Wednesday, August 22, 2012

My "real" resume: part-time jobs that made me

Earlier this summer, when the kids were looking for what they were going to do and we were trying to get them "meaningful" internships that would help their resumes, one of them asked me what kind of jobs I had.
And that started me thinking.
I grew up in a different time, of course; a time when high school and college kids could get part-time and summer jobs because it was expected and employers actually counted on them. And when I think back, boy did I ever have some.

I write this for two reasons:
1) this is my blog and I can write whatever the heck I want, and
2) it is a way to communicate with my kids, and
3) maybe it sparks your own conversation about your jobs. Let's face it, it's pretty funny to look back at some of our early jobs, the things we did to make money while in school.

Looking back, I remember the "dream'' job when I was in high school was Fed Ex, which paid a then-princely sum of something like $3.25 an hour, when the minimum wage (which most of us got) was closer to $2.50 an hour (I can't remember exactly, but that's close). I never got that job.
I had a friend who worked at a movie theatre, a job a lot of us envied because he got to see all the movies for free. He was so enamored with one movie that he taped it for us all to hear ... that's right, "hear." This was well before the days of video taping of any kind, so my friend did an audio tape, which was absolutely as bad as it sounds. However, he thought he'd pulled off a fast one on the theatre (and I dutifully listened to the entire thing, while my buddy described the scenes in between actual dialogue).

Another embarrassing high school work-related story: a bunch of us went to apply for jobs at Six Flags Over Georgia. I'm not going to mention names, but we were sitting in the employment office, filling out the paper work, when one of my best friends said, "What kind of question is this: does my spouse work? It worked fine last night!"
I'm still not sure if he was being funny or being serious. Sad but true.
Needless to say, I didn't run with the brightest crowd.
But we had a lot of fun.

There was also the year we agreed to grow our hair long. This was the tail end of the Age of Aquarius, after all, and an act of some rebellion. However, one of the men of our church owned a car dealership and offered good jobs IF we cut our hair. Being a man of principle, I refused (I was 16, and at 16 this was a matter of principle). The other two went to the barber and got jobs.

Anyway, a sample of my early summer and part-time jobs:

Fabric warehouse: I think this was my first kind of 'real' summer job. I worked in the warehouse of a fabric warehouse, primarily boxing up rolls of fabric for shipping but sometimes getting to run the shrink-wrap machine. My boss could cowboy yodel. The company was not doing well, and every payday it seemed like we got our checks later and later, apparently to keep us from running to the bank to cash them that day. Long-time employees used to start looking for the most expensive fabric rolls they would take if they didn't get paid. However, we never missed a paycheck while I was there.

Auto auction driver: When someone bought a bunch of old cars to sell at auction, we'd get paid $10 a car to go drive them back to the auction. I learned to drive a lot of different style cars, and none were anywhere close to being new. The most fun? When we'd get to drive back old State Trooper cars that had been stripped of all the decals but still had the Police Interceptor carburetors on them. From 0-60 it was normal, but 60-to-120 was incredibly fast (as I found out quite by accident when I pulled out to pass a car in I-75, heading south from up around Rome, Ga., and floored it).

Building concrete sidewalks, curbs, and gutters: I was with this crew that was part of a company building huge industrial warehouse complexes outside of Atlanta. This job was hot, but fun. The cast of characters I worked with over this summer could fill a blog, including a member of a motorcycle gang who was working to get his bike repaired and told me "There are two books you should read: The Bible, and the Count of Monte Cristo. Both are incredibly long, but when you're finished both make a great point." I've read both. I don't count them as equal.

Reservations for Days Inn: I worked one Christmas at the Days Inn reservation center in Atlanta. A bunch of us sat in this room, answering phone calls from all over the country (this was obviously before out-sourcing to India!) While we were supposed to just book rooms for people, we also wound up planning trips for callers (helping determine a days' worth of driving to the next Days Inn), and even where the ice machines were located in their motels (some people thought they were calling the front desk, I guess). Best thing that happened: we got Christmas turkeys for a bonus! My mom was thrilled.

Coaching middle school football and basketball: In college, I coached football and basketball for 3rd and 7th graders. I was assigned to local elementary-middle schools, and we played other local schools. We were quite good, winning two championships. I was the only coach, and had to develop my playbook based on things I'd done in high school or learned from watching/reading about sports. One play I came up with I later suggested to a college coach that I knew - a tight end reverse that I designed (although I'm sure it had been done before) - and, sure enough, this guy adapted it and used it (but never gave me credit, at least not publicly).

Construction on a high rise: I was a "common laborer" who was expected to join the Common Laborer Union for this job. No one quite knew what to do with me. I wasn't allowed to do much other than be a grunt. Best part of the job was that the forms for each floor were built on the ground, then taken by crane to the next level of the building and put in place. I got to ride the floor forms from ground to building, and the higher the building got the more fun it was. The crane operator was crazy (several good stories about this guy), and he liked to see if he could get away with swinging me out wider each time as he brought the floor up and around to settle down on the building. I don't think this practice was actually to code, but what the heck .... it was fun.

Sportswriter: I did do a legitimate internship at a daily newspaper, in the sports department. I'd been the sports editor at the college paper for a year (and was not very good), but it led me to a big-time daily paper, where I fell in love with the business that I eventually did for over half my life. These were old-time sportswriters, and some of them would go to a nearby strip club during dinner break (it was a morning paper, so we worked nights). That left me to answer phones and handle the office until they got back .... also, the copy desk guys played a mean game of Jeopardy! when things slowed down. We all knew a lot about a little, and those Jeopardy! games were amazing.

Billboard company: I worked for an Outdoor Advertising company that owned billboards throughout rural Georgia. My primary job was to go out and cut the grass/bushes/trees that threatened to grow up and block the view of the billboards, but I also watched true artists who could "long-handle" old-style paper billboards. It would take too long to explain, but these guys were amazing. I also learned about double-selling side-by-side billboards (illegal, but apparently not uncommon) and this is the job where I learned first-hand that you can't cut trees on a Department of Transportation Right of Way. There I was, chain saw in hand, cutting trees on the side of a highway that were blocking the view of a billboard, when the state troopers pulled up and put me in the back of their car, taking me back to work where my boss said I knew better (I didn't; they only told me to cut down the trees) and it wouldn't happen again (technically it didn't, but these guys were creative and came up with a new scheme that was probably just as illegal, so I won't go into it because I don't know what the statute of limitations are on this kind of activity).

Church Youth Director: I was horrible. I completely let this church and the youth of this church down. This remains, to this day, one of those regrets that wakes me up in the middle of the night with tremendous guilt.

Door to door salesman: I don't know what else to call this. This business bought the end of the line products that were not going to be made again - silverware, glasses, frying pains, clock, lamps - and then sent guys like myself out with our cars loaded down. We could sell them for whatever we wanted, and got to keep everything over the base price that the company needed. I couldn't do the door-to-door thing, so I went around to small stores in the country to see if they would just buy my entire supply and stock their shelves (they didn't). I found the key was to go to factories on Friday (payday) and sit in the parking lot with my wares on display. Factory workers on payday were extremely loose with their money, and I sold my entire volume on Fridays when I learned this trick. Unfortunately, I also felt really guilt - these people weren't making enough money to be wasting it on the junk I was selling (and it was junk). I quit after about two months and swore I'd never do sales again.

Doorman/bouncer: This was much later, but my future brother-in-law managed some clubs around Birmingham's Five Points. I worked the door in one of them, which really meant checking I.D.s and keeping underage kids out. I did get to break up a couple of fight, and fortunately this was during my  karate days and my instructor, Shihan Oyama, had given me a couple very valuable and common sense tips for breaking up a fight, based on some of his own experiences. Highlight: when the police called me outside to tell me there was a guy inside in a long rain coat who had several shotguns and handguns underneath his coat. They didn't want to go in and get him for fear he would start shooting, so they asked if I could talk the guy into going outside where they could grab him. I'd  like to say I hustled the guy out, but I didn't really; I did start up a conversation with him, and I think I just bothered him into leaving, where the police were waiting.

There are more that I'm forgetting. I think from the time I turned 16, I always worked. I never worked fast food or restaurants or retail. I can't even say there was a plan; I just stumbled into jobs, through friends or classifieds or dumb luck.
Years later, I realized I should have been more focused and been building a true resume that could help me, but I did what I did. But there are a lot of good stories from each, I made some good friends for a short time, and I always had fun.
I think that's been the one constant: every job except the sales job that I've had, I've enjoyed.
And that's fortunate.



Monday, August 20, 2012

When bad news can be good news

"If you stand back and squint your eyes, you can see the perfect circle ..."
That was our orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Lowe, talking us through the newest batch of x-rays taken of MG's pelvis Friday morning.

 Every time I see the pictures, I'm stunned. There is just so much metal, and you wonder how screws that long can possibly fit inside the human body; bright white screws and metal plates that look more like a chain link bracelet dominate the otherwise shades of gray that are MG's bones and ligaments that show up in x-rays.
The "perfect circle'' Dr. Lowe was trying to get us to see is the circle formed on the interior of the pelvis. It wasn't that hard to see, but Dr. Lowe is such a perfectionist I think he wanted us to see it with the same sense of satisfaction that he saw it.
The truth is, we did. He showed us where the bones are growing back together nicely from all the breaks around her pelvis, and where the new bone is growing. I remember him telling me that eventually new bone would grow and the old bones would heal and all the metal would be superfluous. Not that they'd ever take the metal out, but that it would just no longer be necessary.
Of course, I couldn't let Dr. Lowe get away with the "stand back far enough and squint'' line. I laughed and said "Come on, Doc. If you stand back far enough and squint, I look 50 pounds lighter!''
But I could see how good his handiwork was looking, and seeing MG walk - not ride in a wheelchair or shuffle behind a walker but actually walk (with the use of a cane) - into the clinic was amazing. And the x-rays only reinforced that the pelvis is looking like a pelvis is supposed to look again.
However, that kind of progress means we can start to talk about some of the other injuries that, quite frankly, didn't seem as important early on.
Like the knee.
MG's left knee has not been right since she came home from the hospital. She can't bend it fully, and the inflammation has not gone down. It's been frustrating for her, because she couldn't seem to get anyone to address the knee. We did get a MRI of the knee, and the doctor just told us everything looked normal so not to worry about it - easy for him when he's not the one trying to turn over at night, or raise his hips to shift positions, or pick up a pillow that's fallen on the floor.
Now, however, Dr. Lowe suggested we actually see an orthopedic surgeon. He said doctors can't rely 100 percent on tests, that nothing replaces actually seeing a patient and putting your hands on an injury. Dr. Lowe is not a "knee" guy, in that he considers an injury like this a "sports" injury and his specialty is really trauma surgery. So we'll go see the best "knee" guy we know, David Adkisson.  
MG has been telling the doctors that her lower back - lower back as in her "bottom" - hurts, especially when she sits down. The pain has been excruciating and unrelenting, and the pain medicine that she's been taking has done nothing for it. Up to now, we feel like we've been ignored, that they keep saying it's just part of the pain of recovery.
This time, Dr. Lowe went back and rechecked the x-rays again, and came back to tell us MG had a fractured coccyx.
I don't think it's that anyone "missed" this fracture before as much as it was, given the severity of the other injuries, looking for a fracture like this just wasn't a priority. But now that everything else is starting to heal, Dr. Lowe checked over the x-rays more closely.
As painful as a fractured coccyx is (extremely), and as disappointing as it is that there is really nothing you can do about it but wait, and as pain as it is that the coccyx apparently doesn't heal quickly, this was good news in the sense that we finally had an explanation for the pain.
As MG said, now she knows it's not that she's a wimp or has been imagining it or whatever. This gives us a reason, and knowing 'why' is a huge relief - plus knowing that maybe, just maybe, the fracture will heal and the pain go away.
Of course, it makes me wonder what else might have been missed in the initial flurry of putting MG back together again.
I'm sure we'll find out, sooner or later.
More good news was that Dr. Lowe also cleared MG to take anti-inflammatory drugs, and our internist prescribed what he hopes is a good anti-inflammatory that he believes will dramatically reduce the pain. We're hopeful, and in fact Saturday was a better day. Now whether that's successful medicine or just optimism, we'll find out going forward.
I have to say I do get caught up in MG's optimism. Every day that she wakes up, she says her first thought is "maybe today the pain will be gone." I was not there with her for the first three or four months, because I knew it was going to take time. I heard over and over that this would be a year in the healing. So I have always tried to temper her enthusiasm by reminder her of that.
But now when I wake up beside her and we spend the first few minutes talking, then eventually I get her laughing, and then we start making plans for what we're going to do "a year from now, when everything if back to normal," I too think, "maybe today."
So far, that day hasn't arrived. But it's getting closer. I believe it.

So that's where we are today. As I said, it was good and bad, but mostly good to see the healing that has taken place.
It was very sad to see SB go back to college, because she's been such an encourager and practical helper to her mother all summer. I hate that SB didn't have a "normal" summer home from college (although she did a great job in her summer internship). I hate that SB feels so responsible and puts pressure on herself to try to make everything right - to take care of me, her brothers, the house, and of course her mother.
It's not easy, particularly when the guys of the house are not as considerate. I mean, the house looked clean to me!
So I'm happy that SB is back at school where she can be a college kid again. We packed up the old Explorer and she headed off with a new steering wheel cover - my going-away present to her. Look, when you're driving a 17-year-old car, a new steering wheel cover is a big deal; particularly when the original material seems to come off in your hands every time you drive.
That puts us in the market for a new car. We were going to need one anyway and had talked about it. But now the decision is: do I go for safety, which I'm inclined to do, and buy MG a big, hulking dump truck to drive that would take the impact of a Tahoe like a fly bouncing off an elephant? Or do we go for fun, which MG would like, and get another convertible?
 Or do I compromise and maybe get an SUV that offers both size and some fun?

MG is not quite ready to drive, but the therapist has urged her to start. I'm thinking I'll take her back to the church parking lot on a Saturday, when it's empty, like I did the kids when they were learning to drive, and put her through all the tests - forward, backward, circles, figure-eights, parking - that I did the kids.
I don't think MG will be gun shy, since she doesn't remember anything about the actual accident. But I am concerned the limited mobility could be a factor if she has to react suddenly or needs to turn to see something over her shoulder.
I'm not letting her drive until I am confident she'll be safe.
Of course, that might mean she doesn't drive for 30 years.
MG may not be gun-shy, but I am.
At least when it comes to her and her safety.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Watching for the wind

Every time I walk into church and see the shiny gold serving trays stacked prominently on the little table at the front of the church, I can't help but think:  Short sermon today.
It's a hold-over from when I was a kid. We celebrated "the Lord's Supper" or "communion'' - the act of symbolically eating Christ's body broken for me and drinking Christ's blood shed for my sins - once a quarter, I think it was. And because our church was pretty strict about the service not going much past noon (couldn't let the Methodists and Presbyterians get the jump in line at Morrison's), it meant the pastor would cut his sermon short.
It wasn't like Baptism. That was always done after the church service, so it meant you had to hang around a little longer - although for some reason I didn't really mind, even as a kid.  Maybe it was because we didn't really go to Morrison's for Sunday lunch anyway, so we didn't worry about getting caught at the end of a long line.
Recently, while on vacation, we visited the church my brother-in-law attends. We actually enjoy attending new churches while on vacation, to see what the music is like or the preacher. This particular Sunday, however, was both Baptism and Communion Sunday, which was disappointing because when you're just visiting a church, you want to hear the preacher to see what he's like and compare him to yours.

It struck me, on this particular Sunday, how Protestant (we are Protestant) church services can be so different. We went to a church in Daphne where the band was rocking, with a bass player who literally hopped around all over the stage while he was playing to the point of (for us as newcomers) being a distraction. We went to a church in the mountains of North Carolina where everyone showed up in jeans and shirts, very mountain casual, and the service reflected that kind of mountain, homespun, bluegrass attitude.
We've been to "high" churches with robed choirs and pipe organs and liturgies, and "low" churches that used videos and special lighting and props to enhance the service.
The church my sister-in-law attends in Memphis has a huge stage, with a kind of combo band on one side, a small orchestra on the far opposite side, a choir behind the orchestra, a small group of casually dressed singers in front of the band, and a casually dressed worship leader in the middle, with video screens above it all, and all of it going on at the same time. I know it sounds like chaos, but it actually worked.
And yet when it comes to something like Baptism or The Lord's Supper, all these churches tend to become the same. Whatever the attitude had been - casual and hand clapping or formal and stand-offish - when the pastor brings someone down into the water and says "I baptize you in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit'' or those shiny plates are distributed and everyone takes a piece of wafer or cracker and the preacher says, "This is the bread, broken as a symbol  ..." everyone seems to automatically hush into silence at the sacredness of the moment.
I've never known anyone who dozes off during a Baptism or during the Lord's Supper. I'm not saying everyone who participates is fully focused on what is going on, that everyone inherently finds deep meaning in the action, but even small kids who normally squirm and draw in the margins of the order of worship and dig through their mother's purses for a mint tend to sit up and get caught up in what is going on.

I don't want to make too much out of this. I realize anything that's out of the ordinary will catch your attention, and because we don't do Baptism and Communion every Sunday it becomes out of the ordinary and maybe that's all there is to the attention we give it.
But I wonder if there isn't more.
You don't see the Spirit of God when it passes, any more than you see the wind when it blows through the trees. You know how it is - you're standing there and suddenly see the tops of the trees start to sway and you don't say "what's going on?" You say, "Ah, the wind."
You see a boat out on the water, going nowhere. And then suddenly the sails stretch out and the boat starts to move and you don't say, "How'd he do that?" You say, "It's the wind."
You walk along a street and your hat suddenly jumps off the back of you head. You don't ask if your head or had suddenly changed sizes; you think "Wow! The wind ..."

You don't see the wind. How do you know it came through? You just do. You see the result of the winds' passing.
It  see that with people, too. You've known them for years, going about their lives, acting the way they've always acted, and then suddenly one day they're different. It's like they found a purpose, or a goal. You don't know what happened or why or why now and not six months ago or six months from now; you just know it happened.
Maybe it doesn't stick. Maybe it comes and goes or maybe it is only there for a little while and then the person gets beat down and loses whatever it was.
But when I sit and watch someone up there with their arm on the preacher's forearm and he asks why they are their and they say they want to make a public identification with the life of Jesus, or when I watch people silently take that small piece of cracker and cup of liquid and treat it with such sacredness, bringing a moment of solemnity to lives that are soon right back to catching up on the latest gossip or worrying about paying bills or fighting with their kids or going to work ... I can't help but notice.
Maybe it's because those are visible acts that are the result of our faith.
And maybe anytime we actually see someone acting out what they believe, we realize it's special and we have to stop and watch because - unfortunately - it seems all to rare that get the chance to witness that.

Remember your baptism. Remember that moment of tasting.
If you're like me, you'll forget from time to time, maybe more often than you'd  like.
But on those Sundays when you walk in and see those shiny gold serving trays stacked so neatly down front, or the lights go down and you hear the swish of water as the pastor steps into the baptistery, you remember.
Just like the wind.
















Thursday, August 9, 2012

In support of President Obama

In the wake of the recent tragedies in Colorado and Wisconsin, the President said we need to do something to stem this trend of violence in America, that it can't be allowed to go on.
He's right.
It's a complicated issue, with no simple solution. But in the spirit of supporting President Obama, I can think of one grass-roots effort that would be easy to do and could be implemented almost immediately.

In every classroom in every school in the country, I can see us posting a sign that says, "Thou Shalt Not Kill."

To make it have an even greater impact, I'd put it on a sign that resembles a tombstone - you  know, one of those rectangles where you round off the top. I realize a lot of people are used to seeing crosses in cemeteries, but I don't want to offend anyone with such an obvious Christian symbol, so I'm thinking the old-fashioned tombstone would suffice.
The great thing about this - the tombstone-looking sign with the words "Thou Shalt Not Kill"' emblazoned on it - is that you could leave more room for more, similar sayings.
Things like "Don't lie."
"Don't steal"
"Obey your mother and father."
And so on.
I'd bet you could easily come up with, oh, eight or nine such saying. Given the popularity of David Letterman's "Top Ten" list, maybe we should just decided to come up with a popular round number like 10.

Ten good sayings that we could agree are pretty good words to live by, that if taught early enough might help stem the tide of violence that the President - and all of us - are concerned about.

Now, I don't for a minute think this idea is original with me. There are very few truly original ideas. I wouldn't be surprised if someone, somewhere, hadn't thought of this a long time ago.
I know they have signs that say things like "Just say 'no' to drugs'' in schools.
Why not something similar for killing people, and lying, and stealing and not showing proper respect to authority?

It's just an idea.
After all, I really want to help President Obama in this instance.
I think we all do.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

A vacation of all shapes and sizes

Before ''the accident,'' I was almost ready to start running.
Well, maybe jogging.
Or just walking at a slightly faster pace.
At my last physical, I told this wonderful doctor that I'd found in Gulfport that I needed to lose about 20 pounds. He told me, "Why don't you just start with 10 and see if you can stay there for awhile." See? I told you he was wonderful.
So anyway, I was losing weight, going on an almost-nightly 45-minute, roughly 4 mile walk down through the Gulfport small craft harbor and Jones Park. I was starting to feel pretty good - like I said, almost ready to start speeding up some.
Then came "the accident." I feel like I aged three years in three months. I put on the weight I'd lost and then some. And forcing myself to exercise became very difficult.

Then last week we went on our family vacation. MG insisted that we do something to get away as a family before the older kids went back to college. She wanted to go to the beach, but me being either practical or cheap (depending on your point of view) I said we couldn't be sure MG could take a full week away and we'd run the risk of renting a place at the beach and only using it for half a week, so why didn't we go to St. Louis instead?
Now, St. Louis is where six of MG's seven brothers live and work, and one of her two sisters. (Yes, if you are counting, there are 10 kids in her family). "The brothers" as we call them are in real estate development, and they have downtown lofts we knew we could stay at, or we could go up to the lake house.
I was naturally concerned as to how MG would take riding in the car for a roughly eight-hour trip, so we rented a large Tahoe - ironic, because it was a Tahoe that hit MG, and standing in front of that massive SUV as well as sitting behind the steering wheel looking out over the hood gave me a new sense for just how much force hit MG that Saturday morning; one more reason to be thankful she remembers nothing about that day.
We made as much of a bed as we could in the middle seat, and MG laid down while the boys alternated riding in the passenger seat next to me and riding in the third seat with SB. I don't know why SB didn't take a turn riding up front with me. She should have. It just didn't happen.
It was not an easy trip, but it was definitely worthwhile. MG got to see her brothers and sister, their spouse and children. MG's Dad came up for a few days and all of us guys went out and played golf one day in 105-degree heat.  It might as been as close to heat stroke as I can ever remember.
The first night was one of the most memorable, however.
As a family, we were sitting on the outside patio of MG's sister's restaurant (Blondies, on the corner of Washington and 13th), laughing and enjoying some amazing dessert. Two girls who looked to be probably college-age or just older came by on bicycles, and we joked with the boys about these two girls, who rode up to the intersection with Washington Ave. where a crowd was gathering.
I had my back to Washington Ave, but was facing my sons, and suddenly I saw their eyes get big. I turned around in time to see one of the girls pulling off her shirt, and to see that the other already had her shirt off.
And suddenly, a stream of people on bicycles came rolling by, down Washington Ave., in various stages of undress.
Turns out, it was the annual "Naked Bike Ride'' through downtown St. Louis. I don't know how many people rode by, but it had to be close to a hundred. Many were in their underwear, but quite a few women were topless and quite a few men and women were completely naked.
Now, I might be an old man, but I'm still a guy. And even as I write that, I think "wow!" But the truth is, the reaction was more like "whoa!"
Being a guy, you say "naked bike ride" and you think "naked bike ride of gorgeous super models."
Instead, it was the naked bike ride of very ordinary people, mostly male, and mostly people you didn't really want to see naked (if you're the kind of person who likes to see naked people at all).
It was kind of like the time we were on a cruise ship, and docked in some Carribean port next to a ship that had a "nude sun bathing" deck. The ship I was on was taller, so we - myself and a couple of the guys I was with - were looking down on this ship.
And rather than the "nude sun bathing deck of European super models'' that we hoped for, what we saw was the nude sun bathing deck of elderly, sun-dried and shrivled grandmothers.
Another friend of mine who has traveled extensively told me about how anxious he was to see one of those nude beaches in Spain - until he got there and saw images of body types that he can't get out of his mind, no matter how hard he tries.
Still, on this night in St. Louis, everyone lining Washington Ave clapped and cheered as if riding a bicycle naked through downtown St. Louis took some special skill.
I admit I had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I felt like I should have been appalled. On the other, I was in college during the hey-day of streaking. In fact, I was at the University of Georgia when they supposedly set the record for largest "streak,'' thousands of college kids who met at the quad, took off their clothes, and ran through campus.
I wasn't one of them, by the way.
However, one night I was in a girls' dorm room on campus (which was allowed) when we heard this huge commotion outside. We - my friend and I - looked out, and it looked like every guy from the guys' dorm next door had stripped and was circling the girls' dorm where I was. And then, apparently, girls started taking off their clothes and 'flashing' the guys from their dorm room windows (which, of course, I couldn't see since I was in the girls' dorm at that time, and needless to say the girl I was with didn't participate).
I figured the best reaction I could have to the naked bike ride was to simply laugh it off.
Needless to say, it was quite a welcome to St. Louis.

The best thing for MG was the pool at the top of the building where our loft was. One of The Brothers turned up the heater on the pool to 91 degrees so it was like bath water. It was the middle of the week, so nobody was up there except us, and MG was so excited to get into the pool. She was able to float and for the first time since the accident was pain free. She moved and did her exercises and floated and felt, well, 'normal.'

But eventually MG had to get out of the pool, and when she did the pain came back. At times it was horrible. Other times it was just unbearable. It's a helpless feeling to lie in bed at night next to someone you love and hear her cry and know there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Still, it was a great week. And now we're back home. Roecker is already back at school. SB leaves soon. Gray starts his senior year of high school this week. I am back on the coast during the week.
It is amazing how independant MG has become. She is walking with the cane and sometimes without the cane. She still has drop foot, but has begun out-patient therapy and we've been to a neurologist to get a baseline of nerve damage to the leg, so we know what we're looking at.
People ask us continually what they can pray about, and I'd always say the pain: if MG could just get the pain under control, could just not hurt every minute of every day, the rest of her disabilities (which I still believe are termporary) would be bearable.

The timing of all of this has been amazing. I've written about this before, but there was a time when SB was going to intern in South Carolina, but I pushed her to take an internship in Birmingham that I thought would be better for her resume. We thought Roecker would be gone all summer doing basic training, but it turned out there wasn't a place for him so at the last minute he came home to Birmingham and we were fortunate that he was able to get an internship in Birmingham as well.
The accident occured in late spring, before the kids were out of school. But by the time MG came home from the hospital, SB and Roecker were home. The whole family was there, and it made a huge difference in the care-giving while MG recovered.
All along, we knew the day was coming when SB, in particular, would have to go back to school and we prayed that MG would be in a place where she wouldn't need round-the-clock care. Sure enough, as we near the time of SB's leaving, MG is sufficiently independant so that she can be alone at night, or at least where Gray can care for her.
God is good. I can say that in the midst of all that has happened, because even in this horror, we see His Mercy, His reminder that He continues to look after us. As I've said, I believe in God's permissive will, meaning I don't think God caused this accident but rather allowed it to happen because He has given man free choice and this man that hit MG made a bad choice. But I do believe that even in the midst of those bad choices, God's will won't be thwarted and His presence can't be denied.

When we left St. Louis, it was the day before yet another niece would be born, so we have one more reason to get back as soon as we can.
I told MG that when we returned, we'd be riding bikes down Washington Ave.
But don't worry; we'll keep our clothes on.
I'm a long way from being anybody's fantasy.