Easy As ABC? Sometimes.

You went to school to learn girl
Things you never, never knew before
Like "I" before "E" except after "C"
And why 2 plus 2 makes 4
Now, now, now
I'm gonna teach you
Teach you, teach you
All about love girl
All about love
Sit yourself down, take a seat
All you gotta do is repeat after me

That’s right. Today’s blog post is a lesson from Old Pops, The Love Professor. For those that know their Jackson 5 lore you’ll recognize that the lyrics above are from their song “ABC”. The song continues:

Reading, writing, arithmatic
Are the branches of the learning tree
But without the roots of love everyday girl
Your education ain't complete
Tea-Tea-Teacher's gonna show you
(She's gonna show you)
How to get an "A" (na-na-na-naaaaaa)
How to spell "me", "you", add the two
Listen to me, baby
That's all you got to do

A B C
It's easy as, 1 2 3
As simple as, do re mi
A B C, 1 2 3
Baby, you and me girl

This cute little number debuted in 1970 on American Bandstand. I was a freshman in college and had no intention of taking advice on Love from an 11 year-old kid. Looking back on Michael’s answer to Love, I still don’t like his solution.

Valentine’s Day looms. Last February, I did a series of posts with unsolicited advice for guys on how to make the most of the opportunity. This year, I already The Gift taken care of, so I’m just waxing philosophical about Love.

Several years ago I read an essay on “systems”. I wish I had made a copy of it or could remember who wrote it so I could give credit, but I don’t. Basically the author’s point was that we have reduced everything to a system.

In our own bodies we have systems: the nervous system, the circulatory system, the digestive system, etc. In society we have systems: legal systems, political systems, economic systems. Even our cars have systems: the fuel system, the braking system, the electrical system, and so on.

Here’s the thing about systems, when they work they’re wonderful. I’m using a system of ones and zeros, computers, wireless signals, servers, etc. to write and share this blog with the masses. It’s mind boggling to think that anyone around the world could read this if they are in the System.

Another thing about systems, sometimes they break… We have things like the postal system and the healthcare system. The thing about systems is when they do break, we can just blame the system and no one gets hurt. “Who is to blame for these problems?!” “No one really, the system failied.” Do you ever get the feeling that sometimes we create systems so we’ll have something to blame and no one is really accountable?

I’ll be conducting another wedding this Spring. Very soon now I will meet with the beautiful young couple for some “pre-marital counseling.” I hope they are not reading this because I’m going to confess that I don’t have all the answers to Love.

I am pretty sure though that I know a lot more about it than Michael Jackson did at eleven (God rest his soul). I do know that it cannot be reduced to system or a formula like ABCs and 123s.

Several years ago our marriage survived a conference we attended on how to have a successful marriage. I say “survived” because looking back, it was a system some guy had put together. He discovered he could take his show on the road and people would pay money to get the “keys” to marital bliss. And, also a coupon  for the advanced seminar where you got even more secret stuff.

Maybe I shouldn’t be too quick to judge, because actually me and My Amazing-Missus were marriage school dropouts. We ditched the last few sessions and did some Christmas shopping for our boys.

It may sound like I’m taking our 42 years of marriage for granted. I’m not, really I’m not. Nor am I saying I haven’t learned anything. I think I will tell this young couple that there are no magic formulas; there’s not a system. Sometimes it as easy as A-B-C or 1-2-3, sometimes its as complicated as H-E-L-L. Just ask my wife. I will tell them that Love is just the opposite of systematic. It is organic, it is natural, it is beautiful and it is eteneral.

Valentine's Day will be the 43rd anniversary of the day I proposed to My Amazing-Missus. I would do it again in a heart beat. I can only hope she would say, YES! But I would settle for a, “What the heck.” 

Testing 1, 2, 3.

I'M NOT AN ELECTRICIAN OR AN ENGINEER. Luckily, you don’t have to show some kind of license or certificate when you go to Home Depot® to buy a pair of wire strippers or vice grips, because like most guys, I don’t let knowledge, or the lack of it, get in the way of taking things apart and trying to put them together again.

As a kid, I remember the intrigue of attaching wires together to see what would happen. One such memory is burned into my cerebral circuitry. It was probably second grade and time for the school science fair. My parents were very busy. They were bakers at the time, making pies for the early morning deliveries. I took it upon myself to create a blue-ribbon science fair entry.

We definitely could have hung out together.

I found an extension cord, cut off the feminine end, stripped the wires back and taped them to the legs of a little metal folding chair. I strapped my little brother in and was just about to plug in my certain-to-be-award-winning entry, when my mom noticed, screamed, and the rest is a blur. Despite other, later experiments on my brother, he’s still here today.

One of my favorite and successful, projects started with finding an old record player in a pile of junk someone had dumped onto the Arkansas riverbed near our house. Its tubes were missing, but I used the turntable parts, wired around the internal amp to another working amp and voila!

So, four paragraphs in now, let me say, this is a post about connections. I had an english teacher once who critized my writing because, “it takes you too long to get to the point.” Well, I have a blog now, so… there.

For several posts now, I’ve been talking about having a "knot"—a group of people to hang out with, talk with; connect with. I realize my metaphor is a bit flawed now, in an age where everything is becoming more wireless. But I really like the picture of relationships being like wired together. Even the picture that sometimes wires fray and sparks fly.

Tonight I’m meeting with a little knot of people I treasure. We meet almost every Friday night. They are the first two people I’m interviewing as a part of the series I promised in my last blog post. I’m hoping to wrap up the interview tonight so I can write about it over the weekend.

Until then, may your connections be strong and your tubes burn brightly.

Finding the Knot

So...

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Bert and Ernie
The Lone Ranger and Tonto
The Team
The Tribe

To review: a couple of posts back, in a little essay titled, Keeping Company I mentioned a group called The Inklings. It's the kind of group that C.S. Lewis described as "a little knot of friends who turn their backs to the World."

As I said, I would like to have a group like that—a Knot, if you will. To explore the idea further, I started with identifying "six" people I would like to invite to a dinner. These people wouldn't actually be in the Knot, but in going through the process of who to invite, maybe, I thought, I can discover something about myself and the kind of people I could potentially be in a group with.

If you take a look at my "six": David Letterman, Flannery O'Connor, Paul McCartney & John Lennon, Tina Fey & Amy Poehler, Yo Yo Ma, and Atticus Finch, some elements are evident: humor, music, creativity, gregariousness, a strong B.S. filter, and a certain, healthy irreverence.

Maybe it's a guy thing. I don't know for sure, I've never been a girl. But it seems like guys like to be a part of the something. Maslow called it "Belonging" needs. Back when I was a kid, guys had clubs and lodges they could join. I'm not sure what all went on, because by the time I was old enough to join in and find out, Gloria Steinem had burned her bra and all males were chauvinistic pigs. Now don't get me wrong. I'm happy for women, and probably would have said something like, “You go girl!” had I ever met Ms. Steinem; but I will admit, I would have liked to go to one of those lodges where guys wore funny-looking hats and had a secret handshake, and maybe smoked a cigar and acted like big shots and maybe had a bowling team.

Now, men seem to be relegated to impromptu little gatherings at places like McDonald’s or The IHOP where they can drink cheap coffee, and complain about the dang democrats. That's not the kind of Knot I'm looking to be a part of. I'm not even sure I would want to go bowling with those guys.

The fact is, the Knot is already forming in my mind. (Wow, out of context that sounds ugly and ominous.) What I mean is, I already know some of these people and we're actually loosely knotted now. They may not look at it that way, but I do. 

So here's my plan: over the next few months, I'm going to interview these people, these potential Members of the Knot, and introduce them here at About Pops (if they'll let me that is). So stay tuned.

STICKS & STONES & WORDS

IF YOU'RE GOING TO WRITE A BLOG you want to believe you have something to say, and you want to hope someone out there besides your mother will read it. Sometimes, depending on the topic you’re writing about, you want to create a sense that you might know what you’re talking about. I’m going to try that.

• I majored in journalism at The University of Tulsa.
• I’ve been to Paris.
• I love satire.
• I was once beaten up for a satirical comment.

It was fifth grade, recess on the playground at Jenks Elementary School. There was this kid that was purported to have been in fifth grade for a few years now. I quipped that, "I bet if he ever finished fifth grade he would probably be so excited that he might cut himself shaving." Word quickly spread. He was mad, out for revenge, and it would all go down at recess. Sure enough here he came. He walked up to the jungle gym I had climbed to the top of, hoping for a battle advantage. He took a long drag from his Marlboro, flipped it to the asphalt, and ground it out with his boot. A crowd gathered, like happens when there’s likely to be blood shed on the playground. Fortunately, the crowd drew the attention of the teachers “on duty”. The crowd dispersed, disappointed. After school, as I walked to the school bus, here he came around the corner. He pulled my blue, canvas-like notebook from my arms. He said, “You hurt my feelings kid. Now I’m going to hurt yours.” Then he whacked me across the head with my own notebook. I lay in the gravel stunned for a minute, then he reached down and helped me up, dusted me off and offered me a Marlboro. [At least in my fifth grade/now 64 year-old mind that’s the way I remember it.]

I know that Sticks and Stones and (maybe even 3-ring binders) can break one’s bones, but as it turns out, sometimes, Words do hurt.

I feel bad for having a laugh at Harper's expense, but what a great metaphor this is. Surely you've had times when you were having a great time and all of a sudden you find yourself tangled up in your own balloons.

For the most part, here at About Pops, I try to stay clear of hardcore politics. So what I’m aiming for here isn’t at all political commentary. It’s just me thinking out loud. Oh, and don’t you dare go away from this trying to say that I am in any way was justifying the ugly deeds of terrorists in Paris. AND, assuming anyone is still reading this (which I realize is an enormous jump to a conclusion), don’t think for a second that I am trying to equate getting beat up on the playground with the massacre at the magazine studio.

In journalism school we were taught with conviction that a free press is crucial, and I believe it. But free press or not, free speech or not, words and cartoons sometimes hurt. As I learned in the fifth grade, we are free to say whatever we want. That doesn’t mean though that we might not get hit in the head with a notebook.

I didn’t learn a lot from that day. I still love satire (I'm writing this post aren't I?). It seems we need to be secure enough in our convictions that we can laugh at ourselves. If you read my post called, Keeping Company, I chose David Letterman, Tina Fey and Amy Pohler as guests at my dinner because, although I am sometimes offended, they make me laugh.

Does humor sometimes hurt? Yes. Does it sometimes offend? Yes. Does it incite anger? Yes. Do we need to laugh? Yes.

I’m trying to reconcile our need to laugh and the fact that in the end, sometimes, Words; like Sticks and Stones, do hurt.

DISCLAIMER: If I’ve offended anyone here, I’m sorry. I hope you were at least a bit entertained. See what I mean? This is a conundrum.