Now, I’m no food critic. I just eat it. That about sums up my relationship with food. If I like it, I eat more of it. If I don’t like it, I don’t eat it more than three, four times, just to be sure.

Chances are I will eventually come to love all food. You know, your taste buds change, like, what, every seven years? I used to hate Brussels sprouts, but now, no, wait, I still don’t really like Brussels sprouts, but say, grits, for instance. I used to hate grits. Perish the thought! A born southerner who hates grits?

But, it’s true, I did. I don’t now, is my point.

As Aristotle said, A life left unexamined, something, something, something.  

I think what he really meant was “eat up.”

So, in honor of him, of all the cooks I’ve known, of the Deep South, of people who eat everywhere, I’m going to offer my Top Five Snacks That Are Essentially What Make Me Southern.

Be prepared to grimace.

1. 1.       Mayonnaise sandwich, most of the time with a banana

I told you you’d grimace. Every time I make one of these sandwiches, someone has something to say about it. Which, of course, causes me to eat them in silence, in the dark of my kitchen, as if I’m committing a crime. But, you’re the one missing out. Now, I don’t know how or when this delectable comestible came into my life, exactly. It’s been in my family for generations, though, that much I do know. Probably arose out of the Great Depression when families everywhere only had bread, mayonnaise, and bananas. I do recall an episode of Mister Rogers (I like how he always spelled out “mister”) in which he wrapped a piece of cheese around a banana and ate it, thus encouraging me to add cheese to my banana sandwich, which I still do to this day. There’s just something about the combination of sweet and salty that works for me. I would say try it, but I know you won’t. But let’s not get all high and mighty, shall we? As Sipsey so eloquently put it, in Fried Green Tomatoes, “[…] he won’t sit next to no black child, but he’ll eat an egg what done shot out a chicken’s ass.” We all have our “secret foods.” (Fried green tomatoes are also delicious, FYI).

1. 2.       MoonPies

What can be said about the heavenly treat of a MoonPie that hasn’t already? A lot. But, for the sake of time, I’ll leave most of those words up to you. Because, come on!, you’ve had one, you’ve enjoyed it, you’ve had more than one, I’m sure, and really, once you start, you can’t stop. The wafer, the marshmallow, the flavor, none of it organic, even in the least little bit. It may well have been the first “junk” food, but who cares? Nobody eats a MoonPie for his health. My first MoonPie experience came to me from, no lie, my Uncle Moon. We were in the cornfield, I guess because the corn was ready to be pulled, but I did none of that. I sat on the tail of the truck and did whatever I did back then, count crickets, or whatever, and when he and the others stopped for a break, he pulled out a MoonPie and allowed me to believe he’d created it until I was probably a senior in high school. I miss him. Which just makes me love a MoonPie that much more.

1. 3.       Fried dill pickles

I doubt you’d be allowed to stay in the south if you didn’t like a fried dill pickle. This is, honestly, one snack that cannot be messed up. It doesn’t matter what you do, they come out tasting divine, time and time again. Fry the whole spear, chop it up, slice it, it’s all going to be ok. Fill up a pot with peanut oil, turn the temperature high, and become a legend in your own kitchen. (But do it because of the pickles, not because you set the place on fire). My great-grandmother, Tigi, (born in 1898), would have a plate of these ready for me, with a tall glass of chocolate milk, every afternoon when I’d return home from kindergarten. I’m not sure how chocolate milk and fried dill pickles came to be the yin-and-yang of my afternoon snack, but then again, she also enjoyed eating sliced tomatoes with orange juice. Fact is, though: she could cook. After she passed, there were dark days, when all I got was nothing, but after the storm passed—she was so loved by so many—her son, U.L., finally picked up the mantle and carried on her tradition. Until I gained too much weight, and then we went back to where I got nothing.

1. 4.       Cornbread and milk

I can’t count on my hands or yours how many times U.L. and I would sit in the den of his house and eat this. We each had our own special glass for it. Mine was dark green, like a pine needle, and heavy, tempered. We’d get big boy spoons and crawl into our respective seats, the TV turned off, and just eat salty cornbread drowned in milk. Sometimes, he’d mix whole milk and buttermilk, but I never graduated to that level of gastronomy. Some things, I know, are really wrong with the world. Some of those things may never get fixed, but goodness!, a glass of day-old cornbread and fresh milk sure goes a long way in making the world a little bit of a better place. Sweet cornbread, FYI, is a sin, and should not be attempted in your own version of this snack. If you do use sweet cornbread, please do not ever tell me as I would have to never speak to you again.

1. 5.       Salted peanuts and Dr. Pepper

I will never forget the day that I was almost run down by an irate bull on one of my other uncle’s farms. It has less to do with being chased to near exhaustion by the bull (we called him Charlie, for some reason) than it did by what followed. I was thirsty, naturally. My uncle had watched us aggravate the bull (my cousin was with me), and I think he fairly enjoyed watching us run for our lives. Bulls are very good at running, by the way. We only survived by running in two different directions. When we finally got out of the pasture, my uncle was standing there, Dr. Pepper in hand. I asked for a sip. At first, I thought something was wrong with the Dr. Pepper, as it had chunks in it. No, he said, Those’re peanuts. And they were. Sadly, I no longer enjoy the fuzziness of soft drinks, but I don’t miss them. I miss what you could do to them, like adding peanuts. It’s actually tasty. He let me finish the drink; I gave none to my cousin. He didn’t care, anyway. He was more interested in trying to pee on the electric fence. It would have been wasted on him, as you can see.

Of course, these are only five out of a long, long list of other snacks that I also eat, regularly, and consider perfectly southern. But this is just a blog, not an encyclopedia. Feel free, though, to let me know what your favorite snacks are. I’m prepared to be both jealous and determined to take them away and make them my own.

In the meantime, I’ve got to go find a banana.

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Nostalgia for children of the 1980s leads automatically to all the cool tchotchkes and fads that defined what cultural historians would eventually call the “Me Generation.” I’m sure it does for children of any decade, but I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about me, us.

And, really, can we be honest, here?, children of the 80s had the coolest stuff. We discovered  the addiction of electronic gadgets, for crying out loud. Mothers gave up mothering for careers, Carter gave way to Reagan, and cable news gave everything else away. We had no choice but to break the mold, and make our own way in the 80s. And we spent the 90s letting everybody know it.

We were latch-key children tired of board games; we gave up playgrounds for Ataris.

Besides, what did kids in the 50s and 60s have, anyway? Toy bomb shelters? And kids of the 70s, had, like, what, daisy chains and headbands? Were there even children in the 1940s? (I’m pretty sure children weren’t invented until after World War II).

So, I mean. Come on: we invented the computer.

We kickstarted the Handheld Revolution. Before there iPhones, there were calculator watches. Angry Birds? Please, try Berzerk or Frogger. Gameboy, no thanks. We had Simon, and he loved us.

The problem, the real problem, came when education and 1980s trends collided. The first time I ever got in trouble at school, that time I pushed Chris Brannon into a mud puddle notwithstanding, came from my calculator watch with the puffy buttons. I wasn’t actually using it, but I had no idea how to turn the alarm off. I also didn’t set the alarm; it came already programmed into the watch.

There was a learning curve, you could say.

I bet Mrs. Sinclair still has it, tucked away in her desk drawer. Maybe I’ll ask for it back. It’s probably worth something, by now.

Oh, and what about slap bracelets, the trend that kept a toe in the 80s and 90s? Remember those? They lasted about a day in fifth grade. Strangely, they weren’t considered a weapon, as most of the people who hurt themselves were the ones who owned the bracelets. It was a bit S&M, I think, all the kids sitting in their desks, slapping their wrists, again and again.

I bet Mrs. Sinclair still has my slap bracelet, too. Were they really just a cry for help?

I lost my Transformers Autobot Radio Communicator in a bet with Clay that he couldn’t hang upside down on the monkey bars as long as I could. Why on earth a nerdy boy with glasses thought he could beat a boy who was born with a rifle in his mouth at hanging upside down is beyond me.

I bet he took it to school and Mrs. Sinclair confiscated it. God, she’s probably got half my childhood in that desk drawer.

I lost most of the 80s. I mean, if we measure it by toys. My Pound Puppies starved to death. I only vaguely remember Verbot, though I managed to hold onto the remote control, so I don’t know how much good he did to whoever ended up with him. (That is, if he was stolen, and I’m going to say that he was). I fared a little better with my Star Wars figurines, but that was then; God only knows where they are now.  I sold my Speak and Spell at a garage sell, and to be honest, my Tiger Skeet Shoot wasn’t even mine. I stole it from my cousin, Michael.

Don’t tell him.

Anyway, things come and go, right? It happens. And after awhile, you get used to it. I was. Until, a few weeks ago, going through a closet of old, forgotten boxes. My niece was helping me. We pulled a few out, down from the shelves, and curiosity got the better of us. We opened one of the boxes and inside was half of an orange neon Hit Stix set.

I tried to explain to her what it was.

Her comment, “That’s so…old…that’s, what do they say, that’s vintage.”

I took in a sharp breath, and thought, Wow, that’s what I am, I’m vintage.

I let the breath out, and said, “Yeah. Yeah.”

But, I told her…the game ain’t over, yet.

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You live in Mississippi, you get used to it. And tornadoes. And heat. And humidity. And football. All of which cause problems.

The only hurricane I have any serious recollection of, personally, is Katrina. I mean, there were others who came and went, tried their best, but Katrina, she meant business. Even as far inland in Mississippi as I was, we still went nearly a week without electricity.  

In the searing heat of late August, the lack of electricity tends to leave an indelible mark on you.  Trust me.

Still, I have great respect for weather phenomena. I actually love storms, I dream about tornadoes, and I am especially in awe of the mighty hurricane, named after the Cabal god of evil.

So, my feelings are little hurt, after all the gumption I’ve given to hurricanes, in particular.

Because has there ever been a Hurricane Kris?

No. No, there hasn’t.

I don’t think there has, at least.

And that’s a shame, because I bet it’d be a nice hurricane.  And really, when you think about it, shouldn’t there be a nice hurricane, every now and then?

One that would be extremely generous and specific in its path of destruction. For instance, going house to house and giving you the day off from vacuuming because it’d just suck up all the dirt from the carpet. Or, wait a little later in the fall, and come through with a giant wind and blow all the leaves out of the yard and into someone else’s, or just gently clean out the gutters from the roof, you know, something like that.

A nice hurricane might even be polite and take suggestions, like, “find that guy who flipped me off at the four-way” and just give him what-for.

Anyway. There is a Hurricane Isaac, though.  And I find that funny. Not the name Isaac, per se, but that we name them anyway. As if humanizing them makes a difference.

Well, but wait, though. What if it did?

What if we thought of hurricanes—with their Disney-esque, first-names only bases—the way we do every other annual visitor from the Easter Bunny to Santa Claus? Wouldn’t it be something to have a hurricane holiday? Children in houses across the gulf coast, from NOLA to Mobile, and that land mass called Mississippi (but only sometimes and by a precious, knowledgeable few), running home with their class projects of colorful hurricane macaroni swirls to put on the refrigerator, while mothers complained of all the icing they had to put on all the cookies to suggest “wind” they’d leave on the rooftop for Hurricane Whats-his-face?, and little hurricane trees decorated so carefully with tinsel and debris, in the living room?

“Now, don’t forget, time to go to sleep or Hurricane So-and-So won’t spare our house?” (Can you imagine the PTSD on those children)?

But, don’t act like it doesn’t make some kind of sense. Isn’t this what we do with the unknown, or the made-up? We characterize, or caricature, “it” (a value, a faith, a belief, a holiday) and use that as some sort of crowd control or behavior modification. Be good, get gifts. That’s the basic American parenting motto.

And it doesn’t work.  For long.

The problem is in trying to figure out when it stops working.  And I certainly don’t have an answer to that. I’m not a parent. I’m just an uncle, a passer-by, an educator, who watches what’s happening, much like I imagine the eye of a hurricane does: seeing but not believing.

Maybe that’s what uncles are good for: being hurricanes. I like that, Uncle Hurricane Kris. Blowing through, giving people something to talk about, bond over, and then, heading on his way, mindful of the force of his nature, but leaving the rest to pick up the pieces. Because that’s what nature does best: in like Flynn, out like gout.

Oh, and to take the cookies. Because I will most certainly take the cookies. Which is good because that’s about all that’s left in the grocery store, since Isaac caused us a little Katrina-panic.

And so, I’ll be on my couch, Chips Ahoy in hand, waiting to see who gets the last word, me or him.

It’s going to be a long wait, I’m afraid.

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You’ll recall my Zumba accident, perhaps.

And if you need a new reference, well, then, here you go: I took a trip on a bus this weekend to Atlanta.

Not a city bus that takes you twenty minutes or less from Wal-Mart to a museum, or whatever, where I live we don’t really have city buses. No, the bus I took was with a commercial busing company that we’ve come to know as Greyhound.

I was heading to Atlanta to visit an old friend, and do some networking, and eating, and soiree-ing, and chose not to fly, for obvious reasons, nor to drive because it made U.L. too nervous – the traffic in Atlanta Kris, he said, You’d just be borrowing trouble.

So, I found a solution: the bus.

It did not make U.L. feel any better.

The bus? He exasperated. They stab people on buses, don’t they?

As opposed to assigning seats? I asked. I don’t think so. (By the way, they do not assign seats, either. It’s first come, first served, unless you take the bus from Macon, Georgia, where last year a man was stabbed…with nail clippers, no less).

Here’s the full story, if you’re so inclined – http://tinyurl.com/d9hq9dj.

Now Kris, he began, but I cut him off. I’d already bought the ticket online.

And that’s probably where my problems first arose.

Greyhound, at least in the South, has made an attempt to go online. Which is very convenient. However, it has not felt the need to clue its drivers in on this little fact. Which is very inconvenient.

Inconvenience causes rifts between anxious passengers and bus drivers. It also makes bus drivers mean. But, of course, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to grow up to be a bus driver, so I did cut Bob some slack (the driver on the return trip home). Shay-Run, though, the driver on the trip in to Hotlanta, well, she and I had some words.

I flat-out prayed for her right in front of her face, which is frowned upon. FYI.

It turns out, she got the last laugh. She kept a part of my ticket, the part that actually gave me permission to be on the first leg of my return trip. Junior, the very Ossie Davis of Greyhound drivers, though, forgave me and allowed me to stay on board.

When I take over the world, I will allow him to live.

I think I come from good stock, patient and kind, if cautious, and understanding. But, trust me, when I tell you that I have never met a lazier, more disenchanted, unfriendly group of people than those I met with Greyhound. I would die if I were in charge of employer satisfaction surveys. These people are not only unhappy; they’re also paid to be unhappy behind the wheel of a very large bus.

I will be clear on this one point, though: they drove carefully and deliberately, and I see now that that’s their ruse, their trick.

Who cares if they’re rude or crass to you? If they’re on time and on schedule, you almost feel the need to hug them.

(I did not hug them, by the way).

I’ll start briefly with my trip out of Tupelo. The first thing I noticed is that bus stations, in general, are little pockets of third world countries, living right under our noses here in the good, faded glory of the U.S. of A.

It is, I hate to say it, a poorer, cheaper method of transportation that does not appeal to anyone who does not fit into a) a stereotype, or b) dirty pajama pants and torn sportswear. To be other than either of these two points is to draw attention to yourself which, though quite a feat in and of itself when you consider the general clientele of Greyhound, is nevertheless a bad idea.

I was, needless to say, a very bad idea.

Shay-Run picked us up in Tupelo at a station where most of the seats were stained, and there was significant discoloration along the walls where vending machines had either been stolen or they’d just given up hope like the three 80-year-old men behind the Greyhound counter checking people in, balancing their time between bus passengers and frantic people trying to wire money through Western Union.

Shay-Run immediately, after having us load our own bags under the bus, began her spiel about how to pronounce her name, that the bathroom didn’t flush, and that if we had a cell-phone, we needed to speak softly into it so as not to distract her.

The girl in front of me repeated Shay-Run, word for word, to whomever she was speaking with on her cell phone at the time, and was reprimanded.

Then a stinky, fat woman chose to sit next to me, all the while worrying about her “other baby” that she and her boyfriend of dubious background and fashion had left with his “momma.” Her T-shirt had Eeyore on it and read “Cheerless Leader.”

In this manner, my trip started.

She then began to include me in the conversation. I politely told her I wasn’t interested. And still, she sat by me. The Greyhound passenger, you see, in the wild, has developed such a necessary rapacious ability to survive under any social circumstance that they no longer are able to tell when they’re “not wanted.”

Having left my book at home, I was defeated.

So, I prayed for her, too.

Next stop: Birmingham, where it’s always stormy.

I’ll skip Birmingham, for now.

Once in Atlanta, the first thing greeting you is exhaust fumes and a man who believed he was your instant friend, and felt the need to share his colorful language with you about the “people running this country.”

It was the same on the return trip. (I assume he lives in the seat of Gate 2)

We stop, again, in Birmingham.

I’ll skip Birmingham, for now.

Fast forward to Bob. I don’t like Bob. He was my driver on the way home; Bob, who pulled two people off the bus and left them in Birmingham. One, because she didn’t have a ticket for that leg of the trip (dodged a bullet there, didn’t I?) and the other because he had a knife and apparently engaged in inappropriate behavior with an underage girl in Piedmont Park.

(You win, U.L. I mean, who are these people??)

Bob drove me all the way from Birmingham to Tupelo, eyeing me from time to time in the rearview mirror all because I asked him twice if the bus in section one (back at the Birmingham terminal) was the bus that went to Tupelo. (I’d gotten on the wrong bus back in Atlanta, and just barely escaped a forlorn trip to Cincinnati with Helen, the woman who had been standing in front of me waiting to get on the bus and was headed to Cincinnati “on account of a grandson done got put in jail.” Of her five teeth, I liked the one that jiggled the most. He had personality.

I had merely wanted to make sure I would end up in Tupelo, a place I’ve never thought of as heaven until this weekend. I was even looking forward to the nasty seats at the station because yes, they’d be nasty seats, but they be nasty seats in Mississippi, where God’s people are.

Those were my nasty seats.

Here’s a record of our exchange:

ME: “This is the bus to Tupelo, right?”

HIM: “Idn’t that what I told you?”

ME: “Well, you just pointed, and I wanted to make sure.”

HIM: “I just checked you in! Right?! And ain’t I the driver??”

ME: “I. I don’t know. Are you?”

HIM: “I think I know what I’m talking about.”

ME: “Well, I hope you do because I sure as hell don’t.”

Then, I really quickly got on the bus because I scared myself. He had a glass eye, I think. The other one was either bloodshot or glaucoma.

In case you’re wondering, it’s very uncomfortable to be stared at via rearview mirror with a glass eye and either a bloodshot eye or glaucoma.

Still, we got to Tupelo on time, and I wasted none of my own, grabbing my suitcase and leaving.

Of course, I have only myself to blame. I wanted the experience; I wanted to support American transportation. I wanted us to be cool like Europe who manages to have safe, affordable and fun bus and train excursions from country to country.

Truth is, though, I guess we’re just not ready for that.

I’m certainly not, after all was said and done. I had to take half a Xanax this morning when I saw the school bus pick up our neighbor’s kids.

But, I calmed down when I realized that they probably both had knives of their own. So, they’d be safe.

They’d be safe.

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I’m a liar. I mean, I do sleep a lot because I love sleeping so that part from my blog the other day is not a lie.

But, the part where I said I don’t watch a lot of TV?

That was a lie.

A big, fat, bald-faced lie – so called because 18^th-19^th century businessmen often grew beards to mask facial expressions when making “deals,”(Check it out http://tinyurl.com/5s9k7).

By the way, though: Props to bald people. Get a rough end of it, don’t they?

But back to me. I’m obsessed with TV right now.

It wasn’t always like that. TV just got good again. It comes and goes, and as a trendy person I notice this. It rides a wicked wave of popular, topical, social-media driven themes, I’d argue, and I’ve been known to need a Dramamine to get through more than one episode of several shows, but thanks to Netflix (didn’t see that “thank you” coming, did you?) and Hulu, not to mention YouTube’s and Yahoo!’s experimental forays into television-esque programming based on their subscribers’ likes and such, TV has never been easier to watch. 

Or harder to get away from.

So, at the risk of becoming a broken record, but also because a hit’s a hit, regardless, that’s why you listen to the same song over and over, I’ve chosen to chronicle lessons learned from another show that I can’t live without, just like Downton Abbey, The Walking Dead. (Although, I don’t have nightmares of a dowager countess attacking me with verbal insults as I repeatedly bash her head in with the broken handle of a hoe).

Also, I promise not to make a habit of these lists.

For now, though, just humor me.

Ten Things I’ve Learned From Watching The Walking Dead

1. Leave the children. They’re nothing but dead weight anyway. Point them toward the woods and tell them to run and look for culverts. Remind them ants are edible, in a pinch.

2. Don’t trust a church in the middle of a cemetery with bells on a timer. But, do take a moment to go inside and pray. It is always good to pray. Kill any zombies that are also in the church praying because they are not, in fact, praying.

3. Learn to whisper.

3a. Steal anything you like, paying special attention to essentials like a mermaid necklace or a red short-sleeved shirt that you think would “look real nice on” you. However, waste all bottled water on yourself by pouring the whole thing over your head because it’ll probably be hot that day.

4. Remember those walkie-talkies you got for your eighth birthday? Better find them. You’re gonna need them. (Steal some batteries while you’re at it).

5. Zombies tend to favor back seats. Unless they’re in a truck. Also, as a season progresses, they get a lot faster.

6. When all else fails, just have a good cry. Just find a rock, a stump, a tree limb, the back of an RV, and just sit right on down and cry awhile

7. Don’t forget to practice that whispering.

 8. Don’t drive at night in the middle of a storm when there are zombies everywhere. Or, if you absolutely have to because, say, your husband insists, to the point of ridicule, on being the good guy especially to a wayward pastor-veterinarian whose turned to drinking again at the local watering hole, then don’t get pregnant. (See #1).

 9. He who carries the gun carries the show. The problem, though, is when everyone pitches a fit because they don’t have a gun to carry, no one’s got the show.

 10. Stay the hell out of Georgia.

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Of course, I find very little to dislike with any show BBC originates, especially in Downton Abbey, not to be confused with Downtown Abbey which is not even a real place; everything about the show works, and I don’t know why – even the opening theme music creates appropriate anxiety.

Or maybe I just think that highly of myself.

Sadly, now we have to wait until next year to see the next season of Downton Abbey, but in the meantime, we can take a few moments to discuss what we’ve been taught from this British export of high drama.

Below are the lessons I’ve learned from watching.

Read carefully. There’ll be a test later.

Ten Things I’ve Learned From Watching Downton Abbey Most Of Which I’m Sure Are Historically Accurate

1.  There is no such thing as a middle class. There are only super wealthy people and then some others who look like people but are really servants.

2. Each meal must have at least eighteen different bottles of wine to accompany it. You will not ever drink more than a sip each, as a member of the elite, but you should nonetheless decant every bottle because servants like to decant bottles of wine in their spare time.

3. In a house with over 100 rooms, you will still never need to use more than the following four: a bedroom, a parlor/dining room, a library, and a kitchen, but, if you’re one of the wealthy, you will never need to go into the kitchen unless you need to scold someone, namely servants.

4. If you have to be anyone, be the Countess.

5. To say the butler did it is mostly erroneous. There seem to be only footmen, ladies’ maids, valets, a housekeeper, a cook, and Daisy. There is also a shifty Irish chauffeur whose only mission is to deflower the weakest daughter, like most Irishmen.

6. There is no point in ever owning a dog.

7. Servants.

8. The second most disgraceful thing that could ever happen to you, if you’re nobility, is that a maid should ever, ever be seen serving a meal in the parlor/dining room, even if it’s only because there’s “a war on.” She should, if anything, be left with kindling and starting a fire in every one of the other 96 rooms. The first most disgraceful thing is a tie between the alleged ease with which one would marry a first cousin and borrowing a footmen from a lesser house because he’ll drink the wine and get drunk.

9. Always make sure when you’re dealing on the black market in various hard-to-come-by-because-there’s-a-war-on comestibles in some inane attempt to swindle the upper classes out of their inherited fortunes, that you’re actually getting sugar and flour, not sawdust.

10. Trust no one named Thomas. Or Edyth, for that matter. And also don’t hire a single mother as a servant, just to be safe. Because, you know, there’s a war on.  

10a. As a lord, lady, earl, and whatnot, you will spend 80% of your time on this earth being dressed and undressed by servants. The remaining 20% will be spent telling people what not to do, or that one afternoon you spent in court on behalf of Bates.

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He wasn’t baiting me; he was honestly asking.

Granted, the context had been a Valentine’s Day activity of the sort that seems so obligatory in elementary school where everyone gets a card, even the mean kids, but humiliation is reserved for those who are a little too self-aware.

That, sadly, is a family trait we unwillingly share.

I countered by asking him if someone had been mean to him?

No, he replied. But, to tell the truth, he went on, I don’t think I like everybody anyway.

They grow up so fast, don’t they?

Because that is a very adult thing to say.

In my family, we try very hard not to baby-talk any child over the age of two. So, I was rather uncomfortably confronted with how best to respond to his question. I decided to do what an uncle gets to do: tell the truth and let the parents deal with the aftermath.

I told him, quite honestly, that it was OK to not like everybody, but that wasn’t the same as not being nice to everybody.

And just like that we had a teachable moment.

One I hope that sticks because children these days are in a sad shape. They’re not learning what they should be learning in school which I find shocking, if for no other reason than I’d spent most of my life looking at education as having one goal: teaching basics like reading, writing, etc. But, my god, it’s so much more than that, and you probably already knew, right?

We need more than just math teachers and science teachers. We need character teachers; etiquette teachers. Where are they?

Because let’s face it: they’re not getting all they need at home. Children spend the majority of their active, formative years in rooms with strangers: peers and adults. The guidance they receive often comes down to little more than a fifty-minute period, seven days a week, seven times a day where the pressure is on grades as an indicator of success.

And that’s true to a point. However, interestingly enough, I read an AP article yesterday on Obama’s visit with the leader-in-waiting of China—Xi Jinping takes the reigns in 2013—and a large portion of the article was dedicated to manners and political etiquette. Obviously, how we act in front of others still matters. A lot. Being nice to others is, it seems, still a big deal.

That’s not to say every child will be president—that’s not even possible—but what’s wrong with aiming for it? What’s wrong with looking to every day as a way to make the best impression to the greatest number of people.

The world is smaller now. It would serve us well as citizens of the best country on earth to show that we’re more than just Americans. We’re good, nice people who pay attention. Who know how to behave.

I think it’s through this kind of moral development that we learn how to be “in the world, but not of it.” I know that’s a tenet of Christianity, but even putting that aside, think of the point: being of the world is too narrow-minded, too segregationist, too problematic as a dictum of daily life. But being in the world gives you a clearer sight of those who are in the world with you. Those who live alongside you, pay taxes, make laws, and yes…even break them.

But compassion has made just as many headlines as wars have: Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, to name a few. Compassion was their weapon.

And learning how to wield starts in kindergarten.

Compassion grants us the freedom, allows us the freedom to let people get married, to let people worship who and how they want, without losing ourselves in the process. Compassion lets us be fully involved in the lives we’ve been given, not the lives other people have been given, and this is, in the end, all that matters.

To be fully involved. To make a difference by being the difference. That’s what Compassion gives us. Nobody wants to drink vinegar, not even Jesus. Maybe that’s why we have honey.

Aristotle said it best, that a life unexamined is not worth living. But it’s how we examine it, how we teach our children to look at themselves, that makes it a Life.

That’s why God created Compassion. That’s why He has it Himself. What’s the harm in having a little ourselves?

That’s what we ought to be teaching our children. If you have a child, a niece, a cousin, go on and assign them a little extra homework tonight; start with a hug.

Then, see what happens…

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I’m not really the first at anything when it comes to cats.

Especially not with the cat I have now. Her name is Lazarus, and the first person she bit was not me; it was Amanda, who then required a shot. The first person she scratched? Nope, again, it was Amanda. And lucky for Lazarus, Amanda isn’t one to hold a grudge, as the option the vet gave us that long-ago day she bit Amanda was to remove the cat’s head and test it for rabies.

They really need to find a better way to test for rabies.

Aside from having her, the cat I mean, constantly underfoot, I mostly get to sit back and watch her. And let me tell you, she’s weird. She is a strange, beautiful, biting, napping, purring, sweet, devil of a cat – I think it’s because she came back from the dead.

I mean, not technically. But Max, the dog, attacked her when she was hardly the size of soup can, and bit through her, but she survived, wormed her way into our hearts and house, and now she is bent on world domination.

Because it sure as hell won’t be a dog taking the reins of power. They’re too, I hate to say it but I will, dumb. Cats, though, keep you guessing.

Like most current world leaders.

I’ve only ever had two cats – three, technically, but by the time I entered Sugar’s life, she was preparing to leave it behind – but I feel safe in saying that of the two I’ve had, I’ve been taught a lot about kitty behavior.

Though, honestly, Lazarus is a textbook unto herself. She’s all the fun of a regular cat with the attitude of a wolf, the patience of a warthog, and the misguided belief that she’s the offspring of both, and also can fly.

She is 100%, whatever mood she’s in, when she’s in it. Max wants a belly rub, a head scratch, and he’s good to go. Lazarus, I’m afraid, wants you to figure out her mood. No hints. Just a wily stare that makes me feel like she’s thinking I could’ve gotten a better price had I gone to Fred’s.

I stay suspicious of her.

I wonder constantly what goes on in her mind. What is she thinking? Like, what is she thinking at 4:00 AM when she literally goes balls-to-the-wall wild and begins hissing and tearing through the house as if she’s realized a) she’s just a cat, after all, and it’s not going to change, and b) there are ghosts everywhere.

I envy her ability to fall instantly asleep, too. And in any position. Head under butt, tail around neck, upside down, half on/half off the bookshelf, it doesn’t matter. It looks uncomfortable to me, but she snores regardless.  I swear once she fell asleep in midair, as she crashed onto the couch, having for whatever reason decided she could not stand the idea of being on the mantle for even one second more.

She makes split decisions, like that, a lot. One thing we have in common.

She’s also an intensely coquettish cat, as cats go. She’s fully aware of how to get what she wants, except that she never gets it because I’m not a dog. I’m pretty smart. Oh, but she arches that back and swishes her tail and uses her sweetest inside purr, which in her mind, I’m sure, is the equivalent of an “I’m Sorry.”  It doesn’t work for more than, like, a few minutes, but that’s long enough for her to stab a paw through a French fry.

Though we have since discovered that she’s actually less interested in your food, say a hamburger from McDonald’s; she wants only one thing: the straw.

Amanda and I indulge her in this. We bought her an entire package of straws because, much like children, pets don’t want what TV tells you pets want. Buy her a feather-bell-stick-wand-thing for $5, and she’ll dig out an old chopstick from the garbage instead. She loves chopsticks and straws. I bundled a stash together, with a chopstick in the middle for support, and she will play with it for hours…at all hours. (Which actually says a lot more about me, as I’m obviously wasting those hours watching her play with straws and chopsticks).

We pretend she’s practicing for the Olympics, the Straw Olympics, because if we didn’t give her some purpose for the racket she makes when she’s “working on her dismount,” (you have a dismount in Straw Olympics), I’d probably have to throw the whole thing away, cat included.

She’s a sharp one. All on her own, she has figured out the reason for doorknobs. Lockable and otherwise. I found her a few nights ago, in my bathroom cabinet, which she’d opened with the use of one hypodermic claw – I watched her do it – and crawl inside, up to the top shelf, where she enjoyed a roll of toilet paper. (I didn’t see that part happen because I wouldn’t have stood there and let her rip it to shreds. I don’t think).

Amanda is worse about that kind of thing, than I am. She, in my opinion, doesn’t scold Lazarus enough.

I’m all down for the Squirt Bottle Technique – I used it once on my nephews – but Amanda, bless her heart, will give up after half of an attempt of a hand swipe and buckle under the cuteness factor. Oh look, she’ll say, Look how cute it is when she jumps up on the counter and knocks the fruit tray on the floor, or, I didn’t like those curtains, anyway, or, Oh, Kris, it’s one pair of shoes. You can buy another. And now you know not to leave them out.

As if I’m the one who needs to learn.

Which brings me back to my original point: cats will rule the world. Because, in the end, we are the ones who learn; they are the ones who teach. We coo when they purr; we curl up with them when they decide to crawl up into our arms. They’re really good at training us because they know how selfish we are as creatures of our kind.

 A little attention and we melt.

Of course, we better just get happy about it, and be thankful of the one blessing that really matters the most – that they still choose to use the litter box.

Though I fear that day is coming.

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Which is hard to believe considering the bladder problems I’ve always had.

It wouldn’t have mattered, either way; my family doesn’t talk about such personal things, choosing instead to overlook them with polite parentheticals. Should an uncomfortable topic arise in conversation, we are likely to smile and pass it off with an “Is that so?”, but not in an encouraging way.

Inflection is key in asking a question without looking for an answer.

It’s an art form, actually.

Likely, had it been an issue, they simply would have spent a fortune on new sheets and bed spreads, and I would never have been the wiser…except—that awful guilty feeling you have waking up in your own, you know, pee.

Or urine, if you prefer. But, let’s be honest, there’s no way to talk about this without using one of those two words, so buck up.

I do, however, recall one incident in which I did wet the bed.

A family member had died, as they tend to do on occasion, and we had a house full of company, and not just random-hitchhiker company, either. This was strange-relative company which, as you know, is far, far worse because they come spending the night with a sense of entitlement.

I had given up my room to some random cousin-couple (read that as you wish), and was crammed in the front guest bedroom, where no one, not even Day or Night, or Guests, ever went. I have never understood the convention of giving up your own room for company. Is it because it’s a noticeable sacrifice that you hope makes your company feel, at least, a little bad? Or, Is it because you know you never clean the guestrooms and instead, they become extended closets, and so you’d be embarrassed to have other people see it?

I guess we’ll never know.

I was uncomfortable all night long, and when I woke up, it was of little surprise to see that I’d wet the bed but good. A change of sleep patterns is indicative of increasing bedwetting chances. If nothing else, this room would get cleaned now.

U.L. took it all in stride, though. (Which is the “up” side to being raised by the Last Great Victorian – confrontation of any kind is to be avoided). But, he was also a wonderful surrogate father. He was gentle and compassionate. And I think, I like to assume, that because he didn’t scold or embarrass or implicate me in those delicate mishaps, that it helped me overcome them—be it bedwetting or something I suffered with far worse in my early days: stuttering.

I still felt awful about it. He reassured me, certainly, but he was concerned. And though it wasn’t perhaps meant, what I eventually began to take away from these bedwetting moments, even as few and far between as they were, was the fear of one question: What would people think?

And that, I’m afraid, is what cemented in my young brain.

Case in point: last night’s dream.

I’m at a school, preparing for class, that I was suddenly told I had to teach. The room is quickly filling up with eager college students; I’m a nervous wreck. The room is crowded, and noisy. I decide that if we all take our shoes and watches off that it will settle us. So, everyone does. I have chosen to show the entire third season of Roseanne and have everyone write haiku about the plot. A student hands me a Thums Up, also known as the Coke of national choice in India; it goes straight through me. My bladder is literally about to explode.

I don’t know what to do. I’m in the middle of class. So, I call former TV-star Jay Thomas, by pressing a button on the wall by my podium—he was obviously a popular person at this school—he steps into relieve me for a few moments. I run down the hall and find the bathroom, but it’s entirely full. There are no available stalls and I can’t use the urinals because I sit down when I pee, we all do in my family as it’s impolite to be heard using the restroom.

I’d even warrant that we’d rather just die of kidney failure than to use one. (After this dream, perhaps that will change).

I wait and wait and wait. A stall finally opens. I rush in and turn to close the door, except it won’t shut. I’m nearing desperation. I try everything. Finally, I kick the hell out of it and it catches the latch.

Whew.

I begin to unbutton my pants when I realize that even though the door is latched, it doesn’t meet the wall of the stalls. There is an inches-wide crack all around the door. I can see everything; everything can see me.

I simply cannot pee in these conditions.

So, I do the next best thing. I wake up. At first, confused—I’m not really a Jay Thomas fan—and then it dawns on me: I really have to go to the bathroom.  My brain was trying to both tell me and not allow me to abandon my Victorian ideals, not even for a wayward second. It woke me up, instead.

It wove a dream involving two of my worst fears:  sudden teaching (the educator’s actor’s nightmare), and having to pee when I don’t have the time to. Don’t laugh; I secretly think that’s everyone’s fear.

The point is, it woke me up, first.

And when I crawled back into bed, I did so amazed at the lengths the human mind will go to steer you in the direction of your upbringing.  I was grateful, and then mad about it.

I couldn’t get back to sleep for admiring how smart my own brain was.

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And let me tell you something. When you give a lot of money to a cause, it is no longer a fad.

It is a fact, i.e. We now have bicycle lanes.

The thing is, it’s catching on. I went downtown, before Christmas to buy a book for my brother-in-law, a book I swore I’d never look at it, let alone, pick up—Dubya’s Decision Points—and I swore for a moment that I’d taken a wrong turn off Lafayette St. and ended up in a suburb of Tokyo. I was shocked to see how many people were pedaling.

I was pleased.

So pleased, in fact, that I asked for a bicycle for Christmas, and got one.

And now we’re entering Day 15 of The Stand-Off.

To be sure, I wanted to ride it. And, honestly, I did. Just down the road to the church on the corner and back, which very nearly killed me on both sides. My legs had no trouble, but the rest of me did. To put it lightly, I didn’t pedal with a happy heart. I was angry at the bike, at myself, at the fools who put a church at the bottom of a hill, in the first place. Even a small hill.

And then, I got in trouble. Casually mentioning how brave I was in getting on a bicycle after mgmhm years, I was stopped, mid-sentence, and scolded: Did you have helmet on?

“No.”

“You can’t ride your bike without helmet.”

“Ok, sorry.”

“I’m serious. You need a helmet. And you probably ought to get knee pads, and maybe elbow pads, too.”

Which is why I don’t usually cash in on a fad. There’s no end to what you need to buy. A helmet, I understand, but by the time I’ve put on the rest of that garb, I’m be too tired to even look at the bike.

But, this is the great marriage: Going Green means Safety. And I couldn’t argue with that.

And, this is the great Adulteress to that marriage: Vanity. Because I wasn’t sure I wanted to look like a half-breed Pod person, just for the sake of getting some outdoor exercise on my bicycle.

Until I remembered the alternative.

My first bicycle was electric blue, weighed more than I did, and the handle bars were literally a part of the bike. They weren’t adjustable. They rose so high from the neck that had I been smarter, faster, and more coordinated, I could have hooked a blade to the bottom of my bike and cut my neighbor’s yards while trimming those pesky low-lying tree limbs that hung too close to dangerous power lines.

But, nobody has legs that strong. And even my freakishly long, Abe Lincoln arms couldn’t reach higher than the flimsy crepe myrtle branches.

Which factors prominently in my story.

Because, ever the curious child, I trained myself to pedal without holding onto the handle bars up to a certain speed, for the sole purpose of trying, with all my eleven-year-old might, to pull off the small, miniscule bulbs from the lower branches of the crepe myrtle trees down by the start of the driveway.

Then, I would pretend they were magic beans and I’d have to—you know what, never mind, that isn’t important to the story.

Now, you must understand, I grew up out in the woods. Not raised by coyotes, necessarily, though they did what they could to the chickens. So, they were more like those neighbors. My point is, what’s a helmet to a kid who, on occasion, had to round up stray, discontented cattle?

 I’d made my mind up, this particular Saturday morning, and I was going to start all the way over in Nana’s yard, get going at my fastest speed, and in one quick fell swoop, would let go of the handle bars and grab every single bulb on both trees, at one time.

I’d never done that before; I’d just soft-pedaled my way around the crepe myrtles up by the house. And so, I wasn’t thinking of how I’d then have to re-grab the handle bars, once I’d succceeded. I wasn’t one for thinking things through.

As U.L. put it, I “wasn’t but book smart.”

Do you know anything about crepe myrtle trees, by the by?

They’re a smooth bark, with a thick base off which spring whiplike little branches that make the world’s best switches, or so I’ve been told. They’re flimsy and flexible; they don’t have any trouble at all, going with the wind, wherever it may go. And they’re sturdy and can leave a right smart slap to your skin.

That is something I learned that day about crepe myrtles.

I never made it past the first tree. My handle bars got caught in the first branch, the bike fishtailed, I went flying off the banana seat, leaving my Members Only jacket in the top part of the tree, somehow. I fell hard onto the gravel driveway, face-first, and slid a few inches more into the dirty culvert, in the ditch by the second crepe myrtle.

The best part, though, wasn’t the myriad gashes and cuts I suffered. The best part was how the tree and the bike, in collusion, mocked me. Looking back, my bicycle looked as if it had simply been parked by the tree. Wheels on the ground, handle bars locked in a loving embrace with the branches.

Only I looked a fool. And as my bruises and cuts began to heal, I also looked like a poor, neglected child, much to U.L.’s dismay.

 In short, I’m going to buy a helmet this weekend.

 And I thought you should know why. It’s not because of any fad.

 It’s because of my face.

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