The Five Things Most People May Not Know About Me:


1. I like to sing. In the car. Not the shower (do I look stupid? Water amplifies sound!), but the car. Frequently. Hymns, songs from the radio, Christmas carols, songs from musicals I’ve been in or seen too many times – anything familiar enough for me to know at least half the words. I used to sing while I cleaned the Korean Church( In Buffalo), because it was old, had a marvelous arched ceiling and pretty decent acoustics, and because it was normally empty. Pastor Hong caught me once, but didn’t say anything. Shortly thereafter someone asked if I wanted in on their production of “Messiah”. During a short lived delivery job, I once rolled into a downtown parkade polishing off “ amazing grace” . The burly, grubby loading dock guy greeted me with a strange look on his face, and at the end of our interaction, added, sincerely, “you have a nice voice.” It hadn’t dawned on me that if bad hip-hop could escape the plastic-and-steel confines of a vehicle, my pipes might as well.


2. On the subject of strange things coming out of my mouth…( is there any worse way to begin a sentence?) I sometimes indulge in that pentecharismatic practice referred to as “Speaking in Tongues” or something that might be like that. This one is not commonly known, even in my church circles, because I keep pretty quiet about it. Perhaps because I retain a fair bit of Baptist/ Rationalist suspicion of the practice. This might freak some people out, but perhaps it’s easier to relate to feeling a need to pray, or express something, but having nothing intelligible to say. If you think I’m trying to look particularly spiritual, I’ll tell you that my first experiences along these lines occurred at times when I would otherwise have uttered an obscenity. Or on the toilet.


3. Another thing: I am a Nerd. Not the modern, socially-acceptable COOL kind. I am a completely authenticated nerd. The Battlestar Gallactica is just the tip of the iceberg. I was a painfully shy and awkward child/teenager. Seriously. PAINFULLY. I know this is unfathomable to anyone who knows me now - But I was a full-scale, greasy-haired, tape-on-glasses NERD in school. Really. Don’t look so surprised.

4. Anger. JeremythePolite has more of it than you might expect. A few of his friends are unfortunate enough to have experienced this first hand. In fact, while it usually takes quite a bit to get him there, he feels a bit more like his “real self” when he’s angry. He likes to think of it as righteous anger, though. Because it sounds better.


5. I love The Church. Meaning not just my particular little chunk of church, but the big messy mass of people who tend to go places on Sunday and call themselves Christians. I know very few people ever hear me say anything NICE about “The Church”, but I do love it. Sometimes I love it the way you would love a close relative who lied, cheated, and stole his way out of the rest of the family’s good graces, has used, insulted and belittled you your entire life, who wrecks your car in a drunken binge, sleeps with your wife, and then shrugs and says “ What? I’m only human! What did you expect?” More to the point, I sometimes love the Church like you can love a married pastor and father figure who gets “ A little too close” to your girlfriend, uses and abuses his authority to try to cover it up, and ends up destroying something that you (and he) and whole bunch of other people poured years of their life into. In other words, it sometimes makes me very, very ANGRY…but its family. It makes me angry because it hasn’t always been kind to me or those I care about, and its positive contributions to the world often seem outweighed by some pretty big negatives…It makes me angry because I have this sense of what it COULD be…but so often isn’t. Like so many things, it makes me angry BECAUSE I love it. The way only something you love can. I love it because I am part of it – IT… is me. It’s where I belong. It’s family. And I love it because, despite all the things that infuriate me, wherever I have gone in the world, I have found some very, very GOOD people among its ranks.





There. I did it. For real. I’m not such a rebel now, am I?

Now the fun part.

List Five things people don’t know about you. I tag….

Chuck

Erika

Amanda

Sadie (I don’t think you have a blog. I’ll accept a paper, 500 words or less, in my hands by next Tuesday)

Matt (maybe this will shake him out of his blogging slumber)

And, if I may…

Elaine.

For those who might have difficulty deciphering the complex code of the last post, i will state plainly: I have obtained a Cat. His name is George O'Malley. He had been languishing for four months in the SPCA for a crime he didn't commit. I sprung him on the promise of good behavior. He is large and orange and purrs within a five foot proximity of a potentially affectionate human. He also plays soccer with decapitated toy mice. He perches at my window flicking his tale and sits on my lap to watch Battlestar Gallactica with me. Just like everybody else, he has a crush on Starbuck. He is the perfect cat.

Initial Sightings...

Hmm...can't make that out. Closer...



...Closer..



NOT THAT CLOSE!




Doctor...what..what is THAT?



ITS....



SMAUG THE MAGNIFICENT! .....aka Mr. George O' Malley

I remember walking past warm, lighted houses on dark winter nights, and feeling a powerful pull. The pull of a life, that, at that point, I expected never to have - planning for, instead, a life of hardship and scraping by in the service of “the cause”. These were modest, middle class homes, but I saw framed, in those yellow windows, a museum diorama of a particular ideal. Hardwood living rooms, lined with books, a cat, tea, a wife reading in a chair, sleeping children who, bundled in pudgy snowsuits, would hurl snowballs at each other tomorrow morning on the three block walk to the elementary school.

I figured I knew what I was supposed to be doing, and while I acknowledged those things as good, I felt that pull like a siren call to a soft, slow, comfortable death. Like a gravity that I needed to escape.

A few weeks back I joined two families I know for a birthday celebration. Three sisters, raised in Japan by missionary parents. A house full of their grown children. Hardwood floors, even. Men and women, working together in a large kitchen, making sushi. Laughing at old stories and new ones. Loud and happy.

Spending much of the last month or so with Children. Bundling them up, taking them for walks. Sled rides. Taking them swimming. Having them seek me out in crowded room, and crawl into my lap. Watching people light up with the universal warmth of a smiling baby. Seeing, with surprise, that same look of envy in the face of others, that same pull, in the presence of my apparent “family”.

Last night at Ali and Ryan’s. Loud and happy. Friends getting in each other’s way in a small kitchen, juggling and tossing vegetables and sharp objects. An amazing meal shared around a tiny table. Wine. Coffee. Not one, but two cats. Again with the hardwood. Stepping out, with the light spilling from the kitchen window, into a warmer, brighter winter night, alone but not terribly so, stumbling across the snowy, starlit alley to my door 20 steps away.

I’m not so sure about “the cause” anymore. But they might be on to something with the cat thing. And maybe the wood flooring industry…

Jay: Why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it.
Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.


Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black