Actual People of Walmart and Merry Christmas

This Thursday, I went to Walmart. I don't like going there, but I did anyway, hoping to find a large bag of holiday M&Ms for a project in Brandon's class. *

They had a Salvation Army bucket at each door. There were two ladies at the bucket I was going to pass. One of them seemed tired and was sniffling a little, but she spared a smile for each person who passed by and nodded gratefully when someone dropped money in the bucket. The other one . . . I don't know exactly how to put this gently, but I think she was a cyborg.

See, I watch people a lot. I mean, I don't stare, but I take in details of people's faces because, as a writer, faces are an important hook for the reader. I look for interesting marks and hairstyles, but I also look at facial expressions and, in my head, try to sum them up in words as best I can. If I'm with Christy or someone else I trust, I might even share these words to see if I'm doing a decent job of it.

This woman looked like a cyborg. Her facial expression wasn't fixed, exactly, but it was artificial, like she was trapped in a Christmas card pose with people for whom she felt no genuine affection. She would turn that face toward each person who passed her, but her eyes were unfocused, unless you moved close and dropped something in the bucket, in which case she'd look at you, nod and say, "God bless."

I had twenty bucks in my wallet, earmarked for a pizza dinner on Friday, but I did a little quick math and figured that if I bought a slice of pizza inside, I could drop a dollar in the bucket on my way back out. Distracted by my thoughts, I didn't realize that the cyborg had turned its eyes on me.

"A donation, sir?" she asked.

"No, I . . ."

"That's fine, then," she said in a tone of voice I associate with prim schoolmarms who've just found a horse has dropped one in the parlour when there's a gentleman caller. ** "Merry Christmas," she said, evidently relishing the opportunity to hiss the Lord's name at me. I wasn't sure what my response was supposed to be, so I crossed myself and said, "Salaam alaikum," and went in. I didn't spare her a glance, but I heard the other lady snickering quietly to herself. ***

I navigated my way fruitlessly through the aisles of Walmart in search of my large bag of holiday M&Ms and, marginally disheartened, found myself at the takeout counter.

There was only one person behind the counter, a mountainous fellow evidently named "Lenny." **** His face looked well lived-in - pockmarked all over, craggy in spots, saggy in others with a crude, rough scar leading from his left ear to the side of his nose. He seemed tired, murmuring to the guy in front of him who was grossly abusing the store's policy on sampling, trying one of absolutely everything before walking away with the smallest possible container of the least expensive item. His eyes didn't rise all the way to my face as he said, "How can I help you?"

"Just a slice of pizza, m'man."

"Kay. Which one you want?" he muttered, gesturing at the lone pizza in the warmer - plain cheese.

"Chef's choice," I said with a shrug. His eyes were on mine in an instant, intense, practically glowing.

"Been a long time since I've heard that." The glow died quickly as he realized what he was doing. Everyone should glow all the time, is my thinking.

"You used to be a chef?"

And that's how Lenny and I passed the next fifteen minutes, with him telling me all about his days as a chef. He started as a line cook, worked his way until he was sous chef, and then the economy tanked and the restaurant went under. He picked up other food service jobs pretty quickly but he was, as he admitted, an alcoholic mess and eventually ended up with a three month tour of the local penitentiary system after getting drunk in a public park.

He's out, living with an ex-girlfriend ***** and trying to live straight. When he was done, he let out a great, long sigh, like he hadn't taken a breath the entire time, and smiled.

"Man, I never tell anyone that story."

"No worries, this happens to me - I think I was a bartender in a former life." I put out my hand for my pizza. "Can I pray for you?" Lenny's big hand fell on top of mine, pressing it to the counter.

"Please," he said, and bowed his head.

I'll be frank, I have no recollection of what I prayed for. The Spirit was doing an awful lot of groaning on my behalf. When we were done, I turned to leave, politely ignore the dampness in both our eyes.

"Hey buddy," he said.

"Yeah?"

"Merry Christmas."

I smiled.

"Merry Christmas, Lenny."

And God bless us, everyone.

I dropped a dollar in the bucket on my way out, along with the change in my pockets.

(The above is fiction - mostly. Well, it all actually happened, but not this neatly and not at the same time.)

* I ended leaving with a bag of glowsticks and two boxes of theatre candy. This is what happens when I go to Walmart.
** Hey, I said I try to sum up people's expressions - some are harder than others.
*** Was this the most mature way to handle the situation? No, probably not, but people who treat the chance to greet a fellow human as a chance to test them are bullies, and I don't like bullies.
**** His name wasn't Lenny. But it should have been.
***** "We aren't together or anything, she's just got three bedrooms and it's only her now," he said, as though I knew what this meant. I didn't, but I nodded anyway. I got the general idea.

Why I don't make oaths and Black Friday

There was a trend on my Facebook feed of people swearing oaths to not shop on Black Friday. In some cases it was in solidarity of retail workers, in some cases it was a moral choice, in one case I think it was done to impress a girl.

Someone asked me why, if I'm a nice person, I didn't agree to not shop on Black Friday.

That's because I will be shopping today.

First, we're going to a little hardware store up the road that has a really good sale on artificial Christmas trees. We really need a new one. They were open the day after the Thanksgiving last year and the year before and generally always are. Failing to go get this tree will have no effect on their business.

Incidentally, I'm willing to bet that it will either be Alan or Owen who'll ring up my purchase. Alan is a younger guy, maybe in his late twenties, working his way through school at the Tech for computer design, but he really likes robotics and rocketry. His dream job is working for NASA. Owen is old and curmudgeondly, built like a scarecrow - like half of a Wilford Brimley. He's also amazingly helpful and kind to people who're trying to fix a leaky faucet.

We'll also be going to Myriad Games. They have three stores in New Hampshire, all with common ownership. They have every board game, card game, dice game and RPG you can imagine, and a few you can't. They're amazing, the kind of business I really want to see prosper. They sent out a newsletter to their loyal customers asking them to come in today.

What with it being Christmas season, I'm happy to oblige.* They're good people.

So, this is why I don't make oaths. They seem like a good idea at the time. They're comforting and give one a sense of moral rightness, but in the end, for us it would mean a year with a decrepit tree and paying more Christmas presents.

* Yes, that means that if I know you and you're reading this, I might be buying you a game for Christmas. But you know me - this shouldn't surprise you.

The Doctor

In a blue box, somewhere in the universe, there's a madman. He's the right sort of madman, though, the kind who's constantly thinking, plotting, planning, running from one disaster to the next and saving lives. Not everyone - well, hardly ever everyone - but a lot of people.

He doesn't have a gun, the closest he's come to armour is a wool coast and though he's more scientist than soldier, with his intellect and ingenuity, he has saved countless lives. Whole planets - better than three dozen in a single episode, in one case - saved.

It's not just that he's clever, though. Clever only gets him so far. He cares. He wants the universe to work and move, and he wants to see life throughout the whole thing.

See, to the madman in the blue box, life is the most precious thing is real. His archenemies, the Daleks are, quite literally, anti-life and against them every chance he can.

This is the Doctor.

When I was a kid, a very young kid, I didn't really understand what the show was about. I just knew that the Doctor defeated monsters and ran around a lot and, this being the fourth Doctor, that he had a fascinating scarf and floppy hat.

I have no recollection of the exact episode, but I recall the scene. In some grotty cave, a lumpy green man is lurching toward the Doctor. We've seen this thing kill before, although its victim shot at it several times, screaming in terror. The Doctor, though, has no idea what this thing is. He starts, just a little jump back, then smiles that great, toothy grin, reaches into his pocket and holds out a raggedy paper bag.

"Jelly baby?" he asks in a deep, resonating register. The monster stops.

I have no memory of how the scene ends, but that scene has stuck with me ever since.

Monsters are real. They are, any child knows that. But just because something appears monstrous isn't enough to make it a monster. It was this lesson that stuck with me. There were bullies, and they were monstrous, but they weren't monsters. There were people who talked badly about me behind my back, and they were monstrous, but they weren't monsters. They were just people, making bad choices.

Thank you for that lesson, Doctor.

On the 23rd is the 50th anniversary special and, I'll be frank, it's probably a terrible place to start watching if you never have before, but you never know. There will be explosions, and running and times that will make the little child in you feel like hiding behind the couch. And who knows, I might even learn something.

For Christy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovvEb61pLL0

That link right there? It's what we like to call, "ambience." Just open it and let it play in the background.

Anyway, it has come to my attention that it has been far, far too long since the last time I embarrassed you with a public display of affection.

You're amazing. You really, really are.

You fill the gaps in my swing so well and with so little complaint that sometimes it probably seems like I don't notice you doing it. I do, and, as I said, it's amazing.

What throws me, what I can never quite get over, is that you don't love me despite my (many, many) flaws, you love me because of them. You aren't in love with the Jim you wish you'd married, the Jim you want to turn me into or anyone other than the Jim you're married to, a quixotic, slightly crazed Manic Pixie No-So-Dream Man. You're not loud about it, not the way I am about these displays of affection, but that it's quiet makes it all the more powerful.

I'm not putting you on a pedestal here - you frustrate me sometimes, as I'm sure I sometimes frustrate you, but the thing is, even when we're in the middle of a disagreement, my first thought is, "How do I fix this, because I really don't want to fight with my best friend?" But just because we're getting along really well - kind of scarily well - right now is no reason to avoid an opportunity to get to know each other still better.

You and I are going on a date. The sitter will be there at 5:30. For dinner we're going to . . . well, here's where the Manic Pixie thing comes in. It's Choose Your Own Adventure. It's "dinner and . . ." where the "and" depends on the restaurant you choose.

We're going to either The Common Man in Concord, the 99 in Hooksett or Five Guys in Manchester. The "and" is affected by your choice because, well, we have a budget for this, and Common Man is pricier than the 99, which is pricier than Five Guys.

Just let me know by 5:30 where you want me to show up and I'll meet you there.

Love you.

Male Gamers Only

As someone with an XY chromosome and a love of tabletop and video RPGs, ad banners can be embarrassing. A lot of these have cheesecake pinup girls on the ads and are advertised as being "dangerous" or for "male gamers only."

Someone took that idea and put it its head. And it's fantastic.

http://the-toast.net/2013/10/15/male-gamers/

Shame

Please, don't follow this link without reading what I have to say first.


This article is long, and it's horrifying. But it should be read, so that we never, ever, ever allow ourselves to become like the townspeople who turned on the Colemans.

http://www.kansascity.com/2013/10/12/4549775/nightmare-in-maryville-teens-sexual.html

Terrible wisdom geek parents give their children

Yeah, I use the Bible to instruct my kids. It's a very useful book for such things (2 Tim 3:16) but, honestly, we're talking about a book that uses athletics, farming, military service, sheepherding and finding change in your couch cushions as teaching examples. I'm raising a couple of geeks; if the best way to make the story of the lost sheep clear is to explain that it's kind of like the relationship between Aang and Appa*, I'm going to explain it that way.

The problem is, there are some genuinely terribly geek phrases to use when raising kids. I want to talk about one of them: "No. Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try."

I used to think this was great advice. I mean, some tasks are pass/fail, right? You either ate everything on your plate, or you didn't. Eat, or eat not. Yeah, turns out that the real answer is a lot more complicated than that.

See, I've learned that I love it when my kids fail.

No, wait, don't tune me out as another psychopathic parent. I don't like the fact that they fail, I like the opportunity that comes from failure.

See, it's something I'd kind of forgotten myself. I'm not saying that I never fail - I do, every day - but that I'd forgotten what it is to learn from new kinds of failure. Failing a test? That's going to happen. You'll learn about study habits, about the limits of your mind, about what it's like to have an expectation of success only to be completely wrong. Art project failure? The difference between what you see in your head and what you can make in the world can be staggering. Sometimes, the dross turns out to be a lot more interesting than the gold. Failed friendship? The people who're standing with you in the end, keep them close. Everything fades. Yes, everything.

I've learned these lessons. Not to perfection, not by a long shot, but these are things that kids, well, they just don't know about until the failure's already happened. It's like learning to walk. They learn to sit up after falling a hundred times. They learn to crawl after faceplanting a hundred times. They cruise, holding onto the end of the couch for support, then one day they get to the end of it, let go and . . . big grin - "Dad! I'm standing!" in a single expression.

And then they fall onto their diapered butt and start again, still not having mastered walking. And you applaud their failure, call your parents and your in-laws to brag loud and proud about what your child just failed to do.

I like this instead: "Do or do not, but at least try. Even if you fail, you'll learn something."

I'm not saying this is a perfect system and that it always applies. There are times - like mealtimes - where something you just have to demand success and nothing less, but you have to choose those battles wisely, geek parents, and even moreso, you have to choose the wisdom you'll use to win those battles.

After all, with great power comes great responsibility.

* http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Appa, for my non-geek friends.