Middle School Syndrome

There is something in the air.

Normally nice, rational people are getting upset. Their feelings are getting hurt. Their panties are in a bunch. They are getting pissy. Lines have been drawn. Lines have been crossed. Lines have been redrawn. Friends are turning on friends. Enemies are being born. Other friends are left in the wake wondering just what happened.

I wish this was a 7^th grade spat. It’s not. It’s just grown ups acting like 7^th graders.

I don’t know the back stories. Furthermore, I don’t want to know them. I just want friends to act like friends. I want adults to act like adults.  Is that so much to ask?

Probably.

But a guy can hope.

My First Experiment In Parenting Turned Out Okay In Spite Of Me

I’m good at a lot of things and terrible at others. I can’t fix a car to save my life. I’ve never built something from the ground up. But I’m pretty good at sales. I enjoy public speaking. I’m good at calming down volatile situations. I enjoy comedy, cooking and almost anything that requires creativity.  But there is only one thing that I feel like I was born to do.

I’m a dad.

There is nothing on this planet that fulfills me like my four children. I love them each and they are each unique. A very wise woman I know described it like this; each of your fingers are different from the one it’s next to, but you are deeply attached to each of them. The same can be said for my kids. I love them each passionately. I live for them and would die for them.

I’ve written before about my three younger kids, but not my oldest. She is the hardest one for me to write about, because she is most like me. We are both firstborn, which means we are the one most of the experiments were performed on. We were the recipients of most parental missteps. We are also the ones who had to figure out what we were going to do with our lives after we made our mistakes without the benefit of an older sibling to provide a template. More on that later.

It would be an understatement to say that Danae and I both have a flair for the dramatic. When she was only seven, she was staying with my mother. To hear her tell it, she was having a particularly tiresome day. With her hand on her forehead, she informed her Grammy that she would take her lunch in her room on a tray. Eating with other people was just too much.

Danae is a natural born leader. She cares about people and she does everything in her power to help the people around her succeed. She always has. When she was in Middle School, I would pick her up at school and she would look back at her friends and call out, “Make good choices!”  She didn’t just say this once. She said it every day. She has always been such a mom.

When her younger sister was born 22 months after her, she practically inserted herself into the role of substitute mom. This only increased when her brothers were born.  I remember a time when the kids were all somewhat rambunctious. Twelve year old Danae looked at me and asked, “What are we going to do with these kids?” Taken aback for a moment, I replied to her, “You realize that you are one of those kids, right? You understand that you aren’t a parent, right?”

I have never seen someone so offended in my life. I really had to hold the laughter inside.

She has always been musically gifted. She played clarinet through school. She was playing a particularly difficult piece by Shostakovich when the band director tapped her to play drums. She had never played them in her life. But the teacher pointed out that anyone who can play Shostakovich’s rhythms can play the drums. With two years, she was the leader of the drum line and the only female drummer. She pushed the drummers to be their best, and of course, to make good choices.

She was invited to go to a student leadership camp in Washington DC. This was such a great experience for her.  Her leadership skills showed up so much, that they invited her back for a special conference during President Obama’s inauguration. During that time, she got to hear a wide variety of speakers ranging from Newt Gingrich to Al Gore to Bishop Desmond Tutu. It seemed like her innate ability to lead and care about the people she leads has opened doors for her throughout her life.

Being the firstborn, she was the recipient of so many mistakes. We were far too strict with her. We didn’t let her do many things her peers did. I regret that. I’m convinced that, in response to this, when she got to college she went through a checklist of things just to say she did them. In that process, she added her mistakes to the mistakes we made as parents. This is where we are so much alike. We both live our lives with a “Deal With It and Move On” mentality.

However, Danae does this much better than me. She has taken the mistakes of her life and turned them into something great. Because she enjoyed the freedom she had at college so much, she lost her scholarship. In turn, she began to work her way through school. And she discovered that she is very good at what she does. As a junior in college, she all but ran a branch office of a large oil company. She later parlayed that experience through a couple of steps into the job she has now. At the ripe old age of 24, she is the sales manager for an environmental services company.  She is the boss of people as old as her parents. She was promoted over the man who once was her boss and actually had to let him go. As difficult as this was, she did it right. I am constantly amazed at her. She is an amazing woman.

While I have compared Danae to me, she is without a doubt her own person. She is strong. She is compassionate. She is funny. She is charming. She is delightfully unique and, as my firstborn, had more to do with me growing up than the turning of years ever did. I am astounded at the woman she has become. I can’t wait to see what she does next. As with all my children, I want them to be blessed beyond measure in every area of her life.

In the meantime, I am blessed to have a seat at the table to watch this incredible woman. In spite of my mistakes, she has become a wonderfully strong, resilient, happy woman. What more could a dad ask for?

The Nerd Life Chose Me

I am a nerd.

You will never insult me by calling me a nerd, because that’s exactly what I am. I came to grips with my nerdiness decades ago. For a season, I tried to disguise it because I thought I needed to be cool. But by the time I had kids, I came to the conclusion that you can’t be a dad and be cool. That’s when I embraced my inner geekiness and made it my outer geekiness. Life is much easier that way.

My kids know what a nerd I am. In fact, they are the ones responsible for every Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, and DC article of clothing I own. And I don’t just own them. I wear them like a boss.

My kids have also exposed me to many of my favorite things. Parks and Recreation comes immediately to mind. There was one episode in which Patton Oswalt was a guest star. In this episode, he filibustered the Pawnee City Council. Don’t ask me why I was listening to him in the background over the dialog in the foreground, but I was. And he set my Nerdometer off. He suggested a Star Wars/Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) crossover.

I know. I know. It will never happen. Nor should it. As I learned long ago, you should never cross the streams. But what if?

Humor me for a moment.

Disney owns Star Wars and the MCU. This could actually happen in real life. Starting with Oswalt’s original premise, let’s go from there.

Rey and Luke discover an infinity stone.

See?

As they begin to discover and unlock the power of the infinity stone, Kylo Ren begins a hunt to destroy them and take the stone. Meanwhile, the stone’s power works as a beacon for Thanos, who, in order to obtain all the stones for the Infinity Gauntlet, has to fight a four front war for the stones. Front one is with Kylo Ren and the First Order forces. Front two is with the last of the Jedi and Rebel forces who have teamed up with the Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova Corps. Front three is with the heroes of Asgard. Thor, Volstag, Hogun, Fandral, the Lady Sif, Heimdall, and even Loki lead the armies of Asgard into this cosmic battle.  Front four is with the heroes of earth: the Avengers, the Defenders, the Inhumans, Shield, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, and Ant Man fight to save the planet. I would include the X-Men and Fantastic Four, but they are not MCU properties.

Do you still think that we shouldn’t cross streams? I don’t.

Someone in Hollywood needs to make this happen.

Experience Matters

I’m a little sad because I took my daughter to the airport to fly back to college on the East Coast. With the winter weather, there were a few false starts, but the people I’ve dealt with at American Airlines have been great! They need to be because they are carrying precious cargo when they are carrying my Hope. She is one of the most surprising people I have ever met in my life. She has never failed to catch me off guard. She has the ability to ask very direct, tough questions while still being very sweet. She’s very sociable while always wanting her alone time. She’s a constant paradox. She’s hard to figure out and I absolutely love it. She is one of my life’s best spices. The thing with Hope is, she experiences everything and if you are close, you get to tag along.

Hope is a strong willed person. We should have known that she would always keep us on our toes. When she was 2, we were moving. We had carefully packed a lampshade, but still needed the lamp. The exposed bulb made the light brighter than normal. Hope was staring at that bulb and we knew her curiosity was already shifting into fourth gear. We told her not to touch the lamp because it would burn her. Five seconds later, she touched that bulb and blistered her hand. It was a quick lesson. She has always had to experience things. Because of that need to experience, she has experienced God in ways that most of us don’t. Hers is not a lip service relationship. She gets in the trenches with Him and has the reward of experiencing life with Him.

Hope is a beautiful girl who doesn’t know she’s beautiful, which only enhances her beauty. I have told her how pretty she is her whole life, but she just assumes that this is just ‘dad talk.’ She was a cheerleader throughout Middle and High School. She loved it. She worked hard and became a true leader on the team. By the time she was going into her Senior year, she was ready for a new challenge. She wanted to try out for Pom Squad. She was already a leader in cheer, but pom was a new challenge. What to do? After a long, difficult time of pondering, she went ahead and tried out for pom. She had been in dance since she was a toddler, and would probably be a natural at it. The coach that was over cheer and pom decided to bring in outside judges so no personal biases would show up during the auditions.

Hope boldly walked in and started to dance her routine. And the unthinkable happened. She froze. She quickly recovered, but the damage was done. She didn’t make the pom squad. Adding insult to injury, if you tried out for pom, you were ineligible for cheer and vice versa. Her identity was crushed. Her senior year was destroyed. Both Hope and her coach were in tears because they knew nothing could be done. I cried and prayed. This was my baby girl and she just had her life thrown into a blender and there was nothing I could do about it.

Hope went to the coach and asked if there was anything she could do to get back on the team. The coach replied that the only open position was the manager. The manager had the job of making sure the gear was together and the floors were swept. It was a grunt job. But it allowed her to stay close to her friends and maintain part of her school identity. She said yes and became the cheer manager. She felt broken and cast off. She felt ugly and alone. But she became a servant, even to the Freshmen cheerleaders. She even helped coach them up. It was not her dream, but she decided to make the most of what she faced.

A funny thing happens when you are willing to make the best of a bad situation. Good things happen for you. Three weeks into football season, another cheerleader got in trouble and was kicked off the team. This opened up a spot. But this coach had never added a cheerleader after try outs. Every girl on the team went to the coach to petition for Hope to be reinstated. The coach brought Hope in, and with tears in her eyes said, “Hope, this could not happen for another human being on the planet. But you were willing to serve your friends and take a terrible job. You acted better than anyone I have ever known. I would dearly love for you to join the team.”

Hope experiences God in ways most of us just read about.

She has always done things that catch me off guard. I remember coming home one day and finding a note that said, “Dad, I left you something in my bathtub. Please take care of it.” I had no idea what she was talking about. I went upstairs, opened the bathroom door and in the tub was an upside down mixing bowl with a sticky note that said “Kill it.” Under that bowl was a spider. I laughed so hard that I almost didn’t kill it.

A couple of years later, that same dainty thing informed the family that she was going to spend the summer in Mozambique, Africa.  She lived with mosquito nets, outdoor latrines, gritty rice that, as she put it, “contained more bugs than I want to know about.” But she also lived her faith. She went from the fear of spiders to living in a third world country.

Hope’s faith is stronger than most because she does life with God. It’s awesome to see.

I wonder how different my life would be if I lived on the ragged edge with God? How about you? I watch her experience life that is abundant and challenging and just think how blessed I am to have had a courtside seat for this amazing young lady. She makes me want to never be comfortable with just enjoying life. I want to experience it.