Kobayashi Maru

Ever feel this way?  I wonder sometimes about our culture.  Where are we going and will we be happy once we get there?  In fact, are we actually even enjoying the journey?  We have a whack load (yes, that’s a technical term of measurement - I think it’s based on the metric system) of gadgets and things that save time and make our lives easier.  And yet, we have less time than we used to.  We have less energy than we used to.  We have more people who are depressed and sad and overwhelmed.  “Burnout” has now become a normal reference with regards to jobs and even ministry.

In the meantime, nothing seems to be good enough.  Now, I am a huge fan of looking forward.  I love to have BHAGs (Big Harry Ass Audacious Goals).  I never want to become satisfied with today.  But, that being said, I think we need to learn to appreciate what we have.  I don’t want to get to the point where I am taking things for granted.  I get that we all do it to some extent.  Have a cell phone for long enough and we forget the freakishly awesome technology that runs that thing.  We get pissed with the cable is out - forgetting that as kids we moved the rabbit ears and held our tongues right to get a signal.  The Muppet gets her picture taken and immediately wants to “see it” on the LCD screen on the back of the digital camera.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME??  My mom still has 35mm film in her house that hasn’t been developed yet from t-ball games Marvin and I played in the late 70’s!!!  When we get used to immediate gratification on such a grand scale, we end up easily so disappointed.

I think this is what this guy was talking about:
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Now, confession time.  What do you take for granted?  What ticks you off WAY too much and too quickly when you think about it objectively outside the emotional moment?

I will go first.  It’s only fair.

For me, I get totally bent out of shape when someone doesn’t have an answering machine.  When a phone rings and rings and rings…I get so choked.  It’s like “spend the $20 and get a freaking answering machine!!!!”  And second to that, I get miffed when someone doesn’t respond to an email in a “timely manner”.  Yes, timely is a realtive term that is directly proportional to the importance of whatever it is I am asking.

How about you??  Confessions on the Maru anyone?

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Papa introduced the Muppet to the dip cone at a very early age.  That is his right as a grandfather.  And, honestly, he has introduced all of his grandkids to dip cones.  I say all this because the dip cone ha become the end-all-be-all of special treats to the Muppet.

Dairy Queen has no greater evangelist than Papa, and no more loyal follower than the Muppet.  The dip cone is the fourth member of the Holy Trinity in the eyes of the Muppet.  This is important because…
Today, the Muppet achieved a goal that Ferf has had for her for quite some time - counting to 20 with no mistakes 2 times in a row.  Now, on a side note, I know for a fact that the Muppet could have done this some many months ago, but she has a stubborn streak in her and she got more joy from making a some strange random mistake.  Her personal favorite became forgetting to say “15″ and then laughing hysterically when she got to twenty.   But the fun of this eventually wore off and today as I was driving her to pre-school, out of the backseat comes the Muppet asking me if she could try to count to 20 becuase she wanted to get some chocolate chips (evidently this was a payola scheme that Ferf had tried bribing her with).  I told her that I wasn’t sure about the chocolate chips, but it didn’t matter cause she wasn’t gonna do it anyways.  I told her that she would forget 15, so I’d probably eat the chocolate chips when I got home from work.  This seemed to offend her greatly and she belted out 1 - 20 with no mistakes.  In fact, she did it so fast that she surprised herself.  But, undaunted, I told her that she was only halfway there.  Not only that, I told her that it was WAY harder to do it slowly.  So she says, and I quote, “humph!  I can do it slow or fast.  Just watch!”  And she upped her volume, slowed her speech and counted to 20 again.  So we called Ferf and she did it over the phone on speakerphone.  We all celebrated loudly and promised her chocolate chips.

But tonight when I got home, and saw how well the Muppet has done all day, and how great her attitude had been all day, well I decided to take a page out of Papa’s playbook and I suggested a quick run to DQ for a “dip cone”!!  This caused great eleation from both Muppet and Ferf and we bundled up and hopped in the car.  On the way the Muppet announces that she wants her dip cone with vanilla on the inside and chocolate on the outside.  As this is the only way they come, I decided that this was a good opportunity to match wits with a four year old.  So the conversation went something like this:

SO you want vanilla on the outside and chocolate on the inside?

NO DADDY!  I want chocolate on the outside and vanilla on the inside.

RIGHT, that’s what I said.  Vanilla outside and chocolate on the inside.

NO DADDY!!  Vanilla inside and chocolate outside!!

But Muppet, if the vanilla is on the ouside how do you dip in the chocolate?

DADDY!! LISTEN.  Vanilla inside and chocolate outside.

OK.  I get it, but then where is the ice cream?

On the inside silly Daddy.

But I thought the vanilla was on the inside??

It is Daddy.

Then where is the ice cream??

INSIDE!

With the ice cream?

THE ICE CREAM IS VANILLA FLAVORED DADDY!!!!

OH.  Then what flavor is the chocolate?

UH…what?

If the ice cream is inside and vanilla flavored, then if the chocolate is outside, what flavor is it?

There was a long silence from the back, and then Ferf just had to get involved.  She says, “Muppet, tell silly Daddy that chocolate is a flavor AND the outside of the dip cone.”

After a moment, during which I smile slyly at Ferf like I am oh so smart and toying with our child, she says:

“Mommy, maybe you should order the dip cone.”

Any more questions why I feel okay mocking my child when I get the opportunity?  I thought not.

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So I was recently asked to perform another wedding.  I am not unaccustomed to officiating weddings, but neither are they something that I do every day.  So it is always a little humbling to be asked to be a part of a marriage.
So why was I asked to do the wedding?

Was I a close friend of the bride and/or groom?  Bluntly, no.

Did we go to the same church? No…they aren’t really church going folk.

Was I a referral through someone close to them?  Not so much.

Did they pick me out of a phone book?  No, I am not even listed - cell phone only.

So, how did this come about?  I was in a business networking group with the bride for 2 years.  Every Wednesday morning for 3 years, I would get up at the butt crack of dawn, drive to a restaurant, go into the back meeting room, eat a fairly crappy breakfast, listen to people give the same 60 second summary of their job, listen to one of them give a 20 minute talk about their job, pass around a bucket so we could drop in referrals for each other, and then leave.  Somehow, over the course of those 3 years, you get to know people.  A little at a time at first.  But over time, and over breakfast, you learn more and more about people - 5 minutes at a time.  It takes a long time, but it happens.  And then eventually, someone you have spent one brekfast a week with, decides to get married.  They decide that, although they are not “religious” or even “spiritual”, they want someone who is to do their wedding.  Then they think who they might know who is a “God guy” that would do their nuptuials.  Then they think of that guy who they spent every Wednesday morning with - the one who people kept asking to bless the food.  And that is when my phone rang.

Cause blessing food and performing a marriage is almost exactly the same thing right?  How different can it be?  All I had to do was stand up and say, “Dear Lord, thank you for this food bride and groom, and we ask that you bless the wedding to the nourishment of our bodies, and our bodies to your service.  Amen.”

It was a really interesting conversation when they called me.  They jumped right in to tell me they were getting married and that they wanted me to do the wedding.  That transitioned immediately into qualifying clauses and apologies about their lack of “religiosity”.  But they told me that they really wanted me and my God there that day.

Now, to be fair, I told them that I was not going to pretend that I didn’t think God was an important part of marriage.  And they said, “well, how about this - are you familiar with Monty Python?”  Now, I was not really sure how this was relevant in the least, but I am never one to pass up an opportunity to quote that particular troupe of comedic genius, so I said, “of course I am.”  Then they asked me if I had ever seen The Quest for the Holy Grail.

I responded by quoting large sections of the movie.  That seemed to make a connection.  So, then they made me a proposition.  They said, and I quote, “How about this.  You make a couple of references to Holy Grail, and you can do your Jesus thing.”

How could I possibly not be touched by that?  It worked for me.

So I married them good and did my Jesus thing.  It was a happy occasion, we didn’t bicker and argue over who killed who.

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So, I was at the taping of Marriage Uncensored with Dave and Christie this last week.  I have not been at a TV taping since my 5th anniversary when Ferf and I made it to a David Letterman show in New York.  Now that was a great taping.  David Letterman was a hero of mine when I was young…what can I say, I was in my college years in the early 90’s.  Top 10 lists were a staple of my formative years.  I was legally able to drink and Letterman was new to the late night air-waves.  It was a beautiful communion.

But I digress.  I was in the sound studio last week as Dave and Christie interviewed Dr. Garry Smalley and Ted Cunningham, authors of the book The Language of Sex.

Now, at this point I could digress into my lovely wife’s opinion of the book - “spectacularly mediocre”, I think was her phrase, but that, like David Letterman, while amusing and intriguing, is not the point of this post.  The point of the post is the TV show (at least ostensibly).

SO I was there.  The studio is amazing.  It seats about 80 max.  The stage is freaking awesome.  Honestly, you would think that it is a Hollywood sound stage.  Anyways, enough gooshing about the studio, I am starting to sound like a 14 year old girl - which I can assure you, I am not.  But the show is impressive.  They even have audience handlers - people who make the experience fun and interactive for folks in the audience.  I think their names were Wayne and Jayne. (yep, real names, though I could have used them in the spirit of this blog and you would have thought that I had made that up.  Seriously, you would have.)
(as a side note, and in the interest of full disclosure, Ferf was with me at the taping)
So right as the taping starts, Smalley and Cunningham start responding as Dave and Christie begin peppering them with questions about the book.  And since the topic was “sex”, the audience was already somewhat on edge.  You know how it is, when people know that someone is going to be discussing sex, we get all twitterpated with excitement while simultaneously becoming awkwardly sophmoric.  That was the ethos of the entire audience - with the possible exception of my wife who is a professional passion coach.  (she is used to people talking about sex in her presence all the time, shoot I know I do it every chance I get.  In fact I often go so far as to not only talk about sex in front of her, but to actually have it!)

So the questions start coming and the answers began coming and soon the off-hand comments and innunendo bean flying.  In fact, I thought to myself, maybe they ought to rename this show “Double Entendre with Dave and Christie”.  Now, I do want to mention that I am in no way trying to demean the show or the folks on it.  In fact, that night was easily one of the most enjoyable of my life.  I have laughed that hard almost never.  There was an off handed comment made about sex on stairs, and that became one of the constant jokes between sets.  That and one about edible chocolate.  I know, I know.  All chocolate is edible, but somewhere in the midst of the taping someone was talking about romance and so obviously chocolate came up.  And I think the idea of edibles was about to rear its head and the two got convoluted and thus edible chocolates were born.  Right there in the studio, and I was there to see it.  And now you know about them.  So next time you are thinking about having sex on your stairs (sucks for you if you own a rancher) make sure you bring your wife some edible chocolates.  (you know, that was WAY funnier in the moment in the studio.  Seriously.  There is was hysterical.  Here it’s barely blog worthy.  I don’t know what happened.)  Also, Dave made the comment - or made it was a confession - that he likes to call lingerie “units”.  (please don’t ask me to explain that.  I simply can’t.  But I did tell Ferf that next time she wears some, I am going to sing the marine corps running cadence.  I can’t help it - I love the show.  Anyway, suffice it to say that we have enough inside sex humor to last us a while.

SO - my question for you, loyal reader(s) - look at me going all interactive and web 2.0ish - is, are you willing to tell your favorite amusing inside joke/ double entendre?  And if it includes sex on stairs or units, you will lose all points on creativity.

I know that you have some.  Come on. Share them.  Don’t be shy, Lord knows this is only a blog - not a TV show.

Anyone?  Bueller?  Bueller?

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