Superman vs. Batman

I have not seen the movie, "Superman vs. Batman." In fact, I'm not sure what the plot is, other than I guess an attempt to merge the lucrative "Superman" series somehow with the lucrative "Batman" film series, and perhaps leads to a sequel around the "Justice League of America" (which, if my comic book memory is correct, Superman and Batman founded although neither played particularly big roles in subsequent activities; in fact, Batman eventually leaves JLA completely).

But I have long been fascinated with the ideas of "Superman" and "Batman." Because when you think about it, there really are only two kinds of Superhero: Superman and Batman.

I say that despite the onslaught of other "superheroes:" Spiderman, Aquaman, The Green Lantern, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Iron Man, Wonder Woman, The Hulk, Flash, Silver Surfer, Thor (who is actually supposed to be a Norse god, which kind of puts him on a different level) ....

But really, it all comes down to Superman and Batman.

Superman could do everything man ever dreamed of doing but was physically unable to do: faster than a speeding locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, X-ray vision to see through walls, bullets bounced off of him, knives were unable to penetrate his skin. He had super-hearing, super thinking, even super breath (able to create high-speed winds). He could apparently fly not just through the earth's atmosphere, but through outer space (where he often diverted on-rushing meteors and such). He was, of course, other-worldly (from the planet Krypton), and his only weakness was exposure to green Kryptonite, mineral debris from Krypton. In other words, in the beginning at least, the only thing that could harm Superman was something from his place of origin, from "home," if you will.

Superman is the fantasy, the dream. Take just about anything man has ever dreamed of doing, and Superman could do it. And to show how much man always dreamed of doing those things, just look at how many of those skills man has since adapted to: we can now fly (even to the level of solo-flight of jetpacks); we have developed bullet proof vests so that most bullets do not harm us; we have developed devices that allow us to 'see' and 'hear' from great distances and even through barriers; computers enable us to have super-thinking ... and so on.

The rest of those "superheroes' - other than Batman - are mostly perversions of Superman. They tended to focus on specific abilities, but really, what could any of them do that Superman couldn't, for all intents and purposes, do as well (if not better)?

Which begs a sidebar: how limited is Spiderman? I mean, I always enjoyed Spidey, except that I realize he's really of no use outside a major city. I mean, his spider-strength and spider-sense might work anywhere, but his webslinging is far less impressive in a small town where the tallest building is, say, three stories. Or on the plains of Kansas, where Spiderman could, I guess, swing from the tallest stalks of corn (and how stupid would that look?) Truthfully, Spiderman seems to be a strictly urban hero.

Now Batman is different. I have always been a Batman fan, and here is why: he is a truly human superhero. There is no suggestion of any special 'power' that Batman has. The implication is that any one of us, with enough money and know-how, could become Batman. He has great gadgets that make up for his lack of true superpower, and he's honed his physical skills into a cross between a world-class gymnast and 10th degree martial artist, but technically speaking there is nothing there that isn't humanly possible.

Superman, at least in the beginning, was almost naive in his strict morality, his belief in truth, justice, and something called "the American Way" (which, interestingly enough, people back in the day would have understood what that meant and basically agreed with it in principle; I doubt seriously such is the case today). In fact, at one point there was a self-imposed code that Superman could not kill a human being.

Batman was anything but naive. In fact, he is always seen as a border-line criminal, a vigilante who takes the law into his own hands. Batman has always been out to get the bad guys and seems to have little moral compunction about how that happens. He is clearly obsessive, almost singularly so (which is the only way he could have become what he became), which makes normal relationships difficult at best (unlike Superman, who as Clark Kent is able to pine after Lois Lane and as Superman is able to have a relationship of which Batman would be envious, if the Bat weren't so obsessed). If Superman lived by a moral code that forebade killing and never (at least to my memory) struggled with it; Batman seems forced to restrain his venge-filled actions, as if he'd like nothing better than to just kill the bad guys and be done with it, and it is only by his own obsessive self-control that he does not become the evil he has dedicated his life to fighting.

Anything on the Superhero scale beyond these two are simply perversions, knock-offs if you will, of the original.

Superman is perfection; Batman is the closest humanity can come to achieving that perfection.

Maybe that's why I always preferred Batman over Superman. I could identify with Bruce Wayne's (Batman's true identity) struggle with his own dark side and his obsession over achieving his own version of perfection - both physically, mentally, and socially - yet giving in to his own vices.

I haven't seen "Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice." Maybe I will at some point. One synopsis I read sounds good: "Fearing that the actions of Superman are left unchecked, Batman takes on the Man of Steel, while the world wrestles with what kind of a hero it really needs."

I did see the trailer. And there is one line from that that I did like. Batman, for whatever reason, says to Superman, "Time to learn what it means to be a man."

Without knowing context, that line represents the essence of the difference between Superman and Batman.

To create "Superman," we had to go to another planet, to another race of beings (despite their very human-looking nature), to something truly other-worldly.

To create Batman, it took one revenge-obsessed man with unlimited time, energy, and resources.

Both are cartoon characters, of course. So it's all silly nonsense.

But Batman captures the essence of what it is to be human: to struggle with who we want to be, against who we're afraid we could become.

Making peace with the Saints

I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church, as a Southerner, and an American - which means I grew up with great suspicion and perhaps even fear of the Catholic Church.
Yes, I heard preachers come around saying the AntiChrist would be a Pope, and that Catholics practiced idol worship and this whole "praying to Mary" thing was blasphemy. As a lover of history, I also understood all the evils perpetrated by different Popes and the Catholic church as a political power. And there were issues with Immaculate Conception (Mary being conceived without sin?), needing to go through a priest to get to God, and there was the whole cannibalism thing of the wine and wafer served during communion supernaturally turning into the actual blood and body of Christ once inside your mouth.
A byproduct of that was a complete dismissal, if you will, of Catholic "saints" - particularly since I grew up believing in the Priesthood of all Believers and that all believers are also sanctified, therefore making them, or us, all saints.

Then I married a Catholic. And met some fantastic Catholics who were as "Christian" as I am. And recognized that any organized religion is going to be rife with fallen humans who do things "in the name of Christ" that surely embarrassed Christ (if Christ can be embarrassed; I don't know). The Catholic Church is highly organized and structured and has certainly had its share of fallen human beings placed in positions of authority who abused their power and used the power of the church for selfish gain.

My wife is no longer a practicing Catholic, having joined me in a more Protestant form of worship. Having said that, I also found myself reading a few Catholic theologians and discovering real beauty and certainly significant contributions to everyone's understanding of what it means to be in relationship with God.

That's a long introduction to "My Life with the Saints." No, not my life, although there is some of that; but rather a book by the same title by a Jesuit priest named James Martin.
I stumbled across this book in a Barnes and Noble bookstore quite by accident, if you believe in such accidents, and bought it as a present for MG - a selfish purchase, because I knew I really wanted to read it.  It took several years before I finally got around to reading it (it was first published in 2006), but I did.

And what I was reminded mostly was that it is easy to forget that these people that the Catholic Church venerates as "Saints" were, in the beginning, simply people with an amazing commitment to following God, whose lives reflected something special in that devotion, something I could learn from even as I learn from reading about the lives of Billy Graham and John Calvin and Martin Luther and Chuck Colson and Donald Miller and any number of other believers who have shared their spiritual journey with the public through their books and sermons.
Yes, some of them seemed to be bat crazy. They did things (a teenage girl leading an army against England? Visions in a pig pen in France?) that were hardly normal. Still, once  you get past the craziness (any worse than an Old Testament profit lying naked on his side and cooking food over excrement to make God's point?), you have to admire the determination, the passion, the total surrender to an absolute faith that what they were doing was ordained by God.

I read the Bible. I study, as best I can, the Bible and look to it as "God's Word." But I also know there is great wisdom to be gained by learning how other people have interpreted those Words, seeing the example of the way others have lived their lives of faith, and read the stories of the Martyrs (My  Southern Baptist upbringing encouraged me to read stories of the martyrs - many of the same lives the Catholic Church venerates as Saints; I guess it was OK to call them "martyrs").
Actually, that's not entirely true either. I did grow up hearing references to Saint Paul and Saint John. But then, consistency wasn't always the strong suit of the church I grew up in.

Martin writes at one point, "Some might argue (and some do argue) that all you need is Jesus. And that's true: Jesus is everything, and the Saints understood this more than anyone. But God in his wisdom has also given us these companions of Jesus to accompany us along the way, so why not accept the gift of their friendship and encouragement?"
A theologian whose writing deeply affected my life, C. S. Lewis, once said of the Catholic practice of calling on Saints that, while he didn't do it, if we do accept that Christians live on after death, why would asking a "Saint" to pray for you be any different than asking your neighbor or members of your Sunday School class to pray for you?
And so I found inspiration in Martin's brief stories on people like Joan of Arc, Therese of Lisieux, Thomas Merton, Ignatius of Loyola, Mother Teresa, Peter, Thomas Aquinas, Joseph ... not all of whom have actually been officially declared "saints" but who have made the first step of being "venerated."

I read, for the first time, this prayer from Merton that begins, "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so ...."

I laughed out loud, at times, in reading the words of Pope John XXIII, a very humble and humorous man. He was once asked by a journalist, "How many people work in the Vatican?" To which the Pope replied, "About half of them."
On a visit to the Hospital of the Holy Spirit, he was introduced to the sister (nun) who ran the hospital, and was referred to as Mother Superior.
"Holy Father,'' she said. "I am the Superior of the Holy Spirit."
"You're very lucky," said the Pope. "I'm only the Vicar of Christ."
And during a dinner party in Paris, he was asked, "Aren't you embarrassed, Monseigneur, when there are women present who wear very low-cut dresses? It's often a scandal."
"A scandal? Why no,'' the Pope said. "When there's a woman with a plunging neckline, they don't look at her. They look at the apostolic nuncio to see how he's taking it!"
That humor was the trademark of a very humble man who, after three years of serving as Pope, wrote, "My sense of unworthiness keeps me in good company; it makes me put all my trust in God."

And it shapes the story of Martin and his own spiritual journey that, despite his being a Jesuit priest, is really not that different than any of us who struggle to develop a personal relationship to Christ.
At one point, in his relating to Peter, Martin writes of his own search for humility, "It's not the kind of humility I wanted,'' he tells a friend.
"What do you mean?"
"I wanted the kind of humility that when others saw me they would say, 'Wow, he's so humble! What a great guy! ... I wanted a humility I could be proud of."

At the end, in his conclusion, just when you could be feeling like you could never live with the faith of these people Martin writes about, he says, "Believing that God wants us to be ourselves is liberating. While I'm always called to grow, God asks only that I be myself, no matter what the situation. So when I'm listening to a friend tell me his problems, or hearing someones confession, or standing before a homeless man in the street, I don't have to say, 'What would Peter or Francis or Therese or John XXIII do?' Certainly they are models of Christian action for me. But God has not placed them in this particular situation. God, in his mysterious wisdom, has placed me here, with my talents and skills, as well as my weaknesses and limitations. Therefore a better question is, 'What should I do?"

In other words, the same place that it started for the people we look to as "saints."
I am one.
Now, if I can only consistently live as one.

"Men at ease have contempt for misfortune''

It is Sunday morning. I feel like preaching.
Turn with me to the book of Job.
Of course.

In Chapter 12, Job says, "Men at ease have contempt for misfortune."
Remember, when the book of Job started, Job was the ultimate "man of ease." There is a litany of his holdings, his family, his wealth. He is a respected member of the community, one that people go to for advice and counsel.
Yet now, possibly looking back at his life, he has this realization. It couldn't have been easy to make, because none of us want to admit we look down on people less fortunate. But I think down deep we know it is true: when things are going good in our lives, when we've got money in our pocket and the mortgage is being paid and the car is running right and the wife and kids are relatively happy, we look at those less fortunate and think, "Well, if only they'd done what I've done they wouldn't be like that." Sure, we thank God for our good fortune, but there is a dangerous tendency to think that somehow, because we're so blessed, "me and God" as a friend of mine once told me when I asked about his good fortune, "are tight!"
During those times, we help other people. We're compassionate toward those in misfortune. But down deep, in those areas we don't like to explore, when we see things go wrong in the lives of other people or even in our own lives, we look for reasons: what did they/we/I do to bring this circumstance?
Your spouse or child gets sick, you can't help but wonder, did I do something to bring this on the person I love? Is it my fault?
You lose a job, and think, "Am I being punished for some sin that I'm unaware of?'
From a seemingly happy and worry free life one thing leads to another and soon you are having trouble paying the bills, but a car needs repair or there is an unexpected medical expense and soon you have to choose between the immediate and the long term. Before you know it, groceries and gas have to take priority over mortgage and loan and now the home is facing foreclosure.
It's easy enough to trace how you get to the current situation, but it's that first step that has you bewildered. Where did that first disaster come from? Why did it happen to me?
What did I do to deserve this?

Job's friend Zophar's whole speech in chapter 11 is about that: "You say to God, 'My beliefs are flawless, and I am pure in your sight.' Oh how I wish that God would speak, then he would open his lips against you and disclose to you the secrets of wisdom ..."
Zophar's idea of justice demands that God treat people "fairly." He can't accept that this amount of horror could befall Job if Job had truly been living an upright and blameless life. But we know what Zophar doesn't know: that Job didn't do anything to deserve this.
No, that's not exactly true either. Job got this because he was living an upright and blameless life, and that attracted the enmity of Satan.

There are people who don't believe God really cares about the individual happenings in our life, that He is above us and distant. Eastern religions teach that we live our lives over and over until we get it right (before simply  disappearing into Nirvana, becoming "one with the universe,'' losing our identity as individuals completely). Islam - again, the short version - says everything is as "Allah wills it,'' meaning whatever lot you find yourself in, that's what Allah intended for you. Accept it, deal with it, move on.
My faith teaches that God does indeed care about the individual happenings of my life (and yours). He is involved in not just the day to day, but the minute by minute. It doesn't make sense. Why would the God of the Universe care about me?
We Christians are not fatalistic. We believe God gives us the power to change our circumstance, that He wants us to change not only our condition but the condition of those around us. We have hope - not only for eternity, but "strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow."
I think that is the point of the book of Job. There is the cosmic struggle going on. My faith teaches that Satan rebelled against God, and his rebellion continues to this day, and the only way Satan knows how to "get" at God is through God's favorite creation, man. The more of us Satan can get to reject God, the more victories Satan can claim on his way to ultimate defeat - kind of a "doomsday'' scenario, where Satan realizes that he's going down, so he's bound and determined to take as much of God's creation with him on the way.
We might not like this honor that God has bestowed on us, of defending God's honor if you will (and I know theologians are rolling their eyes at the simplicity of that statement) in this cosmic battle of the seen and unseen.
But it is an honor that God thinks so highly of us, His creation, that He believes we will follow Him "regardless."

But sometimes, like Job in chapter 7, we say, "What is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much attention, that you examine him every morning and test him every moment?" Or, as my brother David said to me once, "Don't you think Job wanted to say to God, 'Why did You have to mention my name?'''

Job asks of his friends - and they are his friends, and their advice is as wise as they can make it, they just advise not really knowing the full story that we, the readers, know - to hold him accountable.
I find a couple of scenes very powerful in the book of Job: one where his friends intentionally come together and then go sit with Job in silent support, putting their own lives on hold for seven days; and then this scene where Job, despite the argument he's having with those friends, still wants them to hold him accountable for his life, his words and actions: "But now be so kind as to look at me. Would I lie to your face? Relent, do not be unjust; reconsider, for my integrity is at stake. Is there any wickedness on my lips? ..."

In the end, all Job knows to do is cling to his absolute faith that he has followed God faithfully. What he wants his friends to hold him accountable for is this: "Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant what I hope for ... that I had not denied the words of the Holy One."

I'm not Job, holy and blameless and pure. My guess is, you don't see yourself that way either. I am the last person I'd expect whose life God sees such reflected glory in that He's willing to say to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Ray ..."
But I do believe that all of us are part of that. I do believe that God does say to Satan, "have you considered my servant (your name here)?" and that Satan sees it as a challenge to see if we - the followers of God - will "curse God and die" (as Job's wife, his closest confidant and helpmate, encouraged him to do - no doubt out of her own grief).
The good news for all of us is also that God placed boundaries around what Satan could and could not do to Job. Like Job, we have God's protection. He knows there are limits to what we can bear.

Sure, we ask "but why take the lives of Job's children and servants, innocents who did nothing to deserve what they got?" And I don't know the answer to that. I sit here beside my wife as she sleeps in a hospital bed, knowing she is still unaware of just what happened to her and the extent of her injuries. From my perspective, this happened to me. My guess is that from her perspective, she will ask why this happened to her.
And I know that we're fortunate. God's boundary did indeed put a limit on what was allowed to happen to us. Last night, MG said of the accident, "It's good that nobody died." She doesn't know, I don't think, how close she came to dying, that no one at the scene expected her to survive. And I know that it appears we're going to have what we'd call a "happy ending,'' (again, our perspective) and not everyone gets that.
And I don't know why.
All I know is that whatever I go through, whatever "life" sends my way, I want to be able to come out the other side and be able to say - like Job - "I have not denied the words of the Holy One."
I haven't always been able to say that. And I ask my brothers and sisters to hold me accountable.

I once heard a missionary preach who ended his talks with something like this: "That is the end of my words. But the sermon continues."
I know that is true.
But it's Sunday; go get some fried chicken and sweet tea.
And don't forget to say the blessing.

Random thought

As I watched the parade at The Citadel last week, I couldn't help but think of this quote from George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia." And this isn't a statement on war or peace, but rather the feeling the most men (if not most people) get when they see such a parade ....

"The men who were well enough to stand had moved across the carriage to cheer the Italians as they went past. A crutch waved out of the window; bandaged forearms made the Red Salute. It was like an allegorical picture of war; the trainload of fresh men gliding proudly up the line, the maimed men sliding slowly down, and all the while the guns on the open trucks making one's heart leap as guns always do, and reviving that pernicious feeling, so difficult to get rid of, that war is glorious after all.”

― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

Reading wisdom books - and this time, I don't mean "Travis McGee" (although that's a start)

Sometimes I think most of my worldview has come from reading the Travis McGee novels of John D. MacDonald - and let me say that if you're only going to get your worldview from one fictional author, you could do a lot worse than the chronicles of Travis McGee.
Recently (a relative term) I decided I needed to read straight through the Psalms. It occurred to me that over the course of my life I thought I had probably read everyone of the 150 Psalms, but I couldn't be sure. So I decided to read one a day. Sure enough, about 190 days later (hey, sometimes I forgot or was on the road or was buried in re-reading MacDonald), I put down the Psalms. I could honestly say now I had read them all.
Understood them all? Applied them all to my life?
No. But I do believe all those words will not go void.
Toward the end, I came across quite a few that I wanted The Heir to remember, in light of his facing the challenge of being a Knob under the merciless thumb of the cadres and upperclassmen who are intent upon molding him into a man of character in their own inimitable way.
Psalm 140: "Rescue me, Or Lord, from evil men; protect me from men of violence."
Psalm 141: "Let the wicked fall into their own nets, while I pass by in safety."
Psalm 119: "It was good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn your decrees."
Psalm 116: "The Lord protects the simple hearted."
And so on. There are a lot of Psalms of protection.
Then I went on to read Proverbs and found chapter 13 "He who scorns instruction will pay for it, but he who respects a command is rewarded."
I figured as long as I was in the wisdom books - and had no more Travis McGee novels lying around - I would go on to Isaiah
I came across Isaiah 40: "even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength ..."
But anyway, this morning I came across Isaiah 59:4 "No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case with integrity. They rely on empty arguments and speak lies; ..."
The first thing that came to mind was "lawyers!'' Doesn't this sound like the legal profession today? In our courts, justice is over-run by rules (reminding me of Isaiah 28:10 "For it is: do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule, a little here, a little there.")
Of all the "tions'' that plague our country - inflation, immigration, lack of education, over-taxation, unionization - the one that seems to me to have really done the most damage is "litigation."
Because of courts that no longer actually care about justice, people can sue because their coffee was served too hot; or because they didn't see a step, tripped and fell; or they ate something that no person in their right mind would eat and then sue because there was no warning label telling them "not to be taken internally."
Comedian James Gregory used to do this entire bit about rules. Things like the sign on the hotel swimming pool that says "No animals allowed in the pool,'' which Gregory says meant that some nut, some where, said, "Hey, you know what we ought to do? Let's put the pony in the pool!"
My favorite is the warning label on certain hemorrhoid medicine that says, "Not to be taken internally," which means some nut, some where, thought to himself, "this stuff has done such a great job on my backside, I wonder what it tastes like on a cracker?"
You want to have some fun? Go read warning labels, and then imagine all the stupid things people must have done to cause that label to be printed and applied. Chances are, it was because of some lawyer who found a court that didn't believe in common sense.
There is no end to these ridiculous examples, of course. The other day, I was reading about John Edwards, the United States Senator and one-time vice-presidential candidate, who made a boat-load of money as a lawyer. One of his best-known cases (and I recognize this is an over-simplification, but essentially correct) was suing doctors on the premise that obstetricians caused cerebral palsy in babies by not performing cesarean sections soon enough. Apparently Edwards had jurors believing that waiting too long to deliver a baby caused some kind of stress that caused cerebral palsy.
Now doctors do cesarean sections as four times the rate as was done in 1970, with no reduction of babies born with cerebral palsy. Numerous studies have been done since to show that "in most cases, cerebral palsy is caused by fetal brain injury long before labor begins." (NY Times, Jan 31, 2004).
Shouldn't those doctors and their insurance companies be able to sue lawyers to recover the money they had to pay out? Shouldn't all of us who have had to pay higher medical expenses because of the cost of malpractice insurance be able to get a refund from attorneys like John Edwards?
Well, no. That's not how the system works.
It's not about justice. It's about "empty arguments and ... lies."
But then, it's not just lawyers (as much as I might wish it was).
A few years ago I was reading an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (because I read it regularly for stuff like this) when some high-brow professor from a northeastern brainiac school said something profound. I wish I had the exact quote and documentation, but I don't have time to look it up so I'll paraphrase.
Essentially, this Ph.D. admitted, teachers had spent several decades teaching "critical thinking skills" to generations of American students and he was afraid all they'd really done was teach students to be 'critical' - but not to think.
You see it all around us. We take pieces of sentences or phrases out of context and try to hang people on those very words. This is one area Chris Mathews and Glenn Beck apparently agree on, because I've heard both do it over and over.
As current presidential candidate Herman Cain (himself criticized for something he said that any sane person would realize was a joke) said recently, "America needs to learn how to take a joke."
Oh, we're good at being critical.
We're just not very good at thinking.
And so we've forgotten how to defend ourselves or others with integrity, seeking justice. We reward those with the prettiest words, no matter how empty or irrelevant they are.
My youngest son is a master of this. He can take an argument and turn it six ways, inside and out, hanging on to pieces of sentences or the most abstract concepts.
And, I must admit, he probably learned it from me.
Because like Adam, given the chance I'll tell even God "It wasn't me; it was the woman - the woman you gave me! So really, if you think about it God, it's your fault!''
Let me say right here that is not a reflection upon the Trophy Wife, no matter how quick I am to blame her for the most abstract and ridiculous things simply because I am trying to get out of taking responsibility for my own actions.
"No one calls for justice;
      no one pleads his case with integrity.
They rely on empty arguments and speak lies ..."
I read somewhere that "for lack of guidance a nation falls.''
Oh yeah, it was a wisdom book.
Proverbs 11:14.

Natty Bumppo's got nuthin' on me now

I killed my first deer last night.
(Hence the reference to Natty Bumppo, the hero of James Fenimore Cooper's "The Deerslayer")
It was a doe. Not a big one.
But big enough to bust the front grill and dent the front right corner of the bumper of my beloved Cruella.
Did I mention I killed this deer with my car?
Yeah, I felt sick. After all, it was only a week ago that I'd been going down essentially this same road (by "same," I mean driving through central Mississippi on my way back to Gulfport), spun out on a ridiculous patch of ice, and busted up Cruella more than I thought.
Cruella DeVille - my old Cadillac.
I felt sick because the right front headlight I'd just replaced about six months ago was busted up pretty good, with little tufts of deer hair caught in the broken glass.
I felt sick because even though I thought the Caddy came out of "Skating With the Stars'' in pretty good shape, turns out she hadn't. She was loose in the front, and somewhere along the way the rear bumper skirts came off, leaving much of the old girls' bottom exposed.
I felt sick because sometimes you can't help but wonder, "Why me?"
Oh, and I felt bad about the deer, too. What tragedy compelled this poor little doe to throw herself out in front of an on-coming car in the dark of a January night in Mississippi? I know she saw me coming - I saw her tiny little fearful eyes looking at me as she leaped (leapt?) in front of my headlights at the last second.
Thousands of birds drop dead out of the sky in Arkansas; a hundred thousand fish show up dead in an Arkansas river; two hundred cows keel over in a field in Wisconsin.
And one sucidal doe throws herself in front of my on-coming car somewhere south of Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
What's going on here? Signs of the coming apocalypse?
On the other hand, this is something like a rite of passage for a man, isn't it? Killing game?
See, we didn't hunt when I was a kid. We played ball - football, basketball, baseball. But nobody in my immediate family hunted (except my mother, who could stalk a sale from one side of Atlanta to the other and never came home empty-handed).
 I had uncles that were hunters. At family gatherings I listened to their stories of hunting wild hogs and turkeys and coons and, yes, deer. I had an uncle that trained coon dogs and I remember my Dad - also a non-hunter - telling the story of the time my uncle Woody took him coon-hunting.
I remember the first time I went fishing. I was so excited. I had visions of casting my line and then battling some monster of the deep back to shore. I'd seen "American Sportsman" and those guys on the back of boats whose hands were blistered and raw from hours of fighting to land a giant blue marlin.
Instead, I stood on a bridge over a little stream, dropped a line in the water, and waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Bor-ing.
When I was older, some men in the church decided to take a couple of us deer hunting. Again, I had these visions of stalking deer, creeping through the undergrowth, checking to stay downwind - all those things I'd read about in James Fenimore Cooper books.
(By the way, Cooper was ridiculous.  You want a good laugh, read Mark Twain's essay on Cooper's litterary offenses at http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/projects/rissetto/offense.html . Then read Twain's commentary ridiculing the Book of Mormon .... oh, just go read Mark Twain, despite the current controversy).
Of course, the reality is they took us out before daylight, stuck me on a tree stand, and told me to wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
Bor-ing.
I finally got down and found my best friend who was equally bored. We walked back to the road where we thought the trucks were parked. While we walked and talked, a rabbit jumped out in front of us. Mitch was so excited he started pointing his gun and pulling the trigger, but the safety was on. The rabbit was a very good sport and waited until Mitch could get the safety off, at which time it darted away as Mitch fired off one round - and blew the heck out of a small pine tree.
"Looks like you got a nice 127-pointer there, Mitch,'' I said. "Do we skin it here, or drag it back to camp?''
That was my last time to go hunting.
So as I got older and the guys would sit around talking about hunting and fishing, I'd have to sit there and keep quiet and listen. I have to admit, they made it sound so much fun, so Southern and macho, that I was tempted ... but then I kept reminding myself that these stories were about five minutes out of who knows how many hours, if not days, of hunting/fishing trips.
Now I had killed my first deer. I believe I remember the proper response is to cut off the bottom of my shirttail and dip it in the blood of the kill.
However, when a deer is killed by an on-coming car there is no real blood to speak of, and my shirt was a nice, black-on-black dress shirt from Macy's that I really like.
Besides, I didn't have a knife or scissors with me anyway to cut off the tail of the shirt even if there had been any blood to dip it in.
And, honestly, it's not like I really felt good about killing Bambi.
As Bumppo himself says when he and his friend Hurry Harry fell a doe and Hurry is feeling proud, "Nay, nay, Hurry, there's little manhood in killing a doe ..."