I have shared my only two athletic achievements worth mentioning: scoring my first soccer goal in Honduras and winning a croquet game in Oxford, England. I know what you’re thinking: the words “achievement†and “croquet†don’t belong in the same sentence. That I would even think to share these two should help to emphasize the […]
At the beginning of fifth grade, my first year at David Lipscomb Middle School, I auditioned for the play, Don’t Rock the Boat, and landed a part playing “Antonio from Bamboola.†Antonio is a pirate who commandeers a cruise ship. I wore all black, a fake mustache, and a red sash for a belt. The […]
When we were growing up, my two sisters and I weren’t allowed to watch several television shows. Married with Children had bad language and crass humor. The Simpsons was a little too irreverent for my parents’ taste. Friends had all the wrong goodies: promiscuity, children out of wedlock, divorce, profanity, a casual attitude toward pornography, […]
Certain mistakes you only have to make once. Saying “That didn’t hurt,†to your mom after a spanking. Smoking a cigar on an empty stomach. Forgetting to reapply sunscreen in Key West. Using the word “dramatic†when you’re in an argument with your wife-to-be. Visiting Texas. Just about every guy I know has made the […]
If you’re a star athlete, you won’t win the “Most Tenacious Defender†award. You’ll win MVP, or Highest Goal Percentage, or Most Rebounds. Stats will be your friend because they make you look good. Or perhaps you make the stats look good. I was not a standout athlete. The stats gave me buckteeth. My first […]
What I do for money is help organizations find their inner dorkdom and prevent them from sabotaging themselves with sameness.
I’m confident that all three of those students are remarkable in some way. I just hope that they don’t sabotage their originality long enough to bury it.
Five-year-olds in insulated cover-alls and funky hats would stop and ask, “Are you okay?†Well, I guess that depends on what you mean by “okay.†No bones are broken, but I’ve felt like a twelve-year-old who wets his bed for the last hour.
Perhaps, instead, I would place a live frog, kicking and croaking, in each pair of upturned palms and say, “You decide whether this frog lives or dies. If you decide to save its life, you must find it a good pond or river, then let it go. If you decide to kill it, you must do so at the front of the room where everyone can see. That’s the cost of being human.â€
Certain personality traits lend themselves to mythologizing, and in light of certain events, even common words can take on mythic proportions and special connotations. Most of these small, quite ordinary happenings take place on the way to the grocery or church or baseball practice.
