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Dieting and aging. I am in week three of my diet and have lost 7 1/2 lbs. But just had a stark realization about dieting and aging. When a man loses weight as a youth he goes from being “stout” to being “tone.”
And when he loses weight in middle age he goes from being “fat” to being “paltry.” An example of an inauspicious start. I bought an “ab bench” at Dick’s Sporting Goods tonight. It was on sale and they let me have the floor display. They had one that was boxed that would require assembly by me when we got home—but Rebecca said, “Uh uh” and asked the sales clerk, “How hard is it to assemble? Harder than screwing in a light bulb? Would any tools be required?” The sales clerk looked at me bemused waiting for a response. I glumly said, “Yeah, I’m not very good with light bulbs. Or assembling things. My wife is right. If you can sell us the floor display, that would make it a lot more likely I’d actually ever use the ab bench.” The sales clerk was terrific and said, “No problem,” and retrieved the display model to the front of the store and checked us out.
They laughed politely and asked if I was going to carry the ab bench to the car myself or have one of them carry it for me. It did weigh about 10 lbs. I told them, “Normally, I’d be too proud to ask for help. But since I haven’t started my workout regimen yet and there aren’t many people here this late who are looking, I’d really appreciate it if one of them would take it to the car for me.” I then turned to my wife Rebecca and added, “Unless Rebecca doesn’t mind carrying it.” I was joking, of course, and started laughing myself. I grabbed the “ab bench,” thanked the nice sales clerks, and strode confidently to the car. Geez, though. I gotta tell you, carrying a 10 lb bench several hundred feet to the car is a lot more draining than it sounds. ===
Unfortunately, the mannequin is taller than me. And I didn’t want to risk it not fitting me. Most of these wristbands are proactive and preventive in that they urge us to ask ourselves What would a certain person do “before” action is taken. But let’s be real. We don’t always remember to ask ourselves before we do something and sometimes still make mistakes.
I have a solution. I also wear a second wristband for just such instances. When I screw up, I look at my wrist and ask myself “What Would Kayne West Have Done?” The question is past tense. And what Kayne would have done is always something much worse and crazier than what I did. And that makes me feel better. And will make you feel better too! I was reminded today of a concerning game I devised at age 5. That was a long time ago and wouldn’t seem to have any reflection on who I am today except what I came up with was so out of the ordinary, it made me wonder less about the events themselves and more about what they said about me. We lived in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee and I was playing outside at the bottom of the hill in our front yard with my then best friend George Baker. George was as easygoing and likable a guy as I’ve ever met and I was glad to have him as a friend. He was tall and athletic but I was able to persuade him to play games I made up even if they didn’t make a great deal of sense and even if they happened to put him at bodily risk. George was a good sport. A few weeks earlier I had broken George’s thumb playing Batman and Robin with him. I asked George to play The Penguin and I played Batman because I wanted to jump off the bed and on top of my 5 year old friend George (now The Penguin) just like Batman had done in an episode we just watched. I put on a towel cape, got into the mindset of the caped crusader about to rescue the city of Gotham and got a running start on my parent’s bed and pounced just like Batman on little George. But unlike the Penguin, George started crying like a baby after I jumped on him. Whaling, in fact. I tried to get him to be quiet because he was going to ruin our game but he wouldn’t stop until his mom came in. The next week George came over to play with a cast on his thumb and I was told I couldn’t jump on him anymore for awhile. This day we were playing outside and looking for something new to do that didn’t involve capes, jumping or reenactments from Batman and Robin. I don’t know how I came up with the game I’m about to describe, but I did. All by myself. And in just a matter of seconds. I reminded George that we both liked to run and having a cast on his thumb didn’t prevent him from running. He agreed. But how could I make plain old running interesting? I told George to step down right beside me on the side of the road that ran in front of our house. The speed limit was about 35 miles an hour but often cars, when they would drive by, would go even faster. I said we’d wait until the next car came and when it got really close to us–maybe 10 feet away–we’d take off running as fast as we possibly could run when I said “Go!” and try to get across the street before the car hit us. I guess, according to my game, if we made it across without getting flattened by the car, we won. If that didn’t happen, I guess that meant we lost. Frankly, I hadn’t fully thought through all the details at this point. But I was ready to get started.
We stood beside the road for a couple of minutes waiting for the next car so we could get started. Finally, we saw one coming. Going about the speed limit, all I remember about the car was it was a dark green color and an older car. As it approached –and got within my “adrenaline zone” of within 10 feet –I shouted “Go!” and took off running as fast as I possibly could. I wasn’t wearing my usual superhero cape but felt I had some sort of superpower as I took off running. Think Flash Gordon not Batman. Except that superhuman feeling didn’t last for long. They say baseball players can see a 90 mph pitch in slow motion so that they can even see the seams on the ball slowly spinning before they swing. After about 5 paces of hard run, I could see the gleaming metal front fender of that old dark green car just a few feet away from me–and it was moving in slow motion. And here’s the hopeful part. I may be an adrenaline junkie; but I’m I’m not stupid. OK. I am stupid but not really, really super stupid. Anyway, at that moment I made a brilliant split second decision to turn around and run back the other way to the side of the road. And I did. I looked up and there was my sensible friend George just standing there looking at me with this goofy scared and confused grin on his face as if to say he was sorry for not running with me—but also saying that he never even considered running with me and couldn’t believe I was serious. The car came to a screeching halt and the woman driving was white as a ghost, mortified at what I had just tried to do. She took a few moments to gather herself and catch her breath. She was still in a state of mild shock and with her voice quavering she scolded me (and George, even though he hadn’t done anything) and made me promise her I would never ever try anything like that again. I promised I wouldn’t. It finally began to sink into me that my idea was, in fact, a very bad one despite how much fun it may have sounded when I first thought of it. And it did sound pretty exciting. I just didn’t do a good job of thinking the game through to the end before proposing it. I can’t believe, in the first place, I would ever think up such a game. Yeah, I was only 5 but that’s not a good enough excuse. I didn’t bother to think. I just had a fun idea pop into my head –and went for it. Along with anyone else I could get to join me. That was 45 years ago and my friend George Baker is alive and well and has a nice family of his own and many new friends besides me. And I’m alive and well, too, but had to wonder what this long ago incident says about me. They say kids who drink alcohol are “self-medicating.” Maybe the risky games that I made up was a form of “self-medicating.” A 5 year old jonesing for an adrenaline hit. Or maybe not. Maybe I’m overthinking it all. Perhaps I was just an adventurous kid who overshot himself with that particular game. And there’s nothing more to read into it. Maybe. A few weeks later my dad pulled into the driveway and found me playing by myself in the backyard –not the front yard near that dangerous road. This time I was climbing up the side of a wall where my parents parked their car. I had climbed all the way to the top and was hanging by my hands and had gotten stuck. My hands were getting very tired and if I let go I would drop about six feet and that looked like a bad idea. So, I decided to just hang tight and wait for someone to drive into the driveway and rescue me. My plan worked. My dad came home and helped me down before my hands got too tired. Another day; another game. But also the beginning of the end of my days as an adrenaline junkie. I had hit my bottom. I guess hanging by the whites of my fingertips made me re-think things. I can’t remember what game I made up after that. But if memory serves, my parents started buying me lots of board games after that. And I became one heck of a Chinese Checkers player. When I think of Dr. King, I think of his courage, vision, strength, humanity, and most importantly, his perseverance. Dr. King’s perseverance transformed him into a legendary leader but it was his challenge to each one of us that sets him apart—a challenge in this day, in this hour, to “take up the cause of freedom”. This element of Dr. King’s life is something that hopefully each of us has incorporated into our daily lives. Perseverance breeds success; and it is his perseverance that enabled Dr. King to achieve his dream. Dr. King knew that his dream—this movement towards civil rights—would begin a new chapter for America—a chapter we are still writing today; a chapter steeped in the hopes of “little black boys and black girls [joining hands] with little white boys and white girls” for true opportunity and equality.
I know that if Dr. King were here today he would encourage us to persevere in the face of tragedies like the Trayvon Martin shooting, or efforts to roll back hard fought gains in voting and civil rights. He would remind us that “freedom is not free” and the price we must pay keeps the dream alive; that success does not come without sacrifice if you want the dream to live for future generations And that’s the easy part because the dream lives in each one of us. Happy Birthday Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from The Grio) We’ve all heard some version of the story of a great basketball player who in some big game misses the clutch shot that could have won the game. After that the player is forever haunted by that “moment” and asked over and over again by fans who recognize him, “Aren’t you the guy who ……?” Over time the wound dissipates but never quite fully goes away. My father wasn’t a basketball player (at least after high school). But as a former professional basketball team owner, he has had to live with a similar kind haunting basketball “moment.” Call it the “Salina Bros Shakedown.” Call it the “Greatest sports negotiation of all time.” Call it the convergence of tenacity and blind, dumb luck. Whatever it was, it now has a final-seeming price tag of $800M. And it’s $800M that, theoretically, my father—had my father been a different kind of person and a more ruthless kind of negotiator- may have gotten a piece of.
I believe in negotiating hard and negotiating smart. Always. And my father has taught me that well. But he has also taught me to negotiate honorably with an eye toward your reputation and future business opportunities. At the end of each negotiation you have a “bottom line” business deal and a “bottom line” reflection on your character. And both are of equal importance. In this particular negotiation there was a fluke in which had my father been focused merely on squeezing every last penny out of this deal at the expense of his reputation, he may have gotten a piece of this improbable windfall. But that would have meant sacrificing who he is and his reputation as a fair dealer with people who had trusted him and were relying on him to close the biggest deal of their lives. The entire ABA/NBA merger was being held up by the Salina brothers final demand for TV rights in perpetuity and they knew they had the NBA and ABA over a barrel and merely had to wait them out until they capitulated. And they did. Is a person’s reputation worth $100M, $200M or even $400M dollars? I guess the takeaway for me is that I believe that question is the wrong question. Because one’s reputation should never be for sale. Period. And as so-called “missed opportunities” go–they should never be the cause for time-consuming and soul-draining bitterness but rather something you laugh off magnanimously and then keep moving ahead, from, lest you miss the next opportunity. And that’s a pretty good lesson for a son to learn from his pop. Is any of this just some sort of happy rationalization trying to pretend a missed opportunity wasn’t really wanted anyway? Probably a little. But only a little. Because, at the end of the day, sometimes a missed shot in a basketball game, literal or figurative, is just that. And nothing more. And leaves behind an interesting story but not something to haunt or define you. After all, it’s just a game. Nothing is ever quite the same after you wake up to the feds pounding on your door. Trust me: I learned the hard way. Which is why most of the media response to the “Bridgegate” scandal and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s handling thereof feels off to me. The optimists, including Time and Washington Post political analysts, have asserted that after his “virtuoso” press conference performance, Christie remains the 2016 Republican frontrunner. Somewhere in the middle are Politico and Slate columnists, who acknowledge that this episode may affect the governor’s 2016 prospects. Others less enamored of the governor say that despite his mistakes, the media’s infatuation with him will keep him afloat. The most pessimistic analysts contend that Christie’s presidential hopes are finished because this episode has highlighted his famously overbearing style, or would force him to change it, which may be beyond his ability and/or cost him support. A few even think his governorship may be in jeopardy based on Bridgegate or the more recent revelation that he awarded a contract to the highest (as opposed to the lowest) bidder for ads featuring his own visage in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
What these pundits forget—and, as Christie, a former U.S. attorney, knows as well as anyone—is the old saw that federal prosecutors can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. They don’t need a bulletproof case. And once they have a target, they aren’t limited to investigating the matter that caught their attention; public corruption probes often widen as new information emerges. Federal prosecutors rarely have just one attack route. Remember, they brought down Al Capone for income tax evasion, not bribery, bootlegging, or murder. The Fort Lee incident may be merely a bridge, if you will, to other Christie administration misconduct. As a former target of a federal investigation that started in one place and ended in a very different one, I’m all too familiar with the unpredictable directions in which these things can go. What piques a prosecutor’s interest during plea negotiations may be totally unrelated to the original crime. Read the rest of… Sometimes you read something and all you can say is “Wow.” And then a few moments later, “Amen.” Here’s an excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s recent piece on faith:
Sometimes when I am at a point in my life when it is time to reinvent myself again, I ask myself if I think I can get away with using one of my older reinvented selves and hope no one notices because I cant think of anything new to do with myself. === I want to become a better person. Not so much because of ambition or a sense of calling.
I am better than the current ads targeting me! And I know deep down that I have better targeted ads inside me. Ads my mom would be proud of. Is it possible to prove God exists through higher mathematics? I recently saw a discussion on this matter and it got me to thinking. Suffice it to say, that I do believe it’s possible to use higher mathematics to prove God’s existence. And I even have first hand experience on this very matter. No, I’m not going to get all highfalutin talking to you all fancy-like about mathematical ideas you won’t understand. Not at all. But here’s how it happened for me. I escaped high school only having taken Algebra and Geometry. I always loved math. But once they started introducing letters into it, I figured they had just run out of practical uses for math and were trying to make it deliberately harder—or they were just showing off. After the letters started up, I just lost interest. My only exposure to calculus was four week of pre-calculus my freshman year in college. That’s all it took for me to realize the stuff had to be Divinely inspired –because it made no logical sense to me. But that’s not the part about calculus that convinced me to believe in God. Into my fourth week of this class –and convinced I was going to fail– I started praying nightly for God to please help me–some how, some way. And the next week it happened. My friend and mentor, junior Allen Ragle, explained to me about the college phenomenon of “dropping” a class. If you are taking a class and it turns out you hate it or it is too hard for you, no problem. You just “drop” the dang thing and all you get is a little ole “W” on your transcript. High schools don’t allow this but colleges do. It was a religious experience for me just hearing this good news! I dropped the class the very next day and had never felt such a rush of Grace in all my young life.
Hallelujah! For Jerry Eifler, Lee Whitlock, Gene Thompson, Ivan Schoen, Jim Sichko and my other friends who are also well-connected with the Big Guy…. I would have included a list of friends who had likewise established themselves in the field of mathematics, but don’t seem to have any at the moment…. Which, I guess, is what happens when you leave math at pre-cal. |
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