Kelsey Timmerman's Blog, page 15

André the Giant has been dead for 23 years. Here’s why I’ll never forget him…

I went to a small school and we didn’t have a lot of resources. That meant the junior high basketball team had to wear uniforms from the mid-80s. If you know anything about pre-1988 basketball uniforms you know that they were…(how to put this?)…ball huggers.

Thankfully, wearing spandex beneath basketball shorts had become all of the rage. Thanks, MJ.

So picture a Junior High basketball team in a huddle wearing those shorts with Spandex sticking out a foot beneath the shorts.

I’m not sure why I’m writing about our shorts. Maybe it’s a sort of therapy trying to recover from a season of public humiliation. What I really want to write about is André the Giant.

If you were a boy in the 80s, you probably love WWF wrestling. When Mom wasn’t watching–she though WWF would rot your brain–I was a little Hulk-o-maniac. And everybody knew Andre the Giant, the Hulks arch nemesis. At 7’4″ and 52o-pounds, Andre was hard to miss.

When I was the starting point guard on the 8th grade basketball team, André the Giant died. Coach Stocksdale was a fan, and he wanted to honor André in some way.

My teammates called Coach Stocksdale “Kelsey’s Dad.” He wasn’t my dad. But he did pull me aside before a game and tell me that he wanted me to pretend that he was my dad. For some reason, he thought I played more aggressive and shot the ball more when my dad coached me in the off-season. Coach Stocksdale wanted me to shoot more and pass less. He thought I was the next Steve Alford, and had me read “A Season on the Brink” by John Feinstein.

So anyhow, Coach Stocksdale who wasn’t my father, decided we should break our huddle by shouting “André!”

We did.

We laughed.

We probably lost because we usually lost.

What Andre Taught Me

These are the memories that came flooding back when one of my junior high classmates shared a picture of André the Giant on the 23rd anniversary of his death.

André and Coach Stocksdale taught me not to take anything too seriously. André was always the object of Big Jokes and seemed to relish roles in movies like The Princess Bride where he undoubtedly played a giant.

Coach Stocksdale, well, he had us dedicate an entire basketball game to André the Giant. That’s definitely not taking junior high basketball too seriously, and at the time, I did take basketball too seriously. I would go on to break four bones in four years of high school basketball. It was important that I didn’t take basketball too seriously in order to see a life beyond high school sports.

It is important for my worldview and writing that I don’t take anything too seriously. I’ve been to some of the poorest places on our planet and have found that laughing with the local people is more important than crying at them.

There’s also that book that Coach Stocksdale had me read. “A Season on the Brink” was my first look at what nonfiction literary journalism looked like.

When I think about Andre and Coach Stocksdale and that time of my life where basketball was everything, I realize the influence they may have had on my future. I don’t want to say that any one of these things changed my life, but they might have. How much does a single piece of glass or stone make a moasic?

It’s small moments like these that add up to make us who we are.

I’m 5’11” and 185-pounds, but I’ve got a little bit of Giant in me, too.

 

 

Finding Joy in the Success of Others

When Chris stood on the long board, the Pacific Ocean carrying him towards the beach, I couldn’t have been more proud. I think I was more excited for him than I would’ve been for myself surfing for the first time. I was his trip leader and his SCUBA instructor for a three-week trip in Baja, Mexico.

When my daughter Harper nailed (semi-nailed let’s be honest) her dance recital routine, I damn near exploded with joy.

When my wife Annie was competing in a CrossFit competition, and I was at home watching the kids, I followed the social media reports every second. I could’ve done a happy dance when I saw that she won, but I was putting Harper to bed.

When my son Griffin spelled his first word…

When a friend publishes a book…

When a friend gets a promotion…

When my mom taught her first yoga class…

When my dad started a new business…

When my 12-year-old nephew fasted for the entire Black Friday Fast…

When my brother has a kid…

When a cousin gets married…

I find joy in their success.

(Don’t get me wrong, I’m petty, too. There are people who have success and I feel the opposite of joy, as much as I hate to admit it. But this post isn’t about jealousy and pettiness.)

In our lifetime, there’s only so much personal success that each of us will have. So there’s a limit on the joy we can find in our own accomplishments. But when we find joy in the success of others, there’s no limit.

I was reminded of the above this weekend when I was on a writing retreat with a few friends I’ve made over the years through the Midwest Writers Workshop.

 

From left to right:

Lisa Wheeler is working on a novel she started thirty years ago!

Terri DeVries has written a book on grief and is working on a novel.

Irene Fridsma treated us to a fireside reading of her poetry from her latest collection.

Kelly Stanley was working on a project I won’t discuss, but has written two other books, one of which is Praying Upside Down.

Sarah Schmitt is the author of It’s a Wonderful Death about a sassy teen whom Death kills by accident.

Joe Roper is the author of The Morus Chronicles, which follows young Ethan Morus as he discovers his powers as a treasure hunter.

Me. I was working on a super secret fiction book that I may never share with the world. Why fiction? I had questions that no amount of global travel and research could answer.

Dan Johnson is the author of four mystery books set in early 20th century Detroit.

I’ve watched each of these individuals grow as writers and have found joy in their work and in their successes. My life is richer and more joy-filled because they are in it.

Mobile phones giving 500K garment workers & famers a voice

The common questions asked when we talk about how to have a fair supply chain include: What laws can governments pass to protect workers? What kind of inspections should brands do?  What are the responsibilities of factories, retailers, and consumers?

But one very important question is left out: How do all of the stakeholders work to empower the laborers themselves to have a voice?

One of the most positive answer to that solution is LaborLink. LaborLink was started by Good World Solutions, “a non-profit social enterprise with a vision that every worker should have a free and anonymous channel to report directly to decision-makers about their working conditions, opinions and needs.” That channel is something most farmers and factory workers have already, they’re mobile phone.

Here’s a video explaining how it works:

Last month Good World Solutions announced that LaborLink now reaches more than 500,000 laborers around the world.

The lottery is an unanswered prayer against poverty

 

Luck is false hope.

That’s why I hate the lottery. The lottery preys upon those most in need of hope, those who can least afford the $2 ticket. It dangles millions of dollars like a carrot on the end of an unreachable stick of hope.

Hope is good. When I write and when I live an experience regardless of how tough or how full of despair the story or situation, I always look for the hope. But false hope is exhausting. Too much of it can make you cold and callous.

“People spent more money playing the lottery last year than on books, video games, and tickets for movies and sporting events combined,” writes Derek Thomspon in Lotteries: America’s $70 Billion Shame for the Atlantic Monthly. Those are all things that can actually make you happy, bring you closer to loved ones, and have fun.

Thompson continues:

But it’s the poor who are really losing. The poorest third of households buy half of all lotto tickets, according to a Duke University study in the 1980s, in part because lotteries are advertised most aggressively in poorer neighborhoods. A North Carolina report from NC Policy Watch found that the people living in the poorest counties buy the most tickets. “Out of the 20 counties with poverty rates higher than 20 percent, 18 had lottery sales topping the statewide average of $200 per adult,” the North Carolina Justice Center reported.

The researchers made another damning discovery: Local lottery ticket sales rise with poverty, but movie ticket sales do not. In other words, lotto games are not merely another form of cheap entertainment. They are also a prayer against poverty. This fits what the researchers call the “desperation hypothesis”: States are making their most hopeless citizens addicted to gambling to pay for government services.

I don’ think you are stupid if you buy a lottery ticket. I can see how it can be fun to spend $2 and imagine what you’d do with the money. If you buy a ticket for the record jackpot today, I hope that’s why you are buying it. I hope you aren’t buying it out of a place of desperation because you can’t see hope anywhere else.

I hope you win the $700 million and, after the government takes back 45% (they win even when they are losing), you do amazing things with the money and don’t join the 70% of winners who go broke.

Regardless of why you buy a ticket, you are contributing to a program that is a state-sponsored, false hope machine that runs on the below-living wages of America’s poor.

Good luck?

 

 

Harper the adventurer at 7

A few months after Harper was born I wrote a piece for WorldHum titled Adventure Dad. Here’s an excerpt:

I can’t remember where I read it (if you know, please tell me), but one of my favorite travel stories was written by a father who takes his 3-year-old canoeing down the creek that runs through their backyard. There are no rapids, no danger other than a bee or two, no foreign culture to be explored, no site that most of us don’t ignore each day. Things like squirrels, trash on the bank, and a praying mantis were grand discoveries. Both father and child had a blast.

I like this story because it challenged what I previously thought about adventure. Adventure isn’t an exotic location or an adrenaline-pumping activity. It’s not a place or an action. It’s a state of mind. It’s a sense of exploration and willingness and ability to see with fresh eyes. For the father and child in the story, the creek running through their backyard held all the adventure of Mount Everest.

Yesterday Harper and I followed deer hoof prints into the woods. They led us right to a tree that is perfect for us both to climb. So we climbed it. At our new house in the country, we’ve got even more adventures awaiting us. We’ve only begun to explore!

She’s becoming quite the adventurer. And in the next year or two, I think it’s time to take her on her first international adventure so I can live up to how I ended the Adventure Dad piece:

I can’t wait to see snowcapped mountains, blue oceans and tropical sunsets in Harper’s eyes, but I also can’t wait to see her point to great dragon-shaped clouds rolling over our backyard on a summer’s breeze. I can’t wait to hear her laugh at a butterfly. I can’t wait to see all of the things that I’ve been missing.

So, where should I take Harper on her first international adventure?

Why you need to swear an oath before watching my son with autism

Every night, I turn off the TV, get off the couch, wake up my wife, and shut off the lights. I find that it’s easier to see if the deadbolts are in place by shining my phone’s light at them in a dark room. I check the door to the garage, front door, and porch. All locked.

This might seem like a normal routine of a man ensuring the security of his family from unwanted visitors in the night. But I don’t make sure the doors are locked to keep people out; I make sure they are locked to keep one person in . . . my son Griffin.

Griffin, 4, has autism and a deep curiosity to explore places where he shouldn’t be–all of our cabinets, no matter how high, the top of the refrigerator, the inside of a stranger’s unlocked car, the tub of the dryer. You could say he’s part spelunker or mountain goat. In autism lingo, he’s an “eloper.”

Eloper. Sounds like he’s either running off to get married or starring alongside Josph Gordon-Levitt in a movie where they control time and space (Looper, anyone?).  The running part is accurate and it seems like he can control time and space because he’s so quick–here one second, gone the next.

Mostly, he’s a sweet, happy, hilarious, smart, little boy who loves people and hates hand dryers in public restrooms. He’s actually more well-behaved, less moody, and more pleasant than many kids. But damn, can he run.

“…and now my watch begins”

We like to think, he’d come back. But we don’t know, so someone is always on “Griffin Duty.”  This means that one person always knows where Griffin is and what he’s doing and that he can’t get away or get out. You are on Griffin Duty until someone relieves you of your duty. This usually happens by the person on Griffin Duty saying, “You’ve got Griffin,” and the new person confirming, “Yes.”

Most people don’t know what it means, to “have Griffin.” So there’s a very short list of those who we trust to be “Griffin watchers.” To “have Griffin” is to not get distracted by other kids or lost in a conversation, or to turn away from him for more than a few seconds. If you are in a public place, like a mall or a parking lot, being on Griffin Duty can be a lot like guarding an NBA point guard.  On defense you always keep yourself between the player with the ball and the player you are defending–or ball-you-man, in basketball terms. For Griffin this translates to Griffin-you-danger/shiny thing that Griffin wants to play with. You keep your weight on your toes and set your sense at full alert.

Part of me wants to formalize a Griffin duty changing of the guard. There would be a handshake and an oath:

“Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Griffin Duty, for this night and all the nights to come.”

That’s actually the oath of the Night’s Watch in Game of Thrones, but I think it works nicely.

There are people who I love and trust who I would not trust to be on Griffin Duty. This could be because of their personality (“look a squirrel”) or because of their situation. They might be hosting the party or attending to their own children or simply just not fast enough to run after him. (Griffin has all of the curiosity of a toddler, but the speed of an Olympic sprinter.)

It’s the social functions that scare us the most. The more people there are, the more Griffin could be passed from one watcher to the next who may not appreciate the seriousness of their task. “Who’s with Griffin?” I ask countless times at any gathering, if I’m not the one on duty and don’t see him with the person who last was. I’m a calm, laid-back person, but when I ask that question, it’s tinged with panic.

We’ve lost Griffin. We lived in a rental for a few months before we moved to our current house. In new environments, Griffin likes to explore his boundaries even more. While we were inside, he got out a door and we found him playing in the driveway. One time when we pulled into our garage, there was not a clear proclamation of who “had Griffin” and each of the three adults in the car thought someone else had him. He was outside by himself for no more than a few minutes.

We were all terrified. We’ve been much more vigilant with Griffin Duty ever since.

The world’s shortest babysitter list

When I think about all that we do, everything I just wrote, I feel more than a little neurotic. I know there are people who must think we are overprotective parents and we need to lighten up. But then, in the news last week, a 5-year-old with autism got out of his house at 11PM on New Year’s Eve. They found his body a few days later. He had drowned.

I’m writing this because someone you may know likely has a child that does the same thing. You might wonder why they regularly turn down social invitations, and why they can’t just get a babysitter. Well, that babysitter list can be a pretty short list.

I’m writing this to let you know the focus it takes to watch your friend’s child.

To our friends, if you invite us over, kids and all, know that I’ll likely chase Griffin into your bedroom, bathroom, and into every room in your house whether it’s picked up or not.

Hello, world, it’s me Griffin

It’s a balancing act. We encourage Griffin to explore the world, yet sometimes there needs to be a lock between him and that world. We like him to interact with people and go new places, yet sometimes he’s not ready and sometimes we don’t have the energy.

Griffin participates in 35 hours of one-on-one ABA therapy each week and is making huge strides. He goes to a typical pre-school. And he’s all smiles most days.

We love our son and know that someday he’ll be ready to be on his own in the world. Just not yet.

So I check the locks. I hold his hand. I sprint after him. I all but demand that the next person on Griffin Duty swear an oath.

Life finds energy

Each month I chat with folks I work out with at my CrossFit gym and share our chat on the gym’s blog. I always love having an excuse just to sit and listen to someone and to learn from their journey.

It’s important to be reminded that every single person has a story. This month I talked with Libby Hobson who just became a mom and who showed me that balloon twisting is an art. Her story made me reflect on randomness of our lives and the importance of connecting with people no matter where we end up.

Here’s how I ended her story:

Libby’s story reminded me of a quote that gets thrown around a lot by basketball coaches and players. Here’s IU coach Tom Crean with a recent version:

“The ball always finds energy. The more you pass, cut with purpose, screen with force and sprint the floor, the more that energy shows up.”

I don’t want to get too philosophical here, but, man, that’s life, that’s living. The more active you are, the more you get out, the more you move, the more you live. You relocate to an unknown city, you stumble onto a hidden talent, you see how tough you are, you explore compassion and overhead squats. Suddenly people you never thought you would meet doing a thing you never thought you’d do are throwing you a party in a place you never thought you’d be.

This is the Force Awakens review you’ve been looking for

Harper wanted to do a review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on our YouTube channel.  Actually I think she wanted to say “spoiler alert” a bunch because she just learned what the phrase means and it makes her feel like part of the zeitgeist.

So if you ever wanted to get your movie reviews from a 6-year-old, here you go…

The myth of the perfect Christmas photo family

There’s a story behind every Christmas card photo. This is ours…

Our car looks like something Santa would drive. It has a red body, capped with a white top. Soon that white top will have a green tree strapped to it. At least that’s the plan. We’re on our our annual trip to the Christmas tree farm where we also hope to get the perfect family picture for our Christmas card.

I tune the radio to the Christmas channel. I’ve become that cheesy Chevy Chase dad who tries too hard to instill a little extra energy into moments in an effort to build childhood memories.

I’m about to join the chorus when a little voice in the back starts to sing, “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.” It’s our four-year-old son, Griffin. I slowly turn to make eye contact with my wife, Annie, sitting in the passenger seat.

This is a moment.

I take a hand off the steering wheel and put it over my heart like I’m an 80-year-old grandma, acknowledging the moment without interrupting it. A four-year-old singing along with the radio might not seem like a big deal, but this is a big deal. Griffin is on the autism spectrum. He sings plenty, but not with the radio.

None of us move or speak. It’s just Griff singing and the sound of a car dodging potholes on a rural Indiana road.

We’re five minutes into a month of Christmas celebrations, and I can’t think of a better gift. Christmas is off to a great start.

And then we pull up to the Christmas tree farm. It’s closed. Not just temporarily, but devoid of life, like it’s a location to film The Walking Dead.

A cry breaks the silence, bringing an abrupt end to any Christmas magic. Harper, our six-year-old daughter cannot deal with this.

“What are we going to do?” She whimpers.

We’ve come to this farm since she could remember. There was nothing fancy about it. The trees were only twenty bucks regardless of size. You cut it, you carried it, you tied it to your car, and there wasn’t the first note of Christmas music or whiff of hot chocolate to be enjoyed.

Damn it, we’re going to make a new Christmas tradition, I think. I ask Siri for the directions to the nearest tree farm. It’s 40-minutes away.

Whatever is the opposite of Christmas magic fills the car.

—

A cartoon Christmas tree points the way to the new farm. There are lights, music, people full of Christmas cheer. A retired grandpa, who looks and acts like he’s taken time off from whittling toys for orphans to spread peace on Earth and goodwill to men, greets us. He gives us a shiny new saw and a Christmas tree cart.

Griffin wants to ride on the cart. He sits on one of the crossbars and smiles until one of his boots catches on the ground and he nearly falls off. I take him off, and he looks like a drunken cowboy as he tries to walk in his new boots.

He wants back on the cart. We try it again, and again it doesn’t work. He doesn’t understand why he can’t ride. I’m forced to run with the cart so he can’t get to it. He runs after me. At first he thinks it’s funny, but then he starts to get upset and cries as he pursues me. I keep running anyhow.

We stop at a tree that’s nice but way too big.

“Let’s do the picture here,” Annie says.

For some reason the cuteness of kids’ faces are multiplied by ten if they wear a hat. Annie pulls out Griff’s hat and shoves it down across his ears. At his therapy, he will wear his hat for 30 seconds. She has him stand next to Harper and then steps back to snap the photo.

I make funny faces and dance like an idiot behind Annie.

“Smile, Harper! Look here, buddy!”

Griff starts to pull at his hat.

“It hurts to smile!” Harper cries. She’s been dealing with a canker sore for the last few days.

Only half of her top lip moves. The other side droops into a pirate grimace.

I keep dancing and Griffin looks at me as if wondering, “What is wrong with my father?”

Annie stops trying and gives me the “let’s get a damn tree and get out of this Christmas wonderland hell hole” nod.

I run ahead with the cart, pursued by my crying autistic son.

Remember those scenes from The Lord of the Rings where the fellowship is crossing some high mountain pass? In these scenes there is epic music and the camera will zoom in on the travelers’ faces, which reflect all the trials and tribulations, the wear and the tear that led them to this–yet another–painful moment. That’s our family looking for a Christmas tree.

I’m running. Harper is holding her swollen mouth as if one of her horrible parents just slapped her. Annie is trying to grab Griffin’s hand to keep him from escaping our family to join another. I don’t blame him. All the other families look so happy.

“What’s your name?!” Griffin shouts, pointing at a family who’ve found a tree. They’re all wearing Santa hats. Even their freaking tree is wearing a Santa hat and tinsel.

They introduce themselves, and then the perfect mother asks, “Do you like to take pictures, buddy?”

Griffin doesn’t answer. But what four-year-old would be all like, “Yes, ma’am, I’d be happy to take a photo of your family”?

“I’ll take it,” I say.

The perfect mother and father put their arms around their two perfect daughters and they all smile perfect smiles. Not one of them looks like a pirate. Each picture I snap is more perfect than the one before.

I want to take the phone and throw it into the row of blue spruce behind us. Instead, I hand her the phone and they wish us a Merry Christmas. We walk away to the sound of the father’s battery-powered saw firing up. That’s right, he brought his own saw.

Once we’re out of earshot, Annie and I start laughing. It’s either that or crying.

And then Harper finds “our” Christmas tree, which makes her mouth hurt less. We take an imperfect selfie with the tree and get a picture of the kids “good enough” to work for our card.

It’s a picture where the smiles are genuine, partly because the kids are excited about the tree and partly because I’ve added singing to my dancing while Annie snapped the shot.

Weeks from now, a hundred or so people will open a Christmas card from the Timmerman family. They’ll add it to the pile of other smiling families, made up of people with canker sores, moments of joy, autism, unreasonable expectations, and a whole host of other things that make life interesting. But are they all perfect?

We try to make our family photos look like perfect moments, as if those are the only moments worth capturing. Maybe so, but without imperfect moments there would be no perfect moments. They’re all worth remembering.

Years from now, when I look at our 2015 Christmas card, I’ll remember Griffin singing and crying, Harper’s pathetic little pirate mouth and the light in her eyes when she found our tree. I’ll remember Annie’s look of impatience and the laugh we shared as we drove away from the farm with a green tree on our Santa car filled with Christmas music and Griffin shouting, “Turn it off, please!”

Why you shouldn’t delete your friends who like Donald Trump

Donald Trump is an idiot, but your friends who “Like” him on Facebook aren’t. At least not all of them . . . probably. At least all of mine aren’t.

It’s easy to find out which of your friends “Like” Trump on Facebook, just type in “Friends who like Donald J. Trump” in the search field at the top.

I have 28 Facebook friends who “Like” Trump. There are some really good folks who I think a lot of.  I mean, maybe, they just “Like” his page to keep tabs on him. A “Like” isn’t necessarily an endorsement of all his policies. I’ll listen to Rush Limbaugh from time to time just to see what he’s saying, and I think he’s bad for our country, and is creating a legion of angry, aging, white men.

Even so, that’s not my main point. This is:

I strongly dislike Rush Limbaugh, but I love people who like Rush Limbaugh. 

I strongly dislike Donald Trump, but I love people who like Donald Trump. 

Drawing lines of who or who isn’t on our Team Politic just further divides our country. How are we supposed to understand and learn across difference unless we interact with those who are different?

Excluding those with different views, belittling them, not listening to them, shouting them down, unfriending them, well, that’s something that Donald J. Trump would do.

I think you’re better than that.