Homesick for Eden

Maybe this happens to you.

I'm driving. I do a lot of driving. The car in front of me is slow, as if unsure of where it is going, but the road is such that I can't get around it. I get irritated.

I'm reading. I do a lot of reading. My phone rings and it breaks my concentration. I get irritated.

I'm trying to get somewhere. I do that a lot, too. But the person or people I'm going with are not ready to go because they are talking or checking something or just being slow. I get irritated.

I don't feel well. Fortunately, that doesn't happen very often. But when it does, and I can't find any relief ... I get irritated.

Now, I don't think I get irritated a lot. But I do get irritated.

The comedian Whoopi Goldberg once said, "I don't have pet peeves. I have whole kennels of irritation."

I can blame a lot of things for my irritation: that goofball driver who doesn't know where they are going; that person who calls me for some inane reason when I'm enjoying a good book; those people who are lollygagging when they should be ready to go; getting sick through no fault of my own.

But at the end of the day, being irritated is my problem.

Or maybe, it's my sin.

It comes out of my own selfishness. I'm not irritated for any noble reason, for lack of justice or righteousness or mercy being displayed to someone who needs it; I'm irritated because I'm not getting what I want, when my desires are being denied, delayed, or disrupted.

What I want to do may not be a bad thing. Certainly there is nothing wrong with travel, or reading, or being on time for an appointment, or being sick.

But, like most sin, it's not the thing that is bad, but my action (or reaction) to get what that thing is.

It's putting my own wants, desires, self - first.

Hebrews 12:1 says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us ..." We're being watched by those witnesses who exists across that great gulf between this world and the spiritual world, those folks who now have a true understanding of time and what matters. Since we're living our lives before those witnesses, we should not get hindered and entangled in things that don't really matter, and run the race that is before us not with great speed but with patience and endurance, since we don't know where the finish line is anyway or how soon we may reach it.

Proverbs 15:1 says "A gentle word turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." I wonder how many people I provoke in a given day by my irritability. I'm very aware that how I act affects other people. If I'm harsh with people in my office, they can become harsh in how they deal with the people we're here to help. If I'm rude to the person in the drive-thru window, they may take it out on the next person in line. If, while driving, I get right up on the bumper of the person who doesn't seem to know where they are going or just isn't comfortable driving fast, I may cause them anxiety then fear then anger over feeling pushed or intimidated. I know if I come home in the evening and yell my family, they learn to mimic my behavior - maybe not right then, but they will at some point down the road because I am their example.

"Love," writes the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 13, is not "rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful." In other words, we're not to live with a short fuse, demanding to be treated "fairly" (by my standards of "fair," of course). I heard someone once say, "Don't live by the Golden Rule - 'Treat others as you want to be treated.' No, live by the Platinum Rule - 'Treat others the way they deserve and want to be treated.'

I don't know about the 'Platinum Rule,' but I think there is something to what he was saying.

God gets angry. But I don't think He gets irritated.

Why do I think that? Because it seems that when God gets angry, He takes a long time to get there (Exodus 34:6 says God is slow to anger). Throughout the Old Testament, the children of Israel seem to be crying out for God to act on their behalf, but God seems to be taking his own sweet time. See, God only gets angry when it's time to get angry, when it is the last resort and his Righteousness and Justice have been ignored and even despised.

And then, when God does get angry, it's always with just the right measure. Oh, it may be devastating, but it makes His point and is rarely forgotten.

I need to be more like that. I need to summon my anger judiciously, and only when absolutely necessary and only for the absolutely right reasons. James 1:19 says we are to be "slow to anger." Ephesians 4:26 says there are times when we should be angry, but not to let that anger cause us to sin.

I read an article from a pastor named Jon Bloom who wrote, "Jesus didn’t die for our punctuality, earthly reputation, convenience, or our leisure. But he did die for souls. It is likely that the worth of the soul(s) we’re irritable with is infinitely more precious to God than the thing we desire. We must not dishonor God, whose image that person bears, by being irritable with them. There are necessary times for considered, thoughtful, measured, righteous, loving anger at priceless but sinful souls. But there is never a right time for irritability."

"Never a right time for irritability."

Clearly, this guy has never driven in my lane, or read the book I'm reading, or tried to go someplace with the people I am supposed to go places with, or ...

No. He probably has. My guess is, we all have.

I don't like to think of my irritability as sin. I like to think of it as more of an inconvenience, something that can be justified and excused because of the actions of things beyond my control.

My control.

But guess what? Most of life is beyond my control. And until I recognize whose control my life is under, I'm going to be irritated.

We had an election yesterday in my home state of Alabama, a run-off for Senate between two candidates that were largely unpopular, but for (I believe) different reasons.

One candidate was a good person who a lot of people know and like, but he had a lot of support from "the Swamp" (as Washington DC insiders are known), and how he got into his position in the first place bothered a lot of people (he was appointed by a governor that, as attorney general, he was supposed to be investigating; a governor that, after the appointment, was forced to resign by the next AG). He also ran a very negative campaign, and believe it or not that doesn't go over well here in Alabama. We're still people who prefer you tell us what you have done and believe you can do rather than how bad the other guy is.

The other candidate was a man who had been elected to the state Supreme Court twice and been forced to step aside twice for, basically, not carrying out the rulings of the highest court in the land. This made him a hero to a lot of people, who saw a guy who was willing to 'stand up' against creeping (or galloping) liberalism. But to many others, he was seen as a guy who put himself above the law, in addition to being inarticulate when he wasn't giving a prepared speech.

In some ways, it was a lot like the last Presidential election, which for many of us came down to two unlikeable candidates with serious flaws.

So some of my friends decided their only choice was to not vote.

I appreciate their stand. They felt they couldn't, in good conscious, vote for either candidate, and I can understand that sentiment. Many of these people, in the last presidential election, took a similar approach by either not voting or writing in the name of somebody who had no chance of winning but allowed them to be at peace with their conscious.

I get that.

A lot of people in my home state apparently felt that way in this Senate run-off. Participation was low, where I heard numbers as low as 12 to 15 percent of the potential voters actually turned out to vote.

So between all the people who just didn't get motivated to get out and vote, and those who felt they couldn't vote in good conscious, that means my single vote carried the value of about 10 people (roughly 300,000 people voted out of over 3 million eligible voters). My vote had the strength of 10!

That's not exactly right, of course. Some of those 3 million voters are Democrats in this heavily Republican state, so the actual number of eligible Republican voters would be less than 3 million, but not by much (by the way, the total turnout of Democratic voters in the Democratic primary equaled less than the total number received by the leading Republican in the primary, which doesn't bode well for the Democrat in the December election).

But you can see how I, flush with power, am excited to say that at least nine of my fellow citizens have given me their ballot; maybe not actually given it to me, but abdicated their power by not showing up.

I appreciate that.

Bad candidates or not, we still are involved in a process whereby "We the People" elect our leaders. If we get bad candidates, maybe that's because so few of us actually get involved in the process, or care enough to vote. Something like fewer than 5 percent of the eligible voters in the United States have ever given to a political candidate - not that giving money is the only way to be involved, but it certainly is a pretty good sign of a person's commitment.

So by choosing to not participate, those people have given those of us who do vote power over their very lives, their laws, their rights, their citizenship.

To which I say, thank you.

I take that power willingly. If I can only get more of you to not vote, my individual power will grow to - who knows? - maybe one day I'll be the king-maker (or Governor-maker, Senator-maker, President-maker)! Maybe even one day I'll write myself in and hold all those offices together!

See, I keep participating in the system, no matter how bad it is, because it's the system we have and if I don't vote, then I'm leaving my future in the hands of people who may not have my best interest at heart. And while one simple abstention may not seem to affect much in the big picture, some day it will.

Don't get me wrong. I don't like the choices that my fellow citizens seem to be giving me either. The candidate I support seems to rarely get out of the primary; and the one I vote for in the final election, even if I simply dislike that person less than I dislike the other, very often loses.

But you can't win if you don't play the game; you can't have a say in self-governing if you're not willing to suck it up sometimes and make a tough choice.

As I told a good friend, who decided to write in a candidate for President because he couldn't in good conscious vote for either of the two major party candidates, by not voting or by voting for someone you know can't win, you are essentially allowing someone else to make the most important decision of your civic life for you.

And for that, once again I have to say, "Thank you."

Unfortunately, the person I voted for doesn't always win. But if enough of you stop voting, maybe one day soon my vote will be the only one that counts!

Remember how much fun it was to come off an airplane, make that walk up the “jet way”, and find some smiling face waiting for you at the top?

I think about that every time I come off an airplane these days. It used to be that when someone went to the airport to pick you up, they parked the car, came inside, and went down to the terminal gate to wait for you to come off the plane.

Now, of course, when you go to pick someone up at the airport, it’s like going through a drive-thru at a fast food place – you drive slowly in a long line of cars, looking for the person you’re there to pick up, knowing you can’t stop unless you see them. If you don’t see them, you have to keep going, circle the airport, and come through the line again. If you do see them, you get to stop but you better be quick and get that door open for them while throwing their luggage into the trunk before airport security comes over to tell you to move along.

I used to fly a lot. Most of the time it was for work, so there was rarely anyone waiting for me at the top of the ramp at the jetway. I’d walk through the access door and see those hopeful, expectant faces look at me for the briefest of seconds, then quickly move on to see who came through the door next because I wasn’t the one they were looking for. But it was kind of fun to see all the smiling faces, hear the squeals of excitement from wives or husbands waiting to hug their loved one, the kids running to greet grandma or grandpa who were coming for a visit.

Now, of course, you just come off hoping to get the attention of an airline attendant who can tell you your connecting flight is not at the gate it says on your ticket but is now two terminals – a 10 minute train ride and 15 minute walk – away, but they’re already boarding that flight so you probably won’t make it.

Recently I came off a flight and suddenly thought, “What was the captain’s name?” Do airline pilots – captains – even introduce themselves anymore? I can remember a time when the flight always started with “this is your captain, Ted Stryker, welcoming you aboard …” or ending with “on behalf of Captain Ted Stryker and the entire Chicago-based flight crew, welcome to Orlando and thank you for flying Pan American…”

Maybe they still introduce themselves and I’ve gotten so used to it that I no longer listen.

Not that it really matters. In all the times I’ve begun to ascend into the friendly skies, I never had the speaker come on and hear “This is your captain, Ted Stryker …” and the guy next to me say, “Oh, he’s really good! I always try to fly with Captain Stryker!” It’s not like you go buy a ticket to fly and the reservation agent says, “Where are you going?” and you say, “Well, tell me what route Captain Ted Stryker is flying. I always fly with Captain Ted.”

My parents used to live across the street from a Delta airline pilot. He was a great guy, and a good neighbor. One time he asked me to deposit his paycheck because I was going to the bank. I’m not sure why he asked me to do that; I’d never ask someone to deposit my paycheck for me. Although, come to think of it, he certainly had nothing to be ashamed of. This was the 1970s, when being a pilot was still pretty glamorous, and I don’t know if he was paid weekly, twice a month, or monthly, but I do know that paycheck I deposited for him was about half to a third of what I was making in a year in my first newspaper job (of course, I started out at $150 a week).

But as a sportswriter, I flew quite a bit. And being in Atlanta at the time, I flew Delta a lot. Every time I flew, I listened for the pilot to make his introduction just in case it was my neighbor. It never was. I’m not sure what difference it would have made if it had been, although I guess I could turn to the person sitting next to me and say, “Oh, I know this guy. He’s really good. And you’ll never guess how much money he makes!”

I always thought of pilots as these real adventurous guys, the old “daring young men in their flying machines” kind of image. When you think about it, they are really just glorified cabbies. Their job is to pick you up at point A and get you to point B safely. Unlike cabbies however, you can’t say something like “there’s an extra 20 in it if you can get me there in 15 minutes!”

Pilots do what they are told. They fly at the elevation they are told to fly, and mindlessly follow the directions given them by “the tower.” You know, as in , “the tower tells us we’re No. 19 for takeoff, so settle back for a few minutes and we’ll get you airborne just as soon as it’s our turn on the run way.”

You know what I’d like? A pilot who had been a cabbie, who didn’t care about stop signs or speed limits and could dodge cars, bikes, pedestrians, garbage cans, baby carriages, and knew all the shortcuts to get you where you wanted to go.

Just once, I’d like a pilot say, “the tower tells us we’re No. 19 in line for takeoff, but you know what? To heck with them – we’re not waiting,’’ and the next thing you know he pulls out on the grass between runways and starts accelerating past all the other planes who are waiting in line, making a run for the open run way. We’d all be looking out the window, terrified at first, but then seeing all the other schmucks sitting in the long line of planes being forced to wait their turn. We’d all starting yelling, “Go, Captain Ted! Go!” And at the last minute he swerves back on the paved part of the runway at the front of the line and the next thing you know we’ve got lift off!

I mean, what are they going to do? We’re getting ready to take off into the wild blue yonder, and if he gets us to Point B on time or even early … well, that’s the kind of guy I’d want to book my next flight with, regardless of where he was going. It’s the kind of guy that when he came on and said, “This is Captain Ted Stryker…” you can bet I’d turn to the guy next to me and say, “Oh, this guy’s good. Fasten your seatbelt. You’re not going to believe what we’re about to do …”

I am going to make a somewhat embarrassing admission here: I have this thing for Celtic Women.

I came by it honestly enough. One day I was flipping channels and came across a title on the cable guide that said “Celtic Women,” and I clicked “OK” because I thought it was going to be a show about the Boston Celtics cheerleaders; you know, like the “Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” show.

Instead I found that it’s not the NBA Celtics at all; it was PBS. And they don't pronounce "Celtic" like "Seltic" but rather "Keltic." It was a pretty over-produced concert of some kind, featuring this full orchestra led by a guy who looks like the geek sidekick to Flo on those Progressive Insurance commercials, three women singers who continually change into elaborate gowns, and this one blond woman who is equally dressed up but just shows up at random moments to run around stage, twirling and skipping and smiling, all the while playing a fiddle – except on PBS it’s called a “violin.” However, the way she plays it is like some of the guys I’ve seen in Cajun’ bands, who can play holding the fiddle at their waist, behind their heads, or even one guy I saw who got bandmates to hold him upside down while he knocked out some Doug Kershaw tune.

Here’s the thing: when I tuned into the “Celtic Woman” – despite there being at least four of them, they go by the singular title ‘woman’ rather than ‘women’ – I thought I’d tuned in for the end of the show. The song, whatever it was, sounded like a grand finale, like the third encore, and everyone was clapping and carrying on and the ladies were smiling and bowing as if whatever they’d just sung made Whitney Houston’s “Star Spangled Banner” seem like a third grade recital of “Mary Had A Little Lamb.”

Only it wasn’t the finale, or the encore, or even close to being the last song of the concert. Turns out, every song these people do is staged like it’s a grand finale. Given that I was only vaguely familiar with most of the songs they were performing – to say they were ‘singing’ doesn’t do it justice – I wasn’t sure if this was like a ‘greatest hits’ concert or this group was like a highbrow Slim Whitman (who, if you were remember the late night TV ads from the 1980s, reportedly sold more albums that Elvis Presley and the Beatles in England). But you never saw an audience so enraptured, so mesmerized, so enthralled, so old and white (except for the occasional small child – usually a little girl – that came along for a night out with grandma and grandpa while mom and dad went to the casino).

And, I have to admit, I got hooked. The staging, the drama, the costumes, the absolutely adoring way the women looked at each other every time one came on the stage as if it was Michael Jordan coming back for one last title run with the Bulls – it was shear PBS genius.

But it was PBS.

Which means, of course, that the orchestra would start up and one of the women would start to sing “Oh Danny Boy” and then a second woman would suddenly come out and the first one would look as if she were so glad to see her, then the blond fiddle player would come skipping around all of them, twirling and bowing and bowing (that’s “bowing” as in bending from the waist and “bowing” as in using a bow to play the violin; aren’t I clever?), and you’d really get caught up in the absolutely swell of orchestration as they got ready to go into the final verse when …

When suddenly these two old crones appeared on the screen, saying, “Aren’t you enjoying this performance of ‘Celtic Woman?’ Aren’t they marvelous? Wouldn’t you like to hear the rest of the song? Well, we’re about $672 dollars short of our pledge amount, so if you pull out your credit card right now and call this number, we’ll get off the screen and let you see the climactic finish of ‘Oh Danny Boy!’ Operators are standing by!’’

I have no idea what the Celtic Woman do for an actual finale or encore. I’ve always heard you don’t pay the kidnappers in a hostage situation because it only encourages them to do it again.

Now, if instead of “Celtic Woman’’ it was “Laker Girls” ….

It's the Christmas season.

My youngest son is supposed to be coming back from Tennessee, where he has gone to see a friend, with a Christmas Tree.

I'm not going to ask him where he got it.

Or how.

Getting Christmas trees is a family tradition. We have done it many different ways. Typically, especially when the kids were younger, we all went as a family to one of those Christmas Tree farms where you would drive up, they'd hand you a saw, you could walk around an look at some sad looking animals in pens - a couple cows, maybe a pig or two, and always a sad-looking deer that never had a red nose or answered to the name "Rudolph" despite what the sign might say - and then wander out in a field to find the 'perfect' tree.

Finding the perfect tree was always a challenge. I'm a terrible shopper. No matter what it is, I always feel there is a better option right around the corner. And no matter what I pay, I feel I'm getting ripped off. (Except shopping in Belk, where on certain days they practically give stuff away. You go in when they are having a sale and it's like Mrs. Russell's algebra class all over again - 60 percent off, plus another 10 percent, and if you have a coupon it's 30 more percent, and if you open a credit card you get another 25 percent off. Who can figure that out? And then you walk up to the register and somehow it comes out even cheaper then you figured. But that's another story).

Anyway, at the tree farm, I'd find a tree and everyone would agree it was fine - "fine," not perfect - and I'd say well, remember where this is and let's keep looking. Only how do you remember where a tree is in a field full of trees that are all roughly the same shape and size?

Yet once we got it home, whatever it was, it was always perfect.

Sometimes we'd go to the local tree lots, run by Boy Scouts or whomever. One year, back when the Trophy Wife and I were first married and poor, we got a tree at a local lot. Now understand, the Trophy Wife loves Christmas. Absolutely loves it. I swear there were years where she'd put a tree up on October 1st if I'd agree to it. So this year, we got this tree from a local Boy Scout lot on Thanksgiving weekend. Two weeks later, it was bare - every needle had fallen off. So she took it back and they gave her another one. two weeks later, it was bare. She took it back again. I think we got the last one on Christmas Eve.

And while that is a great story and the guys who ran that lot were extremely nice, you realize this means we had to decorate and undecorated three trees in the span of less than a month. That includes stringing and unstringing lights three times. There was a decided lack of Christmas Cheer in my heart that year - until Christmas morning when, once again, we agreed we had the 'perfect' Christmas tree.

But there are other ways to get Christmas trees.

Sometimes, you just take one. Or two. Or ...

I think the statute of limitations has run out, because I haven't been part of a Christmas tree theft in a long, long time. A long time. I mean it - a really, really long time.

But there was a time ...

Now, we didn't take them from people's homes or houses. And, unlike some other friends of mine, we didn't go out to interstate right-of-ways and cut them down when nobody was looking.

It started when I was a freshman in college. And in a fraternity. The pledge class was told that we had to provide a Christmas tree for the fraternity house. Oh, and we should get enough for a few of the sororities, too.

Now, how were we going to do that? The "brothers" didn't say. They just said we had to come up with Christmas trees.

So some of the other guys - not me, of course, because I'd never do anything illegal like that - would head off in the dead of night to find a grocery store that, during regular business hours, sold Christmas trees. But of course, 1 a.m. was not regular business hours. Only a Kroger or Piggly Wiggly didn't have the space to be taking Christmas trees inside, off the sidewalk every night at closing time. So they'd leave them outside.

Now, there was a time I had this bad habit of hearing everyone talk about what they were going to do, this or that, and I'd finally just say, "let's quit talking and do it,'' and head off. It got me in trouble one time, in a rather big way. But I don't want to talk about that.

But here's the thing. The raid wasn't particularly well thought out. Nobody had a truck, and certainly not a station wagon. This was in the days before SUV's so nobody had a rack on top of their vehicle. So a bunch of the guys - remember, now, this is hearsay, because I'd certainly never take part in something like this - piled into whatever cars they had and headed for the alley that ran alongside this particular grocery store.

Right to the end, they thought that surely the trees would be tied up or chained or something, but when they got there - lo and behold - it was like a Christmas miracle! The trees were just piled up next to the alley, waiting to be put out on display again the next morning.

You ever try to stick a six-foot Christmas tree into the backseat of a car? And do it quickly and quietly, because you were right there on what was a fairly major four lane where, even at 1 in the morning, people were likely to drive by?

Then one guy got a bright idea. He had a convertible. And if you put the top down on the convertible, you could throw four or five Christmas trees into the back seat, stack them up as high as you could, and then get someone to ride on top of them, holding them down.

Did I mention this raid wasn't particularly well thought out?

Absolutely nothing unusual about seeing a caravan of cars skedaddling down a major four land road at 1 a.m., three or four college guys jammed in the front seat, all the windows down, with green tree-tops sticking out of backseat windows. And bringing up the rear, this one convertible with a driver, two guys riding shotgun, and one guy sitting up on top of a stack of Christmas trees in the back seat, hanging on for dear life, like Peter Sellers at the end of Dr. Strangelove straddling the bomb as it falls from the sky.

And then someone realized they were all riding down this major, well-lit, much-travelled four lane, so at the next light - hey, they might have been tree thieves, but they weren't going to run a red light! - somebody yelled, "We need to split up and meet back at the fraternity house,'' so everyone turned a different direction to try to get to the same place that, by this time, wasn't but a few blocks away, on the back side of a college campus.

And we - I mean "they" - made it back.

But that wasn't enough. Full of themselves, they decided to personally deliver trees to each of the sororities. In the middle of the night. The Sisters of Phi Mu and Alpha Delta Pi and Chi Omega were appalled. But they all accepted the trees, and nobody asked where they came from.

Years later, I ran into a family that had a similar tradition. It was a large family, and on Christmas Eve the oldest boys would go out to get a Christmas tree. The mom and dad never asked where they got it from, or how they got it. But I know those boys, and they didn't buy them. I don't know if they came from the right-of-way, or an alley next to a Piggly-Wiggly, or a Home Depot parking lot.

I look back on it kind of like hunting though: We never took more than we needed, and we used every thing that we took.

Now, of course, you have these pop-up tree lots where some poor sap has to live, sleeping in a trailer on site. When my kids were little, my son once asked, "Why do they sleep here, in a trailer?" I tried my best to look all serious and say, "I don't know son. I guess they are afraid people might steal the trees if they don't watch them all night."

To which my son would say, "Who would do a thing like that?"

And I'd shrug my shoulders and say, "I don't know son. But put the top down on your mom's convertible, and how'd you like to ride home, sitting on top of this fine Douglas fir? Just don't tell your momma ..."

Nah. I'm kidding, of course.

I have a new diet plan that will enable you to lose 10-15-20 pounds in just a week. I call it the “semi-colon” diet.

Allow me to explain.

Everyone knows (or should) that at age 50, a man (and I can only speak to men’s health here) should get his first colonoscopy.

Everyone should also know that a lot of men – myself included – don’t like the idea of anyone fooling with that part of our bodies (as Dave Barry put it so famously here: "A journey into my colon - and yours". Google it).

It’s not just the idea of drinking so much stuff the day before and knowing how that means your evening will be spent (although I can think of plenty of ways I’d prefer spending an evening than locked in the “water closet”). It’s also the idea of a stranger - or anyone, for that matter - running something up my backside.

So I found ways to avoid this for years. I have always been rather genetically blessed with good health. I have not spent a night in a hospital as a patient since I was in the fourth grade (they used to keep you in when they took your tonsils out, and gave you all the ice cream you could eat afterward which, like most doctor’s promises, sounded a lot better before the surgery than afterward). Again, not thanks to my lifestyle or exercise or eating habits (I have spent a lot of years on the road, eating things that come from a drive-thru window) I have been blessed with healthy blood pressure, low cholesterol, healthy organs. I don’t take any medication for anything, I don’t drink or smoke or do drugs (heck, my wife has to practically force me to take two Tylenol for the rare headache).

Then I could make the excuse of the last five years of the rather crazy life we led, with me living and working during the week on the coast while my wife stayed behind in Birmingham or in Memphis or St. Louis taking care of her father.

But the truth is, I just didn’t want anyone messing around with my backside.

Until this year. My doctor had just given me my first physical in three years, and pronounced me ridiculously healthy for someone with my propensity for fried goods, sweet tea, and Varsity Hot Dogs with onion rings. But he also said, “You’ve really got to get a colonoscopy. It’s way past time.”

And my friend Gary Palmer, kept on me, challenging my manhood (wait: challenging my manhood because I didn’t want someone to stick something up my butt?), telling me if he could do it so could I.

And another friend went in for a colonoscopy and found he had cancer which, thankfully, they took care of.

So I surrendered my dignity and self-esteem and set up the appointment. It wasn’t going to be so bad, I kept telling myself. You eat some broth for lunch (I didn’t even know you could get ‘broth’ except in a children’s story set in the Middle Ages), then spend the rest of the day drinking enormous amounts of Gatorade mixed with Metamucel acompanied by Dolcolax. Then I got up at 5 a.m. to be at the hospital at 6 and was the first patient of the day. I figured to be out by noon, sleep away the afternoon, and we had invited some friends from church over for a cook-out that evening.

Instead, I woke up to my doctor telling me they’d found a “mass” in my colon that he couldn’t get out, so I should stay over for surgery (“since you’re already cleaned out”) the next day at which time they’d remove “8-10 inches” of my colon.

I appreciate my friend Jack who said, “Well, if they miss and take 8-10 inches from somewhere else, you’ll finally be normal like the rest of us.” I have no idea what he meant by that. I swear. Or how he would even know.

Remember now, I hadn’t eaten anything since a bowl of “broth” the day before at lunch (which I got at Chick-fil-A by straining their chicken soup as best I could). So now we’re at 24 hours without eating. Surgery was set for the next afternoon – it ended up being around 4 p.m.

That was another 24 hours with only ice chips.

The good news is, they did the surgery. It was not cancer, although I was told in another 3-6 months it would have become cancer. I was left with four interesting scars on my belly, and wound up spending a full week in the hospital.

Now, my wonderful wife has spent too many nights in the hospital over the last few years in particular. I have stayed with her (as she did with me, by the way). I used to think, “I could use a night or two in a hospital, reading, watching TV, just relaxing.” But like those promises of unlimited ice cream when I was a kid, the idea was much better on the front side than the back end (groan – another bad reference).

I am a miserable patient. I was grouchy. I was sick. I went six days without anything other than ice – and two bites of jello which I couldn’t keep down. And then there was an attempt by the hospital staff to “intubate” me, which is run a tube thought my nose down into my stomach to drain fluids and stuff. After three unsuccessful attempts, I suggested they just water-board me instead. A doctor came by and told me he couldn’t force me to let them intubate me, but if I kept throwing up there was a good chance I’d die. I said, “give me two hours and if I throw up again, we’ll discuss it.” By sheer force of will, I absolutely refused to throw up for the next 24 hours.

Afterward, everyone agreed that intubation is pretty horrible, except one intern told me they knew of a doctor who would do it to himself there in the hospital room to show patients how “easy” it was to do. My guess is that guy came from a family of sword-swallowers.

I am so bad as a patient that my wife told me she was worried about me. “What happens when you get old and I’m not around to take care of you? Do you think your children are going to want to care for you when you’re like this?”

Good point. So I now have to make sure I die before she does.

End result (get it: “end” result)? I finally ate some hospital turkey and my doctor said if I could keep that down, I could go home. (All other functions had started returning by that point.)

So they took a chunk out of my colon, prompting my youngest to call me a "semi-colon." Get it? Funny kid, right? Yeah, I was laughing so hard I threw up.

I went to the doctor again this week. At my physical before all this happened, he’d told me I should lose 10 pounds. I started hearing that about 35 pounds ago. Turns out, I lost about 20, which caused me to sneer "You happy now?" at him. (I told you I am a miserable patient).

I took the next week and went to the beach with my family, who did put up with me while I slept, read a lot of books, managed to play a game of miniature golf, and went to eat one night at an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet where, for $32 dollars a person, I ate about $4.25 cents worth of food.

Here’s the real point, if you’ve stayed with this story for this long.

Get the colonoscopy. It’s easy. It’s relatively painless. And it could actually save your life.

It would be stupid to die because an over-inflated sense of privacy keeps you from allowing a doctor to inflate your colon like a beach ball and then run 17,000 feet of tubing up your bum.

If you’re 50 and they tell you it’s time, do it. If you’re over 50, as I am, you really, really need to get it done. If I had done this five years ago, they may have been able to get the ‘mass’ out before it became a mass and didn’t require further surgery and my family wouldn’t know just how awful of a patient I am.

Now, I’ve just got to convince my children that I won’t be like this when I’m old.

If a life spent around sports has taught me anything, it's that there are two kids of people on every team:

The ones who can play.

And the ones for whom sports builds character.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely believe that participating in sports can indeed build character. You learn discipline. You learn how not to give up. You learn how to get up when you get beat or knocked down. You learn to trust teammates and/or coaches, and to rely on them. You learn to respect authority (even if sometimes that authority is wrong). You learn that life is not fair, that some people are just more talented than you are for no reason other than genetics or God-given talent; just like you will also find out that you are better than some people for the same reason. You can also learn that you can take what talent you have and squeeze every bit possible out of that limited supply, and add to it by using your head, relying on teammates, understanding the rhythm of the game you are playing, simply work hard to be ready to take advantage of every break, recognize luck when it occurs, and accomplish more than you or anyone else ever thought you could.

But then there are those who play the game at such a level that they can get away with anything. Or so it seems. Grades? If it means being eligible to play, someone will make sure they get the help they need to be eligible. Rules? They don't need no stinkin' rules! The rules don't apply for the incredibly talented, because their talent knows no boundaries, which means the rules are treated more as "suggested guidelines." Practice? I refer to Alan Iverson, who was hardly alone among superstar athletes in his contempt for practice. I can't begin to tell you how many great athletes I have witnessed over the years in a career in sports who were allowed to exempt themselves from practice (usually under the guise of a pulled hamstring that miraculously healed itself by game time).

I don't mean for that to sound mean or bitter or angry. But it's true. On any team, there are the people that create value by giving their team the best chance to win, and so someone has always been there to make sure they are on the field/court/arena/whatever. It's just the way it is.

That's not just in sports, of course. Music, art, business, law, religion, you name it - very often, the very best understand their talent and ability puts them above everyone else and excuses are made for their lack of "character."

But the thing about it is, they rarely even realize they suffer from a lack of character, because this is just how it's always been for them.


Meanwhile, the 'average' ones, the ones who are good enough to play but maybe not so good that excuses are made for them when they screw up, learn discipline, and self-control, and determination, and loyalty and patience and even humility and how to win and lose with, well, "character."

Which reminds me of a time, in my early days, attending a high school sports banquet in a small community. The guest speaker was a local AM radio sports guy (not me, although I have been a local AM radio sports guy now that I think about it), and he was waxing poetic about the virtue of sports. He said something like, "we need sports, because sports builds character, and without sports young men would be out there experimenting with alcohol and drugs,'' to which the kid sitting next to me leaned over and whispered, "he's never been to one of our team parties!"

Here's another thing, however: sports is a great equalizer. In the vast majority of cases, eventually even the best become average.

The best kid on that middle school team? How often does he get to high school and find out he's "average." The best kid on the high school team? He might realize that, compared to other kids in the league/city, he's just "average." Certainly if he goes on to college - remember almost every kid on a college team was the best, or one of the best,on their high school teams. College to pros, same thing. Pros? Most are just hanging on year to year, knowing the team is always looking to find someone better (or someone just as good who is cheaper). If the best of the pros stick around long enough, they often end up role players (two former Boston Celtics come to mind: the great Pete Maravich - maybe the best ball-handler and shooter in basketball history - coming off the bench for the Boston Celtics in 1980; the great Bill Walton as the Celtics' "sixth man" in 1987).

Of course, that progression doesn't always mean those athletes learn "character" (however you define that). Sometimes the lessons ingrained in them as "stars," the special treatment they received and came to expect because that was all they ever knew, overrides the lessons that should be theirs in learning how to be a role player.

But to be honest, I ask myself: would I rather have been a superstar, or learned character?

I have to admit, I wonder what it would be like to be dominant in a particular field. I wonder if I wouldn't have been a bit arrogant about it. I think about a story I heard about Heisman Trophy winner and hall of fame football coach Steve Spurrier who, even as a head football coach later in his career, was known to see quarterbacks half and sometimes a third of his age struggling with a particular throw and saying, "Maybe that's just too tough of a throw. Let me try it." At which point he'd rifle the pass exactly where he wanted it to go with zip on the ball and say, "No, it's not the throw. I guess you're just not good enough." It's kind of cruel, but I have no doubt it was true. And I also have to admit, wouldn't it be fun to be able to do that?

I'm not saying Spurrier didn't/doesn't have character. I'm just saying he was arrogant. Of course, he could usually back it up, too. As the saying goes, it ain't bragging if it's a fact. And I have to admit sometimes I wish I could be so successfully arrogant.

There are the superstars who are great teammates, who display character. And as I just pointed out, there are those athletes who should be learning character but the old, early habits are too ingrained.

Years ago I read a story about a bunch of top American CEO's who recalled getting cut from their sports teams. Maybe it was high school, maybe college, but they recalled with great clarity the moment when they realized they were not going to make the team, that they were not good enough. And despite all the success they had in business, all the money they made, the good they did in their communities, they all remembered clearly that moment when they were told they weren't good enough. And it drove them to succeed in other areas.

Another side note - I did a story on world class decathlete Trey Hardee, a world champion in his sport who, unfortunately, hit his peak between Olympic years (although he did win Silver in 2012). His motivation was being cut from his high school basketball team as a junior (which he still feels was unjustified!), driving him to track and field.

That leads me to two of my favorite Michael Jordan quotes. Jordan, of course, may well have been the greatest basketball player ever.

Jordan said two things that I think apply here:

“I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

and

“I can accept failure; everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.”

Those are pretty good summaries.

But lest we get carried away with Michael Jordan, remember he's also the guy who, when told "there is no 'I' in team," responded with "Yes, but there is in 'win.'"

I am the son of a working mother, the husband of a woman who has been successful in every business endeavor, the father of a brilliant girl who I absolutely believe will make an impact on the world.

So when I hear about women not being paid the same as a man, only earning 77 percent of what a man earns, of this on-going inequality in pay, I say ...

Why not?

This isn't about talent or brains or work ethic. Across the board, I believe those things even out. I have worked with and for brilliant women, just as I have brilliant men.

But it all comes down to an old saying, "the greater the risk, the greater the reward."

And men, day-in and day-out, take the greater risk.

Don't believe me?

Say you're on a cruise ship, like the Titanic. You hit an ice berg, and the ship is going down. What do they say? "Women and children first." Women even before children! In every movie about the Titanic, you don't see the women left standing on the bow of the ship with the band playing "Nearer My God To Thee." It's always the men. It's expected.

But it's not just cruise ships.

What happens in a hostage situation? Say some guy is holding 20 people at gun point in a bank. The police have the place surrounded, and he is demanding a car to take him, unhindered, to the airport, where he will fly to Cuba. If he doesn't get what he wants, he will start killing hostages. And what do the hostage negotiators always say? "Give us something to show we can negotiate in good faith. Let the women and children go...''

Firemen are taught when saving people in a burning buildling to look for "women and children" first. A man can be up on the fifth floor, full-bore panic mode, but if there's a woman in the same room ... guess who comes out first?

So men get paid more than women? They deserve it, just for the fact that society does not value a man's life as highly as it does "women and children." Men are apparently considered replaceable; women are valuable commodities (and I can understand why). If that value doesn't always translate into salary, I'd say its more than compensated in other, very tangible ways. And until that changes .....

I'm kidding. Seriously. It's a joke.

But sometimes my mind just goes this way.