Humor?

Dancin’ Machine with Two Left Feet

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“The job of feets is walking, but their hobby is dancing.” ― Amit Kalantri

She glided into my arms with invisible angel wings. It was a fraternity formal and The O’Jays were singing a slow song. We were “slow dancing, swaying to the music”, my arms around her waist, hers around my neck. She was a vision of loveliness in an emerald, green empire-waisted gown that complimented the deep red hair piled high on her head and the emerald, green choker around her neck. I inhaled her pheromones…perfume and stood no chance. I was smitten.

As I gazed into her blue-green eyes I noticed the freckles splashed across her nose and felt my heart squeeze. I was smitten again. I leaned in to steal a kiss, but my “second” left foot failed me, making solid contact with the instep of her high heel encased foot. I was left with duck lips kissing air as she bent over in pain.

My “feets” had failed at their hobby as badly as the relationship failed five years later. At least she left me still on my feet, staggered but standing.

Someone shared a video on social media, and I made the mistake of clicking on the “twist contest” from the movie Pulp Fiction. It wasn’t so much the dancing of John Travolta and Uma Thurmond but Chuck Berry’s “C’est La Vie” that got me “chair dancing” in my recliner. I am now one of the old folks who say, “it goes to show you never can tell.” I also dance better sitting than I do standing but that has always been the case.

I must have been in a good mood. An old song making me want to dance, even if it was in a chair. It triggered memories from a half century ago. I quickly put the redhead out of my mind and fell down a rabbit hole. Further YouTube “research” led me from thoughts of bobby socks and poodle skirts to mini-skirts and Go-Go boots and from Weejuns, starched button downs, and khaki duck trousers to lime green leisure suits and “catch me, f*ck me” shirts accessorized with gold chains.

Having two left feet didn’t bother me in my teen years that began in the early Sixties. The novel dance crazes of the day were less scripted than those practiced by the previous “Swing” generation. The “Disco” craze was still most of a decade away. We had dances with descriptive names like “The Jerk”, “The Watuzi”, “The Mashed Potato”, and the dance everyone could do, “The Twist.” I could stand in the middle of the dance floor and mimic Joe Cocker stepping on a live wire, and no one would notice.

Teen’s dancing novel dances badly

My two left “feets” would not become an issue until the late Sixties when I thought I needed to learn how to “Shag.” The cute little blond took my hand and pulled me onto the dance floor at The Cellar as “Carolina Girls” began to play. “Come on, I’ll teach you,” she said. She got over her injuries quickly and we remained friends. There were too many nights spent at The Celler chasing the elusive female beast to the tunes of The Catalinas not to learn to shag. Ample nickel drafts didn’t help the dancing but reduced the inhibitions that tended to cripple me.

Known as “The Carolina Shag”, it is a partner dance that requires dancing in concert with another human being to what is known as “Beach Music.” No, this beach music would not include The Beach Boys or Jan and Dean. Holding her right hand with my left, we stepped in and back, did a bit of a slide with one foot and then I got lost. Twirls are involved at some point giving me the opportunity to embarrass myself further.

I got lost a lot at The Cellar in Charlotte, The Barn in Rock Hill, and during coastal retreats to The Beach Club in Myrtle Beach, just to name a few. There were frat parties and, in the Seventies, discos to also display my two left feet. In the late Seventies, the movie “Urban Cowboy” and John Travolta turned us all into cowboy hat wearing line dancers and mechanical bull riders. Riding a mechanical bull was safer.

“Dancin’, Shaggin’ on the Boulevard” refers to Ocean Boulevard at Myrtle Beach. Alabama got their start playing at The Bowery on the Boulevard. I don’t remember the girls in 1968 or 69 dressing the way they dressed in the video.

I practiced long and hard to master the most rudimentary dance steps, sometimes with live partners, other times in the solitude of my room holding on to the doorknob to a closet door as a partner. At least a closet door has no feet to step on, but I did step in too close and received a black eye from the edge of the door for my efforts.

Disco? You are kidding, that was a death wish. I was hustled a few times but never did The Hustle. Thankfully, there was The Bump, the most fun I had had with my hips since The Twist.

It took my graduation into a new century to realize it didn’t matter. It would be 2001 before William Purkey would say, “You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching, love like you’ll never be hurt, sing like there’s nobody listening, and live like it’s heaven on earth.” It would take me a while longer to realize he was right.

Unless you are an exotic dancer it really doesn’t matter if you dance like someone electrocuted. No one really cares unless you step on their foot. Dancing doesn’t come from your feet; it comes from the heart and the music contained there. Just don’t ask me to waltz.

Side note: I once found myself on the dance floor with an exotic dancer. A very…flexible and demonstrative dancer, she danced as if she was in search of a stripper pole. She did manage to keep her clothes on and still get the attention of everyone in the venue.

***

The Mad Southerner’s (Don Miller’s) author’s page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

His latest release is a historical romance novel, “Thunder Along the Copperhead.”

Valentine’s Day Horrors

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“On Valentine’s Day, the Spirit Club plastered the school with red streamers and pink balloons and red and pink hearts. It looked like Clifford the Big Red Dog ate a flock of flamingoes and then barfed his guts up.” ― Carolyn Mackler, Vegan, Virgin, Valentine

“Cupid, draw back you bow”

Note to self if you drop a rose bush don’t try to catch it. I’m now oozing blood from five spots on my right hand. Roses have thorns even those purchased from Valentine’s Day.

It seems, every Valentine’s Day is my own version of The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre or a Valentine’s slasher movie. I am sure I will have shot myself in the foot by day’s end but at least my bride hasn’t beheaded me like the original St. Valentine. I’m also sure she has considered it.

When it comes to Valentine’s Day, like Midas, I have a special talent. Everything I touch turns into poop.

I haven’t had a successful Valentine’s Day since grammar school. We filled out cheap, little Valentines for everyone in class. Short little sayings like “Be Mine!” I remember looking at “Be My Valentine” from Big Lamar, the class bully that should have been two grade levels above us. We had yet to become creative with little poems like, “Roses are red, violets are blue. Your feet smell like cow poop and your breath does too.”

My first negative memory of many was a Valentine’s Day preteen party in the early 1960s. The Church sponsored event was supposed to be a dress up, Sunday best kind of gala. A Kool-Aid and cupcake affair. We were Methodist so dancing would be allowed, and I prayed my two left feet would somehow transform themselves. A cute little blonde girl had agreed to “hang out and talk.” My first date.

The day before, the world’s largest zit appeared in the middle of my forehead.  It didn’t matter. I’m sure the dance was great, but I have no memories of it because I didn’t get to go. My anxiety over my “first date” was so great I threw up and was kept home, in bed, covered in Vick’s VapoRub, the cure-all of the day. It might have been a stomach virus, but Valentine’s Day has been its own virus since. VapoRub was not the cure.

The dance worked out well for my date. A friend took advantage of the situation, and they became a couple. This weird Cupid moment might have been the high point of my attempts at being a romantic Valentine.

Can you imagine? On average, fifty-eight billion pounds or two point two billion dollars’ worth of chocolate will be sold the week leading up to Valentine’s Day. Over two-hundred and fifty million roses are produced just for Valentine’s Day. That is two point three billion in flower sales. A whopping six point two billion dollars are spent on jewelry. I have contributed with little success.

Love-struck Americans dole out almost twenty-four billion dollars on Valentine’s Day with men spending twice the average. Men will spend on average, one-hundred and seventy dollars to prove their undying love. Women? Half of that.

I’ve all but given up on making Valentine’s Day a special event. Attempts at romantic dinners have ended with food poisoning. I’ve tried poetry, “Roses are red, violets are blue, pizza is hot, and so are you.” I’ve tried to create artistic and rustic birdhouses with tin hearts or a couple holding hands. Most fell apart as quickly as my attempts at romantic expression.

I’m waiting for a masked psychopath to show up to carve out my heart in a real-life Valentine’s slasher movie. Blood splatter replacing rose petals scattered on the bedroom floor.

Speaking of bloody, how did the violent death of a Catholic saint become a celebration of love anyway? There are three suggested stories about three different Saint Valentines. What do they have in common? Martyrdom. Violent death. Two of the accounts involve beheading. Somehow beheading seems apropos. How many of us have lost our heads over someone we shouldn’t have?  

That still doesn’t explain cards, candy, flowers, and jewelry but a historical change in Nineteenth Century America does. Prior to this time most marriages were economic rather than romantic despite what romantic writers would have us believe. Even the poor founded their marriages more as economic alliances than romantic love. “Two can live as cheaply as one,” I was told once. Someone lied to me.

This changed in the mid-1800s from economics to romance, or at least combined the two. It also triggered an increase in the giving of tokens of love and it has snowballed from there.

I have taken to giving rose plants as a token of my undying affection. My bride and I plant them in a rose garden next to my vegetable garden in hopes they will bloom as our love has. I dig the holes and let my bride plant them and as soon as she does, they become her responsibility. If they die, it’s on her.

My Midas special Midas touch is still in effect. Damn rose plant has thorns and they have already bitten me. This Valentine’s Day is in fact a bloody one.

Don Miller’s author page may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3yEfoldEBWs3ZbA6bCCQc13npcCrXWdZl0pVYvdbsRMQ86SppPZQVl3SE

One More Super Bowl Sunday to Ponder

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Numbers to ponder, some humor, and a bit of Super Bowl history.

“The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It’s part of our culture like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays beyond their meaning, a factor in our economy.” — Bob Schieffer

Inflation be damned, according to one national news organization, Americans will spend some 1.6 billion dollars on their favorite team’s apparel, food, and drink as they celebrate this year’s Super Bowl. That’s Super Bowl LVII which translates to fifty-seven in numbers we recognize. Over one hundred million will tune in to watch the game, one in three Americans, the commercials, and the halftime extravaganza. It truly is more than just a football game and the jury is still out whether that is a good thing or not.

Here are some numbers to ponder. Americans will eat some 1.4 billion chicken wings during the Super Bowl Sunday festivities. It is predicted that we will consume some three hundred million gallons of beer to wash down those wings, and advertisers will get rich as they charge seven million dollars for a thirty second commercial.

If you are in the stadium, a beer will cost you $13-$19 dollars and a hot dog $5. Times have certainly changed.

Last year one billion dollars was wagered legally. It is estimated another six billion was wagered illegally.

The Super Bowl has grown into something Vince Lombardi would not recognize. I watched the first Super Bowl.  I’ve watched all the Super Bowls.  I guess, unless I go blind, I will watch them all until the “sands in the hourglass” run out.

The first one wasn’t called the Super Bowl.  It was the AFL-NFL World Championship Game back then.  Not only has the name changed, and you can blame Lamar Hunt for the moniker, but the game itself doesn’t resemble the first one. 

More cameras than there are angles, scantily clad cheerleaders instead of pleated skirts, Bobbi socks and saddle shoes, commercials that were sometimes more interesting than the game itself, half-time extravaganzas instead of marching bands and different rules that the officials continue to blow.  The only thing that hasn’t changed is me…laughing, are you?

Ticket prices for the first Super Bowl averaged $12, the game was not a sellout—the only non-sellout in the game’s history. The game drew 61,000 fans to the Rose Bowl and was televised to twenty-six million viewers by CBS and NBC. The cheap seats in Sunday’s Super Bowl will set you back $3000 by comparison.

Yes, the Super Bowl has changed, but my love for the game of football and the Super Bowl hasn’t changed…even though I don’t recognize it as the game I coached and played for three and a half decades.  It is a more fun-loving, less brutal, still brutal game than the original “three yards and a cloud of dust “version.  Much more fan friendly, I guess.  Blame the old fun-loving, more offensive minded, pass-happy AFL.

As a young child, fall Sundays were reserved for church and a single football game on CBS.  That’s correct…one football game and nine times out of ten it was a Redskin contest.  We did have a thirty-minute highlight show of the previous Colts game.  It came on just before the real thing, just after church and Sunday dinner, what we Southerners call lunch. I’m sure my father prayed that there would be no long alter calls on those football Sundays. and that any visitors would stay away till the game was over.

Still, I became a fan…of Sonny Jurgenson’s lasers and Billy Kilmer’s wobblers.  It didn’t matter who was under center in the early sixties, victories were far and in between.  At least I had those replays of Johnny U and the Colts…but they weren’t particularly good either, except in ’59 and ’64.

Most every Sunday, late in the game, my father would make the same observation about the Redskins, “I think they have shot their wad.”  The Redskins would continue to shoot blanks until 1982 when they rode John Riggins to the victory in Super Bowl XVII. For clarification, shooting one’s wad related to old muzzle-loading muskets and not…your dirty mind.

In 1960 a new kid dared to approach the NFL block…an always snowy new kid led by AFL Commissioner, Joe Foss.  We would attempt to adjust our Sears rotary antenna to distant Ashville hoping the ABC affiliate and AFL game of the week would come into view.  Click, click, click, “Whoa! That’s too far, go back!” It didn’t matter, early September or late November, the games always looked like it was snowing in black and white on the old RCA.  Later the league would move to NBC, a channel we could pick up without snow and no longer in black and white.

These were the days of the New York Titans, Dallas Texans, Houston Oilers, and a few names that would still be recognized today.  No, the Dallas Texans were not the forerunners of the Dallas Cowboys or Houston Texans, but the Kansas City Chiefs, one of today’s Super Bowl opponents and one of the first Super Bowl’s opponents. 

The Cowboys were the first NFL expansion team and were briefly known as the Steers. They opened their first season in 1960 as the Cowboys and continue to break their fan’s hearts at every opportunity…at least this century. Da Boys…maybe next year.

The two leagues would eventually merge but not before the 1967 AFL-NFL World Championship played between the Bart Starr led juggernaut Green Bay Packers and the upstart Kansas City Chiefs with Len Dawson under center.  The score was close at half-time but a runaway by the end of the game.  Green Bay’s smash-mouth brand of football won 35-10 and began fifty-six years of futility as I repeatedly pull for the wrong team. I doubt this year will be any different…nah. Congrats Philly.

I’ll watch to the bloody end. Maybe the score will be close, or the commercials good.  Maybe the halftime won’t be controversial, but if it is I hope it is a “nipple gate” moment. I pray Chris Stapleton’s version of the National Anthem doesn’t draw the ire of Twitter fans who will type in capital letters, “JUST SING IT THE WAY IT WAS INTENDED!”

I’ll watch and heft a beer and toast my father…even eat a dozen wings in his honor.  I’ll use his favorite phrase when watching a fourth-quarter pass fall harmlessly to the ground…” Well, looks like they’ve shot their wad.”

The only thing to be decided is who shoots their wad and how many of those beers I heft.  Go Budweiser Commercial!!!! I miss the frogs.  

Don Miller writes in multiple genres. His latest novel is a fictional historical novel that focuses on The Great Depression and the labor unrest it triggered in the South in 1934. The novel is “Thunder Along the Copperhead” and may be purchased in paperback or downloaded at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJYQ3SSV

Teaching How, What, and Why

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“Very few college professors want high school graduates in their history class who are simply “gung-ho” and “rah-rah” with regard to everything the United States has ever done, have never thought critically in their life, don’t know the meaning of the word “historiography” and have never heard of it. They think that history is something you’re supposed to memorize and that’s about it. That’s not what high school, or what college history teachers want.” ~ James W. Loewen

I wish I could have taught like Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine in the segment “Peabody’s Improbable History” from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show. “Moose and Squirrel” said in my best Boris and Natashia accents. “Improbable History” seems to be anything taught by a blue voting, ‘woke’, ‘libtard’ teacher.

My dream course would pick serious issues facing the United States today and then, using my own form of the ‘Wayback Machine’, follow threads, tracing backwards to how these issues got to be issues and how they might be related…and avoided. Social justice, Civil Rights, Labor, lack of confidence in national institutions, war, etcetera kind of issues. Critical thinking kind of issues.

I don’t know. Some of these subjects I wouldn’t want to touch with a ten-foot Pole or a fifteen-foot Czech in today’s teaching climate. With our notorious lack of geography knowledge, I’m not sure how that joke will go over. Can you find the Czech Republic on a map? Poland? Iran? Iraq? I wouldn’t have wanted to teach them in today’s teaching climate but would have.

The fly in the ointment of my teaching history in reverse using critical thinking is the controversy created by all the propaganda directed at education and the teachers toiling within those ivy covered “enlightened” walls of “larning.” (larn is said as lard except with an ‘n’ instead of a ‘d’. That is so you know I ‘spelt’ it the way some say it down ‘heah’ in the “foothills of the Blue Ridge.”)

I’m sure if I suggested such a course, many people would think I had been abducted by woke aliens, brainwashed, and sent back to warp the minds of little Johnny and Jane. Not all parents, but enough to make teaching more of a challenge than it already is.

Down ‘heah’ in the heart of red voting America. Many parents (not all) and most politicians don’t want teachers to get too far past ‘readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic. Low paying jobs don’t require more than that and an educated voter base is counterproductive to certain politicians.

That is a problem with social studies in general and history in particular…at least in my mind. It is also a problem in a world which is controlled by technology and the people trained to operate it and, in our state, we don’t produce enough of those types of graduates.

Who, what (as in the event), and when is easy in history. You are simply memorizing facts, “Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts,” in my best Joe Friday voice. “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” kind of facts. The message boards and comment sections echo, “Just teach the facts, I don’t want ‘Little Johnny’ brainwashed by some Marxist spouting libtard teacher even if the facts I want taught are at best debatable or at worst wrong.” (In 1492…is about the only truism in Jean Marzollo’s poem)

My problem is the how, the why and sometimes the what. “How did this happen and why did it happen?” “What caused it to happen or did it cause some other event to occur.” “What effect did it have.” That goes far beyond ‘facts’ and can move into a debate.

For instance, are we still haunted by the Viet Nam and Cold War years? Who and when are easy but…what caused it, how did it happen, why did it happen, what effects are we still experiencing because it happened. I see many pungi sticks to be stepped on or armed ICBM’s ready to launch.

What about the Civil War? Remember, I taught in the Deep South. “The Lost Cause” is still “strong” and you know where we are headed from there. “Forget Hell.” Arguing the cause of the Civil War versus “The War of Northern Aggression” is likely to devolve into a fist fight.

Antebellum South v North to Civil War to Reconstruction to Jim Crow to Civil Rights to…oh shit. Except in my course, it would be oh shit to Civil Rights to Jim Crow…. I need to rethink this.

Well, there is good news. I’m retired. There will be no accusations of warping the minds of our youth. The ghosts of my classroom failures simply surround me, not the students themselves. The How’s, the What’s, the Why’s…those ghosts. I have deep regrets that I couldn’t have been more and taught in a way that would drive Ron DeSantis or Greg Abbott out of his mind.

I don’t think I was a bad teacher; I just could have been better had I taught more the How’s, the What’s, the Why’s.

***

Don Miller taught history, social studies, and science for thirty-nine years and coached for forty-four years before retiring to the foothills of Blue Ridge with his wife Linda Porter-Miller to their hobby farm which has turned into a wildlife preserve in the middle of golf courses, gated communities, and gaudily attired cyclist. It was turned into a wildlife preserve due to the laziness of the retired folk who live there.

Don’s author’s page may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B018IT38GM?ingress=0&visitId=47ebc75a-d4b2-4d7f-8c81-2ada38516214&store_ref=ap_rdr&ref_=ap_rdr

There Must Be Something Better…The Protective Cup

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A bit of baseball humor the first day of high school baseball tryouts in South Carolina.

There were no baseball cups at my high school in 1967 or 1968 or if there were, no one took any time to explain the need for one to me. Instead, we had a chest protector with an extension that hung down between our knees when we went into a squat. This chest protector probably had been acquired when catchers still set up ten or twelve feet behind the batter and caught the ball on a hop in the early 1900’s.

IT WAS AN ILLUSION OF PROTECTION! IT WAS A BELIEF IN A FALSE GOD!

Take a common household sponge and rest it against your face. Now let me uncork a baseball into it. Really, no one wants to do that. You know you are going to get a broken nose, black eye or lose some teeth. I should have known that a little extension, the thickness of a common household sponge, would not protect my little “floppies” but bought into the belief that if struck by a bounced pitch or foul tipped ball, the little boys would be ok. In other words, the seventeen-year-old me was A DUMMY!

Just so you know a foul tip on to a cup will still take your breath away. A foul tip to an unprotected man part will make you contemplate suicide to make the sickening pain stop. To quote a friend who had tried to cauterize a wound with a red-hot poker, “the pain was exquisite.” I knew exactly what she meant as I remembered a foul tip that bounced off the plate and up into my chest protector extension making solid contact with my man parts. One definition of exquisite is keen or intense. Yes, the pain was exquisite in its intensity and sharpness. It was also sickening to the point of regurgitation, and it wasn’t even a direct shot. Sick, Sick, Sick!

Strangely, somewhere in the small portion of my brain that was not dealing with pain receptors, I remember thinking, “Don’t grab them. Don’t grab them.” This I thought, despite the almost uncontrollable urge to do exactly that. “DON’T RUB IT! IT MIGHT SPIT AT YOU!” That was not likely to happen for a long, long while. Even today there still seems to be an unwritten rule that keeps a catcher, or any other player for that matter, who has just taken a hundred mile per hour shot directly off his cup, from grabbing his little danglies.

Sportscasters will skirt the issue by saying, anything other than “OOOOh, he just took one off the nads!” Well, Bob Uecker might but Curt Gowdy would say something; like “…a glancing blow to the groin” or “he has just got the air knocked out of him” as the poor catcher was being led stiff legged into the dugout for an “equipment adjustment.” As the replay unwinds, over and over, you can almost hear the collective intake of breath as millions of male baseball fans react to an event that we are all too familiar with.

Just in case you are ever in a sports trivia contest, Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench holds the dubious career record for broken cups, seven. From someone who knows the truth, this should be one of his least coveted records.

Historical note: According to the Baseball Book by SI, the first protective cup was worn by Claude Berry in 1915 while catching for the Pittsburgh Rebels. Protective baseball helmets were not required until 1971. We now know which head was most important.

Don Miller’s writings may be found at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Call the Bomb Squad, it’s 2023

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“There has never been a ‘New Year’ that has managed to become ‘new’ if the mistakes of the old years are repeated!”

― Mehmet Murat ildan

I’m not going to touch 2023 with a ten-foot pole unless the bomb squad says it is okay. A change in the House leadership, threats of retribution for perceived liberal evils, charges looming against a former president, Hunter’s laptop…and House leadership walking the halls of Congress with a gallon of gasoline and a Zippo. I hope that is metaphorical.

For the past six years I have had hopes that we would turn ourselves around as humans and strive to make the principles this country was founded on a reality. Well, enough about the ridiculous and on to the sublime.  The sublime of course, is me.

When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, I have an affliction like Midas’ golden touch except instead of gold, my touch creates gooey, stinky, piles of cow poo.

After reading my posts from the past five or six New Years I’ve decided the New Year is a little like Monty Hall’s “Let’s Make a Deal” with a twist. Instead of “My whole life lies waitin’ behind Door Number Three” it is Door Number 2023, My choices are a smelly Billy goat, Uncle Cletus’ dirty underwear, or a live bomb.1 Should I mention the three wires leading to the bomb are all black?

I had great hopes 2022 would reverse the trend I have noticed since I began writing in 2014. That would be both personally and politically. Instead, 2022 started badly and finished worse with a few ups and many downs in between.

From the January 6th insurrection to a positive Covid test over Thanksgiving and what was characterized as a Covid carryover of vertigo and nausea on Christmas Day, 2022 has been circling the toilet for a while and refusing to flush. If I look closely, I see the ghosts of New Years past circling too. Seems little has changed. I’m a bit worried about what New Year’s Eve might bring.

As I reread my New Year’s posts, they followed similar pig trails. Lamentations of broken resolutions, self-reflection on why they were broken before listing the hopes I have for the next New Year. Hopes and dreams that quickly turn into pipe dreams, fantasies, or will-‘o-the wisp mirages.

I think my depression has taken hold. Thank goodness the daylight hours are lengthening.

Rather than choosing to avoid making resolutions, I’ve decided this year to use the “Kiss” principle. “Keep it simple stupid,” the old naval design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960 that I attempted to model as a coach…. I was 13 and 27 as a varsity head football coach. I’m already rethinking that choice.

So here it is, my resolution for 2023. “Ta…ta…ta-taaaaa.” Do one positive thing daily, other than getting out of bed in the morning. That is as simple as I can make it. I mean aren’t the chances good that I’ll do something positive whether I’m trying or not? I do take daily showers, that’s positive, right? I know, it’s like giving up calf liver for Lent, something I give up the remainder of the year too.

Happy New Year, Friends. To you I make this toast, “May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue so that I triumph even when I fall!” – Aleister Crowley

1The game show referenced earlier was “Let’s Make a Deal.” Created and hosted by Monty Hall, it premiered in 1963 and featured crazy people with signs, in crazy dress hoping to get Monty’s attention and a chance at the brass ring. The ending segment pitted a previous winner who was given the choice of trading their winnings for prizes of varying worth located behind one of three doors, one featuring a prize of worth, a car possibly, the others not so much.

The song “Door Number Three” referenced with the reframe, “My Whole World Lies Waiting Behind Door Number Three” was a song written by Steve Goodwin in 1975 and most famously performed by Jimmy Buffett on his A1A album. The tune is now circling my brain like 2022 circled the toilet. So, with the video below you can join in along with Monty Hall and the crazies from “Let’s Make a Deal.” Make sure you watch till the end.

Further readings by Don Miller may be found at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Thanksgiving Blessings? It Could Be Worse.

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“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”-Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

It is easy to be depressed on Thanksgiving, 2022…or lately any Thanksgiving this decade. Then I think about my Native American brethren and realize that it has been a rough two and a half centuries for them. I don’t know who thought celebrating Native American Heritage Month in the same month as the Native American National Day of Mourning, aka Thanksgiving, was a great idea. Regardless, President Bush signed it into law in 1990.

While I identify with my Native American blood brothers, there are reasons to celebrate and be thankful.

I’m thankful that a (cisgender) veteran attended Club Q in Colorado Springs. They were celebrating Transgender Remembrance Day, a day to remember those lost to violence against or suicide. With the help of a Drag Queen in high heels, they were able to limit the death and destruction that claimed five lives, taking down a shooter armed with a “long gun” and pistol.  I am also thankful for the darkly humorous image of a Drag Queen dressed in his/her finery dancing on the murderer’s head in stiletto heels. Too soon? There is a reason they are called “stiletto” heels.

I’m also thankful that the veteran and his family were at a Queer venue celebrating people who have, for a too long, been considered the others by others who don’t believe people outside of the “box” deserve such basic rights as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I’m sorry they lost their daughter’s boyfriend to the carnage. I’m also sorry that the best we can offer to the families and friends of those lost in the previous seven hundred or so mass shootings this year is thoughts and prayers.

I would like to be thankful for the absence of hatred in the world but instead will celebrate an Iranian men’s soccer team who stood in mute solidarity protesting the treatment of Iranian women at home as their national anthem played at the World Cup and the English team who knelt during theirs supporting social justice for all. The American team did nothing but tie with Wales. Sorry American right-wingers, nothing for you to ridicule and celebrate against. I’m thankful for that too.

These are going to sound like a litany of “hurray for me and the hell with everyone else” and they might be.

I’m thankful that despite inflation numbers and high gas and food prices, I’m doing okay. I have money in the bank and a retirement. I’m thankful inflation will correct itself, eventually. I am thankful that despite gas prices, I will make the road trip to my family’s gathering instead of being sequestered during a pandemic. I’m also unhappy that because of the road trip I will not have the opportunity to sample any brown liquor.

I’m thankful I haven’t lost any family members or friends recently to the pandemic and pray that the building “triple threat” burns itself out quickly.

I’m thankful that I recently came through my yearly bank of physicals and am in “fine fiddle “although with Afib, the fiddle might be a bit out of tune. There are many my age who are not as healthy. I’m thankful I look so much younger than those my age. LOL.

I’m thankful I am sitting in an airish old farmhouse with heat and electricity and a running refrigerator with food in it. I could gripe about the price of electricity, but I could also be sitting in a cold and dark Ukrainian flat as missiles and artillery shells rain down.

I’m thankful I’m not on a dusty South American road trekking to gain asylum in a country that doesn’t seem to want me despite the quote on the Statue of Liberty,

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
― Emma Lazarus

I’m thankful for a family to visit over Thanksgiving and celebrate memories of family members no longer with us. So many folks had less than the childhood I lived. I was truly blessed.

I’m thankful for and proud of my immediate family.

My rock Linda Gail, I can’t contemplate a world without you. The fact we found each other makes me believe there actually is a God.

Ashley and Justin. I am proud of the people you are and the parents you are. I still think you’ve too many irons in the fire. You are wonderful, rocks in your own right.

Kate and Nolan, you are both heart breakers. I’m so proud of your confidence and fearlessness…some of your fearlessness causes my heart to stop but if you survive, it will serve you well.

Steve and Rebecca, I’m proud to call you brother and sister-in-law. I live much of my life vicariously through you…so you went to Folly Beach, did you? I just committed the sin of envy.

Joyce, I’m thankful you treated me much like the son you never had, and for keeping me tied to home, and with it, my mother, and my grandmother.

Kim, Lynn, and Terri, thanks for being the sisters I never had and like your mother, tying me to my home that once existed along a dusty dirt road.

Bob, thanks for being Lynn’s rock, I know it is a challenge.

Lawrence and Stephanie, I’m thankful you have the family you always wanted and am proud to call you kin.

Hawk, I consider you family. Thanks for being there buddy, and thanks for your perspective on the world and God…I don’t necessarily agree but perspectives are like M&M’s, assorted colors, and flavors.

Lynn C, thanks for letting me bounce ideas off your head and your support. Glad we reconnected after such a long time.

I am quite blessed it seems…and I almost forgot. Quigley and Cora, thanks for your unconditional love and the puppy kisses I receive despite knowing where your tongues have been.

To all my friends, known and unknown, especially those of you who take time to read these, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. To my family, Happy Thanksgiving.

***

Postscript

This was written before the murder of six people at a Walmart in Virginia and the suicide of their murderer. Seven-gun deaths means it is just another day in America and I refuse to send empty thoughts and prayers.

***

Don Miller’s most recent release is the historical fiction “Thunder Along the Copperhead” and the nonfiction “Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes.” Both may be purchased in paperback and downloaded on Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0LGf5HUb84nQnPB-sFQF7KaqSOW6sGsSSu1_ltf1FuWh1Wj2nSIad1uYQ

Memorial to My Sense of Humor

/ cigarman501 / 7 Comments

“I have a knack for finding humor in all sorts of things, no matter how grim. My sense of humor is wry and a bit on the warped side. (Well, more than a bit, depending on whom you ask.)” ― Gerri R. Gray

Once I had a sense of humor…mostly teenage kind of humor, bathroom, potty mouthed, laugh at farts kind of humor. “Here, pull on my finger.” I would like to think I have evolved but I still get a good laugh when someone slips on a banana peel…I make sure they aren’t hurt first. I have evolved.

I found humor in the grim. You know, hiding my fear and pain behind a suspect joke at the expense of a dearly departed friend or family member. From my home state’s Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina: Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 2023 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances.

My problem is I’ve become too fearful or the grim has become too grim and I believe I’m not in a small boat in my thinking.

American politics were once a perfect target for humor. During the worst times, even our politicians could poke fun at each other. Their constituents could still laugh at them or themselves. Now any joke is taken as a challenge to a duel.

I’ve become too politically correct. No, I’ve always been too politically correct. I’ve never wanted to hurt someone’s feelings just for the sake of hurting someone’s feelings but “roasting” someone was always fair game. Now there is a movement that uses political correctness to become incensed over every little thing and another movement that uses its distain for political correctness to bully.

Americans have lost their sense of humor. I miss George Carlin’s, Dick Gregory’s, Lenny Bruce’s, and Richard Pryor’s sharp and irreverent wit poking fun at society and government in the Sixties and Seventies. We need Laugh-in’s “Laugh-in Looks at the News” or “The Wonderful World of Whoopee Award” or the political satire and irreverence of the Smothers Brothers. I miss Johnny Carson wise cracking, “There is a power struggle going on between President Reagan’s advisers. Moe and Curly are out. Larry is still in.” Somehow it was funnier when he said it, cha ching.

According to Mark Twain…or maybe Steve Allen, “Humor is tragedy plus time.” I don’t guess we have had enough time to find the humor of today’s tragic political environment. I fear in today’s environment, Mark or Steve would be cancelled the way CBS smothered the Smothers Brothers.

Now we have Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson…what do you mean? They aren’t comedians?

Even our politicians were funny…I’m not talking about their lawmaking abilities; some of those are quite hilarious. Some were funny not meaning to be, like Gerald Ford slipping and falling and Chevy Chase making a career spoofing it.

I swear I didn’t laugh until I knew he was okay.

I’m talking about the ability to turn a phrase or humorously bash their opponent. The comedic looking Winston Churchill for instance, speaking of politics in general, “Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.”

My favorite humorous Churchill quotes involved Nancy Astor, Lady Astor, an American who married an English nobleman and had been elected to Parliament. They didn’t like each other very much and were always good for a humorous quip.

Lady Astor: “Mr. Churchill, you’re drunk!”

Winston Churchill: “Yes, and you, Madam, are ugly. But tomorrow, I shall be sober.”

I’m not sure that one would fly in today’s political environment. Still, it is funny.

Another and then I shall move on

Lady Astor: “Winston, if I were your wife, I’d put poison in your coffee.”

Winston Churchill: “Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it.”

Politicians from another age knew how to think and realized well thought out words carried more weight than stupidly bludgeoning opponents. Simple barbs yet thoughtful that were more intelligent than name calling or disparaging someone’s wife.

Some favored quips

Bob Dole on Carter, Ford, and Nixon: “History buffs probably noted the reunion at a Washington party a few weeks ago of three ex-presidents: Carter, Ford, and Nixon — See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Evil.”

Pat Buchanan on Bill Clinton: “Bill Clinton’s foreign policy experience is pretty much confined to having had breakfast once at the International House of Pancakes.”

Senator William E. Jenner on New York Governor W. Averell Harriman: “He’s thin, boys. He’s thin as piss on a hot rock.”

Texas Governor Ann Richards on George W. Bush: “Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

Politicians were more creative…. about many things.

Maybe it is just me. I guess I should cremate my sense of humor and put the ashes in a pretty urn. I’ve let mass shootings, politics, the impending doom of Climate Change, inflation, etcetera suck the humor out of my humor. If it is a humor vampire, I’ll hang a bobble head of George Carlin around my neck instead of a cross to keep it away.

The truth is, we have lost the ability to poke fun at ourselves and the only humor we find funny must be directed toward what we perceive to be the opposition.

Don Miller’s latest offering is “Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes” and may be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0yXYm7o67oNCZe580f0IHGFtOAndQ4-x_K4txNuTEUZlTfZIvoD-apLtU

Political Football…Woah Nellie!!! They’re Taking it to the House.

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

“You really do own your illiteracy, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I’m thinking about moving to America and running for public office.”
― Alexis Hall, Boyfriend Material

I coached high school football for twenty-nine years. I understood the game as it was played at that time, but I assure you I’ve never understood American politics. Just like football today doesn’t resemble the game I played and coached, politics do not resemble the “game” I grew up with. While American football has become more entertaining, Political football has not. It has become painful.

Politics has always seemed a bit dishonest to me, but today, politicians are hiding their dishonesty in plain sight. Politics is not about morals. It’s not about ethics. It’s not about governing. It’s about power. Win at all costs! If American politics were college football, both teams would have received the NCAA “Death Penalty.”

The fans in red shout, “Push ’em back, push ’em back, wayyyyy back!”

It is political football season, and the United States is down late in the game and facing a third down and a taxi ride…third down and forever. For those who don’t understand “football-ese” there are no plays for third down and ridiculously long yardage that gives a coach any hope for success. Yet here we are facing what I think is a mid-term, third down, “Hail Mary” at best.

Our political system is broken, that shouldn’t be a news flash. The breakage has been going on forever plus a day and it is growing worse…on both sidelines. If the system were a football, it belonged to Tom Brady during Deflategate. It gets worse, both teams have lost their starting quarterbacks and are down to their third string linemen. Negative yardage plays are the rule not the exception. They should think about punting on first down.

What is the game plan? There doesn’t seem to be one. Let’s pull a play out of a helmet and see if it works. Punch them in the face and hope for a snot bubble. Games are not won by who yells the loudest and politics shouldn’t be about who yells the most heated rhetoric. But…here we are hurling insults at the other team…I mean political party. Just insults and no substance.

The cheerleaders in blue yell, “Shimmy up a toothpick, slide down a pine, look at the scoreboard and see who’s behind…YOU!!!”

My hopeful voice tells me it will be okay, brighter heads will prevail and the lamebrains will be voted out. Then a blond lamebrain already elected reminds me otherwise. My cynical voice tells me there is no way because we are playing a political game of football with selfish and mentally challenged coaches and ethically challenged players who only care about the numbers on the back of their jerseys. The fans? They only know the colors of the jerseys, red or blue, and their allegiance is to a color not the country.

Fans in red yell while pointing, “Kill ’em, Kill ’em we don’t care, we’ve got a graveyard over there,” they honestly mean it. This is not a metaphor. (This was a cheer at my college alma mater. There was a cemetery next to the stadium. It was metaphor.)

The political ad season is upon us. The political ad playbook is to misinform and propagandize and it works. Hitler’s big lie is alive and well and we swallow it like a greasy stadium chili dog washed down with flat beer…and we like it and ask for more. Research? This is football not a physics lab.

Our teams use every misdirection play in the playbook from reverses to flea flickers to lonesome ends, but our favorite is the hidden truth…I mean the hidden ball trick. Distract and confuse the opposition’s fan base who is also distracting and confusing their opposition’s fan base. Where has truth gone and why do we allow ourselves to be lied to? Is lying the first rule of political football? Is accepting lies the second rule?

Again, I hear the cheerleaders dressed in blue chanting, “Chewin’ tobacco, chewin’ tobacco spit, spit, spit. Ex-lax, Ex-lax, go team go!”

In my deeply red state of SC, I think I shall vomit into my facemask. Thank goodness I can DVR and run past the ads. One gubernatorial candidate, the incumbent, launches forward passes of “We don’t do that down here” while his liberal, Commie loving opponent brings up football as a metaphor.

It doesn’t matter that the liberal is not a Commie, the red team will win easily because it is easier to support the team rather than the truth and it is the fans’ fault because they could care less about the truth and just hate the word liberal. Being called a liberal in South Carolina is like waving a red cape in front of a bull. Nothing good will come of it.

Just a few South Carolina truth bombs. “Go Deep Henry!” Preferably out of the end zone, through the runway and out of the stadium. Take your ball home with you.

We rank in the top ten of the worst states for domestic violence, infrastructure, education, equality, and obesity according to the latest US News statistics. We rank in the bottom fifteen in public healthcare and access to healthcare, and despite a top twenty economy, rank in the bottom fifteen in economic opportunity. We rank 47th. of fifty in infant mortality.

None of those rankings matter as long as “We don’t do that down here” and thumb our noses at Washington. We will continue to vote against our best interest because “That’s how my daddy and his daddy voted.”

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t totally blame you, Henry. You are the quarterback but only as good as the players on your team and the fans that continue to cheer for their side regardless of truth.

The facts are this, the red team has been in total control of South Carolina, the Governor’s office, the Senate, and the House, for nineteen consecutive years. Yea team!!!! We rank forty-fourth overall among the fifty states. As we like to say, “Thank God for Mississippi.”

One blue fan base yell, “Go back, go back, go back into the woods, your momma dresses funny and your team ain’t no good!

The red counters with, “Go back, go back, go back into the woods! Your breath smells like cat piss and your girl does too.” Infantile? Yes, we are.

We have abandoned all truths. We’ve abandoned those truths that made us what we were, and our political parties hold much of the blame for turning our country into the football game from hell. We the fans share the blame…are to blame. We allow it. We vote for the same old tired rhetoric our grandparents voted for. Our loyalty is to the team and not to the game. Ethics? We can’t spell the word because we rank 44th. in education.

In real football games, one team wins, and one team loses. In most cases, when the clock runs out, we shake hands and go to the local watering hole, forget our good-natured hazing, and raise a few whiles discussing what went right or wrong. In political football, no one wins except the politicians and their rich supporters, and we go to the local watering hole and try to bludgeon each other to death.

Let’s face facts about political football, it’s not about morals. It’s not about ethics. It’s not about governing. It’s all about power. A recent quote, “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate,” from former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch sums it up. She added that “winning is a virtue.”

Just like a football game where winning is the only thing, we really don’t care about lies and deceit and who paid how much for a blue chip QB. We just care about the W and the political National Championship.

How else do you explain a football great who is running for the Georgia Senate that obviously took too many helmets to the head or a woman in SC running for Superintendent of Education who has never stood in front of a classroom and has yet to meet the qualifications to run? These are just a couple of examples.

I don’t know what November must hold. There will be fumbles and interceptions. Crushing defeats and winning by the skin of our teeth. There will be bizarre plays and goal line stands. This will also be repeated in 2024.

I know, I will be glad when the political football season is over, win, lose, or draw. I would never say that about American football.

Interested in reading more of Don Miller’s thoughts? His authors page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3U-N4HtAUsEOnyjKd_cVNPL6ywvzooknWm93aa0gGRAVnaIpKPPzIjlDc

My Body is not a Temple

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“Middle age is when a narrow waist and a broad mind begin to change places.” – Anonymous

At best I’ve never had a narrow waist and my mind may be broader than it has ever been. Middle Age? I passed that landmark a while ago.

My body was never a temple, more like an old barn, some of its weathered cladding falling off, the tin roof turning reddish brown with rust, and one door sagging on its hinges like a drunken sailor on liberty. If I could see inside, broken down stalls would be filled with old, dried-up horse apples and cow patties. Let’s face it, middle age is in my rear-view mirror along with a steadily approaching figure known as the grim reaper.

With the approaching fall, the dreaded “physical” season is upon me. It began midweek with a full body “search” for nasty squamous cells, basil cells, or any other carcinoma that might be found. As I looked into a strategically placed mirror, I saw an alien old man who’s pale and scrawny shoulders and chest had fallen into his waist and his waist into his ass. My only six pack is cooling in the fridge. Not a pear shape exactly, more of a triangle. Note to self, stay out of eyeshot of mirrors, it is easier to lie to yourself that way and not as depressing.

The scan went well considering. I stood in my underwear in front of my extremely attractive and pregnant dermatologist and her attractive nonpregnant nurse. I didn’t know I could suck in my stomach for that long. Oh, the vanity of it all and they are young enough to be granddaughters.

One suspicious area was biopsied and three pre-cancers burned off, one squarely in the middle of my forehead.  Cue the “Did you forget to duck” comments.

Early next month I have my general physical with all its bloodwork and a week later a physical with my cardiologist with the sticky and ice-cold patches reading electrical impulses for the EKG. It is a known fact they store them in a freezer. I don’t expect any unwelcome news, but they do trigger reflection.  The physicals will all confirm what I already know, I’m old…but I’m still alive.

Two quotes about aging by baseball great, Satchel Paige are stuck in my head. Born in 1906, Paige pitched his last professional game in 1966, just weeks before his sixtieth birthday. Due to the Major League’s color barrier, he pitched for over twenty years combining time with the Negro Leagues, barnstorming and semi-pro ball before getting an opportunity to pitch in the Majors for the Cleveland Indians. Owner Bill Veeck knew a draw when he saw one and knew Paige would put people in seats.

Paige was forty-two and two days old when he threw his first pitch, still the oldest rookie to debut. When reporters asked about his age, Paige replied, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?” Sage words. Time is a human construct used to torture us with thoughts of our own pending mortality.

A 42-year-old rookie warms up for the then Cleveland Indians

In the two and a half months left in the 1948 season, Paige finished with a 6–1 record and a 2.48 ERA, pitched two, nine inning shutouts, struck out forty-three against twenty-two walks and gave up sixty-one base hits in 72 and 2⁄3 innings. And Cleveland? They won the World Series in six games; the last time Cleveland won a World Series. Not bad for a rookie of any age.

The second notable Paige quote rattling in the empty drum that is my mind, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” I know the grim reaper is drawing closer, but I rather not know when he will place his bony hand upon my shoulder. No need to dwell on the inevitable. I hope I wake up dead one morning with a surprised look on my face.

Three additional quotes from Satchel Paige:

“You win a few, you lose a few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them.” (Metaphor for life)

“I ain’t ever had a job, I just always played baseball.” (When you enjoy what you do it is hard to call it work)

“Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.” (Don’t just pray when things are bad.)

Don Miller’s authors page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share