A Very Funny Guy

Micah leading the singing of the girl's team's fight song.

It's been more than a decade since the terrible day our beloved son, Micah died. I did CPR for 30 minutes while waiting for the ambulance and couldn't bring him back. It was the worst day of my life and I've had plenty of bad days. Sheila and I got through that day but it feels strange. It doesn't seem like more than a decade since we last heard him drive up in the driveway after work and burst through the front door looking for something to eat. In many ways our lives fell apart in the aftermath - Sheila's illness, our jobs went away, we lost our home, moved far from our families, passed through poverty, homelessness, our other son sick and in prison because of it. We lost most everything of worldly value that we have worked for. 

Gray day at the beach - Micah scooping up the ocean with a fork.

And here we stand, trusting in God that all things do, in fact, work together for good to them that love God. The devil doesn't like anyone who passes through the fire and clings to their faith in spite of it. Our daughter and son-in-law, however, are pillars of the church and are doing well. Sheila's health is stabilized. It doesn't mean the challenges are done, but we face them trusting in Jesus. We can do nothing else here at the world's end, save stand and fight. Thank you all for your many prayers and your wonderful support in our hours of need. We love you all and pray for you constantly. God bless you all. Here are a couple of stories friends sent me about Micah. They give me courage.

• 

  Micah & Jordan in Mexico
  

  I often think of Micah, and his beautiful love for Christ and others. I still will never forget the Mexico trip we were both on, and our bus arrived at this out-of-the way area with small cabins and a main building. The only food sent on the bus was an entire box of flour tortillas... So around 6:00 PM that night, Micah came to my cabin, and said, ""I've been foraging for food, Paula, and I have found a really old bull roaming this property! Now I know a lot of folks here are vegetarian, but come sun-up, I think most of 'em would change their minds and eat BEEF Fajitas!". Then he added with resignation, "Besides, it's an old bull, And since I've got this (brandishing a large Bowie knife), I think I can take him! So If Harley and the food hasn't shown up by midnight, I'm killing the bull, and prepping him! All I need you to do is get a fire going on this brick-built grill, while these guys (motioning to a few young college kids) can gather fire wood for you!" - Paula Westbrook

• 

  Micah "The Wall" King
  

  In 1993 our son Micah played basketball for Keene High
  School. The boys team played first and then the girls played. I think this game was at Blum, Texas - big Keene Charger rivals. Between games one of the girls on the team complained to Micah that the girls always rooted (loudly) for the boys team, but the guys didn't seem interested in supporting the girls when they were on the court. As the girls team took the court, Micah rounded up the boys, stood them up and led the Keene crowd in singing the girls team's fight song. Someone took a picture of the moment (top of the page). That's Micah on the far right with the Big Dog sign in his hand, singing his heart out for the girls. 
  

• 

  Micah playing shark with our daycare kids.
  

  Micah worked at Little Caesar's Pizza while he was in high school. He and a friend managed the store by themselves. His partner one day was in the back making a pizza when he heard the bell on the door jingle he waited to hear Micah greet the customer. After a while he went to the front to see what was going on. A customer stood at the counter. Micah was nowhere in sight. Micah's partner went to the counter and said, "Welcome to Little Caesar's." He nearly jumped out of his pants when he felt a tug at his cuff. He stepped back and look down to see Micah, all 6'3", 280 pounds of him folded up inside the space under the counter, grinning from ear to ear.  Micah's partner had no idea what to do next. He wound up taking the customer's order and pretending there was nothing wrong. When he went back to make the customer's order, Micah crawled out from under the counter and acted as if nothing were out of the ordinary for your friendly neighborhood Little Caesar's. The poor customer looked utterly confused, but sat quietly till his pizza came out. Micah had a weird sense of humor.

• 

  Micah with his Boys & Girls Club kids
  

   A mother approached us at Micah's memorial. Her elementary school son played the trumpet. He had been invited to play a trumpet solo at the First Baptist Church, the second largest church in Tyler. He was terrified. He confided his fears with Micah during Boys & Girls Club after school the week before. Micah encouraged the boy to go ahead and play. He shared stories with the boy of his own struggles with stage fright. He sometimes would shake so hard, people on the stage could feel the floor vibrate. What Micah did for the little trumpeter was get up early on Sunday morning, went down to the First Baptist Church and sat down on the front row next to the boy. "Don't look at anyone else," Micah told him. "Look at me. Keep your eyes on me while you play and you'll be alright." The boy gave a perfect performance. Micah came home that day and never told us what he had done. The boy's mother told us how grateful she was for what Micah had done for her boy. "My son," she said, "trusted and loved Micah and that got him past his fear."
  

• 

  Micah's daycare class
  

  Two weeks before his death, Micah was talking to a friend. They talked about the future, girl troubles and school. Suddenly, Micah asked, "Do you think anyone would miss me if I died?" I kind of think he knew God was telling him his time was short. I can answer his question now. There's not a day goes by I don't think of Micah. His Mom is the same. Everyone I know remembers our gentle giant fondly. Many of his kids have come to us years later to tell us how much they miss him. 
  

• 

  Making another memory with Mom.
  

   One day I went out in the backyard of our daycare center one stiflingly hot Texas day and found Micah sitting in a wheelbarrow full of water spraying jets of water into the air with a hose. "What ARE you doing?" I asked looking at the growing puddle in the middle of the playground.  "I'm makin' a memory," he replied. It was Sunday and the puddle would evaporate by sundown so I figured no harm, no foul. The boy (I say "boy", he was over 6 feet 250 pounds by then) gave me a sheepish grin. I gave him a thumbs up and left him to his memory making. I told his Mom to look out the back window and told her what he said he was doing. She cried a little. Moms are easily made misty-eyed.

• Two years after I wrote this, my daughter told her Mom another Micah story we'd never heard.  Micah worked a series of restaurant jobs out of high school. He eventually came to manage a restaurant making pretty good money. Whenever he got paid, Meghan told us, Micah came and found her and took her out to eat. His favorite place was a Chinese buffet on the South Loop in Tyler. He was such a fixture there, the lady who owned the place with her husband would spot him coming in the door. "Ah! Big a Boy!" she would hurry to meet him as he came in (Micah was 6'5" by then). "Musta be payday." It was. What I didn't know was that when he went to China Buffet, he would find his sister and take her along to treat her to dinner. He used to check out her shoes to see if they were wearing out. Meg was working her way through school at Chik-fil-A and put a lot of miles on her shoes. We didn't know her shoes were wearing out, but Micah who also put a lot of mileage on his shoes and at his weight, the wear and tear on his shoes was substantial. It was just like him to be aware of his sister's shoes and because he was doing pretty well, he didn't worry for a second about who should pay for Meg some good shoes. He just did it because Micah was just that kind of person.
  

The mark of a life well-lived is the hole it leaves when that life ends. Our church has never been so filled for a funeral than it was for Micah's memorial service. The stories that we told of his life at the service made us laugh and cry. I've seldom seen a funeral service quite like it. I miss him and look forward to Jesus' coming when he will rise and all of us will together be caught up in the clouds to go home with Him. What a day that will be!

© 2022 by Tom King 

Life on the Edge: Childhood Adventures of The Flying Dingbat Brothers

My brother Donnie atop the Mizpah Gate at SW Junior College 1969.
Campus security was not amused!

We always liked high places. We lived in the treetops in our yard - big oaks with brittle branches. Mom finally quit looking out the kitchen window. The view must have been worrying for a mother. Her two sons, who seemed to believe they were either Tarzan or Cheetah, would inevitably be swinging from the branches of the brittle old post oaks in our back yard or making like a gibbon, swinging arm over arm from branch to branch of the Chinaberry trees. We were pretty good at it too, though Donnie was somewhat better than me. My mom one day found one neighbor kid dangling from the Chinaberry with a broken bone (leg or arm, I don't remember). He had attemped the arm over arm trip round the Chinaberry that my brother and I used to do, only he was scared so he tied a rope around his leg in case he fell. 

He did!

It's fortunate he didn't tie the rope round his neck. Mom cut him down and called Edward's mom and he went off to the doctor. Nobody got sued for childhood stupidity fortunately. We were safe anyway as we were too poor to sue.

This is pretty much my youthful
self-image back then.

My kid brother, God rest his soul, and I made a ramp by our driveway on a little rise. We would come tearing down the street on our bikes, hit the ramp and go flying. My brother, not the finest bicycle mechanic in the world, followed me over the ramp. He sailed up into the air (we used to get a couple of feet in altitude out of a jump) and as he left the ramp, his front wheel came off. He hit the ground, forks first, and sailed over the handlebars. But gymnast that he was he managed to tuck and roll up to his feet. He looked around and spied the front wheel rolling off across the neighbor's front yard. He sprang to his feet and took off in hot pursuit, managing to catch it before it ran out into the cross street half a block away. 

My brother was the epitome of cool, unlike his awkward older brother. I have two pictures somewhere - one of me and one of him doing a hand spring over a heavy sawhorse we had purloined for the purpose. Donny's image was captured at the peak of the flip, perfect form, toes pointed, back straight headed for a 3 point landing. I was better at photography than gymnastics. The picture of me shows a gangling kid, long torso, short legs, sort of a skinny flying troll look. I looked like someone had flung a bag of loose bones over the sawhorse. I was headed for a -5 point landing and a face plant. I told my brother his looked so much better than mine because I was the better photographer.

 

How Donnie actually looked!

Life back then was high-risk and a ton of fun!

Our friend Leslie Gilley had a great long rope that hung from a huge tree overhanging a usually dry creek bed in the pasture behind his house. I asked him how often he replaced it. Since his older brother had installed it years ago and the knot was above his climbing ceiling when he was 12, he told me, "When it breaks."

We would climb out on another limb that over hung a bend in the creek, grab the rope and swing out over the creek bed, back and forth until it slowed down enough to slide to a stop in the gravel that filled the bed of the creek at that spot. One day I climbed out on the limb with the rope, leaned back and launched myself out into space. As I approached the bottom of the swing where momentum reached its zenith, I heard a crack above as the rope parted. I hit the gravel in the creek bed butt first and at pretty good speed. Fortunately, I've been blessed with very tough bones and nothing was broken.

Leslie's comment was, "Hey man, you broke my rope!"

I answered, "I'd have been happy to let you break it."

My brother, the gymnast, decided he was going to do a triple flip on the trampoline. He finally did it, but got a bunch of bruises and sprained his neck along the way. One day he was late for school on Monday. Mom flipped back the covers on his bed and found him sleeping in his skivvies and covered with bruises. Turns out he'd been motorcycle racing, had run off the track, through a barbed wire fence and crashed in a gully sans bike. I'm not sure Mom knew he'd been doing motocross or that he could ride a motorcycle for that matter.

In the middle on the bottom,
where else would I be?

I thought I'd outgrown being stupid until I became a staff member at Lone Star Camp and was introduced to water skiing. I got to do a lot of stunts in our weekly ski show, I think, mainly because I used to do such spectacular wipe-outs. Remember: not as coordinated as my gymnast brother.

I was once jerked off my skis (on purpose), but then lost my swimsuit while being dragged around the lake (not on purpose). I had worn a Speedo under the suit and managed to catch it on my foot. As I was dragged on my back by the dock where a row of preacher's wives and kids sat watching the ski show. For a bit of comic relief, I stuck my foot up and passed the audience with my swimsuit waving from my leg like a flag. One of the minister's wives asked me afterward if I had done that on purpose. I told them it was part of the show. We all laughed and laughed.

I've got so many stories about my brother and I and the disasters we suffered doing risky things. I once kicked myself in the back of the head while trying to barefoot ski. We did pyramids for ski shows. I was the center guy at the bottom. When the pyramid collapsed at the end, accidentally or on purpose, guess who got fallen on?

The point of the story is that I look back on my misadventures fondly. I've been almost run over by a motorboat, jerked off a lifeguard tower by a ski boat, and was nearly immolated during a campfire skit of Elijah and the Priests of Baal (Donny was in on that one too.) My best friend kicked loose a 500 pound boulder that hit me square in the chest while we were free climbing a 40 foot cliff over the Brazos River. Not sure how, but when the stars cleared up I was hanging from a scrub of a tree 30 feet above a field of rocks as the boulder bounced down to the river, clearing out a path through the saplings..

As a grownup I risked 5 nonprofit startups unpaid, wrote more than one million dollars in grants, became a nonprofit consultant, a freelance commercial writer and am working on publishing a novel (the sixth book I've done). I taught self-defense for staff of a mental facility treating often violent kids from diminutive 3 year olds to 17 year old football players and one powerful 300 pound Samoan kid. I wrangled 20 horses, read a book on how to break horses and trained several to ride. I cut trails with emotionally disturbed kids and rode 5 days a week, 5 hours a day and never lost a kid. I took youth groups camping and led canoe trips down swollen Texas rivers. I taught canoeing and swimming and rescued a drowning steer from the overflowing Trinity River in a canoe with the help of a junior lifesaver girl I'd just graduated the day before. WE SAVED THE COW!

My wrangling days....

We made some memories and took some risks. My Mom had two ADHD boys and she raised us just right. We were allowed to take risks and we took 'em. She didn't hover. We grew up to be good people with the right blend of courage and kindness. My brother and I once extricated the car of a church singer from stuck high centered on a curb with the front wheels dangling in a deep mudhole. After we leveraged his car from the mud, Donny and I then walked home in the freezing rain afterward. And no, he didn't offer us a ride (we were on foot) because we might get mud on his mother's car's upholstery. Walking home, wet and shivering across a pasture waist high in wet grass, my brother and I felt like we'd won a battle against evil. After all, Steve did make it in time to sing for vespers. We made it home to a hot shower.  

I lost my brother his sophomore year in high school, killed by a stupid prank by a friend. Christmas, the night before he died, we sat up late talking about how we would do Christmas when we grew up and had families. He talked about his plans to work on improving his grades so he could go back to church academy with his friends. We used to fight like cats and dogs. I can't remember why we wound up in wrestling matches. We quit doing it when things got too dangerous and chances of hurting each other became too real. 

In that last day, however, my brother and I bonded as we never had before. And when Christ comes to take us home, I'll be looking around for my brother. We're still not done swinging on ropes, skiing, climbing trees and sailing. I never got a chance to take him out on my Hobie Cat and catch a full breeze and tip her up on one pontoon. 

Oh, the things we'll do once we have forever in which to do them.

© 2022 by Tom King

Tom king

 

Ten Reasons It's Great to Be an Old Man

I have attained my grandfatherly years honestly. I will admit I had hoped for a few more grandchildren than I wound up with, but my children have stubbornly refused to reproduce in the quantities I had in mind. I gave up my armada of boats, my ton of fishing gear, my sporting goods bag (in case a ball game broke out among my 18 grandchildren that, sadly, never materialized), my scuba diving equipment, my train sets, most of my game collection and all but a few of my young people oriented book collection (even "Mike Mulligan & His Steam Shovel" was passed along to the one grandkid we've determined to spoil rotten).  I have two grandsons, one of whom is 2300 miles away is adopted and whom I love like one of my own children and visit weekly by Skype. My other grandson currently lives in Tennessee and moves around a lot, I've never met him and have only made tentative contact with him through Facebook recently so we don't know how that will go yet. 

 

So my dream gig as the fun grandpa has been abridged significantly. I had a fleet of canoes and equipment all ready to lead family floats down the mighty (and fairly safe) rivers of Texas. I even trained as a Red Cross swimming and canoeing instructor. Man I was ready. Oh well. "The best laid plans o' mice and men oft times gang agly" as Scottish poet Bobby Burns once opined.

Still there are some definite advantages to becoming an old geezer and a few disadvantages like arthritis to make you appreciate the good bits.  So let me list the good stuff that comes with being an old coot.

1. People don't expect you to dig ditches. It surprises them if you do pick up a shovel and they are appreciative since they didn't think you were going to help. AND they keep offering you drinks and asking you if you need to sit down for a minute.
2. Your children and their spouses ask you if you want to take a nap and think it's funny when you snore. You actually win points with your offspring, your spouse and your various descendants when you pile up in the recliner for an afternoon snooze.
3. You finally have accumulated an assortment of favorite things that don't get thrown out by your significant other because either they are ugly or you don't need them. By the time you are eligible for social security you own some things like mugs, recliners, fishing gear, Hawaiian shirts, and books that your wife tolerates and won't slip into the Goodwill donation box when you aren't looking. Figuring out what you can keep is a process of elimination.
4. Arthritis is a great excuse for avoiding unpleasant tasks. Conversely, when you actually get around to doing one of those honey-do projects, you get a brief respite from the admonishment to get-er-done!
5. You have a collection of favorite TV shows you really like. Better still, because you've previewed and selected the good stuff you enjoy, you don't have to wade through the depressing post-modernist crap your kids and grandkids think is relevant. 
6. You have a favorite music collection that is wonderfully eclectic. I've got more than 500 songs in my phone's mp3 list and a pile of CDs, cassettes and vinyl that I'm gradually converting to digital mp3s. I defy anyone to look at my digital collection and find a bad song or at least one I don't like. I've got every thing from Pearly Shells (Don Ho) to Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road, from Doris Day to The First Highlanders Pipe Band playing Amazing Grace, from I'm My Own Grandpa to Brown-Eyed Girl, from Monkees, Beach Boys and Beatles to Placido Domingo, John Denver, Earl Scruggs, Burl Ives and Audio Adrenalin. My personal radio station never plays a song I don't want to hear or interrupt the music with a commercial for Honest Bob Vanderhoort's Used Cars.
7. You can sit on the back porch in the sun for 4 hours and it feels like you had a productive afternoon.  It is no longer necessary to tick off a list of things you need to meet your life goals. Sitting on the back porch playing your guitar and feeding the squirrels in the sunshine WAS one of your life goals.
8. You know how to do stuff that makes you happy. You play the guitar, banjo, dulcimer or Irish bodhrain, You build model ships. You can make your own bookshelves. You have time to write that novel you always wanted to write. You can cook things you want to eat and you're pretty good at it because you have lots of practice.
9. People no longer ask you to help them move. You can go over if you want, but you are participating in more of a supervisory role because you have a lot of experience in how to move and pack having done so many many times in your life.
10. Little things give you immense satisfaction.  A favorite restaurant, a walk down a country lane, a grandkid coming to visit, birds coming to your bird feeder outside your window and you can watch them from your easy chair. You, in fact, have an easy chair and people save it for you. 

There are other things I'm sure, but I just can't remember them now. In fact, people don't expect you to get ten things pulled from memory in the first place, so when you do, you get credit for being kind of old, but still sharp as a tack.

Time for my obligatory Sabbath afternoon nap.

© 2021 by Tom King

 

 

 

One Man's Journey - Grandpa My Guide

My Grandpa Thomas Adolph King - My Hero

With my own father, I could never connect with his journey. He mostly journeyed away from his own father's legacy and from his home town, which for a headstrong over-active male in the late 40s was anywhere but his one-church college town and the faith of his father. He was more influenced by his mother and his mother's people who were more like him. Impulsive, stubborn, prideful Scots-Indians. His father (my grandfather) was a quiet hard-working studious man who deferred to my strong-willed grandmother in almost all things. We grandkids loved him, but looked to my grandmother for any decisions about family matters. She was the axis about which we all rotated. She was for my dad too. He looked to the rowdy, disruptive McClure clan for his example rather than to his strong, quiet father, the culmination of a line of schoolteachers, preachers and farmers for his guides.  

Grandpa & Dad

He later came to respect my grandfather, but by then he'd been to prison, fought a lifetime addiction to tobacco and alcohol (all things his own dad's family heartily disapproved of). In Grandpa's family 3 of the 4 siblings left their father's faith and went a-roving in the manner of my grandmother's clan, although the girls especially were always respectful and loving with their quiet, patient father. But it was my powerful grandmother who, in spite of her tacit acceptance of her adopted faith, remained independent of the King family culture and very much bound to the culture in which she'd grown up. This was despite her old wounds at how she was treated by her own clan.

My grandfather was my de facto male mentor. My Dad abandoned my Mom and his 3 kids when I was five. My grandfather, however, never wavered in his love for us. We remained close to Grandpa and by association, to my stern Scots grandmother.  My father went his own way, pursuing his own goals and dreams and left us largely to the care of others. I forgave him as I got older, though my grandmother could never figure out what Dad had done that I should forgive him for it. Mom remarried and I never really bonded with my step father though I learned to appreciate him. He was from somewhere else and on some other journey that did not include me. With my 4 half siblings by him, and my Dad's two kids and step daughter by the woman he got pregnant and ran off with, there were 10 of us total, divided between two widely separated houses. At the age of 52, Dad had a heart attack (he was a 4 pack a day smoker), fell off the wagon (AA for 15 years), and my step-mother ambushed him when he came home from work drunk one day. She shot him through the chest with his own shotgun. Dad's journey ended on the floor of his living room while my step-mom waited for him to die before calling 911.

I felt sorry for Dad. I wrote a poem for his funeral in which I said, "He was a fisherman, in a world unkind to fishermen some times." I'm not sure why I wrote that, but it seemed right to me somehow. His legacy was never mine. Unlike Abram's father, mine did not settle. He went off on his own way. Neither father figure had been the sort I was able to make a legacy journey with. I needed to complete my own journey. I chose my own father figures to guide me. My paternal grandpa was the first of all.  My maternal grandpa left my mother and grandmother when she was young to run off with a younger model and left behind an abandoned family that, thanks to my maternal grandmother, remained true to our faith. Her children scattered like missionaries from Texas to California. Grampie lived his own life, much like my Dad did, aloof and distant from his kids. Visiting my Grampie Bell was like a visit to a foreign country. I recognized few of the characteristics of the home and the family I loved and grew up with.

I read books and chose male mentors to model how to be a man and a father.  King Arthur, Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Captain Horatio Hornblower and others. They all shared one thing. They were men on a mission. They fought with stubborn honor and integrity for what they believed was right. They were leaders and wise ones and that's what I attempted to be. My Uncle Bobby, a pastor and church leader was an influence. He stood for what was right, even when he had to oppose powerful church leaders he believed were doing wrong to the churches that were his job to care for and defend.  

Mom the way I
remember her best.

I have to mention my mother here in speaking of my journey to manhood. She was a tough prairie bird, raised on the High Plains in New Mexico. She was an athlete, gymnast and the kindest person I know. She was the perfect Mom for boys who were hyper, inquisitive and short on attention span for most things. She gave me books early. I found I could focus on those and became a voracious reader, one of the reasons so many of my male role models were fictitious characters. She let my brother and I run free, but with very clear limits. She wasn't very tall, but the woman could swing a belt when need be and believe me there were lots of times when it needed to be. Her endless patience and unflagging quiet support was as much an influence on how I turned out as a man as any of the actual men in my life, if not more.

As a result of all the good examples of faith, patience and tenacity, I've gone down with more than one ship in my time. I don't regret a single one. Often what seemed like failures at the time were doors to something else God wanted me to do.  I worked with abused, mentally ill and neglected children, people with disabilities, seniors, low income families, youth groups - basically anyone that seemed to need a defender.  I am deeply grateful to all of the people and organizations that have stepped up to aid me in my fight over the years. I especially am grateful to all of you, to Kathy, Fred and Dawn, Sheila and Glenn, Sam and Mark, Hutch and the others who have  befriended me, helped and guided me and showed me how to do what I was able to do right up until I couldn't do it anymore. From you guys I learned much. With your help, I was able to do some real good for real people. I'm kind of proud of that.

I'm still teaching on occasion (most recently night ESL classes with Chinese kids). I'm physically disabled with crippling arthritis from abusing my muscles and bones over the years. I always felt I was on a mission from God. Some of that may have come from having missed receiving any kind of legacy journey or direction from my father and from who I chose as my role models. From my Grandpa King, I got patience and devotion to my own family. From King Arthur I received a willingness to use might for right even though you may only get that "one brief shining moment" out of the struggle before it all collapses around you. From Robin Hood, I learned that just because someone has power, they aren't necessarily worthy of your obedience. You can do what is right in spite of them. I once got an angry letter from a very important person over one of my crusades. I've always been rather proud of that. Captain Blood, went to war on his own hook, because he refused to be slave to a tyrant. Captain Hornblower appealed to me because he was a smart leader who made the system work despite it's fundamental flaws and because of who he was - in the heat of battle, cool-headed and courageous. In the eleven Hornblower books, CS Forester, the author, traced the growth and career of Horatio Hornblower from midshipman to admiral. I learned much about leadership that I was able to apply in my own career.

From my sweet wife, I learned order. She helped me by bringing her formidable organizational skills and her stunning competence at everything she put her hand to. She kept me going through good times and bad. She taught me to enjoy life when things were going well and to pray hard and endure when they weren't.

To all hose friends who helped me, stood by me or gave me an "attaboy" as they passed along the way, I say, "Keep up the good work." Folk like all of you play an essential role in keeping all those knights in dull and dented armor going out there on the front lines in the war on apathy, indifference, poverty, ignorance, and self-righteousness. God bless you for that.

© 2020 by Tom King

Chinese Grandmas Spring Into Action

As some of you know, I teach English language classes to Chinese kids at night. Lately, I've had a very full schedule. The coronavirus is sweeping through China and the schools are closed all over. The kids are restless because their parents are keeping them inside all day. I'm making more money than I did last year as more and more parents are putting their kids in online classes like mine. Some seem to be putting their kids in classes for punishment. Those are always fun classes. Anyway the group classes are particularly exciting and by the end of the night, I'm pretty well pooped out.

Working with the kids, I find they are pretty spooked. Because they can't leave the house, the schools are pretty much all shut down throughout February, and they have limited contact with their peers in real-time, the kids are very much aware that something bad is happening. I have to be careful not to encourage them to talk about it lest I fall afoul of Chinese authorities.

So how are two-income Chinese families taking care of the little ones while they are at work? Daycare's are terrifying and leaving them altogether with a friend exposes them to the same threats as they can't be sure someone entering the friend's home isn't infected.

Into the breach springs the Chinese grandmas. When you think of grandmas in America, you think of kindly white-haired ladies who spoil their grandkids shamelessly. But these ladies who have moved in with their children to care for the grandkids are by no means American grandmas. Based on what I get from the kids in bits and pieces, Chinese grandmas tend to be tough, no-nonsense taskmasters. Some of the kids are a bit afraid of them. I've also noticed that my late evening classes have stopped altogether. Apparently grandma makes the kids go to bed earlier than Mom and Dad did.

All that said, these stiff-spined seniors are doing their bit to prevent the spread of this hideous disease among Chinese kids. It's pretty scary out there and the kids know it. One of my 4 year olds told me yesterday, "All Chinese people sick!" when he was telling me how he had to stay inside the house all day. It's indicative of the seriousness of the outbreak that children who are being protected from the news by their parents, still have picked up on the seriousness of the epidemic. Stories coming out of Communist China tell of hundreds of bodies a day coming through hospital morgues - far more than the 500-800 deaths being reported by the Chinese politburo. One of my children told me the virus came from people eating bugs and bats and "bad things". Evidently the kids are being warned to be careful what they eat. That story has been poo-pooed by some leftist pundits lately, but apparently it's a rumor being spread across China enough that the kids have picked it up.

The fact that schools across China are closed all this month according to the kids, gives you an idea of how bad it is. Chinese schools don't do snow days or close for anything more than national holidays, and then rather reluctantly. You should see the homework these guys take home on holidays!

Whether the disease breaks loose or not, especially among the youth of China, might just depend on this army of tough women and their tenacity in keeping their descendants safely corralled until the emergency is over.

God bless those brave Chinese grandmas!

© 2019 by Tom King

The Application to Date My Daughter

      (Secret King Family Edition)

Something similar to this went round a few years back.  I touched it up a bit to meet my somewhat higher standard at the time since I had a daughter of "that age".  I printed up a batch of these in case any candidates decided to show up on my doorstep with "intentions".  I gave one young man a copy to fill out and returned to cleaning my shotgun.  He turned pale and sneaked out while I wasn't looking.  I last saw him running across the front lawn in the recommended "serpentine fashion".  - T. King (2013)

________

APPLICATION FOR PERMISSION 

TO DATE MY DAUGHTER

NOTE:    This application will be considered incomplete and will be summarily rejected unless accompanied by a complete financial statement, job history, family lineage (7 generation minimum), current blood test and medical report from your doctor.

1.     NAME:___________________________________________

2.     DATE OF BIRTH:____________________

3.     HEIGHT:___________________

4.     WEIGHT:_____________ I.Q.__________  G.P.A._________

5.     SOCIAL SECURITY #:________________________

6.     DRIVER’S LICENSE #______________________

7.     BOY SCOUT RANK:_________________

8.     NUMBER OF MERIT BADGES EARNED:______________

9.     HOME ADDRESS:______________

      CITY:______________________STATE:______ZIP:______

10. Do you have one MALE and one FEMALE parent?  

         Yes_______    No_______

          If NO, explain:__________________________________

11. Date Parents married:________________

12. Date of your birth (for calculation purposes):_______________

13. Number of years Parents married:__________
    Grandparents?:_______         Great Grandparents?___________

14.  Do you own:

A.    A van:_____
B.    A truck with over-sized tires?________
C.    Low profile tires?_________
D.    A car stereo with speakers larger than 4 inches
         in diameter:______
E.     A  Harley Davidson motorcycle:_______
F.     Leather clothing of any kind?_____
G.    A waterbed?_____
H.    An earring, nose or belly button ring?_____
I.      A tattoo?_____
J.      Fuzzy Dice:______
K.    A bandana?______
L.     An unusual haircut?______
M.    Do you have any homeboys?_________
N.    Does your underwear extend above your pants
           more than 3 inches____

Warning: If you answered "YES" to A, G, H or I above, discontinue 
application and leave premises while you still can.  If you answered 
"yes" to item N and are a full-time professional plumber or 
appliance repairman, you get a "by" on this one.

15.  In 25 words or less, what does LATE mean to you?

16.  In 25 words or less, what does DON’T TOUCH MY DAUGHTER mean to you?

17.  In 25 words or less, what does ABSTINENCE mean to you?

18.  Church you attend:____________________________

19.  How often do you attend?_____________________

20.  Best time to interview you father, mother, pastor, priest or rabbi?
          ___:___am/pm

Answer by filling in the blank and please answer freely; all answers are confidential.

   (That means I won’t tell anyone not related to or employed by me – I promise!)

A. If I were shot, the last place on my body I would want
     to be wounded is in the _______________________

B. If I were beaten, the last bone I would want broken is my

      ________________________________

C. A woman’s place is....__________________________

D. The one thing I hope this application does not ask me about is

        ________________________________________

E. When I first meet a girl, the thing I notice about her is her

      __________________________________________

F.  What do you want to be IF permitted to grow up?

       __________________________________________

*Note: If answer “E” begins with “T” or “A”, discontinue application process immediately and leave premises. Keep your head low and run in a serpentine fashion.

I SWEAR THAT ALL INFORMATION SUPPLIED ABOVE IS TRUE AND CORRECT TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH, DISMEMBERMENT, NATIVE AMERICAN ANT TORTURE, CRUCIFIXION,  BEHEADING, ELECTROCUTION, CHINESE WATER TORTURE, RED HOT POKERS AND/OR VIVISECTION WITH BLUNT INSTRUMENTS.

Date (for county mortuary records):____________________  

Signature:__________________________________

                (That means sign your name, Einstein!)

Thank you for your interest.  Please allow four to six years for processing.  You will be contacted if you are approved.  Please do not try to call or write (in the unlikely event that you are, in fact, even remotely literate).  If your application is rejected , you will be notified, in person, by two gentlemen wearing Italian suits and carrying what appear to be musical instrument cases.  Do not write below this line.

FOR PARENTAL USE ONLY

___ Rejected - Escaped
___ Rejected - Phone coroner
___ Rejected - Phone Guido and Rocky
___ Rejected - Soiled himself during interview phase (basically harmless)
___ Rejected - Wrote below the line (incapable of accepting instruction - send G and R to “educate”).
___ Rejected - Insufficient merit badges (allow to remain alive)
___ Accepted - (Yeah, right!)

Christ and the Collective

by Tom King

One may become a member of the Body of Christ with almost embarrassing ease.  It requires but one act and one small symbolic ritual.  The act required is repentance.  Repentance is not in any sense some sort of self-flagellation. It is not a trip to spiritual boot camp nor even 40 days in the wilderness, although that may be part of your spiritual journey at some point.  We need to be careful not to postpone taking up membership in Christ’s church in order to perform some great work of contrition or some great ritual of joining.  Joining the Body of Christ differs fundamentally from joining the Masonic lodge or the Communist party.  The Body of Christ is not in any sense a collective.

In the Body, we are members, not subjects.  We are, if you accept the idea that we are all created beings, already children of God and called according to His purpose.  We are organs of the Body of Christ, not all copies of one thing.  We are not called to sign up to join as soldiers. We are not called to be trained to sublimate ourselves to some collective state and be turned into another  identical egg in a stack of boxes of eggs all destined to be scrambled in service to the aims of the chef. We simply assume the place in the body that we were created to occupy.  It is not so much a process of molding so much as it is a process of restoration.

 C.S. Lewis* argued that “true membership in a body differs from inclusion in a collective”.  He compares membership in the Body of Christ to the structure of a family.  A family is made up of unique individuals.  They are not units of “homogeneous classes”.  You cannot interchange one for another.  If grandpa were to die, you couldn’t replace him with a Labrador retriever.  Grandpa has one role in the family. The family dog has another.  Brothers can’t be swapped for sisters as though they were all just “children” with identical functions.  You can’t even swap one brother for another.  All members of the family are unique; almost a species unto themselves.

We instinctively recognize the family structure as the “way things ought to be” – the ideal way to organize human beings.  Look at the myths and stories we tell ourselves.  The best ones are always about groups in which each individual is a separate, unique, but essential part of the whole.  The Wind in the Willows unites a Badger, a Mole and a Water Rat.  Star Wars unites a princess, a Jedi-in-training, a pirate, a stuffy robot, his comical sidekick, a teacher and a “walking carpet” that communicates by howling.  Every member of the Dirty Dozen has his own unique function.  Even Christ chose as his disciples, not identical acolytes, but an incredibly diverse band of fishermen, fanatics, theologians, tax collectors and accountants.  In none of the stories, that so appeal to us, does any member sublimate him or herself to the collective.  They simply work together in service to a common goal.  Each has his own part to play. Not one could be easily replaced.  None are members of a class. If you remove one member, as Lewis puts it, “You have not simply reduced the family in number; you have inflicted an injury on its structure.”

The Body of Christ is a unity of individuals.  This idea of the unique individual as part of a motley crew of rugged individualists is enshrined in the US Constitution and in Scripture as the model for all human endeavours.  We are not designed to be trained to robotic sameness, pumped full of ideology all spouting the same talking points and shoved into whatever box the collective deems appropriate for us. We are not part of a class that can be treated as though it were a chunk of cheese or a block of wood.  We are not blacks, Hispanics, conservatives, “the” poor, “the” rich or the ruling class. The central planners would put an end to individualism for individualism is seen as a threat to progress.  Individuals make for too many pieces on the chess board to push around.

By progress, the great leaders of our day mean the evolution of the people of this world into a vast homogeneous soup. The collective is a soup in which every man, woman and child is a bit of the broth which can be seasoned, stirred and heated into whatever flavor the planners happen to favor this week.  Individualism is anathema to the collectivist.  

The very existence of the solitary, independent-thinking individual is a threat to the collectivist ambition.  That is why membership in collectives requires extensive prerequisites.  There must be relentless training to subdue any tendency to think independently. Art, music and writing are encouraged, but only such art, music and writings which reflect the talking points of the collective.  To remain a member of the collective, one must perform frequent ritual obeisance to the collective throughout his life. The almost comic displays of “patriotism” and devotion to the great leader that one sees in places like North Korea are not an aberration, but are rather the logical conclusion of the collectivist vision.  

Where Christian faith is all about faith and trust and being secure as to one’s place in the universe, one is never really secure as a member of a collective. Someone is always looking over your shoulder, searching for telltale signs of individualism that must be rooted out.  The threat of being cast out or punished by the collective for unorthodoxy is always there hanging over your head.

The only ritual required to join the Body of Christ is baptism.  It is a once for all ceremony. It is a public declaration that I am unclean and would be washed and made new by Christ. It is submission, not to a denomination, a particular church group or even to a set of doctrines, but to Almighty God Himself and no other.  Anyone who says differently is organizing a collective with himself and not God as its head.

Christ did not die for a society, a political party or for a nation-state, nor even for a church.  He died for each individual soul, whether that soul chooses to accept the gift or not. To the secular-collectivists, communists, progressives, socialists and statists, Christianity would have to seem like an almost militant assertion of individuality.  To defeat this pernicious movement toward uncontrollable individual liberty, the collectivists must accuse the Body of Christ of their own sin, that of suppressing individuality.

In this the collectivists are having some success, because without experiencing it for oneself, it is easy to misunderstand what it means to be a “servant” of God.  Christianity must seem “maddeningly ambiguous” C.S. Lewis pointed out.*  Christian faith seems to come out against our own natural individualism in that the practice of that faith requires that we abandon our own “natural” will to God. The Apostle Paul described the natural will as doing what you do not want to do because you are compelled to do it by your old nature.  

What the secular-collectivists do not and cannot comprehend unless they experience a relationship with God themselves, is that, in exchange for our giving of our old “self” to Him, God cleans the old self, repairs the damage, polishes it up and gives it back to us.  We then are true individuals as we were meant to be; free from all the old urges, compulsions, terrors and cravings that living in a corrupt world had placed upon us and once used to control us. We become, in Christ, new people who can freely choose to do what is right because they want to and because they are no longer bound by fear, no longer deluded by old programming and no longer weak and able to be manipulated.  

To the leaders of the collective, the existence of such people must be terrifying indeed. 

© 2013 Tom King – Puyallup, WA

*From “Weight of Glory” by CS Lewis.