Dead Man's Honda

Kurt Vonnegut, the (in my opinion) a tad bizarre literary icon died today at age 84. His most recent work, a collection of essays published as a memoire in "A Man Without A Country" isn't the best thing I've ever read, (and certainly fails to attack the equal hypocricy of the Left) but it includes this fairly annoyed, simple quote:

How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly George W Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

It so happens that idealism enough for anyone is not made of perfumed pink clouds. It is the law! It is the US Constitution.

But I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened instead is that it was taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'état imaginable.

Before I realized what was going on, my nine-year-old head was attached to the fan. “Delissa!” I remember painfully calling out in the midst of all the high school students climbing on to the bus taking the pack to church camp. My best friend, Heidi, and I were the only third graders--- we would be attending Sherwood Forest, the kid camp, while everyone else from the bus went to High School Camp.

After a break in the drive, as I climbed back on the bus, I stopped, turned, and faced the rows of seats only to have my hair rapidly (and painfully!) sucked into the fan attached to the bus dashboard.

“Let’s just cut her hair,” someone said.

“Perhaps I can rip it out,” the bus driver said, and began her attempt.

Before anyone else could put their hands on my head, Delissa, my older sister, interfered, pushing away the bus driver and other people, demanded a screw-driver and she and my brother Landon removed the fan from the dashboard of the bus.

Oh. My. Gosh…I’m going to have to wear a fan dangling from the back of my head for the whole week of camp, I thought.

Instead, Delissa patiently sat down in her seat with me beside her and painstakingly unwound every single hair for the next four hours.

“Why don’t you just cut it off? It’s never going to come out…let's just shave the back of her head...” People kept saying.

“No! First, our mother would kill us if we brought her back without all of her hair. Second, she would hate that.” Delissa said resolutely as I sniffled and nodded. My fears of a bald spot on the back of my head dissipated and I slowly realized I was safe.

And that’s jus the thing when you have older siblings—you’re safer. You feel that way anyway. For most of my life people have asked me why I so fearlessly dive headlong into situations that others might find intimidating (or stupid)---it wasn’t until I began reflecting on my memories of Delissa that I realized why I do that.

I grew up in the middle of six children with three older siblings fiercely devoted to my protection and well-being. It’s like getting special suit of armor as a child—one that’s light, airy and unnoticeable. And one that gets frequently taken for granted.

My memories of Delissa are pretty much entirely made up of her serving me, worrying about me, clucking over me. When we came home from studying ballet across the country she would have re-decorated our bathroom, or our rooms, so that they were beautiful and new-looking. When we needed rides to dance or school or whatever—she would take us. In my college years she would come to school and bring me lunch or have me to her house and cook adorable, yet large, meals for us to consume in her breezy kitchen.

And the one trip I can remember where it was just her and me, headed to London to visit our brother, she still took care of most everything even though she was ill and needed me to attach little electric nodules to her body for the duration of the flight. Yes, that’s another story. But the point is—she is brave and protective and takes care of things and people (sick or well), and always has. She has an M.Div. but I think her pastoral skills were gained long before she ever went to seminary.

Her kids are extremely lucky--- and so am I.

Happy Birthday Lissy!

Four-Year-Old: "Adults are such freaking idiots."

Rooster:"You're telling me- the idiot fed me sunflower seeds."

Four-Year-Old: "Do you have a cigarette shoved into your mouth while your completely wasted dad decides to shoot pics of you with part of the family farm? No. You don't. So shut up about the sunflower seeds."

Rooster: "Ok. You win."

Four- Year-Old: "You bet I win. This thing doesn't even have tobacco in it. It's just a frigging rolled-up grocery list mama gave him. Moron."

I’m lying on my back on the couch and it’s one A.M. From the kitchen I hear the steady drip drop of our leaky faucet and can make out the glow from the turtle’s (named Frog) heat lamp. I can’t sleep.

I can’t sleep because my stomach is having issues and using the microwave I’ve just melted a plastic bag into the folds of a wet washcloth inside the bag and then laid that sucker on my stomach and burnt a half-moon blister right above my belly-button.

And as I’m thinking of my self-inflicted tattoo, I think about how I get when things seem to hit the fan like they have recently--- and how I get is like this:

I get distracted.

I get so distracted I just might become a hazard not only to my own health but those around me: At Trader Joes I loaded up a bunch of groceries, unlocked Honda’s trunk and then balanced the hatchback on my head while I piled the groceries into the back. (The thing that holds up the hatchback no longer works so I have to get creative.)

Well, as I’m doing this, the stupid cart gets away from me and I’m too busy listening to my phone tucked neatly between my ear, neck and my head holding up the hatchback, to notice.

And I wonder why I have neck pain.

Our Trader Joes is located at the top of a winding parking structure and I was parked at just the point where the lot dips southward. Gravity, therefore, inevitably had its way with my shopping cart. Only….my cart was headed straight for the side of the shiniest BMW I’ve ever seen.

I pulled my head out of my trunk and with horror stuck in my throat, stumbled after the bloody thing yelling out loud to my own embarrassment “Oh Sh--! Oh Sh--! Oh Sh--!” into the mouthpiece of my phone (oops), as I went. This was, apparently, much to the amusement of the schmuck casually striding alongside the opposite end of the slope who couldn’t stop chuckling as I dove for the stray cart.

Jerk.

I also forget what people say when they’ve said it two seconds before and I ask them to repeat it over and over again until they stare at me with their head cocked to the side and say “are you for real?”

I also call out “me too!” from my cubicle when I hear the strange man who always keeps his office door closed mumbling to himself, “I’m going to the gym…I’m going to the gym….I’m going to the gym…I’ve decided…I’m….”

I also fail to know what to do when the strange, stalker-like guy at work slaps his dirty fingernails up over the top of my cubicle, follows with his head, and asks:

“Do you live alone?”

I mean, honestly? The proper, not-someone-who’s-going-to-hack-you-up-into-pieces question is: “Do you have roommates?”

Who asks if you live alone?

And rather than responding with:

“Uh, no. Actually I live with a 6’5’ four hundred pound weight lifting male who constantly carries a machine gun.”

When I get like this, I respond with a simple, apathetic:

“Hey dude.”

And once all of these thoughts of how I get when things hit the fan wash through my mind at this hour, and I forget about the blister on my stomach (and the bag of water that is now leaking everywhere) I remember something important buried beneath the pieces:

I’m most certainly not alone.