Knowing When to Fold'em

Taking a much-needed respite from the grind of early afternoon classes, I decided to meet my friend David to drink and fill up on some empty calories.

Admittedly, there is something overtly decadent about indulging in a few libations when you have obligations elsewhere.

Thinking about it now as I attempt to win a few new “Dating 101” devotees and Facebook friends, I understand why my mom was in such high spirits on those days we trudged home from school with half the kids from the bus stop.

She always smiled with an understanding look while microwaving a few snacks.

Now I believe it had less to do with the fact she was happy that her offspring were popular and had more to do with the bottle of merlot she polished off an hour before we walked through the door.

Before you misconstrue my mother as an alcoholic, I should assure you she was not. These were times before folks jumped onto the “politically correct” train and started throwing around words like “postpartum depression” and ambiguous phrases like “you shouldn’t drink before four in the afternoon.”

After all, my mother and her friends believed it was a great big world, so it was bound to be 4 o’clock somewhere.

On lazy afternoons, once the bills were paid, errands run and laundry done, my mother and her friends would wile away the remainder of cocktail hour with card games.

They would play gin rummy and poker, and although they would never confess to playing for actual money, I distinctly remember several new dresses hanging in my mother’s closet after an afternoon with the girls.

Forgive my moment of nostalgia, but I do have a point.

David, sitting across from me at lunch, tells about his friend who has been dating a girl for five years. I met her once at a wedding reception and she seemed to be a lovely girl. In that brief encounter, I couldn’t have imagined she was having an affair for three of the five years with someone a few hours south of the home she shared with her boyfriend.

You may ask me why I didn’t pick up on the subtleties of sheer sluttiness oozing from her like a penicillin-resistant infection, but despite my letter-writing campaign urging Congress to bring back branding a big red “A” on whores, I don’t feel sorry for the guy, and here’s why:

I am tired of everyone blaming their partners for the problems that persist in their relationships. The national statistic for divorce is more than 50 percent and according to some statistics, closer to 63 percent. Obviously, there is an issue and it has little to do with hindsight and more with foresight.

“Well, I wouldn’t have gotten together with her if I knew she was crazy,” or “I wouldn’t have moved in with him if I knew he would beat me.” And my favorite, “I wouldn’t have gotten married if I had known blah, blah, blah…”

You did know.

In any poker game, the best player pays attention to the tells. These are the little, sometimes unconscious, signs everyone has that allow the gambler to know if you’re holding a royal flush or if your hand might as well be flushed down the toilet.

Everyone’s character is defined in those moments when they think no one is paying close attention. There are always signs and your job is to look a little closer to see what they are.

The big oaf you’re married to now and complain about was a big oaf when you dated.

Dating is as good as it gets, so don’t expect anyone to change just because they financed a piece of jewelry for your finger.

Take one lesson from my mother’s afternoon poker game: You can’t always get the cards you want. However, once they’ve been dealt and you happen to spot a sign that signals disaster, for god’s sake, fold your cards and walk away.

Sit-Coms instead of Sermons?

     There is a lot of crap on TV these days.  I suppose that there has always been an audience for crappy television shows, but like most kids that grow up in the south however, I spent a lot of time in church which severely limited my crappy television viewing time.  

I would even go so far as to say, that I spent too much time in church.    

There was of course, Sunday school, where, as a child you learn to cut, paste and craft your way through biblical stories like Adam and Eve or Noah and his ark chocked full of animals.  Learning morals and gleaming wisdom with every pinto bean you glued to a paper plate.   

Then through your teens, you graduate from the fun scissor work to more serious scriptural studies, which included the sins of premarital sex and the dangers of spilling your seed…I still don’t quite understand how spilling seeds equates to masturbation and how that path leads to an eternity in hell, but at 14, I just didn’t question the logic.   Eventually, you graduate to sitting in the big sanctuary with the grown-ups enduring an entire Sunday morning moralism without the benefits of paste and a few handfuls of beans to stave off boredom.

After the last prayer had been prayed and the congregation dismissed, later that same Sunday at six, I would again be sitting in front of my parents, just in arm’s length of my mother so she could ensure that I did not nod off at any point during the evening sermon.  However bored I became, I always enjoyed the very beginning of the service because of the music and singing.  Sometimes it was fast and lively enough to get folks out of their seats and clapping.  Other times it was mournful and bluesy.  Because I always enjoyed belting out a song, it didn’t matter to me if the song was pop or praise, I was alert and ready to hit the high notes.  You can imagine that after a few spirited performances of me and my back up choir, that I would, of course, be tired and in need of a quick cat nap during the pastoral portion of the event.  More often than not, I would receive a quick rap to the back of the head because my mother caught me swaying or nodding off before the last “amen” of the evening.

Now on Monday night, while most of America watched football, my family had part one of bible study with part two concluding on Wednesday, which coincidentally, always made me miss the first part of my favorite television show.  I could care less about not watching football, but I despised missing my TV program and honestly, contribute this as the beginning of a deeply rooted disdain for religion in general. 

Periodically, though out the year, there were also week-long revivals, where we’d spend seven nights of prime-time in the confines of a church building listening to a sermon instead of watching sit-coms.   I am sure you are getting the point, which is that I spent a lot of time in church sitting in a pew, when I’d really have preferred to have been watching television on my bed. 

For me, after spending years of memorizing biblical scripture and then in college studying philosophy and world religion, I would argue that my youth would have been better served in front of a television screen instead of a pastor…unless that pastor was Pat Robertson and the program was The 700 Club.  ...I suppose there still is a lot of crap on television.

A Buck & Baldness

    Every week, I promise myself that I am going to start being more active in my blog, after all, I consider myself above all else, a writer.  Truthfully, I have many talents; for instance, I can stir a filthy martini that would make a nun salivate and after drinking a couple, I can belt out a high note at any local karaoke bar until all the drunks hand me a dollar while strumming a guitar effectively.  (I don't really play the guitar while singing...I need one hand for the mike and the other to take the money.  The guitar is intermittently strummed in between those other tasks.)

     Alas, at the end of an exhausting list of possessed talents and, dare I say, universally bestowed gifts, I am, above all else, a humble writer…well, writer at least.  To which, I am resolved to perch upon my pedestal of public domain and pen down more of my thoughts.

Honestly though, I have had my plate pretty full recently with the move to Philadelphia.  I graduated in May with a master’s degree and for the life of me, I cannot seem to understand why my door hasn’t been beaten down with job offers.  Statistics be damned, but only 10% of the world has a post-secondary degree and I am one of them.   

This makes me wonder, are there others too who are out of work wondering if there are others in the same jobless state.  To them I say, “Brothers, you are not worthless and alone while you meander aimlessly though scams and crooked shams looking for opportunities to present themselves on Career Builder.  I am here and sit with you in solidarity in front of my computer screen, and I too, am searching for the next lead, phone interview and someone who believes that I am the right one for the job!"

Looking for a job, especially when you spent so much time and money on a degree in which seems sometimes is completely useless can be maddening.  On my way to the gym last night to work off the bag of Butterfinger candy bars that I consumed while perusing the webpage want ads, I drove past a Paul Mitchell Hair School and had to pullover because I was sobbing so loudly that I couldn’t control the car.  

 I thought at the time, that learning to bang out some hair would, at the very least, be a job that would never be at the whim of an academic recession and would be a helluva lot cheaper than grad school.  After all, most people grow hair and those folks always need their hair cut…and just to have job security, I figured that I could also learn to style wigs and hair pieces.  That way, hair or no hair, I’d have all my bases (or scalps in this case) covered.

After a good long cry, I gained some composure and made my way to the gym and hopped on the nearest treadmill where I drowned out my troubles with Cher’s latest album.  She really has a way of putting things in perspective when I trudge along, getting nowhere on a moving platform going 4.5 mph.  It may seem a bit ego-centric, but I change all the lyrics in her songs to reflect me and my state of being and it somehow, makes everything all right, at least for a little while.   

I will now address anyone within ear shot of “The Christian Sing-Along While Running on a Treadmill Show at Planet Fitness:” Although your individual playlist may differ from the one that I belt out during the show, hold up a buck next time.  I take requests.