He Skis

If their parents skied, then skiing was for old people. That was the opinion of my children anyway. So when we moved to the mountains and introduced them to snow with gravity, they all decided to be snowboarders because snowboarding was way cooler. They all picked up basic skills, but never really excelled. They didn't dislike the sport but they didn't love it either and I always had to twist arms to get them to go with me. Samantha and Noah eventually gave it up altogether.

If I had tried to talk Jonah into skiing he probably would have resisted. But a couple of his friends were skiers and last year he borrowed some skis and gave it try. He picked it up immediately and by his 3rd day he was a better skier than he ever was a snowboarder. By the end of the season he was as good as me. This year I bought him skis for Christmas and he has far surpassed me. He skis fast and fearless. He skis every weekend and after school and at night and everyday of winter vacation. I'm glad he loves it so much but I still have to twist his arm to get him to ski with me.

Now I'm too slow for him.

Top 50 Books

Earlier, I compiled a list of my 50 top movies (which I've already revised a few times!) I was recently challenged to compile a similar list of books, which actually has proven to be more of a challenge. I've been adding and subtracting for a couple of weeks and I'm sure I'll do more of it in the future but I'm pretty comfortable with the following list. You may notice that I've cheated a few times and have included a title that actually represents all of the works of authors I like. Here's the list in alphabetical order.

3 Cups of Tea (incredible difference one man can make)
7 Habits of Highly Effective People (I followed it for a few years anyway!)
A Prayer for Owen Meany (representing all of John Irvings books)
All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (I love all Fulgham books)
And Then There Were None (just using this title to represent Christie books)
Angela's Ashes (humor, compassion, and poverty)
Animal Farm (high school requirement. first example of the power of allegory)
Atlas Shrugged (I have problems with Rand but recognize the importance of her work)
Big Rock Candy Mountain (Stegner is a great writer)
Call of the Wild (perfect book for a teen boy)
Charlotte's Web (tears for a spider)
Cold Mountain (civil war love story)
Crime and Punishment (stream of consciousness look into the mind)
Dancing at the Rascal Fair (Ivan Doig should be more famous)
Dandelion Wine (Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors. He's not just sci fi)
Everything is Illuminated (3 expertly written interconnected stories)
Freakonomics (I look at trends and statistics a different way after reading this)
Great Gatsby (classic that I've reread a few times)
Green Eggs and Ham (Thank-you, Thank-you, Sam I am)
Hardy Boys Mysteries (same plot told 50 different times. But I read them all)
Harry Potter series (popular for a reason)
Hawaii (all of Micheners books) (Centennial, Chesapeake, Texas, The Source, Alaska)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (the human condition)
How to Win Friends and Influence People (all improvement books are versions of this)
Into Thin Air (excellent research)
In Cold Blood (thought Capote was just famous for being famous until I read this.)
Jonathon Livingston Seagull (Don't want to reread, but it was inspirational at 15)
Last Lecture (Inspiring)
Life of Pi (most unusual plot)
Lonesome Dove (very best western ever)
Lord of the Rings (The Trilogy plus The Hobbit)
Louis LaMour (same plot over and over but I read them all as a teen)
Mans Search For Meaning (life changing)
My Friend Flicka (my first novel)
Ode to Billy Joe (my first love story)
Oh The Places You'll Go (for every graduate)
Of Mice and Men (Steinbecks best...according to me!)
Oliver Twist (Dickens best...according to me!)
Poisonwood Bible (just a very talented writer)
Power of Now (light bulb went off over my head)
Princess Bride (great movie, better book)
Roots (gave me a life long hobby)
Stumbling on Happiness (how come we don't know what will make us happy?)
The Road (dark, disturbing, but ultimately a love story)
The Stand (favorite Stephen King)
The Things They Carried (Veitnam, but really a summary of all wars)
To Kill a Mockingbird (how can it not be on everyones list?)
Walden (One of the few books I own)
Water For Elephants (at some point we'd all like to join the circus)
Your Money or Your Life (If I had a do-over, I would live this way)


So what do you think? What am I missing?

The Shadow

I've realized that whenever I am in a writing slump, I can use my blog as a refrigerator door and post brilliant things my kids have done. I was cleaning up some old files last night and I found this poem that Noah wrote when he was 13. Like I've already said...I think it's brilliant!


The Shadow

As I slept in dark last night
A shadow approached my cot
And though I awoke upon a fright
The shadow hurt me not
I asked the shadow, “How do you do?”
The shadow thought for a while
And he replied, “I am you, I do how you do.”
Though the words he spoke were true, I was in denial
“If I am me, then you must lie.”
He chuckled as if he had just commit a crime
“You see…each man is like a die,
He has many faces, but only one shows at a time.”
And then my shadow disappeared and I became like lumber
And once again I returned to my silenced slumber


Noah Crocker

Greensleeves

I've always wished I'd been more musical, but the talent was just never introduced into my DNA. When I had kids, I did what many parents do and tried to encourage them to take music lessons with the hope that something would stick. It would be a shame for the world to lose out on the next Mozart because his parents never put him in front of a piano.

So when Samantha was 8 or 9 we decided to give her piano lessons. She was mildly enthusiastic about it at first but lost interest after awhile and it was difficult to force her to practice. Finally I told her she could quit as soon as she learned to play Greensleeves for me. The song has always moved me ever since I was a child and heard it in a movie. She said she'd do it, but eventually the lessons stopped without her fulfilling her end of the bargain.

This year she warned us all that she had no money and her Christmas gifts would be extremely inexpensive which I thought was a good idea. On Christmas morning after all of the gifts were exchanged she went out to her car and brought in a guitar and sat beside me on the sofa and played Greensleeves for me. I had tears in my eyes as I hugged her for the beautiful gift.

Thank-you honey, I love it!

Really Very Stupid Things

The following incidents may or may not have happened but I will not admit to doing any of them.

tubing with no life jacket in a flood swollen river, contest to see who could hold a lit firecracker the longest, playing chicken head-on on bikes to see who would swerve first, tying brother backwards to a tricycle and pushing him down a hill, poking jailed drunks with a sharp stick, rolling bowling balls down the highway at 60 miles an hour, walking across steel beams 8 stories high, tubing down hill with barbed wire fence at the bottom, tying brother upside down in a tree, waking up at 70 miles an hour and 70 feet off the freeway, trying to knock each other off speeding snowmobiles, teach brother to yell "jack ass" at the mean neighbor lady, cementing the neighbors doors and windows shut, spending two hours at the top of a tree while the girl that someone called a cow tries to knock you down with rocks, folding my brother into a sleeper sofa, launching bottle rockets from the car, streaking, contest to see who could hold onto electric fence the longest, throwing knives at brothers feet, reasoning that the lakes thin ice will hold if you just drive snowmobile fast enough, getting into a car with drunk hillbillies, bb gun wars, jumping bikes over friends laying lengthwise, jousting from bikes, riding on the hood of a car, riding on the highway on the top of a tall stack of hay bails in the back of a truck, training to be a stuntman by jumping out of a moving car, laughing while drill sergeant screams in your face, breaking into vacant apartments to sleep and shower, slowing down but not stopping the car when dropping brother off, contest to see who can pass the most motorhomes on bike going down mountain switchbacks, pushing fully clothed bully into swimming pool, stopping fan blade with tongue, rock fights, running through pitch black mile long tunnel with just a stick to guide you, competing in triathlons without learning to swim, car races, sleeping in cemetary, blindfolded boxing, shooting arrow straight up and dodging its return, trying to outrun a cop, blowing things up in a variety of ways, sleeping under a hedge in downtown Los Angeles, making drill sergeant remember your name by pissing him off on the 1st day of boot camp, hitchhiking at 14, wandering through a bronx ghetto at midnight, getting a ride to California with crazy man who claims to be a hit man on assignment, sleeping under freeway over passes, misreading arrival time as departure time for family trip, packing remote control instead of camera for birth of child, publishing list of really very stupid things that I may or may not have done.

You are on Welfare

You are Angry.

You saw the woman in front of you buying junk food with food stamps and now you are on a rant about the welfare parasites ruining your country. You claim the solution to all of our deficit problems is to just stop the welfare.

Now please...take a breath and the mood altering pill of your choice (legally prescribed by your doctor of course) and take a look in the mirror.

Can we all agree that the definition of welfare is receiving financial assistance that you haven't earned? Are you 100% certain that you pay your own way without help from a socialist goverment? Let's take a look. I'm going to pick on Utah for one example because I know the state well, have many friends there and believe that you have one of the more fiscally prudent states in the country. But even as efficient as you are it still costs about $7,500 per pupil per year to educate your kids. So 2 kids for 13 years means that taxpayers (including you ) have spent about $180,000 to educate those two kids. Double that for four kids and triple it for six. So before I believe that the government isn't taking from others to redistribute to you, I'll need you to show me proof that you will ever pay that back in your life time. If you aren't going to pay that back then you have received financial assistance from others to educate your kids.

Your house is the same value as your neighbors, but you are paying a mortgage to a bank and your neighbor is paying rent to a landlord. You get a big interest deduction worth a couple thousand that he doesn't get. You may not consider it welfare but your neighbor probably does.

You live in a state that gets more money back from the federal government than you pay. My friends in Utah get back $1.07 for every dollar they pay. If they feel bad that in Colorado we only get $0.83 back for every dollar collected, I'll let you send me a check for the difference.

If you are 60 something, you are likely collecting some sort of welfare.

If the fire department ever responded to a fire on your property, then you have probably collected more from safer taxpayers than you will ever pay back. Your church provides you with a social safety net and they use roads and infrastructure but they don't have to pay taxes for them. If you have a college degree from a state college then you were subsidized by the taxes of the hard working masses who didn't go to school.

If you have a mortgage, if you have children, if you collect social security, unemployment, belong to a church, have gone to college, work for the government (including schools) then you are benefiting from some sort of redistribution of wealth.

So please stop whining that the single mother in the check out line in front of you bought cheetos and coke with "your money"!

Tasty Severance

I believe I've already blogged about the stress of firing people. No matter how much it's deserved it's never pleasant. There was one time that was almost fun though. I'd forgotten all about it until my friend Donna reminded me of it last week. She was a witness and said she still laughs about it.

Jodi was the receptionist at Twin Peaks Mall. She'd only been there a few months, but I already knew I'd made a mistake in hiring her. Her skills were fine but she was a whiner and whiners are my least favorite species. She loved being a victim and her feelings were always getting hurt and she was always pouting. The only thing I ever remember her talking about was how unfairly her husband, kids, mother, coworkers, neighbors, weatherman, and God was treating her.

Every year we would let the Girl Scouts sell cookies in the mall. Every year they would thank us with about 2 dozen boxes of cookies that I would divide up among the staff. This year Jodi handled the arrangements and was the only one in the office when the girls brought in the cookies. As the rest of the staff arrived, they reacted with excitement that it was cookie time!

Should have been a happy time for all, right? Not exactly.

I got an emergency call from my bookkeeper that morning. "Jim! She's keeping the cookies and not sharing!" Apparently Jodi had all of the cookies under her desk and was insisting that the girl scouts had given them to her and she was going to take them all home to her family. Keep in mind that this an office staff, not a 3rd grade classroom. I canceled my plans and came into the office and explained to the Cookie Monster that this was an annual tradition and the gift was for the whole staff and not just her and demanded that she turn over the thin mints. Instead of handing them over and apologizing for the misunderstanding, she stomped out of the office in tears. All terribly awkward and embarrassing but she did leave the cookies behind so we decided to console ourselves with a cookie party and I sent a security guard to the store for some milk.

Two hours went by and we were getting excited with the prospect that she might never come back when the door flew open. She was back and she brought an angry, loud, little man with her. I thought he might be some sort of hired cookie enforcer but he turned out to just be her husband. He was yelling about theft and about taking food out of the mouths of his children. I'm serious... I remember that because for a few years afterwards, whenever anyone on the staff had a disagreement with me they would joke that I was taking food out of the mouths of their children.

I demanded that he get out of my office and I had a "full of cookies and milk" security guard escort him out. I told Jodi to take the rest of the day off and be in my office at 8:00 the next morning. When she came in she started to apologize when she noticed about 20 boxes of girl scout cookies in bags that I'd bought the night before. She asked "what are they for?"

I said, "It's your severance pay. Don't come back." Some firings are easier than others!