growing up

Alexander, the Not So Great

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

If my name had been Alexander, it would have made sense.  The morning at my junior high school hadn’t started out well, what with being sent to Mr. Chapa’s office for running in the hall.  Okay, so it actually started before that, when I missed the bus and my mom got me to school late.  After picking up my books from my locker, I was running to math class, but one of the teachers stopped me and sent me to the Assistant Principal.  “Paul, this is the third time this semester I’ve seen you in here,” he reminded me sternly.  “The next time, you’ll be getting swats.  For now, two afternoons of detention, but I don’t want to see you in here again!”  I assured him he wouldn’t, knowing that he would, and went to math class, only to have Debbie Gordon write on my shirt (in ink!) as she sat behind me.  What a day!  And my name wasn’t even Alexander!

But, like the protagonist of that popular children’s book “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”, it really was to be, well…just that.  After math, I stumbled through a few more classes which I hated.  Nothing bad really happened there, but never fear, that would change.  I headed for the one class I loved – Band.  Our band director, Mr. Olson, remains to this day, one of my favorite teachers.  He just had a knack for making you feel special, complimenting you when you got a difficult passage right, exulting with you when you had practiced for hours to be able to challenge the guy ahead of you in the seating arrangement and bested him.  My guess is that he commiserated with the loser in much the same way, to make him feel better, encouraging him to work harder the next time.  Band was the one place where this young nerd felt at ease and free to express himself.

On this day, that expression of myself was to be a big problem.  As Mr. Olson explained a fingering pattern to the flutes, Randy, who sat next to me in the horn section, and I started poking at each other.  All of the sudden, my horn…really the school’s horn, slipped off of my lap and to the floor with a crash.  The discussion with the flutes ceased instantaneously, all eyes focusing on me, and my face turned beet red.  An angry Mr. Olson (yeah, he could do angry too) snapped out a question which I didn’t understand.  I thought he said, “Did you get it?”, perhaps wondering if I had caught the horn before it was damaged.  I wasn’t sure, but answered timorously, “Yes.”  He grew even angrier, nearly shouting at me as he told me to put the horn away and get one of the beginner’s single horns to play.  I was mortified, but did as I was told, returning to my seat with the inferior instrument, to finish the period.  Afterward, the other guys told me that he had inquired if I dented the horn, which explained his reaction.  I hadn’t, but it made no difference by that time.

I stumbled through the rest of the day, but it wasn’t finished with me yet.  I had only gotten through the terrible, the horrible, and the no good parts so far.  The very bad was yet to come, although in retrospect, it was actually pretty funny.  That day, I couldn’t laugh about it at all.  I was preparing for All Region tryouts, so I had a private lesson scheduled with Mr. Olson after school.  While I waited my turn for a lesson, I went to warm up in the prop room on the stage, which was just behind the band room.  You went out through a door, up a short flight of steps to the stage, and the door to the room was on the right.  I closed the door, sat down, and began to play a scale.  It was a disaster.  The fingerings were all different and the bore of the horn was smaller, so it sounded bad, and I just couldn’t play anything right.  The time approached for me to meet with Mr. Olson, so I got up to leave the room, but found that the door was jammed!  It was completely stuck shut, and…it opened inward.  No amount of jerking the door knob would budge it.  I shouted; I pounded on the door, but there was no one in the gymnasium, and the other door into the band room was a solid slab of wood, so even shouting didn’t carry to anyone there.  Finally, as my panic subsided, I looked around for something, anything to help me; soon finding a long wooden pole lying on the floor.  Like many classroom doors in those days, there were slats in the lower half of the door, and one of them was broken out.  I stuck the pole out the slot, shoving it to the left and down the stairs, banging it again and again on the door to the band room.  Eventually, someone heard the racket and came up, shoving on the door from the outside as I pulled with all my might on the knob.

Free from that prison at last, I headed for my lesson; ten minutes late.  Once again, Mr Olson wasn’t happy.  By this point, he wasn’t even prepared to listen to my explanation, but as we started the lesson, he softened.  As I gamely struggled to play the notes that had come clearly and effortlessly on the good horn, he made a decision.  “If you hadn’t come to this lesson today, Paul, I was going to make you keep this horn all year.  I’m going to give you another chance.  Don’t make me regret it.”  Unlike the promise to the assistant principal earlier in the day, the promise I made to him was one I knew I could keep.  I’ve never asked him, but I don’t think he ever had a reason to be sorry.

Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days happen.  Sometimes, when they come, I want to go home and wait for tomorrow from the safety of my bedroom.  I’m fairly certain that won’t work.  To get to tomorrow, hopefully a better day, you have to go through today.  The events which are put in our way are there for a purpose, sometimes to help us grow, perhaps to be an example to someone else who is watching.  How we deal with them speaks volumes about our character and our resolve to be who we say we are.

It is, however, a very good thing that those days don’t come every day.  And, when they do come, it helps to know that the bell is going to ring at the end of the school day.  Light at the end of the tunnel brings new hope…unless, of course, it turns out to be an oncoming train…

“To the victor belong the spoils.”
(William L. Marcy~New York Senator & Governor~1786-1857)

“‘I daren’t come and drink,’ said Jill. ‘Then you will die of thirst,’ said the Lion.  ‘Oh dear!’ said Jill, coming another step nearer. ‘I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.’‘There is no other stream,’ said the Lion.”
(C.S. Lewis~from The Silver Chair in The Chronicles of Narnia)

Baby Steps and Split Lips

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

Smack!  The baseball hit the six-year old boy right in the mouth and it took all the fortitude his young dad could muster to keep from running onto the field.  The lad was at his first ever tee-ball practice and he was used to people lobbing softer balls toward him.  This one had been thrown by another kid whose aim was a bit errant, so the sphere skimmed the hard dirt surface in front of him, bouncing up to batter a target it wasn’t intended for.  But the dad stood where he was behind the fence and let the boy’s coach run out to check him.  A little blood and a little more wounded pride, but he tearfully assured the coach that he would stay where he was and keep on with the practice.

On the way home later, the conversation went something like, “That ball hit you pretty hard out there.”  “Yeah, and look at it now!” (Said with a split, puffy lip stuck out.)  “You know, you can quit if you want to…”  “Quit?  I’m going to play baseball!”  And play baseball, he did.  It was about 9 years later that he finally put away the cleats and glove, after many different teams and All-Star games.  He turned into a really good baseball player, but more than that, he became a young man who knew what it was to tough it out and go for his goals.

It’s been a few years since that young man showed the doggedness it took to stick through the pain and effort, but the early lessons keep bearing fruit 20 years later.  Those lessons aren’t lost on the dad either, now a little older and a very small amount wiser.  Of course, one of the things he’s learned is that these lessons are neither rare, nor remarkable.  But sometimes, the reminder still helps to keep life in perspective.

This week, his youngest granddaughter took her first steps on her own.  She turns one in another week or so, and her frame of reference is widening at an amazing rate (not that this is unusual, either).  As we all do, she started out aware of only the most basic needs, food, sleep, a mother’s touch.  As she’s grown, her scope has expanded also.  Still very much self-absorbed, she realizes that she wants other things; brightly colored toys, different food than she usually has (even hot coffee), certain people (Grandma’s the best!).  She even wants more mobility, but she herself is perfectly willing to leave the transportation to anyone who will carry her.  She started crawling only out of the most dire need (Mama has 4 kids and was thoughtless enough to leave her on the floor!).  And now, even though crawling is good enough, these adults around her keep standing her up and having her walk on the bottom of her feet.

And still today, she doesn’t really want to walk.  She has to be put upright on her feet and have someone in front of her for whom she is motivated enough to put out the effort.  She even fusses about it.  But parents and grandparents understand that this is the next achievement in the natural progression.  Yes, she’s going to fall down a time or two.  She may even split her lip open, but this is how life moves along.  We try new things even when we are frightened of the effort and the possibilities.  And, the result is a complete person, one who has taken their fair share of licks and won their fair share of victories.

For today, she knows she’s done something really good.  Everyone praises her and Grandpa sweeps her up in his arms, telling her how smart she is.  It’s a picture that’s been seen millions of times before and will be repeated that many more times, but for right now, all she knows is that she’s done something stupendous, and the smile on her face is living proof.

Sometimes we forget that our lives are supposed to be spent learning and the pop-quizzes should come along fairly regularly.  It is possible to become a drop-out.  We just decide we’ve gotten the degree we want in the school of hard knocks and we’re done.  Sit tight, do the same things every day, and no one will ever hit us in the mouth with anything.  We figure we’ve learned everything that we need for our profession and just mark time.  But we were never intended to be done, never intended to quit learning, never intended to sit on the sidelines watching.  For many of us today, it’s confusing to see friends who refuse to learn about new technologies, refuse to contemplate and discuss current events, and refuse to take an active part in any unfamiliar activity.    We live in an exciting time, when information is at our fingertips, facts are verified with the push of a few buttons, and new experiences await us at every turn.  We were meant to live ’til we die! 

You’d better be careful, little girl!  One step leads to another all through your life!  And watch out for those wild pitches…



The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet, 
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then?  I cannot say.
(From “The Hobbit” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien)


“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the Faith.” 
(The Apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 4:7)

Dancing to the Oldies

~ Paul Phillips ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes we let the pizza get cold, but there is never a dull moment.  The four little ones come, more for the time spent playing outside and the suckers from the music store next door than for the pizza, but Tuesday evening without them is not nearly as much fun.  Uncle “Steben” is usually here, much to the delight of the young ones (and his dad too, truth be known), but he doesn’t know how to provide entertainment like these guys.  The after-dinner matinee is spectacular!

I’ll never figure it out.  They are surrounded by technological marvels, CD player, DVD player, computer, and digital television, but they want me to open up the 90 year-old Victrola, lay a thick old 78 RPM record on the turntable, and let them “dance”.  We’re not talking about good music either.  These are old hillbilly harmonies, sung in the most nasally voice imaginable, nothing nearly as sophisticated as “Little Einsteins” or “Yo Gabba Gabba”, but these kids love it.  Almost every time they come, we have to go through the rigamarole again…Select a record (Who cares what record, just a different one than last time), everyone gets a turn at winding the crank, open the doors to the voice cone (how else can you control the volume?), the selected kid gets to move the lever to release the turntable (a cherished job they vie mightily for), and the steel needle is set down on the record.  After that, pandemonium ensues!  They jump and fall, wriggle and writhe, run around in circles, and just generally make a noisy commotion.  This is called “dancing”, not to be confused with wrestling or tag, although the process for these seems to be the same, minus the Victrola.  If we’re lucky enough to get an operatic tune, perhaps Grandpa will add to the commotion with his Bugs Bunny imitation from “What’s Opera, Doc?”, probably a scene we don’t want to dwell on for long…

The music is bad, the dancing is not a thing of beauty, but you’d be rolling on the floor laughing if you could see it.  These are times when I could chuck technology and live a much simpler life.  But events move on, the children go home, and (after a short rest) the wife and I head back to work, with all it’s chiming emails, whirring disc drives, and really frustrating issues.  “Oh no!  I saved my changes the last time I used this form and now I’ve lost my entire master list,” comes the lament from the beautiful lady.  I have problems of my own.  I know my website designer told me how to do this, but it’s beyond me.  Download those files to this new one on the desktop, upload those newly downloaded files using the FTC or FTP (or something like that) to the S3 (3S?) site.  No, you download them with the FDIC to My Documents…no FDIC is what the bank uses.  Oh, just push that key and upload it.  What do you mean two hours and 53 minutes until the upload is finished?  How am I supposed to get my work done now?

How did we ever work before we had all this labor-saving technological equipment?    It used to be pencil and paper, adding machines, mechanical cash registers with the pull handles on the side…all relics of a distant past.  But they, at their inception, also promised the same thing all innovations promise;  the inveiglement of higher productivity and lower labor output.  Once the trap is sprung, the reality is revealed.  More productivity leads to more labor every time, regardless of the original promise of more leisure.  We don’t care, we love our machines, and again and again, buy the latest, the greatest, only to want more.

So, I sit at my computer, having once more worked into the early hours of the morning, and think, not primarily of the job at hand, but I reminisce of earlier in the evening (now yesterday).  For a few moments that I’ll hold dear forever, we were free of the encumbrances, not tied to any device, but just enjoying the abandon of childhood, and wishing (just a little bit) that we grownups were that carefree once more.

Second childhood is coming…maybe I’ll get that chance soon!

Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long. ~Ogden Nash