• Pick, pick, pick

    I’m back at work this week, a little reluctantly. I’m still expelling – those of you with respiratory issues feel me. I feel run over. Those of you who haven’t been run over – I don’t recommend it.

    However, my thumb – the real reason I haven’t posted in a while – still throbs. You may not know this, but approximately three out of every four American adults suffer from some form of self-mutilation.

    Actually, as far as I know that’s not true. I made it up – out of whole cloth, as they say. I have no idea how many of you pick pieces off. I’d like to think there are a lot of you out there. Then I wouldn’t feel so bad. Me? I’m not doing anything that would draw the attention of a mental health expert, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just pick the hell out of my fingernails. The only phrase heard more often in our house than “Adam, stop running,” or “what the heck is that and what is it doing there,” is “John, stop picking.” I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s not like I’m blowing my big chance as a male hand model. Here’s the thing: it drives Cheryl crazy. It’s like nails on a chalkboard. If I were a pet I’d be a peeve. It’s not entirely my fault though. I swear she has a supernatural sense of hearing. We can be watching a movie in a loud theater and she’ll grab my hands in frustration, trying in vain to squeeze the will to pick out of them. It’s times like these I’m thankful she doesn’t have a firm grip.

    Anyway, those of you familiar with Olympic fingernail picking know there are risks involved, one of which is infection. If you pick too much off it grows back off track. That’s what happened to my thumb. On my right hand. On the outside edge.

    I don’t know about the rest of you, but that part of my hand gets a lot of work: it’s my space thumb. Come on, admit it, you’ve all got a space thumb. You probably take it for granted too – pounding away at your keys without a thought for it’s needs, dreams, or desires.

    I won’t. Not anymore. I thought office email was painful before. Try it with a bum space thumb.

  • Rods and cones

    Call it generational bias. Blame it on the way history is taught in school (with one exception, in my case). The world before 1960 seems black and white. I hear it in the stories older generations tell.

    It’s not, of course. The world isn’t just filled with gray, it’s filled with all the colors of the spectrum.

    I’ve been fooling around with a birthday gift the last few days: a film scanner I’ve been lusting over to scan my grandfather’s slides (as in photography). I never thought color film was available on the consumer market until much later, but hidden in the stuff scavenged from my grandmother’s things was a box of one hundred color slides… taken between 1942 and 1944.

    Seeing baby pictures of my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandparents, and half a dozen aunts and uncles (with a few greats to go around) in color has been a thrill.

    I know, I’m easily duped, but pictures are a powerful medium. Seeing so many old pictures in black, white, sepia, and the silvery highlights of the really old ones contributed to my bias… my feelings that modern society tended to be morally superior.

    Considering where we are, isn’t that sad?

    I’d never admit it to you, but I think it’s always been there, looking down my nose with contempt on “the good old days.”

    These pictures reminded me we’ve been seeing more than black and white for a long time. The capacity for critical thought goes back beyond the 1960s.

    Even our ancestors had rods and cones.

    Mom & grandma - 3 Mom and Grandma Conner

    My grandmother Conner holds my three week old mother in the Fall of 1942

    *If you’re out there Christy, I don’t want to hear about photosensitive ganglion cells.

  • Adam bomb

    Maybe it’s his small body. Maybe it’s just hardwired into a four year old boy.

    Adam is showing an early flair for maneuvering, pattern recognition, and tactics. I think he’s worked out every long approach to a padded landing in the house. “Adam, no running!” comes out of my mouth on autopilot, like “God bless you” when someone sneezes. It comes out a fraction of a second before his body makes impact. Sometimes I’m the target. Sometimes it’s a piece of furniture, or an unsuspecting (large) stuffed animal. He is afraid of the dark, but he’ll run across two rooms and launch his body at full speed, head first, into a Lazy Boy – sending boy and chair sliding across the floor into the wall.

    He’s still a little big for his age, my ribs can vouch for his conditioning, and he’s signed up for soccer this winter.

    Fellow parents, I pray for your children.