So many topics...so little time

Gosh, where do I begin. My head-brain is just racing with so many subjects it's hard to prioritize. I mean, I like my manic state and once I get it under control, well then I can produce a lot of inspirational thoughts, at least to me that is, until that ugly cloud of insecurity blows in over my being and I end up deleting half the stuff I put up.

First thing on my mind has to do with purple chickens, green ducks and pink rabbits. No, I haven't fallen off the wagon, it's just that it's gettin' near Easter time and well, you know how we have forgotten about the meaning of Easter for the most part and we focus on the secondary reasons such as candy, chocolate bunnies getting their heads bitten off and the poor little barnyard animals that some people think is a good thing to spray paint some iridescent color and offer them for sale.

OK, I confess, I got a purple chicken one Easter. Of course I didn't get my Mom or Dad to buy it for me because they had better sense than that. I bought it myself. It was pretty neat for awhile and I kept it out in the garage until it started to shed the purple feathers and started to bulk up. Dad thought it might be time to "take it to the farm" so it would have a good life out in the country. Yeah, right. I saw that chicken a couple of weeks later at my Grandma's house out in the back yard and it had grown huge. Next time I went to visit it had disappeared I'm sure into a plate of fried chicken.

The next thing on my mind is the recent passing of Stephen Hawking. Though controversial with his interpretation of how the universe began there is no denying that someone like Stephen only comes around once every so many hundred years. I really look forward to hearing from him soon and I'm sure he will be contacting me/us. The irony of Stephen's life is that he didn't need a physical body to produce the incredible theories and mind-blowing suggestions that he offered. He did it while his mind was trapped in a twisted horrible shell of flesh and bone. But that was ok, we didn't judge him on his appearance, we saw in fact an incredible human being. It's a shame we can't do that more often with the people we see and meet.

Thirdly, this morning Pattye and I were talking and I asked her a question while I was having a brain "fart". I said, "What was it that the Tin Man wanted in the Wizard of Oz?". She looked at me a little surprised by the question and answered correctly. "He wanted a Heart." And then I followed up with, "Oh yeah, and the Scarecrow wanted a Brain and the Lion wanted Courage". She then said to me, "What did Dorothy want?" I answered so quickly, I was almost like a school kid raising their hand shouting "I know, I know".

And then I blurted out "Shoes". Well, she kinda laughed, then I kinda laughed and then I thought, "Man am I a dumbass or what".

And then finally, after thinking about Stephen Hawking some more I began to wonder as I often do about why God allows mistakes to happen. Of course, Stephen wasn't a mistake, it's just that his body turned out to be a crappy one. But he had a beautiful mind. It's kinda how God makes artichoke hearts. Those outside leaves are horrible and you have to pull them through your teeth in order to get just a taste of the delicious flesh until you finally get down to the heart.

I still question His design on avacadoes, but once again, despite the large seed, the flesh is so wonderful. I just wish there was more meat and less seed.

There are so many of God's creations that I'm still trying to figure out. I keep working on it though. It's just those dang purple chickens that I keep seeing that gets me sidetracked.

Oh, and in the coming weeks, lets try to remember the real reason we celebrate the upcoming holidays of Easter and Passover it will do all of us some good.

Rites of Spring, "When a young man's fancy lightly turns to .....

One of my favorite poets...yes, I like poetry, probably even love poetry even though it took me 50 years to learn to appreciate it...anyway, one of my favorites is Alfred Lord Tennyson. And, one of my favorite poems by said author is Locksley Hall. And, one of my favorite lines from that poem is "In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." But until you've discovered love, the only thing that Spring reminds a young person of is either Baseball or Spring Break.

Since I've written about Baseball in the Spring, I guess that only leaves me to write about that time-honored tradition of college enrolled students or an occasional high school student or anyone for that matter who wants to participate in the Rites of Spring, i.e.  Spring Break . Spring Break is the passage of youth into...yep, that wild child syndrome, that kids gone crazy lifestyle that we hoped our parents would never find out about.

When the cult movie, "Where the Boys Are"  surfaced in 1960, I was just 12 years old and couldn't even imagine what an experience of heading off to the beach for a week of drinking, kissing, smoking and more kissing would be all about. Heck, I was still enjoying playing sandlot baseball and picking through neighbor's trash that was set out each Saturday morning. All that kissing and stuff was left for the older kids, for my older brothers and their friends. Well, that was until I saw the movie.

I guess it was hormonal and at age twelve, I guess I was curious as the "professionals" say. I loved that movie. I mean, come on, Yvette Mimieux. Who couldn't get "excited" over her. And on top of that her name sounded just like Corvette. I wasn't even in high school yet and already I was making my plans to go to Florida in the Spring while there was still snow on the ground in Dayton, Ohio. Pack the car full of my friends, get some of that near-beer, as we called it, and meet some girls and kiss them. Yep, that's about all I could imagine.

Fast forward to 1969 and I find myself at the University of Oklahoma and it's Spring Break. I hadn't done any of the crazy things that so many of my peers did the prior three years. Almost all of them headed off to South Padre Island, Texas or Mexico. I'm not sure what I did the earlier years. I know for sure it wasn't studying.

So here we were. School was out for a week. We had no money. But.....I had a Volkswagon bus. A truly hippe-mobile, though I was far from being a hippie. Sure we'd do a little doobie every now and then but nope, we were alcoholics, none of the stuff that altered your mind, we just did booze. So, we decide to head for Mexico.

I'm not naming names, but there were 4 of us. We had $10.00 each and one of us had a gasoline credit card. Hell, we didn't even have a spare tire for the bus.

We drove straight down I-35 from Oklahoma City to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, almost 700 miles ....stopping only to relieve ourselves every now and then and buy more beer if needed.

We arrived some time around 6:00 in the evening and as soon as we crossed the border, we started asking everyone we saw, "donde esta la ciudad del muchacho"....it was our rugged translation of "Where is Boys Town". Now that's not to be confused with the movie "Where the Boys Are". For those of you who aren't from around here...that stood for "Boys Town" as in..."Where are the hookers".

OK, so let's pause for a second. None of us were actually going to do any of that stuff. Sure we were stupid but we weren't dumb. We just wanted to go there. You know, just kinda look around. Unfortunately one of our group succumbed to "pleasures of the flesh" and he spent his entire $10.00 on a hooker. He did say it was money well spent, but he was already broke for the week.

The second member of our group decided to buy a taco from a vendor on the street. He gave the guy a dollar and the guy gave him a taco and some change. About an hour later, he realized he had given him his $10 bill by mistake, so now we were down to 1/2 of our loot and we had only been in Mexico for less than 12 hours.

We spent the next few days travelling along the border towns in Mexico and driving across the border to Texas at night to sleep in the bus. We headed over to Matamoros, Mexico got lost looking for South Padre and later ended up a few hundred miles north arriving in the middle of the night at Port Aransas and woke up with the bus submerged in the sand when the tide came in. Fortunately we had about 20 other college friends to pull us out.

We made it. We celebrated Spring Break and we lived to tell about it. Yep, it's a Rite of Passage by golly.

So, to all of you young-uns out there getting ready to make the big escape in the next few weeks. Here are two words of advice. Have fun. It's what life is all about and you'll have a story or two to share 50 years later.