Postcards from the Funny Farm

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe via -or-

Today I had a rough first day back at work. I’m a 4th grade teacher in California and my school just put new carpet in my room. As a result, I had to take every item out of storage and rearrange all my things from the heaviest desks to the minutiae of staples. Tomorrow I have my biggest chore: the walls. I have to hang colored butcher paper and staple them up. It’s a daunting task, if you are a teacher you know.

When it was time to go home I could have gone home to take a nap (which I considered) but I thought taking my wife out to the new sports-bar pizza joint would be more inspiring. It was tasty and they even had a popcorn machines. As I had a few Amber ales and chatted with my wife, my troubles seemed smaller. I looked around and saw the many other people in the evening restaurant air and imagined their problems. Despite them, they were laughing and giving high-fives … I was glad to be with them.

My point of this vignette: get out more. Often when we want to hide from our duties and jobs what we really need is just to put ourselves where the people are. That’s where we find we aren’t any better or worse off than most of them

NOTE: This is not a paid endorsement for Skechers shoes. I just like them a lot ;)

New shoes for a new year, that’s one of my simple pleasures in life. For my one-year-old I’d compare it to new crib bedding (which we just bought for her from a ritzy designer baby place for the new year. Some of your are wondering, “Did he write new year?” Yes, Teachers are kind of like the Chinese that way, we have a weird time we start our years. Usually it’s around August. But back to new shoes being simple pleasures. I haven’t indulged in it for 3 years so this is something special I had to write about!

Sometimes it’s those simple pleasures that give us the fuel we need to do great things. I start back to work teaching in the 2008-2009 school-year tomorrow. My teaching job can be hot and cold but it is always is always an over-brimming source of material for my online diary.

The brand of shoes I bought is “Skechers,” a once small company from Southern California that has now become a household word like Vans or Stride Rite. I don’t know how the name evolved exactly but I remember growing up in the 80’s when surfers in my region would use the term “sketchy” as slang to mean “frightening.” Mostly it was used with regards to big waves ie;

Dude, that giant wave was skecthy.

I guess that’s why I have worn Skechers all these years. They are quality shoes and very comfortable, but it is something about that association with thrill-seeking, with surfing that keeps me buying them. They aren’t cheap at 60 bucks a pop. Still, it’s something we try to budget it in because of its importance to me. I laced mine up tonight and set them at the bottom stair ready for “the waves” that will come tomorrow. Even though I start teaching in the morning, I feel like a kid before his first soccer game.

You may not like the style of Skechers. You may prefer some other specialized “body armor” to wear to work. It is not the brand that makes it better, it’s your excitement. No one may ever notice the type of shoes you wear. If you’re a woman, then maybe no one will have noticed your new bracelet, or power skirt etc. The point is, there is a psychology to new things you assign meaning to that will make you more creative, innovative, and in many ways better.

If you’re facing a rocky climb ahead, it might seem more like a brick wall … try some new shoes.

Even though my new home is like a vacation spot, Sarah and I were talking the other night about vacation deals out there. If you’ve ever moved a family of 5 then you know you need a vacation after the fact. I’m not a world traveler but I have been to some amazing vacation spots in my day. Incidentally, if you want to see some truly amazing pictures on a weekly basis of local Scotland, bookmark Amy Palko’s blog.  See if you’ve been to any of these:

• Hawaii: The coconut smell of Oahu and Kauai is definitely rejuvenatory.
• Washington DC: Nice to take the underground train and learn stuff about our country’s capital.  Lots of restaurants.
• Arizona: Flagstaff and Apache Junction are nice places for Jeep tours.  As is Sedona.  The red rocks look like mars and people say there is a “center” or vortex there that has medicinal properties.
• Guadalajara Mexico.  Middle class life all around you.  Not like TJ where there is so much poverty and you take your good deals back to your hotel room fighting back the tears.  Also Puerto Vallarta is great.  Just avoid the sea of the dead.
• Florida: I’ve been to Jacksonville and Orlando.  One day I want to drop in on my blog buddy Nick there in Myrtle Beach.
• California:  The best spots are: Disneyland, the Redwoods, Fisherman’s Wharf …  I could go on since this is my native state.  Catalina Island is gorgeous.  Very affordable and there is a buffalo tour.

So, I ask myself … what’s next?

I got that title from an old Alarm song. It’s a great tune with an even greater message for the visionaries among us in 2008.

Instead of waiting for others to be our inspiration, we have to be the inspiration to others AND to ourselves.

As you may have gathered from this series’ title, I grew up in Orange County. 45 minutes from Disneyland and 2 hours from the Mexico border. Nice living! When I moved up here to the high desert of California in August of 2002 I had nothing more than 300 bucks in my pocket and what seemed like a mystical job contract to teach public school. I left behind a rental apartment and everything else that had been “home.” I had decided some months earlier that a return to teaching was what my life and soul needed at age 33. You can read more about my transition back into teaching in my article entitled: Success and Relativity. Anyway, I didn’t mind the details of the move, I just knew this was my return to teaching and return to joy. It was as if I was in the story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the teaching job was my “golden ticket.”

The people I met up here, from the interview onward were magical. They saw the light in me and in turn I saw theirs. People offered to let me sleep on their couches, rent their condos, go out to dinner with them, set me up with women … note: I was single then … it was like out of a dream. The dream wasn’t so much about what they offered me though, it was about the light they shined into my heart. I remember thinking of the high desert as a magical place that no one in Orange County, where I grew up, could ever touch. Well, of course, I see now after nearly six years that wasn’t the case, it was merely my perception brought on by simple things people did.

The people were and still are magical but many have left the desert. One woman in particular who was instrumental in hiring me sufferred unspeakable loss when her son and his wife lost a baby in delivery. This world can be so harsh. She left the district and I don’t see her anymore. Others have retired and some have just moved on. I find myself sometimes asking: “Was the magic real? Where has it gone?” There you have the place to put my title: We are the Light.

In life we are lucky at times to be touched by the magic of others. We must never forget however that we have that same power to touch others. We see the light in people they often don’t see themselves. Let your words and actions pour light like water into the “vases” of people. Let them be better for knowing you. I’ll never forget the time my Grandpa had such an impact on me when he bought me a set of Callaway irons as a kid. I used to polish them nightly. Golf was a better game for me because of his generosity. That’s the kind of impact we should all have.

Remember also that the world is not always a mystical place. It is most the time, at its most complex level, just people walking on sand getting to their next destination. It takes people of vision, like you and I my friend, to to create the perception of magic.

The things that are eternal are actions and words you dream. Only you can start them. Only you can bring them back. Only you can keep them going. There really isn’t much to say on this except: GO AND DO!

An aside here at closing: Below are 4 of my family pictures. Each person in them “happened” post-desert … post-magic. Looking at them reminds me that home is where I probably need to shine the brightest, before I take on the world. Wouldn’t you agree?

This is my “creepy” story for Shelly over at this Eclectic Life. She was very kind this past month to ask me to judge her “scared silly” writing contest. This is sort of my “entry” after the fact since I already picked a winner. You can find the list of all the entries in the footer of this post. Anyway, as far as my story goes: I hope it comes across as well as it does when I tell it live. I have many stories from my youth but this one absolutely takes the cake because it is so “ethereal” yet 100% real as well. Rest assured, the following story indeed happened and I have run it through my mind ever since trying to make sense of it on a purely scientific level: maybe you can, I’d be very grateful.

I was 12 years old and my 3 younger siblings were all riding in the back of a brown Oldsmobile station wagon, both my parents were up front. We were driving back in a scorching summer from my great grandparents’ house in Apache Junction, Arizona. Normally the drive from there to Southern California, where we resided and all still do, is a painted masterpiece to enjoy as you make the hours of driving. Today it wasn’t like that because the car was having severe issues. We had pulled over twice to let the car cool off since it was overheating. It was a stretch for miles that presented no gas stations and rarely did a car pass up by. That’s how the scenic route is. When the car overheated a third time, my dad told us all to get out and walk.

We waved our hands at passing cars hoping to get some help. No help came. Finally after what seemed like the whole day, a tow truck pulled up and a guy got out who looked like someone out of Deliverance inly less attractive. His name on his makeshift uniform read: “Butch.” I’ll always remember how that man looked. It felt scary at that moment for me, though my mom and dad seems to feel as if they’d won the lottery.

Butch towed us up the hill to his service station. That’s actually too nice of a name to call it. There was a half-destroyed Exxon sign that was fastened to a set of thin trees with bungee cables. My brother and I bolted out of the car (he carried us all in the car as he towed it which was kind of cool) and ran into what seemed like a bathroom. Inside there were busted up condom machines and leaking water all over the place. It wasn’t even a bathroom, it looked more like a post-nuclear film for the government. We went back to our parents to find an unsettling sight.

Butch was yelling at my mom and dad, telling them the car was fixed and he needed $1200 dollars from them. This was circa 1983 so there were no cell phones and in fact Butch said he didn’t have a phone. I remember the frightening next sentence that Butch said to my parents as I watched a three legged dog hobble into the rest room we had just exited: “Well you’re gonna have to get it cash. I will keep one of your kids while you go into town and get it.” The air stood still. My dad is a very calm man and I have rarely seen him lose it, but he was about there with this man. My Dad then decided to get the family into the car. Butch said, “Don’t try leaving. You owe me.”

In the car my dad, being a Christian men’s group leader, said we should all hold hands and pray. My dad prayed a prayer that really seemed to calm my two sisters who were crying down and it actually made me feel at peace as well. I don’t think you can imagine how good it was to feel peace in that situation for the oldest of 4 kids who felt totally helpless.

Soon after the “amen” a white valiant pulled into the gas side. Since no one had come by the whole time, my dad said “son. come with me” and we bolted over to this car. It looked like a family out of the 1950’s. Two boys with braces and headgear and perfect flat-tops. The mom was primping her hair and the dad looked nerd central. My dad explained our situation to the other dad and he nodded as if he knew it already. He explained that they had been praying as a family in the last town and the mom said she just felt like they should get more cash. So they had the cash we needed.

My dad wrote him a personal check for the $1200. The other dad gave him the cash and we paid Butch.

The car wasn’t even remotely fixed and we broke down again later but eventually by a string of events, made it home. I remember being so tired when I hit my bed that night.

To close this up, I know there are many ways to explain this creepy yet victorious story of my family driving across the desert … but you haven’t heard it all. When the check was never cashed my dad tried to get a hold of the man and his family through the contact info they had given him … turned out the phone and address never existed.

Thanks for reading my story. Like I said, it happened to me and I don’t think I could ever make up something that good. It’s hard to get my mind around that story without believing it was supernatural.

Have you ever seen something you thought was supernatural?

Here are the other stories in the contest, they are all amazing:

THE ENTRIES:

• KatelynJane’s Notebook Scared Silly
• SusieJ entered Definitely something foul going on over there…from her archives.
• Crystal at Song Of My Soul entered from her archives “Hey, at least I can laugh at myself, right?”
• Marcia, at Tumbled Words entered “The mask, three prompts combined.”
• Jessica at Life As I See It entered a post from her archives, “It’s Here.”
• Penelope At Cafe at the End of the Universe wrote “The Bathtub Below.”
• Cyn at Rage Against The Cliche entered “The Tears of the Phoenix.”
• Robin at Around The Island posted “Treed, or rather staircased.”
• Amy Palko at Lives Less Ordinary added “Scare Silly By The Fairies.”
• Cindee at CiNdEe’s GaRdEn entered “How I Scared My Daughter Silly.”
• The Wandering Author wrote “Wake Up, Little Susie.”