An uncommon wealth

The road bumps you along low-slung hills and sharp peaks, slumping banana and trees and a thousand explosive and subdued shades of green. The nearby volcanoes are draped with clouds. Almost like something out of Jurassic Park. 

Our bus bumped and swerved as it slowly made its way to a place that was very familiar to some of us, who had been there a time or two before. Here and there, boys rode horses and herd cattle and waved as we drove by. Young girls chased pigs along a dried-up creek bed. And mothers walked dusty pathways carrying bundles on their heads.

For some in our group, this was a homecoming of sorts to the remote Nicaragua village of Abagansca. The name of this place – loosely translated from some nearly forgotten Indian tongue – means “river with little black pebbles.” I had been there twice before -- and my heart was beating faster with anticipation as our ride came to a halt. 

Keep your eyes on the road, dummy... I wanna collect my pension!

Youngsters who are driven by their grandparents are less likely to suffer serious injury if they're involved in a crash, says a new study in the journal Pediatrics. Those findings come from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, who says that even though grandparents are in an older group that has a higher risk of severe crashes, youngsters driven by their grandparents suffered fewer injuries in crashes and were actually safer than children driven by their parents.

Chalk one up for us fledlging geezers. Gen-Xers and you other hyphenated inheritors of societal labels, take note: You can’t teach youngsters driving safety skills from Grand Theft Auto and other video games.

I initially learned mine from my Dad while heading down that mirage-glistening road to Folsomville to family get-togethers in the early ‘60s. With his foot comfortably stomped on the pedal at 60, occasionally he’d let me and my brother and, in years later my sister, take the steering wheel of that family car.  Learned fast eye-to-hand coordination that no computer game -- not even Grand Theft Auto -- could ever teach. Especially with a nervous, screaming Mom riding shotgun.

You’ll kill us all, Buck!

Mothers transcend DNA and Hallmark cards

In the next few days, mothers throughout America, and other places around the globe, will begin receiving myriad messages of thanks, gratitude and love. It’s an ancient ritual, giving a nod to fertility and the continuance of life. In our country, this tradition is traced back to Julia Ward Howe, whose words became the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic became the rallying theme of the Union during our Civil War.

Yes, sons, daughters, grandchildren and others are scouring the stores to find the right gift, order the sweet-smelling bouquets, zero in on the right trinkets and prepare to offer them at the Altar of Motherhood. We hear in advance from this oddly wonderful sex, Oh, I don’t want or need any of these things. I already have so much!

They cheerfully accept the crude art of their kids, marveling at the intricate, abstract designs of family stick figure holding hands. Their own visages being grotesquely portrayed with weird hair-dos and body shapes which  would stun Picasso. The scrawled messages have more misspellings and reversed letters than a hostage note written by the backwoods boys who got whacked in Deliverance.

And for adult children, it’s not much better. The brief notes we write are weak footnotes to the sentimental screed found within the mass-produced greeting cards we buy.

I’ve been around long enough to know what mothers are, more importantly, what they do. They clean up the messes their children make from birth and sometimes into adulthood They wipe snotty noses and other gross places; grimace against projectile vomiting from sour tummies;  and listen carefully for cries during the night denoting pain or sadness or fear. Especially when some invisible Boogeyman has invaded a darkened bedroom.

They endure mindless prattle and answer questions Einstein and Oprah could never answer. Their eyes mist up when they hear correct recitations of the ABCs, counting numbers and fill-in dialogue from Dr. Seuss books. For you see, such imagination needs a nudge.

The fine art of miscommunicating

Things I have learned about communicating and interacting with others... 

When they've sounded "Taps" in Army boot camp ending the training day -- it's not really a good idea to strut up and down the barracks hallway, impersonating your drill sergeant when you think he's gone for the day.

Suppose you're in the fifth grade and in the school spelling bee in a crowded gym with your Mom looking on. You misspell a word and they "ding" you out of competition. And you react by muttering an expletive you've heard a gazillion times before.

When you get an e-mail from a "friend" in your office asking for your opinion about corporate's  "latest and greatest idea. " Never -- EVER --  hit the Reply All button.

If you're in a foreign country, say, like Nicaragua, your Spanish-speaking skills won't necessarily work if the stranger you're trying to speak to turns out to be a visitor from the Mideast. 

You meet a celebrity, a guy who has co-starred in 1960s beach movies with Annette, and the best thing you can mutter is, "Boy, you sure do have a lot of kids to be such a short guy!"

That when you are young newspaper reporter and writing a crime story and on deadline -- and the sheriff's last name is "Dick" -- be careful of typos that place the word-article "the" before his name. Some folks reading it the next morning might think you're editorializing and the sheriff doesn't think the mistake is very funny. A related lesson? Copy editors sometimes are neither.

Say you're 12 years old and shoplifting a necklace for a girl in your class as a Christmas present, and you turn around to the man who has been trailing you and say, "Sir, this may seem like a strange question, but why are you following me? I hope you don’t think I’m shoplifting!"

You have just been introduced to give a presentation to a large crowd, and as you stand to approach the microphone you forget that you're still furiously trying to dry-rub away water that has spilled onto the front of your pants.

That an uptight elderly third-grade teacher -- with hair the color of moldy Velveeta cheese  -- monitoring the school cafeteria will never believe you when you tell her that the reason you didn't eat the mashed potatoes is because of an allergic reaction that will cause you to bleed from your ears and eyes and eventually kill you if you eat them.

Yep. Always lessons to be learned.

Legend of a fall

Okay. The last week has passed, and in the last few days so have the cliché queries the sympathetic comments, the rhetorical questions and all of that.

No, me and my girlfriend didn’t get into a slugfest; nor did I dare to take on a burly bunch of bikers at a local tavern. Didn’t walk into that proverbial door by accident.  I didn’t back-end some slow-driving goober along U.S. 31, and, as it were, there was no failed athletic attempt to be heroic at the end of the game.

Truth is, I fell in my driveway while taking that olive-drab, 96-gallon behemoth our city officials describe as a trash container. Near dusk, I attempted to navigate a full load of my personal flotsam, jetsam and wood planks to the end of the driveway. But that journey took a turn. And drop.

Lost my footing down that heavy rock trail half-way to the curb. Feet slid out like an errant ice-skater and dropped heavier than three large sacks of Idaho spuds. Boom! Face down flat against the heavy, sharp-edged gravel. Like any neo-geezer I lay there stunned for a few seconds. Then insult crowned injury.

Selah from the sidelines

Forty-something years ago, I was on a freshman football team at Evansville Central High School coached by a fellow named Reno DeMuth. He stood about 27 ½ inches tall, had a chest like a beer keg, but had a frothy countenance, flowing clearly to every string-bean and fat boy on the squad. And that commanding voice he had, which roared us into action on many occasions:

I don’t know what you knuckleheads are thinkin’ the way you just did that! But on this field I am a creature, in the classroom I am a teacher… but I am always everywhere a preacher! Now take your rear ends outta your helmets and give me the minutes we need to win this game!

Coach DeMuth entirely played all three roles, but most of all, that third job description. Evangelizing to get 50-something hormonal hooligans working together. 

The Eden of our hearts

So sorry but not surprised to hear about the Kardashian-Humphries split and the demise of the Katy Perry-Russell Brand nuptials. In an age where marriage and relationships come and go faster than a drunken athlete’s Tweets, none of us should be surprised.

We have been living in a disposable world for quite some time. Not quite sure when it began but I suspect it made its arrival about the time disposable diapers and razors came onto the scene.

 Any more, if the Internet service you have runs too slow and it’s hard to get a wireless connection, just get rid of what you have and upgrade. All that cheesy and intriguing stuff offered in television ads (why do most of these items usually only cost $19.95, plus shipping and handling?) that breaks down fast, we soon discard or “re-gift” to the less fortunate. Get rid of it.

It’s an odd and ironic phenomenon, especially when you consider there are a few among us who hoard monstrous tons of garbage, flea-bitten starving colonies of animals and stuff which places them at point of eviction and alienation from their families. And even worse, makes them subjects of reality series.

But I am getting off message, perhaps. I was talking about relationships; more specifically, marriage and its all-too-common disposability. Far be it for me to offer any profound observations on the subject, having been up the proverbial aisle more than once. However, I won’t let that stop me.