Forty Year Old Mystery

I don't know why I thought of this last story...perhaps because my last post was about a teacher. There's a mystery that has bounced around in my head for the last forty years or so and I would like fresh insight as to how it might be solved.

Virtually all of my elementary school teachers made a lasting impression on me in one way or another...

My kindergarten teacher's name was Miss Buzzbee. (what a perfect name for a kindergarten teacher!) Aside from her name, I remember that she was very sweet and patient and that she made me feel safe in her classroom. I still remember that warm and genuinely loving smile she gave to me when my mom took me into her classroom on the day before I started school to introduce me to my new teacher. Once she told us that we were going to have some new friends come and visit us that day. I still remember my excitement; I've always enjoyed meeting new people. When they never came, I felt cheated for years until I finally realized that our 'new friends' were named, "Dick" and "Jane" and they had a dog named, "Spot".

My first grade teacher's name was Mrs. Gilliland. She was a stickler for manners and courtesy. It was while in her class that we were first allowed to go and eat in the school cafeteria. For a week, each day before lunch, she would drill us on cafeteria protocol. She taught us that it was inconsiderate to make the cashier and others behind us in line wait while we fumbled around in our pockets looking for our money. Such was her influence that, to this day, when I visit a Luby's, I still have my money or credit card in the upper right hand corner of my tray when I get to the cashier.

It was while in Mrs. Steven's third grade classroom that I first was allowed to write with a fountain pen and we were introduced to cursive writing.

Miss Piggett, my fourth grade teacher was a willowy blond who looked like she was the inspiration for Barbie and was the object of my first crush.

Miss Innis, my fifth grade teacher was fresh out of college. My ability to make her turn red with laughter any time I felt like it made me think that I had her in the palm of my hand. Then I got my report card and discovered that, under the category of conduct, I received an "Unsatisfactory"

My sixth grade teacher, Mrs Harris, was a no-nonsense woman who issued pages of math as a punishment and is probably the reason I can now do long division with the skill of an autistic savant.

Did you notice that I skipped over my second grade teacher? That's because I only remember one thing about her. I can close my eyes and see, in my mind, the face of every single one of my elementary school teachers except this woman. I remember absolutely nothing about her....what her name was, what color her hair was, was she tall or short? Was she skinny or plump?....nothing....my mind is a complete blank.

The only thing I can recall is one day (after a particularly bad day of conduct on my part) She dropped a note on my desk for me to take to my parents, allow them to read how horrible I had conducted myself in class that day, get them to sign it, and bring it back to class with me the next day.

Now, I understand that this was a time predating the Internet and so my teachers could not simply email my mom and dad and tell them how badly I had misbehaved. But, by the time I attended second grade, Alexander Graham Bell was dead and in his grave for the better part of a century...the woman couldn't pick up a phone?

Having a seven year old boy bring one of those dreaded notes to his parents was akin to having a firing squad victim pass out the bullets just before they tied him to a post and put a blindfold over his eyes. Worse, in fact. At least a firing squad victim knows what his punishment will be and that it will be much quicker and relatively less painful.

To make matters worse, the sadistic...(what's the adjective I'm looking for here?....it will come to me....) In any event, the woman dropped the note off on my desk a full hour before I was to go home; meaning that I had a full hour to fret over my fate and try to concoct an alibi (which I couldn't because, unlike her more considerate predecessors, THIS teacher had stapled the note shut so I couldn't read it before I got home!) I was going to find out what I had done wrong at the same time my parents did. Allowing for their reaction, I would have about 30 seconds to come up with a plausible story. I was going to have to call upon all my powers of persuasion and talents in extemporaneous speaking just to survive past dinner time!

I tried to prise open a corner of the note to get a clue as to what it might be all about. No good. The woman had used too many staples. I accidentally tore a corner and quickly tried to smooth it all back into place. Things were bad enough but they would be much worse if my parents saw the torn corner and correctly surmised that I had tried to circumvent my teachers will and read the note before they got it.

Nervous energy consumed me and spilled out of me in the form of fidgeting and drawing doodles on the object of my obsession....the instrument of my doom. I'd had to contend with notes from teachers before but never had I been hemmed in on all sides like this.

After an hour of mental torture, the afternoon bell rang signalling freedom for virtually every student at James Arle Montgomery Elementary School...save one condemned.

That long walk home was too much for me to face. I sat at the street corner, directly atop a storm sewer inlet, and contemplated my fate. I sat there for the better part of an hour before inspiration struck. I looked down and saw the opening to the storm sewer. I casually looked about for witnesses. There was nobody in sight. The only thing that would make me seem more alone would be for the wind to moan and a tumbleweed to come rolling by. I girded up my loins, took a deep breath, and dropped my teacher's note into the storm drain inlet where I was certain it would be transported to the nearest bayou and out into The Gulf of Mexico to disappear forever.

I had bought myself some time. Tomorrow was a new day and hope springs eternal for a seven year old. I felt my old confidence return.

The next day, in class, when my teacher asked me if my parents had signed the note, I told her I had lost it. I smiled inwardly. I knew I was going to have a new note but my bad conduct was almost a day old. Chances are that this note would be written with far less venom and vitriol...maybe she had forgotten what I had done altogether...

My teacher levelled her gaze at me, reached into her top drawer, pulled out that note...that very same note...and placed it upon her desk.

"you mean this note?", She asked.

Did you ever see the movie, "Psycho"? You remember how Hitchcock played that shower scene...keeping his viewers mentally off balance by rapidly, and repeatedly zooming in and out while strained violins screeched in cadence with the camera's movements?

All I can say is that something like this must have happened in his life to give him the inspiration because that's exactly what was happening in my mind as I stared, transfixed upon that note on my teacher's desk.

SCREECH!!!...SCREECH!!!...SCREECH

And it was the same note...not a replica...not a duplicate or a carbon copy. It was the very same note that I had stuffed down the storm sewer the day before without a witness in sight...right down to every crease, doodle...even the tear in the corner where I had tried to read it!!! all there!

And that's it...that's is my only memory about second grade. Now, there might be one or more explanations for my inability to recall anything else from that school year. Post traumatic stress might be coming to your mind. I can buy that.

But I can only come up with two plausible explanations for how my teacher came to be in possession of that note.

1) She lived in the sewer

or (and this is the one I'm leaning towards)

2) She sold her soul to The Devil.

On Judging Not...

I had a history teacher in High School. I won't say his name for reasons that will shortly be evident. But, if I were to pick which of my teachers influenced me the most, this man would be high in the running.

He was a most opinionated man but I learned from him that it is possible to be opinionated and open-minded at the same time. He always preached to us about the dangers of communism in class and so, when he spoke of mormons as communists because, at one time, we had practiced The United Order, I stood up and told him that he didn't know what he was talking about.

You could have heard a pin drop.

The teacher eyed me up and down and then challenged me to back up my claim with a debate between he and myself. He allowed me three days to prepare and it was probably the hardest studying I had ever done in my academic career. We debated, he made his points and I made mine. In the end, he conceded defeat and thanked me for correcting his mistake.

His forearms were heavily scarred...a testament of a battle fought long ago with fire. In learning more about him, I discovered that when WWII broke out in Europe, he crossed the border into Canada and enlisted in the RAF before America was sucked into the war. He got those scars while piloting a Hawker Hurricane during The Battle of Britain. One of the most noteworthy features of that plane is that it took damage very well. In fact, it could still fly and fight while it was on fire, something my teacher found out first hand.

Even though he smoked heavily, the school administrators designated him to be the one to check for illicit smoking in the third floor boys restroom between classes. He felt it somewhat hypocritcal that he should turn in smokers when he, himself smoked so heavily. In the end, he figured out a way to do his job and maintain his integrity. He stood outside the boys room door between each period, coughed loudly and kicked the door for thirty seconds, then entered the boys room to see if he could catch anyone smoking...amazingly enough, he never did.

One of the greatest thing he insisted upon teaching us was to think for ourselves. The quickest way to get a mediocre or failing grade on an essay paper in his class was to parrot back an opinion he had offered. facts were facts, but when it came to opinion, you'd better have one of your own because he wasn't about to lend you one of his. I discovered that the best way to get an 'A' on any essay paper was to offer a well-researched and argued opinion contrary to his.

To say that the man was a hero of mine would be an understatement. Perhaps, you'll understand now why I don't mention his name when I tell you that I specifically went back to my high school after I served a mission to thank him and tell him what an influence he had on me only to discover that he was serving time in prison for child molestation.

The revelation turned my whole world upside down for quite some time. Nothing at all made sense and I wondered, for a while, what I could and could not trust. Thankfully, my father and I always had open lines of communication and in telling him my troubles, he wisely counselled me to keep that which was good in my memory and not dwell upon the bad.

"Every man is capable of both good and evil. In fact, a man cannot go very far in one of those directions without having the capacity to go just as far in the opposite".

That advice has stood me in good stead in my life. The thing is, I don't even know if my teacher was guilty because of the following story I am going to tell.

While serving as an Elders Quorum President, I had occasion to observe behavior in a little girl in our ward who exhibited many signs of having been a victim of molestation. I took my concerns to her mother who immediately implicated her husband, the child's stepfather.

The police were called and the man, who happened to be a friend of mine, was accused, tried and convicted and sent off to serve time in prison. I've designed many prisons and have visited all of them I can attest to the fact that the stories you hear about the treatment of child molesters in prison is absolutely true.

The years went by, the little girl grew up and graduated high school. I happened to be at her graduation and made it a point to go up and speak to her. I wanted to tell her how pleased I was that she had done so well through school and then, I don't know why, maybe because her stepfather was my friend, I broached the subject of her earlier life and expressed hope that she was faring well.

She looked at me with tears in her eyes and told me that it was all a lie. Her stepfather, my friend, had never touched her. In fact, she counted the time she spent with him as some of the happiest times of her life.

She had, in fact, been a victim. But the perpetrators were some men that her mother made friends with and had brought around to the house while my friend was at work. They were going through a divorce at the time and, when I asked about the daughter's strange behavior and expressed my fears, the girl's mom seized upon the opportunity to gain some leverage against her husband.

I felt as if ice water had replaced all of the blood in my body. The revelation that my friend had done nothing wrong and had spent the last five years in hell for it was beyond my comprehension. Worse still was the realization that I had unwittingly played a role in all of this by bringing up the matter in the first place.

All kinds of self doubt raced though me. Was I too quick to judge? Had I meddled where I ought not have? In the end, I realized that I was right about there being a problem, I just naturally assumed like everyone else that the source of that problem was the cliche that we all seem to accept.

A few years after the graduation, I was in Lowes and I spied my friend on one of the aisles. He had been released from prison. He is two years younger than me but he looked thirty years older. He had no teeth. His face was lined and scarred. His hair was thinning from malnutrition...

I went to him and begged his forgiveness for ever doubting him. I asked him to forgive me for the part I had played in his life turning out like it had. I half expected him to spit in my face or hit me or, at the very least, turn and walk away.

Instead, he embraced me and for five minutes we were the strangest sight ever seen in Lowes...two men embracing each other in the electrical department weeping like babies.

Given all of that, I hope you'll all understand why I try and give anyone accused of a horrible crime or sin the benifit of the doubt...and why I always try and keep the good things they brought to me and not worry so much about the bad.

I don't know what Michael Jackson did or didn't do. I do know that all of the jokes about what he might have done aren't very funny...and I do like his music.

The Ride of My Life..a moment of conversion

By the time that the fire department and the paramedics arrived at the scene of my accident, I was over 40 minutes into what rescue workers and trauma center personnel call, "The Golden Hour"; that period of time following an accident where a victim's chance of survival are greatest if they can begin to recieve treatment.

Aside from my wrists being destroyed, I had shattered my pelvis into four separate pieces of bone. I learned a few interesting facts about the human pelvis in the following weeks. I learned that it is a most difficult bone to break. In fact, my surgeon informed me that, if I took a human pelvis and hit it with a sledge hammer, chances are it would stay intact. She also said that it is the most painful bone to break and the shock associated with the pain kills a huge percentage of people who experience a broken pelvis.

At that moment, however, it was an almost ethereal experience for me. While people frantically tried to cut me from my car, I could tell that I had one foot in this world and one foot in the next. I instictively knew that I had to fight in some way to stay in this world but the temptation was almost overwhelming to let go and slip away into the next.

In the time where I knew with an absolute certainty that I was closest to death, I have never been more aware of my immediate surroundings, (even what I could not physically see...it was as if I were somehow connected to all things and everyone around me) and I have never felt more at peace. I knew with an absolute certainty that my existence would go on because, in a strange way, as I lay dying, I never felt more alive. I lost, forever, my fear of death

I have likened the experience to being in a river and holding onto a rope while the current tugged at you. If you let go of the rope, the current would simply transport you away to another place. It was odd, but I held onto my life by concentrating very hard on a spot just below where my throat melds into my chest.

Although I am not a follower of eastern religions,(and I was completely unaware of it at the time) the Hindus refer to this region as 'vishuddha', one of their seven 'chakras', or states of existence and equate this one to being on the 'physical plane'.

I do not now nor did I then ascribe to any beliefs in any religion but my own but I do find it strangely coincidental that I would cling to life by instictivly concentrating upon a spot that some believe to be the spirit's gateway to this physical existence. Joseph Smith once said that all religions have some truth to them. Perhaps this is one of the Hindus.

A rescue worker, a tiny guy with a bushy red moustache broke the rear window of my car and climbed into the back seat. He placed a collar around my neck and began to check me for injuries. He touched my thigh and pain shot through me like I had never felt before. I screamed and cursed at him and told him to leave me alone. He cursed back and told me that he was there to save my life and that he was going to touch whatever he damn well felt like touching.

I didn't see why I had to be the only one with a broken bone that night and so I whipped back with my elbow and gave the mouthy little guy a shot in the face, breaking his nose. The fireman with the jaws of life outside of the car laughed and said, "he told you not to touch him".

My left foot was jammed up against the driver's door of the car and they were afraid that while cutting off the door, they might cut off my foot and so I could hear them planning to cut off the passenger's door and pull me out that way.

"If you do that", I said, "you'll rake my hip over the console and I'll lose my concentration and die". I discovered then that rescue workers, at least those without bushy red moustaches, know when to listen to the people they are trying to save.

They gave me time to try and move my left foot from the door. I won't go into how difficult it is to try and move your leg when the bone it's supposed to be connected to is destroyed but, let's just say that I felt a lot like Luke Skywalker must have felt when he was stuck upside down in the ice trying to get to his light saber before that monster got to him. I can't say for certain but I'm pretty sure that "The Force" had a lot to do with my left foot moving away from the door.

The cut the door away and spread the car apart and then told me to fall out into thier arms. I feared the pain of moving but took a deep breath and leaned out into my rescuers.

I was grateful to learn that their movements were quick, deliberate, and fluid. The pain was inevitable but they lessened it drammatically by thier expertise.

As soon as I was situated on a gurney, four pairs of scissors, weilded by four practiced hands came out and snipped away the arms of my shirt and the legs of my pants. Then, in what was reminiscient of one of those amazing magician, tablecloth, flower vase tricks, they whipped away my clothes leaving me strip stark naked on a gurney beside the busiest freeway in the U S of A! (With all of the traffic stopped to boot!)Continuing with the Star Wars theme, it wouldn't have been so bad if I looked more like Luke or Han or even Chewbacca instead of Jabba the Hut.

I heard a paramedic ask, "Did we make sure that the television crew was far enough away?" I thought, "Yes...please....Lord....let them be far enough away" and I screamed, "Can I have a blanket?" They covered me up and hustled me into the waiting life flight helicopter that had landed on the freeway. I said goodbye to one set of paramedics and hello to another.

The flight from Katy to Hermann Hospital was only a few minutes but it was some of the most painful moments of the night. They had jammed my hip up against the side of the helicopter and all of the vibrations of the ship and rotor were transferred to my broken pelvis and shot right into me.

I began to feel as if I was going to slip away again and I knew I had to do something to take my mind off of the pain...so I began to sing.

If you're ever a passanger in life flight and you ever feel like singing, you should choose a different song than I did. I began to sing, "Abide With Me". That's not a song that instills a feeling of confidence in the life flight nurse who attends you. In fact, it freaks them out.

The nurse yelled at me, "Don't you die! If you die...you die on the ground, not up here!"

It struck me as odd that the nurse should be more concerned with where I die and not if I die and so I felt like this was a nurse whose head deserved to be messed with...so I asked in a feeble voice, "do I go towards the light or stay away from it?"

Excited now, the nuse asked, "Do you see a light?"

Motioning with my hand towards the helicopter's console I said, "Yes, I see a green one and a couple of red ones and there's a pretty blue one that keeps blinking"

She looked at me hard and then began to laugh, "You might very well be the only one I've ever heard of joking while on life flight"

I thought that my rescue efforts were tortuous but that was a pittance compared to what lay in store for me in the trauma room.

A nurse began to try and tug my boot off of my foot causing pain to stream out of every pore in my body. I screamed and cursed in several languages, including a few that I made up on the spot, and told the nurse that they were just a thirty dollar pair of boots...cut them off!.

She finally got the boot off and then, in a strange paradox, whipped out a pair of scissors and cut off my sock. (I still have the sock...if I ever run into that stupid nurse I'm going to make her wear it on her nose for a day)

Red Duke was my attending physician that night and, in his Texas ranger drawl came up and said, "Now Tom, we're gonna have to do some things to you that are apt to hurt quite a bit but we'll try and get them over with as soon as possible. We have to set your leg in traction and so we have to drill a hole in your shin to set a bar in there. We gave you a local anesthetic but we can't do a general 'cause you're still in shock. The local should numb it up a bit but you're still apt to feel it a might when that drill hits the bone". I was half expecting him to give me a bullet to bite down on.

I looked up and there was one physician standing on the gurney with his butt in my face, holding my pelvis together while a second held my foot under his arm and leaned back. A third held up a drill.

Revelation comes to different people in different ways...for me, it usually takes the form of a scripture that I'd read springing into my mind at the appropriate moment.

Just before the drill went into my shin, D&C 19:16-18 popped into my head:

For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;

But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;

Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink

The drill bit into my leg and I thought, "Tom is gonna be a good boy from now on"

Small and Simple Things

Joseph Smith once said that all religions have some measure of truth to them. I would imagine that this extends to non-Christian religions as well. If that is so, then I think that I have uncovered what the LDS version of Karma is.

Under Buddhism, Karma is the belief that one keeps coming back to the same life until a much needed lesson is learned and then the soul ascends onto a higher plane in its next existence.

The Mormon version of Karma is that you have to keep doing a calling until you get it right. That might account for the reason I was Elders Quorum President three times.

During one of my incarnations as EQP, I was called into the bishop's office and told that there was a couple who were going through difficulties in their marriage. The bishop of our ward asked me to go to the couple's home and counsel with them and try and get their marriage back on track.

I don't usually argue with bishops but this is one time when I made an exception. Not only did it seem unorthodox...but it also seemed downright dangerous. I had absolutely no training in couples counseling and I could only imagine the trouble that could rain down on my head in particular, and the church in general if I meddled in areas wherein I had no expertise.

The bishop was insistent, however, and so I played my trump card. I made him bear his testimony to me that this was something he felt inspired to do and wasn't just something done out of expediency. He did just that and so I accepted the assignment.

The couple in question had met and married a bit quicker than many people in the ward felt was wise and, now that the shine was off the new relationship, they were experiencing difficulties. The things that most couples work out during a courtship were things that this couple was having to work out after having already taken upon themselves the covenant of marriage.

As I drove to the couple's home, terror over all the possible mistakes I could make and all of the possible problems that could come from my screwing up (and let's face it, I excel at screwing up) overcame me; so I pulled over to the side of the road and said a prayer.

I got to the couple's home and, I no sooner sat down on the couch when the accusations began to fly from both sides. For five minutes, I couldn't get a word in edgewise because of accusations and insults followed by counter-accusations and counter insults.

Finally, they each stopped to take a breath and I was able to speak. I had no idea what I was going to say but, when I opened my mouth, the words just came out...

"Are you having family prayer each night?"

They looked at me like I was crazy, then they looked down and said, "no"

"Are you having family home evening?"

"No"

"Do you each have individual prayer?"

Neither one did.

"Do you read from the scriptures each day?"

"no"

"Do you pay your tithes and offerings?"

They admitted that they did not.

I scoured my memory for seemingly inconsequential things that the leaders of the church had been counseling its members to do since I was a child...things that seemed small and insignificant but that they constantly told us was important. In each and every area, the couple admitted that they were not doing those things.

Finally, I said, "It seems to me that if you were doing all of those things and you still couldn't get along with each other...THEN, we'd have a problem"

I got a commitment from the couple that they would start doing these 'little' things and I would check back in two weeks.

Three days later, I got a call in the middle of the night. It was the wife of the couple on the phone calling me to complain. The husband got on the extension so that he could represent himself.

I interrupted them and began asking the same questions I had asked when I was in their home. Before long, they realized that I wasn't going to budge from my position. They had given me a commitment and I was going to hold them to it.

After a few months, I noticed that the complaining phone calls had ceased. I also noticed that the couple began showing up in church regularly and were much more affectionate and kind to each other than I had ever seen them.

I realized what a powerful testimony had been given to me about the wisdom of the counsel we are given. That these small and seemingly insignificant things are the building blocks for the foundation to a happy home life.

A Really Really Good Man

I posted this blog last year when I transferred all of my facebook notes to my blog. Since it is coming up on Fathers' Day, I wanted to post it again. I also wanted to add a poem that I wrote to my son about a trait of my father's that he shared



A lot of people think that they have the best father in the world. I really did...at least for me. I can't think of a single instance in my life where he treated me unfairly or harshly. I think that he only lost his temper with me once but in his defense, at the time, I was eating the very first brand new car he ever owned...(that will have to be a separate story).


Teenage boys growing up and becoming disillusioned when they find out what a hypocrite their father's been is a cliche I was spared. My father never professed to be anything other than what he was and while he constantly demanded perfection in himself, he was always forgiving of faults and weaknesses in others.

I was told once that, as children, we often model our concept of Heavenly Father after our earthly fathers. If you have an angry and vengeful father here on earth, your concept of Heavenly Father is that he is an angry and vengeful God. It has always been easy for me to envision my Father in Heaven as kind, loving, and forgiving...someone whose first and foremost passion was my own well-being and progress.

When I was twelve, Kevin McCreary stole a pack of his mom's cigarettes and we took up smoking. I got to be quite good at it and could smoke an entire cigarette and only cough up one lung. One day, Kevin left an unextiguished cigarette in his garage and it nearly burned down his house.

Like the very best friend that he was, Kevin immediately fingered me as an accomplice. My father called me into his room and asked me point blank if I had been smoking. I looked him straight in the eye and said, "no sir!". My father looked at me for a second and then just nodded his head and told me I could go. As I turned to leave, he reached out and took my hand. He held it for a moment and then brought it to his nose and inhaled. Then he looked at me again with sadness in his eyes and said I could go.

Somewhat puzzled by my father's actions, I held my hand to my own nose and inhaled. The smell of cigarettes was unmistakable. I looked at him and he looked at me. I immediately became aware of two facts. First, that both my father and I knew what the truth was and second, that my father as a man of honor expected his son to act honorably as well. I knew that he would never call me a liar and that I would not be punished as long as I held on to my story.

But the look in his eyes broke my heart and I burst into tears begging my father to forgive my lie. I was punished for the cigarettes, the lie was forgiven. I never lied to my father again.

He valued my privacy and guarded it more jealously than I did myself. My sister told me of a tithing settlement where everyone in the family was present except me. The Bishop was chatting with my parents and he began to relate to my folks something I had said. My father interrupted the bishop and asked him if I had given my permission for the information to be passed along. The bishop said that it was not something said in confidence but just in conversation. My father told the bishop that, nevertheless, if I had not given my permission, my father did not want to know. He asked the bishop to treat everything I had said to him as if it were said in confidence.

He was the most diligent home teacher I ever knew. A favorite story of our family is one where he was assigned for years to teach a family that never let him in the door. They had one of those screen doors where they could see you but you couldn't see them. Every month my father would come up and knock on their door only to be denied entrance. Every month, before he left, he stood there on their porch with the cigarette smoke wafting through the slats in the door and he would bear his testimony to people he never got to see. When he turned and left, he would often hear them giggling at him.

We moved away for a few years but we came back. On our first Sunday back, my mom and dad were walking down the hall when the door to the bishop's office opened and the bishop came out with a woman who had been weeping. When she saw my father, the woman screamed and threw her arms around him. My mother, wondered who this strange woman was who was crying and hugging my dad.

It was the wife of the couple he had home taught all those years. After our family moved away, their home teaching visits ceased. The woman began to go though some very trying times and one day she was at the kitchen sink and could see my father in her mind's eye standing there and giving his testimony every month. She determined that she would go back to church and get her life in order. In fact, she was in the bishop's office that very day to begin the process. The last thing she said to the bishop before they walked out was that she wished should could meet whoever that home teacher was so that she could thank him. Then she walked out the door and turned to see my father.

Twice in my father's life, he sold everything he owned to serve The Lord. Once when they didn't have very much so that he could take his wife and children to Salt Lake to be sealed in the temple and once when he had quite a bit more so that he could serve a mission in The Philippines.

He wasn't much on sports. He didn't hunt or fish and so I learned these skills elsewhere. What he did teach me was a love of great music and art. We would sit for hours and listen to symphonies and opera and pour over pictures of great works of art. When I visited The Sistine Chapel on my mission my joy was short-lived. It was beautiful and majestic and lovely and yet the experience was empty because I longed to have my father by my side to thrill in the moment with me.

He was always learning. It was rare that I did not see him with either a book of scripture or science in his hand. He loved to share with me the mysteries that were revealed to him as he studied these. Later on, when Alzheimer's began to rip away the knowledge that he had fought so hard to gain, I began to quit coming around as often. It was too painful for me to witness. I think that I shall regret my cowardice for as long as I live.

My father was in bishoprics but he was never bishop. He was in stake presidencies but he was never stake president. He never held public office or invented anything to ease man's burden here on earth. He didn't write any great books or symphonies. He never sang at The Met.

In fact, I can't think of anything my father ever did that would cause one to consider him great. But you know what? That's alright...a lot of men aspire to greatness. Many times, in aspiring to greatness, these men forgot to be good.

The world has a lot of really great men but what we need are a lot of really good men.

My father was a really really good man.

When my eldest son was quite young, there was a physical trait he had that he lamented. As it happened, my father shared that same physical trait...and he also lamented it. I was of a different mind, I was happy to have something that, when my father passed from this earth, would serve as a continual reminder of him. And so, I wrote this poem for my son.

Grandpa's Ears

Aaron got his sense of honor; Jenni, his quiet strength.
Lee got his sense of humor, and Ken knows how to paint
Amy and Valerie have iron wills; Jeremy, a tender heart
Joel and Sarah share a joy for life, and each of you is smart.

Laura and Brian are every one's friend. Gretchen loves to read
Rebekah had his infectious smile, and Rachel's as quiet as he.
Nathan loves worlds of fancy. Melissa is as loyal as they come.
Michael sings like a mockingbird. John Douglas is a dutiful son.

Daniel once proved stalwart, before the earth was new
so in The Savior's plan, our Dan is one of the chosen few
You each got something from Grandpa to see you through the years
but I think yours is the greatest gift, 'cause you got Grandpa's ears.

Now you might think that they're too big, or they stick out too far
but glance in any mirror, you'll see just whose grandson you are
Then maybe you'll try harder, each day you face life's tests
to live your life just like the man who gave you his silhouette.

Aaron might someday sit on a bench. Ken might paint a mural
Your grandpa gave to each grandchild, the keys to conquer worlds
But they say time will tell all things, and I think it will be said
that the greatest gifts he ever gave, sit right there on your head

For when life's trials bow that head, and sorrows bear you down
you'll look and see your grandpa's shadow there upon the ground.
You'll remember him...and who you are...and then you'll dry your tears
and thank your Father in Heaven above, He gave you grandpa's ears.

Disruption at the Drive-In or The Night I Ate the Car

The South Main Drive-In Theater was a mere three and a half miles from our four bedroom house on Brookmeade in South Houston. Drive-In Theaters were invented up in New Jersey where the air actually cools down somewhat on a summer night and mosquitoes are not measured by the width of their wing-spans.

In Texas, they're not such a good idea. Nope, the infestation and the fetid atmosphere combined with the marketing ploy of admission prices per carload instead of per person made a drive-in experience in Houston somewhat like a cross-Atlantic trip jammed into the cargo hold of a slave ship...with an in-flight movie.

Any available space in an automobile was utilized. A standard VW Beetle became a clown car that could hold 12 people:

1 Driver
1 in the passenger seat
1 on their lap
3 in the back seat
3 on their laps
1 in the little cubby hole in back
2 in the trunk. You could fit as many as three in the trunk but then you had no room for the large cake-holder Tupperware tub of home-made popcorn.

The second you pulled into the drive-in and found your place, everyone piled out and went to their pre-arranged areas to socialize and wait for the movie to begin. Adults stayed in the car while teens went to the pavilion near the snack bar, and the kiddies ran down to the front where the ancient playground equipment lay rotting and rusting and festooned with tetanus.

When the movie started, you all jammed back into the car where you craned your neck around the other passengers and strained to hear the dialogue through a speaker that was built sturdier than the black box on an airplane and had a sound quality slightly higher than WWII prisoners of war enjoyed while listening to BBC on their home-made crystal radio sets.

When I was five years old, my father came home one night with the very first brand new car he ever owned. It was a 1963 Ford Fairlane. White with red trim and red plastic interior. It had a steering wheel with a bullet-shaped center that was certain to impale the driver upon any impact greater than 30 miles per hour, no shoulder harnesses, no safety glass, electric windows that were powerful enough to decapitate and side fins that jutted out at right angles that were as threatening as those jagged wheel hubs on Massala's chariot in 'Ben-Hur'




Detroit couldn't have constructed a greater monument to mobilized death if it had super-glued razor blades onto a killer whale.

As my father proudly displayed his new acquisition to neighbors and friends, my mom came out of the house with a Tupperware container filled with popcorn. We were taking the new car to the drive-in.

We all piled into the new car. My brother and two sisters in the back and my mom and dad in the front with me in between. As we settled in and inhaled that new car smell, my mom ran her hand over the newest feature Detroit had come up with; a padded dashboard. In reality, it was the standard metal dash with about a quarter inch of padding and red vinyl covering. The incentive here was to lessen the number of third-degree burns that came from touching a hot metal dash that absorbed solar radiation like a black hole.

As we pulled into the drive-in, dad went up and down the aisles looking for a place to park that would keep his new car free from dings and scratches and still offer us a decent view of the screen. I watched his face beam as he passed cars that honked and let out wolf-whistles in appreciation of the shiny new car with less than a dozen miles on the odometer.

Tonight's feature was a Vincent Price offering, "The Pit and The Pendulum", the only similarity between the movie and Edgar Allen Poe's work being the title itself. If you want to watch it, you can actually view it online for free at www.hulu.com. If you don't have the time for that, the embedded trailer I found on Youtube should be sufficient to give you an idea of the kind of movie that parents took their five-year old kids to back in my day.

As the movie got under way, I leaned forward to move myself as far as possible away from the body heat radiating from my parents on either side of me. My face came to rest on the padded dashboard.

During the course of the movie, Vincent Price's character, who was certain that he had mistakenly buried his wife in the family crypt while still alive, was making his way through the cobweb-infested crypt while his wife's taunting voice hissed out his name. To this day I can't watch a Ricola commercial because the wife's voice had the same sing-song meter to it

"NICH-o-lasssss"

As Vincent Price made his way deeper and deeper into the crypt, I became more and more absorbed into the movie. The violins played with greater urgency and I opened my mouth in engrossed awe....the padded dashboard slipped between my teeth and I unwittingly began to chew upon it.

As Vincent Price came to his wife's tomb, it opened slowly....I chewed with a bit more gusto. A bloody hand crept from the open grave.....my teeth were moving like a sewing machine. Suddenly, the wife's corpse shot from the grave and her accusing voice rang out. "NICHOLASSSSSS!!!!!!!"

I chomped down on the dashboard of my dad's new car and reared back away from the bloody harpie on the screen, tearing a huge chunk of the dash with me.

I have to depend upon information from my brother at this point because I lost conciousness a moment after I tore the chunk of dash from the car. I do, however, remember one over-riding thought before I slipped into oblivion, SWALLOW THE EVIDENCE!!!

My brother and sisters, who were in the back seat of the car and were just as hypnotized by the movie as I was were suddenly and rudely brought back to reality by my father and mother screaming "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!?!?" and pummeling me as if they were trying pound the life out of me.

This was the era of the sixties...the Red Menace...McCarthy....in short, paranoia.

Fearing that my parents had been made crazed killers by some mind-altering substance that was slipped into the Kool-Aid we had snuck into the drive-in and were brought to their crazed state by some hidden trigger-phrase uttered by Vincent Price, my siblings tried to escape through the rear windows of the two door Fairlaine while my parents were occupied with killing me.

The neighboring cars, also caught up in the crescendo of this horror movie, saw what was certain blood-lust and mayhem in the neighboring car and began to react as well. People erupted from their cars screaming and falling to their knees begging God to deliver them...which set off the next wave of cars and so on and so on until a full-on riot occured.

From that day, until my father traded in his car. My punishment was to sit in the front seat directly in front of the damaged dash board now covered with red tape, listen to my parents sigh heavily and then look at me and shake their heads.

The Passing of The Old Guard

Lorelei Sinclair just posted on my wall that David Brackman had passed away. I'm still numb with the news. I called into the other room and told my wife as soon as I read it and she came into the office, her eyes were wet and she said, "It's funny, not an hour ago, I was wondering how Dave and Sue were doing".

David and Sue Brackman are an institution in The Katy Stake. I like to brag that I was the first missionary to leave from that area but, in truth, that is nothing compared to the work that they did. Dave and Sue and Aunt Edna were the only mormons in Katy for a long time. They were faithful members of the church when all of Houston met in the old church off of Broadway. Anytime I hear someone complain about having to travel as much as fifteen minutes to get to church, I want to tell them about The Brackmans and Aunt Edna.

Lorelei told me that David wanted to come back to Katy to die. I know how he felt. When Oliver Loving died on the cattle trail, he told his partner, Charles Goodnight, "Don't bury me in a foreign land" Charles Goodnight brought his partner all the way back to Texas to be laid to rest. Those of us up on our Texas history know where Larry McMurtrey got his ideas from in Lonesome Dove. I don't know when or if I'll ever come back to Texas to live but, like David, I don't want to be laid to rest in a foreign land either. I want to come back to Katy.

Anyone who reads this and knows David and Sue, please tell Sue how much we love her and mourn with her...and please tell her that we were thinking of David and she an hour or two before we got the news. It was strange how the thought of them just came to us out of the blue.

Maybe it's maudlin to suggest but we like to think that, perhaps David stopped in to say 'hi' before he went on.

Lessons Life Teaches Us

After my accident, life was a lot tougher in our household. One of the things for which I am most grateful is that my wife is someone who lives close to the spirit. A year or two before my accident, she came to me and told me that she felt very strongly that it was time we got serious with our food storage. We discussed it some more. We had tried to get our food storage in order many times but something always came up that took its place in the hierarchy of our priorities.

This time was different for some reason and, after giving my wife the green light, she set to the task of storing up against hard times like a squirrel on amphetamines. I don't think anyone who hasn't gone through two years of being unable to go to work can appreciate the joy and satisfaction that comes from sitting down to a really good meal that is the product of your own industry and the prudence of your wife.

To be sure, we were beholding to the charity of others but the need for that charity was mitigated substantially by my wife's insight and patience and providence. She built up our food storage by adding thirty dollars a week to our food budget. She shopped for bargains like a miner panning for gold and, within a year and a half, she had stored up enough to see us through almost two years of my recuperating. All we needed to shop for during those two years were perishables like milk and eggs.

She didn't store only food. We had soap, razors, toilet paper...all the things she could think of and anything that went on sale became a food storage item. These were set aside in our closets and under our beds and everyone in our family knew that breaking open a package of any item designated as a food storage item would bring swift and terrible retribution upon our heads...(you husbands, think of what happens when you cut paper with "the good scissors" and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about.)

I found out that wives employ a version of fuzzy math and that a case of toilet paper that was purchased on sale at half off is ten times more valuable than a case of toilet paper purchased at the regular price.

But, even though we were prepared with our food storage, the two years recuperating were times of deprivation for our family. We wanted for none of the necessities but we had no luxuries either. We looked forward with great anticipation to our return to normal life.

We were involved in a law suit with the construction company and we were certain that our times of want would end as soon as the settlement conference came up. We had discovered things that we felt certain no insurance company would want to go before a jury and we were confident that, at the settlement conference, they would pony up and we could move on.

The conference took place on a Saturday and we spent all day going back and forth. Despite the fact that the insurance company was in agreement with many points of our case, they felt certain that a jury would not see past the fact that I had hit their truck. They also cited the fact that Harris County juries are notoriously stingy and so, after offering us less money than what would even cover my medical bills, they left the bargaining table.

My wife and I were devastated. We drove home in silence. It was almost midnight and my wife asked me to stop off at the grocery store so that she could get a gallon of milk before The Sabbath.

The Sabbath... I thought to myself bitterly...What use is it to obey the law of The Sabbath if we receive no blessings for it?

But I pulled into the store anyway and, because I was still having trouble walking more than fifty feet at a time, I sat on a bench at the front of the store while my wife went to the dairy section at the back.

As my wife disappeared in the back, another woman came to the checkout stand. I could tell that she had once been a very beautiful woman but that she had obviously been through many surgeries. I spotted a fellow accident survivor.

As she checked out, I looked at the many scars on her. She had kind of a stony expression on her face and she struggled to speak with the cashier through the corner of her mouth. Most horrible of all were her legs, the scars looked as if they had been through a meat grinder. She finished her purchase and struggled with her groceries as far as my bench and then she stopped beside me to take a rest.

I apologized for not helping her and showed her my own scars explaining that I was unable to hold much more than a pound of weight at that time.

Accident victims love to compare stories and, up until that point, I had won every encounter with a fellow accident survivor. She asked me what happened and, after I told her, I could see the remnant of a twinkle in her eye and she tried to smile as she said, "I can beat that"

She told me that she had been working at a photo kiosk in a parking lot when a drunk driver in an eighteen wheeler made a u-turn though the parking lot, crashed through the kiosk and pinned her against a tree, crushing her face and nearly severing both of her legs below the knee. When the truck backed away, she was still pinned to the tree by a pipe that had come through the truck and had impaled her to the tree's trunk.

If you think I've told you the worst...you're wrong.

While she was still in the hospital, the insurance company settled with her for several million dollars. The day that the check cleared in her bank account, her husband called to inform her that he could no longer stand to look at her. Then he absconded with all the settlement money and all the money they had saved prior to her accident, leaving her nothing.

I had to remind myself to breathe for several minutes after hearing the woman's tale. Several thoughts raced through me....no hole in hell deep enough.....the feminists are right, we're pigs finally I asked her, "how do you manage to even get out of bed in the morning?"

"Oh", she said, "It was rough for a while and then I realized that he only took money. I still have my kids and the rest of my family"

She struggled to her feet and grabbed her bag. Then she leaned down and patted my arm, "We don't always know what tomorrow holds...but we know who holds tomorrow"

That night I spent awake wondering if God hadn't sent an angel to me to remind me just what is and isn't important.

Things Aren't Always What They Seem

These are two of my favorites...I love it when pictures come together like this. But what you don't know...what you can't see or hear, is why these cranes are flying in the first place.

I love to travel the back roads up here in Wisconsin. In Houston, I lived 20 miles from the office and it took me an hour to get to work. In Wisconsin, I lived 20 miles from the office and it still took me an hour to get to work because I would be travelling slowly on the back farm roads looking at all of the deer and turkeys and foxes and cranes. I love cranes! There is a word for someone like me..."craniac"

Anyway, I always have my camera on the seat and ready as I scan the fields next to these lonely backroads for wildlife...especially cranes.

On this particular day, I came out of a railroad overpass tunnel. The morning sun was shining against the forest and, right next to me, on the right, were these three beautiful cranes.

I slammed on the brakes, jammed my truck into park, and lept from my truck with my camera ready.

Unfortunately, I did not see the lady jogger coming towards me on the other side of that lonely farm road who apparently misinterpreted my actions as a prelude to an abduction.

She bagan to scream loudly and run in place (why do women run in place when they're scared?), which set the cranes off in flight. I was busy snapping these pictures as I apologized to the lady.

And now you know the story behind the pictures.

A Gift You Give to Yourself

In our lesson today in church, we talked about forgiveness. In particular, we spoke of the power that comes to us in forgiving others. As the instructor taught the lesson, my mind wandered back to an autumn night over ten years ago when I slammed into the back of a construction truck, illegally parked in the fast lane of the freeway.

It was a sensory overload. My ears were still ringing from the loud bang of the collision. The air was heavy with the overpowering smell of steam, oil, spent radiator fluid, and whatever set off the explosion of the air bag.

As my head began to clear, I relived, for a moment, the sheer terror that ripped through me as the truck came up in my headlights. I had enough time to think, "Oh no!" before the air bag hit my face. I looked at my shattered hands which were bent at odd angles and the bones that were coming through my wrists and I had my first rational thought after the crash, "I think I'm in shock because that really looks like it ought to hurt"

My next thought is that enough time had passed so that people should be attending to me. After all, I was not that far from the construction site. Surely they had heard the sound of the accident and had come running.

"I must have killed whoever I hit". I thought. I knew that the accident was unavoidable but, nevertheless, I wondered how I was going to live with myself from then on. It was not long afterwards that a man in a hard hat, poked his head from around the truck that I hit. I found out later what his name was and that he was the driver of the truck. I also found out that he had been smoking dope in the cab when the call had come over his radio that the freeway was about to open up again and for him to clear his truck off the road.

He did not look at me with compassion in his eyes. Rather, he had kind of a clinical detachment...almost as if I were something he wanted to scrape from the bottom of his shoe.

"Help me", I said.

The man looked at me and shook his head, "No English", he responded.

"Ayudame" I replied.

The man disappeared and I thought that he was going to fetch help. Moments later I was surprised to hear the truck's engine start. The man was trying to drive off and leave me!

It soon became apparent that my car and his truck were inextricably connected and, after he dragged my car for about 25 feet, the truck stopped and he just ran off into the night.

Not long after he left, I head a soft "whoosh" and I saw an orange glow dancing on the shoulder of the road beside me. My worst fears had come true. I was trapped and alone in a burning car.

I had heard of coyotes who had chewed off their own leg to escape from a trap. Up until that point, I had no idea how the coyote felt. The windshield was cracked and crazed but was still in place. Unfortunately, it was my only possible means of egress. With my shattered right hand, I struck at it repeatedly until it gave way and I was able to push it aside. I fumbled with my seat belt release until I was able to apply enough pressure to free myself. It was excruciating but I imagined that the pain was a pittance compared to what was in store for me if I was unable to escape from my burning car.

With my left forearm. I tried to drag myself over my steering wheel and outside of my car. My legs would not help me. I discovered later why...the engine had compressed the driver's compartment such that the dash had struck my knee and driven my femur through my pelvis, breaking it into four separate sections and ripping the ball from the joint. My femur stuck through my back and into the seat.

As I settled back into the seat and looked at my right hand and left forearm, now ripped and bleeding from their recent desperate battle with the broken windshield, I wondered if I would have the good fortune to bleed to death, or at least lose consciousness before the flames entered where I was.

I remembered reading once of the execution of Joan of Arc. One of her executioners mercifully told her that when the flames reached her face, she should breath them in and she would die very soon afterwards.

I realized that my burning engine was jammed right up against the gas tank of the truck and I told myself that, when it exploded and I saw the wall of flame coming towards me, to breath them in. I prayed that I would have enough courage to do just that.

As I had these morose thoughts, a pair of hands came up to my window and an anxious face poked through my windshield. Someone had finally noticed my wrecked car and had decided to stop and render assistance. I was later to find out just how fortunate I was...my rescuer was an off-duty fire fighter. Perhaps Heavenly Father was not finished with me after all.

He battled the blaze under my car for quite some time. At first, his only weapon was a baby blanket but when that proved futile, he ran forward and found a fire extinguisher in the abandoned truck. It proved sufficient for the task at hand and he was able to extinguish the flames and call for help.

During the hours of torture that followed, every time a movement on my part or on the part of my rescuers would cause more pain to rip though me, I saw in my mind's eye, the face of the driver of that truck...the face of the man who tried to kill me, leave my children fatherless and my wife a widow.

In the emergency room, when they drilled through my shin so that they could set a bar through there and place my leg in traction, I saw his face and my hatred grew.

In the midst of all the trauma room turmoil, an administrator came up and asked if I was Tom Boyce.

"who else would I be?" I asked

"I need you to sign something", she replied.

"Can't my wife sign it?" I asked.

"No", she answered, "It has to be you"

"Look at my hands", I said. "I can't hold a pen"

"Oh my goodness!" she answered "I'm sorry"

I opened my mouth to tell her to get my wife to sign whatever it was and she placed a pen between my teeth and held the clipboard over my head.

As well as I could manage, I signed my name across the form, spit out the pen, and snarled, "What did I just sign?"

It was then that I found out that I was about to go into eighteen hours of surgery and that I had a less than even chance of waking up with my right leg or either one of my hands. I had signed a consent for amputation.

The driver's face came up in my mind and my hatred for him grew even hotter.

For years afterwards, every pain, each time that I struggled to complete a task that should have been easy for a man my age, I thought bitterly of the driver of the truck and hated him. I wanted God's judgement to be poured out upon him and for he to suffer as much as I had.

I'm not certain what the catalyst was for the change but, one day, I realized that this man who I hardly knew and didn't even like was consuming a large portion of my life. Many of my waking thoughts were directed at him and I realized that I had stopped moving forward in any spiritual progression. I had, in fact, started to move the other way. Because of my hatred, I had tied myself to someone I hardly knew.

I knew what I had to do. My prayers for justice became prayers for God to soften my heart. I prayed for the strength to forgive the man who had crippled me. The more I prayed, the more I was able to realize that the man did what he did, not out of malice but out of weakness and fear of the consequences for that weakness.

As the weeks progressed, the more I prayed for forgiveness to enter into my heart, the more I realized that a spirit I had not felt in quite some time, a spirit I had evicted from my heart to make room for my hatred, was beginning to return.

One day, I was asked about the man in the truck and I realized, to my joy, that I had to struggle to remember his name....a name I had dwelt upon with a vehemence for almost two years and yet, God was able to remove him and heal over that wound.

As I pondered that miracle, I realized that my hatred for the man did not cause him any problems or pain or suffering. I realized that the only person I had damaged was myself.

And I realized that forgiveness is a gift that we give to ourselves.

My Favorite Christmas

It was just a day or two before Christmas in 2002 when I came across the young woman stranded on the side of the freeway. I was going into town to buy a Christmas gift for my brother, a radio-controlled airplane. I was looking forward to giving the gift to John because I knew it was something that he would long for but would never buy for himself.

For the first time in my life, I had enough money that I could afford to buy the gift for my brother. As I passed Highway 6 on I-10 headed into Houston, I glanced over to the other side of the freeway and saw the woman outside of her car with her hood up.

It wasn’t the first time I’d come across that scene. If you live in or near a big city long enough, you’re apt to come across dozens if not hundreds of similar sights. So maybe because it was Christmastime or maybe because I saw the car seat in the back seat or maybe it was the way she looked with her shoulders stooped and her hand to her forehead but I felt compelled to exit the freeway, turn back towards Katy, and stop to see if I could help.

I pulled up next to her car on the feeder road and, with my bum hip, tried to negotiate my way over to her car across the ditch.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

She was so distraught that she didn’t even see me coming. She whirled around in surprise. I was well aware of the fear that might be going through her…a young woman being approached along the side of the road by a strange man…so I stayed where I was and didn’t try and close the distance between us.

“My car just died” She said. “Nothing works…and I just bought that battery!”

“So it wouldn’t work before and you had a battery installed and it worked then?”, I asked.

“Yeah..but I must have bought a bad battery because now it’s dead”

“It’s not your battery”, I said. “It’s your alternator”

“My alternator?”

“It’s that silver thing right there with the belt running around it. It keeps your battery charged.”

She looked hesitant. “How much does it cost to get one fixed?”

“Last time I had one fixed it cost about fifty dollars for the alternator and a hundred for labor. Plus, you’re looking at about another fifty for a tow.”

“TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS!?”

“About that…probably a bit more”

I thought she looked distraught and dejected before but my last sentence just seemd to let all of the air out of her,

“I don’t have two hundred dollars. I just spent my last sixty on that battery”

It wasn’t a hard decision. I thought back on all of the times in my life when two hundred dollars was all that was standing between where I was and where I needed to be. I thought of the many times I had been the recipient of charity from others and, perhaps more importantly, the times when that charity was withheld…the times when I swore that I would never ever make another human being feel the way I felt then, like money was more important to everyone than I was.

Two hundred dollars would mean the world to this young woman and her baby and it wouldn’t even make a dent to my bottom line; so I took out my cell phone and dialed my mechanic.

When my son started to drive, I made arrangements with a mechanic in Katy so that John-Ross would not have to wait in order to get something on his car fixed. He could just pull in, get whatever he needed done done, and the mechanic would bill me for it later.

It was a pretty good arrangement and the mechanic was someone I trusted to not take advantage of the situation. The one fly in the ointment was that he bought all of his parts from a parts store in Katy where the guy knew that you had to go to Mason Road to the nearest competitor and so he marked up his parts a bit more. He wasn’t shy about it either. If you ever went into his parts store, Bill would let you know that he was more expensive than the chain store on Mason Road and then launch into a narrative about how you should just shut up and buy his over-priced spark plugs because he needed the extra profit in order to compete and wouldn’t it be sad if the chain stores drove the little guy out of business.

I told the mechanic the situation, asked him to tow the young woman’s car to his garage, give her and her baby a ride home, fix the car and then deliver it to her. I told him that I would take care of the bill.

The young mother began to cry and thank me. It was all a bit embarrassing so I just nodded and waved and told her she should wait in her car until the tow truck came. Then I turned and left to finish my Christmas shopping.

A few days after Christmas, I got an invoice from the mechanic. I opened it to discover that I owed him $39.87. I looked at it again and saw that the only item I was being charged for was the alternator. There was no charge for a tow or labor, This, I determined, was an invoice that I would have to pay in person.

I walked into the garage with my invoice in hand., The mechanic was busy under the hood of another car. I held the invoice up.

“This is the cheapest alternator I ever had to replace”

The mechanic never even looked up. “You think you’re the only one that keeps Christmas?” he asked.

I chuckled to myself. Then I said, “Yeah..but still, the last alternator I bought from you cost me over fifty dollars. Are they going down in price?”
The mechanic looked up from under the hood. “When I told Bill at the parts store what was going on, he wanted a piece of the action as well so he only charged you wholesale”

“I suppose I should be grateful you left a piece for me” I said.

“Well….we didn’t want to cut you out completely”

And so it happened that 2 millennia after the three magi brought gifts of Gold Frankincense, and Myrrh to one young mother and her child, three other men, perhaps not quite as wise, but nevertheless, compelled by the same spirit, imparted gifts of money, time, and profit to another mother and her child.

It became my favorite Christmas.

I'm On To You Now!

You guys remember that final scene in "The Matrix"? The one where Keanu Reeves tells the machines how it's all about to go down? Well you guys can just call me "Neo" from now on because my eyes are open. I'm on to you. I SEE THE MATRIX!

(Incidentally, has anyone ever realized that "The Matrix" and "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" are really the same move?...Think about it.

1) They both deal with alternate realities
2) They both deal with travel through phone lines
3) They both have central characters who are brought up to speed by an all-knowing mentor wearing awesome sunglasses
4) and last but not least, in both movies, Keanu Reeve's most convincing line was "Whoa!")

Okay but back to my rant now and let's see if you guys can follow what's going on here because I've finally put it all together!

It's the end of moving day, right? Which means that even my best laid plans have gone awry. Which means that, even though I did the laundry and carefully planned out the events two nights ago, the people helping me move had packed a mountain of boxes over and around the clean underwear I had planned on changing into which means that I couldn't find clean underwear which means that I'd been in the same underwear for almost 40 hours which means that I was about to go crazy, get a gun, and climb a clock tower.

Still with me? Good!

I have the most awesomist bed in the entire universe. Even when I'm not that tired, it only takes about 5 minutes to be in deep REM sleep in this thing. I need the bed to get a decent night's sleep because I basically have more metal in my body than a terminator (another awesome movie). However, for the last month, I've been here in Plymouth and my bed has been in Baraboo which means I've slept on a mattress on the floor in our new house until my daughter graduated High School and the family could move here. Which means that I've only slept about 3 or 4 hours a night for the last month.

Okay now...It's the end of moving day. I can't take a shower because I don't have clean underwear to change into and I stink to high heaven. The good news is that at least I don't have to chase the dog off my bed. He's at the far end of the house.

Despite my filthy-stinking state, I take a look at that bed...that bed I'd been deprived of for the last 30 days. I couldn't even wait for clean sheets. I did a perfect swan and was deep asleep before my body hit the mattress. But I eventually woke up. (it must have been the smell)

So I got up and, because I was a bit more revived, digging through boxes to find my clean underwear did not seem like such an insurmountable task. I finally found them an hour ago and what was an impossible situation before now turned into the perfect situation.

Everyone else in the house was asleep and still smelling. I alone knew that there was clean underwear to be had. I had clean clothes, clean towels, and (most importantly) an ENTIRE WATER HEATER ALL TO MYSELF. Do any of you realize how rare that is? It's Sunday morning...I don't care how early on Sunday...and I can use all the hot water I want because by the time the rest of my filthy-stinking loved-ones get up, the water heater will have regenerated enough for them to take their meagre rationed showers.

Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!! (there's nothing like a hot shower)...but this is where it gets interesting. I've realized that the people who make bath tubs and the people who make shampoo and body wash are all conspiring against us...maybe even the undertakers, coffin-makers, and even the people who make those annoying little flower shaped adhesive thingies so you won't slip and break your neck.

Stay focused now 'cause this is liable to get a little complicated.

The average width of the shelf in a tub is two inches. You even have to take away three-eights of an inch to account for the radius of the curve caused by the caulking. I know...I checked...I found my tape measure while I was looking for underwear.

Thing is...the DAMNABLE THING IS!!!! that shampoo bottles and body wash bottles are all no less than three inches in diameter (except for the freebies that come in hotel rooms but I just realized that fits neatly into their nefarious little plan)

You see where I'm going with this, don't you? You're in the shower, you're all lathered up and you just put a big ol' glob of shampoo in your hand or body wash on your loofah and you try and balance that 3" diameter bottle on a space that is only two inches wide with a little, 3/8" caulk line trying to unbalance it and knock it back into the tub where its contents will gush out, causing you to slip and fall and break your stupid neck unless you buy those annoying flower-shaped (or fish shaped) adhesive thingies that nobody really likes but has to buy to stay alive and smelling sweet!

It HAS to be a conspiracy! It just has to be! How hard is it to build a three-inch shelf? I'll even give 'em the 3/8" caulk line. All I'm asking for is a sporting chance. For that matter...how hard is it to build a skinny shampoo bottle?

The hotels make them! And it's not just because they don't want you absconding with a big bottle either because they all know that when the maid's back is turned...we're all busy stuffing those life-savers in our extra bag that we brought along just so we could have enough space to put them! And don't give me any business about stealing. They build it into the price. They expect you to take them. If nobody took the shampoo bottles and the toilet paper when the maid's back was turned...we could all stay at the Hilton for a buck-fifty a night.

Noooo...They make 'em tiny because they don't want you slipping and falling and breaking your neck in their hotel. They want you doing it at home where your surviving kin cannot sue anyone!

So there it is! The entire conspiracy wrapped up neat and tidy. You're all exposed!

...or maybe I could just use another three or four hour's sleep.

Time Provides a Different Perspective

I've never hit a home run in my entire life. You'd think that with my body mass knocking a ball over the fence would come as natual as breathing but I just never could seem to master the art. I came really close once and it would not have merely been a home run, it would have been the home run about which Hollywood made movies.

Back in the day when our church used to have intramural sports, the bitterest rivals of Memorial Ward was Maplewood II. They were better than us at EVERYTHING, bastketball, volleyball, softball. They were always beating us but always by just a few points. In fact we actually won a few games but I think it was when half of their first string had food poisoning. I still remember standing there on the court feeling like my feet were encased in cement while one of the Cope brothers sailed like a gazelle over my head to the basket. The only thing we ever beat them in was scripture chase. We had spring-loaded quadruple combinations.

In almost every regional tournament, at the end of the day, the results would be Maplewood II bringing home the first place trophy with Memorial Ward coming in second.

And so one early spring morning in 1976, we took the field yet again in a regional softball tournament. There were several stakes competing and so it was to be an all day tournament, double round elimination. Our hopes were high because we had a ringer on our side. Lance Wade had come home from the military academy where he attended high school and would be playing on our side.

I never could figure out how parents could look at their tiny baby and just know that he was going to grow up with movie star good looks and give him a name to match but such was the case with Lance Wade. He was a dead ringer for our modern day Matthew McConaughey right down to the wavy blonde hair, ice-blue eyes, chiseled jaw and rippling physique.

Since he attended an all boy's military academy, Lance had no idea how good looking he was. When he came home on the weekends, Bret Bassett, Lance and I would often go to the movies and Lance often expressed astonishment, wondering what all the girls at the movies were staring at. They certainly weren't looking at the two flabby chunks of flesh next to him...I used to look at him and think, "With my brains and your looks, I could take over the world"

Lance must have been particularly valiant in the pre mortal life because Heavenly Father decided that being the best looking kid around wasn't enough for him...nope, he had to make him one of the most gifted athletes as well. With Lance on our side, we felt we finally had an even chance to beat Maplewood II and finally take home the first place trophy.

The day progressed and we easily vanquished all of the other teams. We even squeaked by Maplewood II. Since it was a double round elimination tournament, they were still in the fight though. We got beat once by a team from Beaumont and we went back into the mix as well.

At the end of the day, all other teams had been eliminated except Maplewood II and Memorial. We were to face our stake arch-rivals for the regional softball championship. The game lead changed every inning. We would be ahead and the Maplewood II would come up and they would lead, then we would come up to bat and go up by a point or two.

We went to extra innings see-sawing back and forth with the lead. At the bottom of the fourteenth inning, the score had Maplewood II up by one point. We had two outs on us. Lance, the tying run was on second and I was coming up to bat.

While I was never a power hitter, I was pretty good at spotting weak points in the defense and placing the ball where I wanted it to go. Usually that meant dinking it over the head of the shortstop into no man's land between the infield and the outfield.

Like Lance, I too am built somewhat like a movie star... I am over six feet tall but only have a 29 inch inseam which means when I run, I remind people of Yogi Bear. If I didn't get the ball out of the infield, I hadn't a prayer of making it to first base on those stubby legs of mine.

Maplewood II's left fielder was Kevin Butler, another one of God's favorites who was blessed with a rifle for a right arm. Twice already that night he had thrown me out from deep in right field with a frozen rope to first.

The setup could not be much more drammatic. Our bitterest rivals up ahead by a point, the tying run on second..two outs.... and me coming up. A base hit would easily put Lance at home and me on first. Bret Bassett was coming up behind me and he was good for an occasional home run. If I could just get on base, we would win the game, the championship, and never-ending glory.

I stepped up to the plate intending on hitting the ball over the second baseman but then something happened, when the ball left the pitcher's hand, it just seemed to float towards me in slow motion. It was the biggest, beefiest softball pitch ever thrown my way and I just knew that this was going to finally be the home run I had never hit.

I swung and watched the bat connect. The ball leapt off the bat and sailed towards the fences. I felt the vibration of that hit all the way down to the soles of my shoes and I knew we were about to win...and on my very first home run! Life could not be any sweeter. As I jogged towards first, I watched the path of the ball.

Kevin Butler had been used to my previous dinks and so when he saw me swing, he started running towards the infield so that he could scoop up my hit and send it sailing towards first as he had twice before. I grinned as I looked at the fear on Kevin's face when he realized that this ball was headed out of the park. He immediately went into a slide and popped up running in the opposite direction, chasing my ball to the left field fence.

By the time I got to first, Lance was already home. My ball was on it's downward descent and, just as I thought, it was going to clear the fence. Then halfway between first and second, my dreams of glory came crashing to earth.

In a last ditch effort, Kevin leapt up, his hip caught on the fence causing him to upend. As he summer-saulted over the fence with his feet up in the air and his head towards the ground, his left arm shot out and plucked my ball from out of the air. When he stood up again, he held up his glove with my ball still in it. It was the most amazing catch I had ever seen.

We had lost. Maplewood II won the regional tournament and I had STILL never hit a home run.

For years, even into my adult life, whenever I saw Kevin Butler at stake meetings, it would be through narrowed bitter eyes. To be fair, whenever he saw me, he would give me a big smile and hold up an immaginary softball in his hands.

Then one day I realized, that catch was one in a million. I had never seen anything like it, even in professional highlight films...and, in a wierd way, I was a part of it.

Call it delusional or dementia but I now realize that I was an integral part of the most amazing catch I ever witnessed. The last time I saw Kevin, he held up his immaginary ball and I came over to him and told him about my different perspective and how I was grateful to be a part of that wonderful catch.

His brow furrowed as he digested what I said and I could tell it took a bit of the shine off of the memory for him...That was sweet.

My Friend Edwina

And it came to pass that Enoch went forth in the land, among the people, standing upon the hills and the high places, and cried with a loud voice, testifying against their works; and all men were offended because of him.

And they came forth to hear him, upon the high places, saying unto the tent-keepers: Tarry ye here and keep the tents, while we go yonder to behold the seer, for he prophesieth, and there is a strange thing in the land; a wild man hath come among us.

Moses 6:37-38

I can't read that scripture above without thinking about my friend, Edwina Clark. Anyone who is LDS from Katy is familiar with Edwina. I suspect that the mere mention of her name causes a smile or two to break out and a story about Edwina will shortly follow. Everyone has one or two Edwina stories. I imagine that I have more than anyone outside her family, having appointed myself the chronicler of her exploits.

In describing her many adventures I hope you will realize the great love and admiration I had for her. I count many of her daughters and grandchildren as my friends and they all know of my feelings for Edwina. It is because I am confident that they know how I felt about her that I can give the following description:

Pick your metaphor...the cheese slid off her cracker; both oars weren't in the water at the same time, her elevator didn't go all the way to the top floor...any of them are apt descriptions of Edwina Clark. It wasn't just that she always came off as slightly odd, she was the most enthusiastic odd person I had ever met.

Every first Sunday of the month, she was the best entertainment for miles around. She was certain to give her testimony and just as her family would often cringe when she got up to take the podium, I would rub my hands in anticipated glee, wondering just what would come out of that loose canon rolling around on deck.

Although restraints of time and decorum forbid me detailing all of her off the cuff sermons, I will never forget the Sunday she decided we were all a bit too stuffy and insisted that we all sing along with her, "I'm a Little Teapot". The testimony to her persuasiveness was in the former bishop and high councilman in the congregation singing along with her, their left arm forming a handle and their right arm forming a spout.

Once, I was teaching the story of Christ and The Samaritan Woman. In the scriptures, the Samaritan woman asked The Savior, "How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest a drink of me?". I asked the class how the Smaritan woman knew that Christ was a Jew. Nobody seemed to know the answer. After a few seconds of silence, Edwina's hand shot up. It was the only hand up so I HAD to call upon her.

"Yes, Edwina?"

"Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I can spot a Jew a mile away"

For all of her faults though, Edwina was a fierce missionary. It is no exaggeration to state that you'd have to travel to Salt Lake City and knock on an apostle's door to find a more tireless and enthusiastic herald of the restored gospel. If anyone sat still in Katy Texas for more than a minute and Edwina was nearby, they were invited to a free copy of The Book of Mormon and Edwina's simple testimony of its truthfulness.

Once, she came up to me and asked me if I knew how she might obtain some pass along cards in Spanish. When I asked her why she wanted them, she told me she was taking a vacation in Mexico. When I asked her if she even knew any of the language, she grinned, and in imperfect Spanish (with an atrocious accent), she said, "This is the Book of Mormon; it tells of the restored gospel. If you read it, it will make you happy"

If Edwina went into the hospital, you can be certain that all of her doctors and nurses and even the lady who delivered her breakfast would get a pass along card and a copy of The Book of Mormon.

As Gospel Doctrine teacher, I heard from Edwina many times. Any time I asked a question, her hand would shoot up. If she didn't know the answer, she would guess. I was a great motivation for class participation. If the rest of the class was reticent to participate, they knew I had no qualms whatsoever in calling upon Edwina to pontificate....and Heaven only knows where that will lead us. (there was many a time when I found myself in the middle of a lesson thinking, "we're all going to hell and I'm driving the bus")

Once the lesson was on recieving priesthood blessings. The manual instructed me to ask the class for experiences in recieving annointings and blessings...so I asked the question.

Edwina's hand shot up. I looked around and nobody else felt like joining in so I called upon Edwina and prepared myself for the answer.

"Yes, Edwina?"

"Well, once, one of my dogs got sick so I made the elders give him a blessing"

"How do I salvage this?", I thought.

"Did he get better?"

"Well...he got better for a day or two and then the guy at the filling station shot him"

Not everyone shared my feelings of affection for Edwina and so, after a particularly brutal experience that had just about everyone in the class wanting to die from embarrassment, a group of two or three members in the class came up to me and said they had enough. They wondered if I would join them in a complaint to the bishop asking that Edwina not be allowed to attend and disrupt Gospel Doctrine.

My heart sank. I knew that they were wrong but I didn't know how to argue against them. Edwina had definately crossed the line earlier that day. She was disruptive but she was also innocent. It wasn't her fault. It was just who she was...and I have to admit, the thought of teaching Gospel Doctrine without my friend there filled me with despair.

The delegation before me was indignant, but it was an indignance sung in the key of intolerance. I remembered what The Savior did when he was cornered. There was no dust on the ground in which to draw but there was chalk on the chalkboard.

Picking it up, I marked several lines. I explained to the delegation before me that each of these lines represented one of Edwina's children, their spouses and her grandchildren. Then I marked a few more, representing the number of people of whom I had personal knowledge that had joined the church because of Edwina. A few of those who had converted because of her efforts had served missions. Like I said, I was a big fan of the woman and so I knew the number, over twenty more lines went on the blackboard representing people they had baptized. A few more went up representing children of the people she had helped convert who were born into the church.

By the time I was done marking on the board, over a hundred lines were there, each of them representing a soul who owed their membership in the Kingdom of God to the missionary efforts of this woman they were trying to ban from Gospel Doctrine class.

I looked at the blackboard for a moment and turned back to the delegation, "No", I said. "I don't believe that I will join you in complaining to the bishop"

After I moved up to Wisconsin, I got a call from one of Edwina's daughters telling me she had passed away. It tore at me to not be able to attend my friend's funeral and mourn with her family.

A few months after I got that call, I was reading a blog on the internet. The blogger was ranting about Walmart, especially all of the wierd and strange people that seem to congregate there. There were several comments to the blog, each with a shared experience. The words, "Katy Texas" jumped off the screen and I read one commentor's experience in stopping off at the Katy Walmart during a cross country trip. She left her children and husband in the snack bar and went to buy whatever they had stopped for. She related that, when she went to pick them up after leaving the checkout, she was surprised to find them cornered in a booth with a wild woman talking to them about The Book of Mormon.

I smiled, and then I laughed out loud, and then I laughed out loud through tears of joy and sadness as I said to myself, "I know that wild woman"

Some day, in the not too distant future, I will stand before the judgement bar of Christ. On that day, I shall throw into the balance against my transgressions, that I was a friend of Edwina Clark.

Who knows? It just might be enough to get me in.

Karma, Disneyworld, and Lying to Your Children

You should never lie to your children. I know that, you know that. It's a subject on which we all agree. Yet, who among us can say with all candor that we have never fibbed, even a little bit, to our offspring?

It is true that, like all sins, there are varying degrees of lying. Stringing your children along about Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy, or The Easter Bunny falls into the lower spectrum of lies we tell our kids. I won't go into the higher spectrum for fear of offending someone or causing hurt feelings but let's just say that the degree of sin rises sharply once you wander off the reservation of mythical beings bringing gifts to your children in the dead of night.

There are many reasons to not lie to your children, one of the least of which is that you'll eventually be found out. When I was a kid and I wanted to communicate with Kevin McCreary after bedtime, the best means possible was two juice cans connected by thirty feet of string between his bedroom window and mine. Kids today are mobilized, they're organized and they can text each other over cells phones brought to them by the mythical beings of the night we told them of when they were toddlers. You're just not going to lie to them for long and get away with it.

Unfortunately, I found out this lesson the hard way.

Early in our married life, my wife and I lived in Little Rock Arkansas. My eldest son, John-Ross was in that stage between toddler and kindergarten. (you know....easy to lie to). As it happened, the people who lived two doors down from us had a couple of kids close to our son's age and they became the best of friends.

For vacation, this year, they were planning a trip to Disneyworld. By night, at the dinner table, the family would plan the trip and the next day, their kids would eagerly relate to my son all of the wonderful things that lay in store for them in just a few short weeks.

Caught up in the excitement, my little boy came to me and asked me when we were going to go to Disneyworld.

"One day we'll go", I said.

That really wasn't a lie, even though I had no idea how we would ever afford such a trip, even one day. We were poor. I'm talking generic macaroni and cheese poor...the kind of poor where it's Wednesday and payday is Friday and you're scrounging around in the couch cushions for spare change poor.

But I didn't want for my son to feel left out. So I got together twenty dollars and went over to my neighbor's house and knocked on the door. When he answered, I told him my situation, gave him the twenty, and asked if he wouldn't buy a few souveniers of his trip to bring back and give my son.

What can I say? It was the best I could do. I swear by all that's holy, at that point in time, my intentions were entirely honorable.

But then events conspired against me. For one, they came home from their trip at eight-thirty in the evening. John-Ross was already in his bed. The next domino that fell was that my neighbor came over immediately and brought to me the souveniers he had bought for my son while they were away. The final nail in my coffin was when I opened up the bag and saw what they brought: A Disneyworld T-shirt, some Mouseketeer Ears, and a little felt banner on a stick.

An evil plot began to hatch in my heart...could I do it? Even if I could....should I do it? How bad was it, really? (I began to rationalize) "It's no worse than telling him about Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny", I thought. I weighed the risks versus the rewards of my evil plan and decided to go for it.

Scooping John-Ross up from his little bed, I grabbed the bag of souveniers in the other hand and went out to the car. My son was in that adorably drowsy state between awake and sleep when I placed him in his car seat. It was perfect, almost like a state of hypnotic suggestion. I drove around for a while until he fell deep asleep again. Then I pulled into a parking lot and dressed him in his new t-shirt and mouseketeer ears. I stuck the felt banner on a stick between the cushions in his car seat. Then I drove back home.

Everything was proceeding according to my plan. All that was needed now was the final touch. I gently shook my son. "Wake up, Boo-Boo", I said. My toddler did one of those numbers where he suddenly starts awake and then instantly settled back into drowsiness.

All parents know the trick of getting our kids excited by showing the excitement on our own faces. I turned it up full throttle, "Did you like Disneyworld?" I asked; my smile beaming from ear to ear and my voice at least two octaves higher than normal.

Confused, my little boy came a bit more awake. Like a drunk trying to remember a lost weekend, he looked at his t-shirt and his felt banner. His chubby little hand wandered up to his head. He pulled the mousketeer ears off and gave upon them with a bewildered look.

Then an expression came over his face; I'd seen it in war movies...that "thousand yard stare" shell shocked marines have after a long battle. His left eyebrow raised ever so slightly. I was beginning to lose him.

"Did you have fun?", I asked, reinforcing the illusion.

Finally, through a combination of lack of sleep, Disney mechandising, and a firm conviction that the father he idolized would surely never engage in such a cowardly falsehood, my son bought the story.

"uh huh", said John-Ross, with a befuddled nod of his head.

We heard no more about Disneyworld......for a few years.

"Be sure that your sin will find you out."
Numbers 32:23

Several years later, I was working late into the night at my drawing board. My son came to my elbow:

"Dad?"

"Yes, son"

"Remember back when we went to Disneyworld?"

My heart came to my throat. I didn't know how but it seemed as if the web of deceit I had woven was about to come unravelled after all of these years...maybe his mother had talked....she always had those lofty ideas about being honest with your children.

"What about it?"

"Well.....um...."

"Yes?"

"Can we go back? Because I can't find any pictures or tapes and I can't remember anything"

My heart settled back down into my chest. I took a deep breath, turned to my son and smiled.

"Sure, Son", I said, "We'll go back one day"

Eventually we did go to Disneyworld. Because we were a lot more solvent then and because a guilty conscience has a way of loosening the purse strings, we decided to go all out. We bought the "anything you want to do, is already paid for" package.

We stayed at The Grand Floridian. We ate at the best restaurants. We saw all the shows. I took my kids fishing and waterskiing...everything they wanted to do was already paid for and so we did it all. I felt a relief knowing that I had atoned for the sins of my capricious early fatherhood.

But it seems that Karma decided I had not yet fully paid for my foul deed. There was one activity that we had not yet tried, parasailing. It looked like fun. What wouldn't be fun about gliding hundreds of feet above the treetops, riding the wind currents like a magnificent eagle?

There was only one problem. I am a person who is only too aware of his own weight, the laws of physics, and (more importantly) The painful consequences of flaunting those laws. But my son persisted in wanting to go and, not wishing to appear like the coward I am, I relented.

If you ever go parasailing, you really need to benefit from the wisdom of my experience and pay complete attention to the safety lecture they give you before they strap you into that death machine...particularly the part about making sure that the straps are situated at the bend of your knee.

If you value your safety, your comfort, and (if you're a man) your manhood, for the love of all that's holy, get those straps at the back of your knee. You won't have occasion to correct that blunder once your parachute fills with air and your feet are lifted off the back of the boat.

Listen to me on this....THE LAST THING YOU WANT IS TO BE 400 FEET IN THE AIR, DANGLING FROM YOUR CROTCH!!!

It doesn't happen right away. If it did, you would be close enough to the boat that your screaming would alert the crew and your torment would be short-lived. But what happens is that the instant your feet leave the deck. Those straps that you thought were perfectly fine at the meaty part of your thigh begin to inch upwards.

You aren't really that concerned until you're about two hundred feet up. It is about then that you realize two things: First, those straps aren't going to stop inching up and second, you were probably joking around and not listening when the crew told you what the hand signal was for, "stop now and get me the heck down!"

By the time that your tether line is fully extended, you're well out of shouting range. That's when those straps decide to slip all the way up and give you the mother of all wedgies.

I had inadvertantly discovered the perfect means of torture. If the fifteenth century Spaniards had understood the laws of aerodynamics, surely this means of torment would have been reserved by the Inquisition for the most recalcitrant of heretics. I had been in far less pain in my life and lost consciousness.

I began to try and improvise hand signals to get the crew to pull me down. All that I accomplished was to induce them to go faster, and thus, lift me higher. As I danced about in the air, my screams lost in the ether, I remembered one thing from my safety lecture, "DO NOT TOUCH THE BUCKLE CONNECTING THE HARNASS TO THE TETHER LINE"

I looked about through the blur of tears in my eyes. I saw the forbidden buckle and seized it in both hands whipping it back and forth like a terrier shaking a rat. I could see them signalling for me to stop. I shook it again more vigorously. Finally, the boat crew decided to end the ride for my own safety.

By the time they got me onto the deck, I had composed myself. My son was eagerly awaiting his turn.

"How was it, Dad?", he asked.

I don't know why I didn't tell him the truth...what can I say? I am a wicked, spiteful man....

"It was fun", I said smiling. "You're going to love it"

Sometimes at night, I will jolt awake from a deep slumber with fear for just what Karma has in store for me because of that lie.