretch the cents. This expertise is a kind of credibility. Women sniff out sales while their men build the Tower of Babel.

“Take one small bite and be as a god? What a ridiculous bargain! I mean, why wouldn’t I taste the forbidden fruit…for free! It would be a sin not to.”

So you see why I had to undo that blasted knot even if it made my fingers bleed. We’re talking about the difference between respect and being denied entrance into the fraternity of men. Getting that rope off my truck was a guarantee that I would never need Viagra.

After much self-deprecatory interior monologue, I finally freed the rope.

I said thank you to Jesus and meant it.

I’m not proud of what happened soon afterwards.

I dug around the roots of the holly bush, reattached the rope, and climbed back into my 4Runner.

Nothing happened.

I went inside and changed into my Mountain Khaki shorts and tennis shoes. I took off my glasses and put in my contacts. Business time.

Round 3.

Nothing happened.

Round 4.

Nothing happened.

Now I was getting a wee bit irritated.

I hacked at the roots of the holly bush as though they were responsible for my broken leg in eighth grade. My broken heart at 16. Not getting into Columbia for grad school. (I didn’t want to pay that much for a writing degree, but it would have been a nice gesture on their part.)

In my truck, I put it in the lowest gear and slammed on the gas.

Tires screeching, back end fishtailing, then…

WHAM!

Cussword.

I put it into park, got out, and walked around to see what had happened.

The rear door was dented in two places: on the right side of the fender and on the left side of the door itself above the license plate, below the window.

Idiot.

I sat down in the middle of the road.

Steve Loy: 2.

Austin Church: 0.

The peanut gallery of tool-proficient men didn’t even shake their heads. They just walked away.

About ten seconds later, Patrick and Jason emerged through the hedge that separates our side yard from the alley.

“What happened?” they asked.

“I’m an idiot,” I said.

“At least you didn’t break the window or one of your tail lights,” Jason said.

True enough.

Everyone had some commentary to offer.

Caroline observed, “Your morning of manly endeavor didn’t go so well,” to which I replied, “When does manly endeavor ever go well? This is how wars get started.”

Our neighbor, Ty, told Caroline later in the day, “That man just needs to get laid.”

Maybe so. I don’t really know much about that sort of thing. I never got the sex talk.

Rather than rip out the final bush, I took my new ax and hacked it up. Don’t ask me why I didn’t do that to the other two and save the body damage to my truck, not to mention two hours of my time. You may as well ask why people are violent.

Before you get depressed, I want to reassure you that this story does have some redemption in it.

When I backed into an old red Pontiac Grand Am in the Walgreen’s parking lot, my fender was already dented, so you couldn’t even see the new damage. Great.

September 18, 2009

Dear Tadd of Soccer Taco Downtown,

Thank you for taking time out of your day to serve me lunch.

Please allow me to share the 7 aspects of my dining experience which I most appreciated:

1)    You did your utmost to avoid coming to our table except to write down our orders and pick up your tip. Respecting our privacy was your top priority.

2)    When you brought the bill, you chose to avoid the hassle of including the nickel. Change sliding around on the black plastic bill tray? How frustrating! Who wanted that nickel anyway? Why don’t you just put it in your piggy bank? You were entitled to it, because I, affluent as I am, don’t hold congress with paltry coins anymore. I deal strictly in bills. Anything else is below my economic stratum and insults to my pedigree.

3)    You recommended the fish tacos, which weren’t on the lunch menu, because your extraordinary gift of discernment told you immediately that lunch menus are to me as Windows operating systems and fuel-efficent cars. I own a Mac and drive a gas-guzzling 4Runner. Why? Because I can. I can pay the dinner price for an entrée at 7am if I want. I use George Washingtons to shine my handmade shoes.

4)    You acted all chummy, which I didn’t deserve. It’s as if you were saying that even though we are separated by this artificial divide of server/customer, that doesn’t mean you have to do the job for which you’re getting paid. You’re right: at any moment, the tables could be turned and I could be serving you refried beans. I won’t forget it.

5)    You never brought the queso that I ordered, yet it showed up on my bill. How clever of you! I never would have thought of that. Invisible cheese dip like the emperor’s new clothes. I didn’t even know all the kitchen staff were laughing at me?

6)    You are a Caucasian male. In the past, someone with your skin tone waiting tables at a Mexican restaurant would undermined my confidence in the cuisine’s authenticity. Now, I realize the error of my ways: a white man can bring his poor work ethic and sense of entitlement anywhere. Equal Opportunity Employment working in reverse is a beautiful thing.

7)    When I asked for more salsa and you said, “No problem,” I thought I had inconvenienced you and distracted you from a much more important task. When the salsa never came, a wave of relief washed over me. I hadn’t been a nuisance after all! These pesky wants of mine are always causing friction in my relationships. More salsa would simply have confirmed my neediness and insecurity. Your longsightedness was a much-needed wake up call.

Can’t wait to eat at Soccer Taco again! I forgot to say I’m sorry that I only tipped you 16.8%. That was an affront to your exemplary service, and one that remains a canker in my soul. Please accept my apologies.

Your Most Humble Servant,

Austin L. Church