Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 288

Unfair assumption #28: Parents who threaten to disown their children based upon their marital choices are the lowest form of human life.

You know these people.

These are the parents who will refuse to attend their child's wedding and sometimes disown a son or daughter for failing to marry someone who shares their religious belief, racial composition, socioeconomic standing, national or cultural origin, or does not conform to their heteronormative expectations of marriage.

They are the despicable cretins who think that their assumptions about who their child should fall in love with and marry should have any bearing on their child's actual life or future. 

In many cases, these misguided parents lose their sons and daughter for years (or lifetimes) over this ridiculous nonsense.

Even worse, their child may miss out on the possible love of their life when they inexplicably conform to their parents' selfish tribal wishes.

Credit people like my in-laws, who didn't bat an eye when my wife - their Jewish daughter - agreed to marry me, a former Christian-turned reluctant atheist. Instead, they embraced me like a son and have stood by my side ever since.

Many parents would have made Elysha's life exceedingly difficult for marrying outside the religion. I know people in circumstances like these. I also have gay friends who have experienced similar exclusion from their parents, and I know people who were only permitted to marry a person from the same country of origin.

I will be forever grateful to my in-laws - Barbara and Gerry - for their rational, loving, open-minded, unquestioning acceptance of me and our relationship. 

I know that to most people, my in-laws acceptance and embrace of me this seems like a no-brainer. The only reasonable reaction to our engagement and marriage. But I know that in many cases, across many dividing lines, parents are oftentimes less than reasonable, incredibly selfish, and sometimes downright disgusting in situations like this. 

In regards to Russian hacking: "I think we ought to get on with our lives." Also, word salad.

Donald Trump took a few questions at Mar-a-Lago last night and said this about Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and many Senators - Democrat and Republican - who are pushing for Russian sanctions following evidence of hacking in order to tip the balance of the Presidential election. 

His answer strikes me as slightly incomprehensible, questionably incompetent, and (at least in terms of the first sentence) possibly treasonous. Have you ever seen anything this inarticulate come from the mouth of a President?

Lest you think this is a mischaracterization of his answer, the actual video of the moment is even more disturbing. 

Bottle flipping: I gave it a month. Here are my thoughts.

When I was a kid, we climbed the highest trees. Rode our bikes without any hands. Jumped across roaring streams. Skateboarded down concrete steps. Threw tennis balls at each other.

Today children flip half-filled plastic water bottles in the air in hopes of landing them in a standing position.

Perhaps this is unfair. Simply because they flip water bottles incessantly doesn't mean they don't do all those other things. I don't see them doing these other things, and they seem overly concerned about dirtying their clothes or getting their shoes wet, but maybe I'm not looking closely enough. Maybe today's youth are scampering up trees and splashing through streams with reckless abandon when I'm not looking. 

Still, they flip bottles. And when they capture their flip on camera, they get millions of views on YouTube. There are even apps dedicated to water blottle flipping. 

As part of a New Year's resolution to try things that I don't understand or have a negative view toward, I spent a month flipping bottles with kids at my school. During recess and after school, I joined in, flipping half-empty water bottles into the air in an attempt to land them in a standing position.

Here are my observations:

It's not hard to get fairly proficient at simple bottle flipping. I became adept at this practice relatively quickly. Filling the bottle about one-third of the way seems ideal for flipping.  The kids have NO DESIRE to add any layer of competition to this activity. They simply want to mindlessly flip water bottles on their own, almost unaware of the bottle flippers around them. This was the most surprising and disappointing aspect of this exercise to me and mildly disconcerting in terms of the future of our civilization. Bottle flipping would have been impossible in my childhood, since the ridiculousness of bottled water wasn't sold in stores until 1983 and only gained significant market share in the 1990's. But try explaining to anyone under 30 that there was a time when water wasn't readily available in stores and people were forced to quench their thirsts via drinking fountains (bubblers where I grew up), garden hoses, and taps. Minds blown. Ultimately, I did not enjoy bottle flipping and felt that it was a tragic waste of time. I tried to compare it favorably with the time I spent as a child playing my Atari 5200 and pouring quarters into pinballs machines and video games at arcades throughout the northeast, but in the end, I found the two activities incomparable for a few reasons:First, kids spend more time playing video games than ever before, so it's not as if bottle flipping has replaced any time in front of screens. They have simply layered this time-wasting activity atop their time spent gaming.Second, there is also almost no socializing aspect to this activity. The kids bottle flip in near isolation, even if there are fellow flippers beside them. When I played video games, we collaborated and/or competed against one another depending upon the game. We watched the best gamers perform, hoping to learn tips and tricks for next time. Video games brought my friends and I together in basements, living rooms, and malls. We challenged one another, taunted and boasted mid-game, and created memories that I still have today: specific, joyous, heartbreaking moments of standing alongside my pals, joystick in hand, battling it out over silver balls, enlarged pixels and electronic beeps.  It's not difficult to master this skill. Admittedly, there are bottle flippers on YouTube who have done some incredible things, but the average bottle flipper is simply looking to land that bottle upright. Not hard. Video games were high stakes and difficult. You invested money and time in order to beat the game, flip the machine, conquer the highest level, and add your initials to the high score. This took dedication and  persistence. I don't see this from today's bottle flippers.

In the end, bottle flipping will go away. Disappear into forgotten history. I already see it happening. Even as I flipped, kids became less enamored by the activity. Fewer children joined the pursuit. This is good, because it is a stupid and mindless way to spend one's time, and its waning popularity is an indication of this.

Sadly, I don't see the demise of bottle flipping leading to an increase in tree climbing, stream jumping, or skateboarding. These soulful, physically demanding, high stakes activities have not disappeared into the ether, but they are not nearly as popular as they were in my youth. They will not go the way of the bottle flip but instead continue to be practiced by those children who still seek to challenge elements and are fortunate enough to have parents who allow them to exist beyond fences and leashes and into the world of water and rock and sky.      

"Merry Christmas" is perfectly fine. But the existence of Jews should not be a secret.

Conversation between a cashier and me at a local restaurant on the morning of December 24:

Me: (handing over a signed receipt) Happy holidays!

Cashier: You know what? I'm going to wish you a merry Christmas! Donald Trump said that we need to say 'Merry Christmas' more often, so I’m going to do that... (leans in and shifts to a whisper voice) ... even though there are a lot of Jews in West Hartford. 

Me: (shifting to a whisper) Like my wife and kids over there? And lots and lots of my friends?

Cashier: (looking a little startled) Yeah. She wouldn’t be offended. Would she?

Me: Not nearly as offended as I am about Americans voting for a bigot and sexual deviant. 

Cashier: (stares) 

Me: Happy Hanukah.  

Elysha missed all of this, of course, but as she left the restaurant, she waved to the owner and shouted, "Merry Christmas!"

Icing on the cake. 

For the record, I have no problem with people wishing others a "Merry Christmas."

A "Happy Hanukah," "Joyful Kwanza," or "Blessed Eid al-Adha" either. 

It's slightly presumptuous to automatically wish others a "Merry Christmas" given that more than 20% of America is non-Christian, but I judge on intent. No malice is intended with a simple "Merry Christmas." It's a simple pleasantry that is occasionally off the mark.

No different, really, than people who say, "God bless you," to me when I sneeze. I could explain to them that I'm a reluctant atheist who has been unable to find faith in God (and I sometimes do), but I never take offense to their offer of Godly intervention on my part.

They mean well. 

Frankly, "Happy Holidays" is just as presumptuous given that about 20% of Americans now consider themselves non-affiliated to religion. Atheists. Agnostics. Secular humanists. For them, December is just another month, absent of any holiday whatsoever.    

If you're Jewish or Muslim or an atheist and are wished a merry Christmas, you can either accept the sentiment as intended kindness or take the time to explain your belief system. 

No big deal.

But when you feel the need to whisper about the existence of Jews in a town and base your seasonal greeting solely on the advice of bigot, I'm probably going to respond in a snarky manner. 

The truth about red meat (and an ugly truth about me)

During our Christmas Day open house, a debate was sparked over the claim that the red juice in a piece of raw steak is blood. 

I argued that it was not blood. Everyone - and one friend in particular - disagreed. Facing a wall of opposition, I faltered. Doubted my claim. Wondered if I had been wrong about something so ubiquitous for all of my life.

Feeling uncertain, sensing defeat on the horizon, I decided to check the Internet.

I was correct. Not blood. Confirmed by many-a-website.

Apparently this is a frequently asked question. Most succinctly:  

"Meat bought from a store contains very little and in most cases no blood in the red liquid. It's actually a mixture of water and a protein called myoglobin. Myoglobin is a common protein, which has the ability to store oxygen in muscle cells."

I'm not sure if you know this about me, but I like being right a lot. I like being able to say, "I told you do" a whole lot. 

Later, after the defeated parties had left, I received a text from his spouse indicating that her husband was still mad that I was right.

His son chimed in. "Wow, I've never seen Dad be wrong before."

It was the final Christmas present of 2016, and it was a good one. Perhaps not in the true spirit of the holiday, but still, a merry Christmas indeed. 

Bruce Springsteen understands the cliff. Do you?

I'm listening to Bruce Springsteen's autobiography Born to Run. It's incredible. The man speaks truth with eloquence again and again. 

How can someone be this talented?

One of the aspects of this book that speaks to me most is the way in which he understands the cliff. If you've never stood on the edge of the cliff, it's hard to describe or understand, but once you have stood there, it's difficult - perhaps impossible - to step away, even when all seems right in the world.

The cliff is the place where you have nothing. No money. No home. No future. No hope. The cliff is the end of the line. The place were unbelievable misfortune and unknowing misstep have taken you against your will.

The cliff is the place where you turn around and see nothing. No mother or father standing in support. No childhood home awaiting your return. No safety net waiting to catch you when you fall. There is a wasteland behind you and the cliff ahead you, and there you stand, alone on a sliver of substance in between. 

The cliff is the place where you wonder about your next meal. You worry about staying warm. It's the place where you learn to stay low and dodge the law and the lawless. It's where you wrap worry around you like a blanket because it's all you have. The cliff is the place where you endlessly debate how to spend the last $10 that you think you will ever have.  

The cliff is the place where you wonder why your life didn't turn out like everyone else's life. It is a place of shame and regret and fear and resignation.

But the cliff is also the place where you find strength. It's the place where every cell in your body universally and unequivocally points in one direction for the first time in your life. You become a being of one purpose. One singular goal. If you do not fall - do not plunge into the abyss as so many will - the cliff is also the place where you can rise up. It's the place where your mettle will be tested, and relentlessness and confidence are forged in the fires of solitude and survival.

Once you stand on the edge of the cliff, I don't believe you ever leave. You stand or you fall. If you stand, you remain in place, feet planted firmly on the edge of oblivion. Someday, you may turn around and discover that you are no longer alone. No longer lost. The wasteland once behind you you is now green and lush and full. But the cliff remains before you. A reminder of what could have been and still could be.

The cliff is both destroyer and salvation. Shame and pride. Fear and courage. The cliff was where I became me, and I believe it is where Bruce Springsteen became The Boss.  

Springsteen's second album was abandoned by his record company. Executives at Columbia Records did not believe in his sound, and so they did not support his music. In fact, the actively petitioned against it. Torpedoed it. Fought for its demise.

It could have been the end of Springsteen's musical career. He was standing on the cliff. He faced oblivion. No money. No career. No safety net. Little hope.

Here is what he writes about this moment.  

"The basic drift was these guys thought we were just going to go away. Return to our day jobs. Go back to school. Disappear into the swamps of Jersey. They didn't understand that they were dealing with men without homes, lives, any practicable skills or talents that could bring a reliable paycheck in the straight world. We had nowhere to go, and we loved music. This was going to be it. We had come to liberate you, confiscate you, and all the rest." 

This is the edge of cliff. Springsteen stood. He remained, and the world is better for it.

If you are standing on the cliff today, please know that you do not stand alone. Hope exists even when it is impossible to see or even imagine. I find myself on this Christmas morning in a warm home, alongside a loving wife and two happy children. I am the teacher and writer that I once dreamed of becoming but never thought I could be. I am more than I ever imagined I could be.   

But like you, I am still standing at the edge of the cliff. I will likely be here forever. But today my feet are planted firmly, and that once arid wasteland at my back is now green and lush and full.

It can be like this for you, too. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday. 

I am living in my someday. It's a someday I never thought would come. 

Stand firm and fight for your someday, an inch at a time if necessary.   

When someone suggests that we give Donald Trump a chance, say this.

When someone fires off this Trump talking point:

"He's our President now. Why not at least give him a chance?" 

... please do not remain silent.

I inform these people that I have a policy against giving bigots, misogynists, sexual predators, and liars a second chance, at least when it comes to governing our country and determine the fates of hundred of millions of people.

As the husband of a Jewish woman, the father of a little girl, the teacher of an enormously diverse group of children, and the personal friend to Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants, and the disabled, I will stand in opposition of a man who has insulted and threatened all of these groups both in both word and deed. 

I need not give the man who has hurt so many that I love a chance. I will not normalize indecency, ignorance, disrespect, and the purposeful attempt to divide people with intimidation, violence, and hatred.    

I don't think this is an unreasonable position. 

I suspect that many of the people who suggest that we give Trump a chance do not spend their days alongside little Muslim girls, Mexican immigrants, and the disabled. I suspect that they have not worked in restaurants alongside undocumented workers just trying to make a living and on construction sites with men who do not speak English but are willing to work in subzero temperatures when many will not. They are not friends with minorities, the poor, and the disenfranchised. They do not know (or don't know that they know) the victim of a sexual assault.

It's much easier to give someone like Donald Trump a chance when he has not hurt anyone you love, but for many of us, the world is decidedly less white, less homogeneous, and less affluent. For many of us, he has already done great harm to the people we love.  

I have many loved ones - these included - who deserve a future much better than what he has promised. 

Why I cry when looking at old photographs like this.

This is a photo of A.A. Milne, the author of the Winnie the Pooh stories, along with his son, Christopher Robin Milne, and the stuffed bear that inspired Winnie the Pooh. 

A.A. Milne died in 1956.

Christopher Robin Milne died in 1996.

The stuffed bear, which was given to Christopher Robin in 1920 before his first birthday, can be found in the New York Public Library.

People love this photograph. The combination of father, son, and the bear that inspired so many beloved children's classics warms the hearts of many.

When I look at this photo - really look at it - I am forced to hold back the tears every time. This is what happens to me when I look at old photographs. I know that's strange and unfortunate, but it cannot be helped.

Here on some day in the late 1920's, a father and son sat before a long forgotten photographer, so much of their future still ahead of them. So much love and laughter and joy as yet to unfold. They must have felt so alive in this moment. So primal. The days and hours and minutes of their lives stretching out before them like a seemingly endless chain of light and warmth and surprise. 

Thirty years later - perhaps in the blink of an eye from their perspective - the father would be dead.

Forty years after that, his son would also be dead. 

This joyous union of father and son, creator and inspiration, would be broken forever. And if not for a series of books that parents read to their children before bed, these two people - father and son - would eventually be forgotten, like almost every other person alive in the world when this photograph was taken.  

A planet full of people, most dead, almost all forgotten forever in both body and deed. Every beautiful moment of their lives lost to the death and the dirt.  

All that survives from this particular moment is a stuffed bear, an inanimate object that magically comes to life in the pages of books and the minds of readers, but still, nothing more than stuffing and button eyes, a gift once purchased at Harrods in London for a boy who had been alive for days instead of years but is now gone forever. This small gift, which inspired so much more, has outlasted the two people in the photograph.

It remains while they do not. 

I see this photo and think about the moments just after it was taken. Father and son rise from their seated position, thank the long forgotten man behind the camera, and walk off, perhaps hand in hand, the little boy clinging to his toy, each step bringing them closer to dissolution and death, unaware of the moment just captured would endure when they would not.    

I see this father and son - both dead and buried - and I see every photograph of every father and son, a captured moment of potential and primacy that will end the same way.

This is why I must hold back tears when I look at old photographs like this. 

I know what you're thinking:

What the hell is wrong with this man? Is he okay? 

Fear not. I've been carrying this stone for a long time. Most of my life, in fact. It is how I have always seen the world. I've actually written about it before. It's a part of me. Not something I like but something I've grown accustomed to. 

I'll be fine. I promise.

If you forbid jeans at your place of business, you're not thinking straight. You might even be a coward.

Although there is no formal dress code at the school where I teach, staff members are allowed to make a $1 charitable contribution on Fridays in order to wear jeans.

Having no explicit dress code, I'm fairly certain that if I wanted to wear jeans every day, I could, but I'm not ready to rock that boat. I'm not so attached to jeans (at least not yet) that I feel the need to wear them every day.

That may change someday, but so far, I'm happy to give my dollar and wear jeans on the day that has been assigned.

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But if we were to look at this issue objectively, reasonably, and absent the stupidity of conformity or tradition, you have to ask:

What exactly makes my jeans any different from the khaki pants, corduroys, or dress slacks that I wear on any other day?

Is it the denim? Is the material designed by Levi Strauss many years ago so clearly unprofessional in its blueness or elasticity or durability that it can't be worn in a professional setting without the offer of a charitable payment? Is denim so uncouth or unkempt that employees wearing jeans are incapable of appearing professional to potential customers and clients? 

Or is it the fact that those long haired, rock-and-roll types are wearing jeans as they shake their hips onstage and play their electric guitars, and as a result, the wearing of jeans automatically confers the sense moral degradation and societal breakdown?

That may have been true in the 1960's when old people were stupid, but I don't think this perception applies today. 

Is it perhaps the rivets? The stone-washed texture? The way that denim encapsulates a person's ass or thighs?

Or is it simply because James Dean popularized jeans in the movie Rebel Without a Cause, and as a result, wearing jeans became a symbol of youth rebellion during the 1950s, and that reputation has remained in place ever since? 

I think it's probably that, because objectively, there is little difference between the jeans and the and the khaki pants or corduroy slacks that I wear. In fact, there's nothing objectively different between denim and any other fabric.

I suspect that the only thing keeping people from wearing jeans every day at the workplace are the old people in charge who are stuck on tradition and conformity and unwilling to examine their world through an objective, logical, and clear lens.

These are the rules followers. The lemmings. The cowards who would rather perpetuate some misinformed, illogical, nonsensical stereotype about a fabric and the people who choose to wear it rather than standing for what is right and logical and sensible.

I suddenly find myself wanting to wear jeans every day of my life.  

I went to the bathroom alongside a bunch of ladies, and something surprising happened.

I competed last night at a Moth StorySLAM at The Oberon in Cambridge, MA. 

The Oberon has two restrooms. When I started performing there in 2013, these restrooms were identified by placards as "Men" and "Women."

About a year ago, the "Men" and "Women" placards were replaced with placards that read "All Gender." Since then, I had only found myself in the restroom with a woman once, and it was alongside several other men. Though the placards had changed, people for the most part continued to segregate themselves according to sex.

Last night, however, I found myself in the restroom at one point with one other man and three women, and when that man exited the restroom ahead of me, I was the only man in the restroom with these women. I almost didn't notice, but as I stood at the sink washing my hands alongside two of the women, it occurred to me that I was using a public restroom with a majority of women for the first time in my life.

Also, none of us cared a bit.

At the end of the night, I returned to the restroom and found myself alone with one other woman. As we approached the sink together, we began talking. I had won the StorySLAM, and she had recognized me from my previous victories and wanted to know how I managed to win so often. As we washed our hands, I gave her a few storytelling tips, and she told me about her battles with stage fright and her desire to tell a story someday. 

I was back on the street, walking to my car, when I realized that I had just engaged in my first conversation with a woman in a public restroom, and I couldn't get over these two facts:

It was no big deal at all. So many dumbass jerk faces (I'm looking at you, North Carolina) think it's a very big deal.

If your opposed to allowing people to use the restroom of their choice, it's time to put on your big boy or big girl pants and grow up. Sooner than you think, "all gender" or "gender neutral" restrooms will be the norm, and people will wonder why gender segregation was once required in order for people to sit on toilets and wash their hands. 

After last night, I'm wondering it myself.