When the Truth Doesn't Matter... Kinda

Lazy Eye - Silversun Pickups (mp3)
Hazy Shade of Winter - Simon + Garfunkel (mp3)

My very first real honest-to-God girlfriend was a senior when I was a junior. She was a stud. She was built like an efficient brick shithouse, played soccer like a champ, and loved Van Halen, Dan Fogelberg, Indiana Jones and Jesus. “Carrie” was also salutatorian at the very large public school where my mother taught. She was socially clueless enough to find me attractive and interesting. One in a million, I tell ya.

We courted for three wonderful months. We dated for six. In the summer before my senior year, I broke up with Carrie. The reasons were lame but valid. And they were punctuated with this minor, insignificant detail that I'd spent two weeks at Governor's School romancing and eventually falling for a semi-psychotic but incredibly adventurous drama queen, someone who was in all ways the complete opposite of Carrie.

Carrie was back in Chattanooga writing me three to four letters each week, drawing little cartoons and cutting out ransom notes and writing bad limericks. I never wrote her once.

I broke up with Carrie the week I got back home, but it took two months of follow-up talks to settle the matter. She never could understand why I was breaking up, and I kept leaving out that little detail about Leigh. But Leigh and I had broken up before Carrie had finally accepted we were over, so I kinda had the chance to make up with her and never did.

I really had no desire to go back. In part because I was scum for lying to her so utterly and repeatedly... and in part because this girl, a very conservative and mature Christian, was simply too good for me.

Yeah so I'm defensive about it. Whatevs.

Cue the fast-moving clock. Move forward in time. Speed past our drifting apart once I get to college and become all but unreachable by family and friends from back home. Soar past our Christmas holiday dinner non-date when I'm a senior and we're awkward and both single but not feeling that thing that would transform a polite dinner into something more intense. Slip past the time we ran into one another on AOL and I tell her I'm engaged and will be married in three months and she immediately disconnects and never answers another email.

It's now the summer of 2010. I'm at a local dive watching the World Cup with my fellow blogger and 100 or so of my closest non-friends. I'm drinking a Bud Light Chelada for shits and giggles, my own form of Mad Men-esque rebellion of imbibing during the workday. (Don’t worry; it was just one freakin’ Chelada.)
Bob introduces me to a lawyer who works in the firm with his wife. Guy went to Red Bank. My mom taught him. He knew my ex-girlfriend. Small world yada yada. And then he says it.

"So weird about Carrie, right?"
"Weird what?" I say. 'Cuz I have no idea what he's talking about.
"I just can't believe she's gay. Never pictured her playing for the other team, you know?"

My reaction to all information I can't quite handle is very similar. If someone says the N-word in my presence, or if someone insults my mother's fidelity, or if someone says my Christian ex-girlfriend is gay, I just shrug and fake-chuckle and turn away and take another drink and try to pretend it didn't happen. It is the reaction of a non-confrontational coward, and I haven't been very good at doing anything about it.

Was it true? Is/was Carrie gay?

That night, when I was hopping around on Facebook, I searched for her name and found it. She was still living and working in Atlanta, but all other information was blocked from snooping eyes. So I sent her a long message. It updated her about my life, my family, my job, my hobbies. Everything someone who was happy not having anything to do with me for 20 years would be fine never knowing. God bless Facebook.

She never responded. Can't say I really expected her to.

So why does this stick in my craw? I don't really care if she's gay. Seriously, if she's married, or if she's celibate and uninterested in relationships, or if she's gay and dating Jane Lynch, none of it changes the way my heart reacts to her or my memories of her. If she's who she is, and if she's happy, then it's a good thing, and I would like knowing it.

Human nature. The Billy version is definitely screwed up. I want Carrie to be happy, but I also want to know I was written into her history book. But is my pathetic ego-trip enough to explain my desire to reconnect and find out?

Maybe I've convinced myself that if she was gay that I could absolve myself of messing around with another girl* while we were dating. I could excuse my unconscionable act with the faulty logic that I must've known something wasn't quite right with Carrie, something I just didn't understand in my clueless youth, and my straying was simply the product of a sixth-sense in my subconsciousness.

* “Messing around” isn’t code for kinky sex. “Messing around” wasn’t even petting. “Messing around” was strictly limited to kissing and groping over clothing. I never actually got my hands under the clothing covering female erogenous zones until one month before my wife got pregnant for the first time. OK, that’s exaggerated, but I was definitely in college.

The Sport of Serfs

Black Betty - Ram Jam (mp3)
For Tomorrow - Blur (mp3)

UGA’s A.J. Green was suspended for four games for selling his own jersey for somewhere in the range of $400-500. A 1-game suspension per $100 of profit. According to Michael Wilbon’s column in the Washington Post, UGA rakes in a healthy six figures in pure profit off the sales of various licensed versions of A.J. Green’s #8 UGA jersey. Meanwhile, A.J. Green could only buy three Kindles with the money he made.

That makes my head hurt. But not as much as the next factoid.

Somewhere between 1.6 million and 3.8 million brain injuries - mostly concussions - are suffered each year during sports activities. There’s no reliable way to track athletes and concussions in high school because so many players are afraid of missing games or falling in dutch with coaches (PDF, GAO.gov). The number of emergency room visits for concussions for children ages 8-19 doubled from 1997-2007 (PDF, Pediatrics).

I play fantasy football. I am a moderately fervent UNC sports fanatic. My daughter plays select soccer, and it would take the jaws of life to remove her from doing so for the foreseeable future, because she loves it. So I’m not the Anti-Jock or Gozer the Destructor, apocalyptic death-bringer of all things sporty. But I would happily bet that we’re approaching the point, in the coming decade, where the cultural pendulum will reach its pinnacle of sports obsession and begin returning to something more in line with reason.

Take a look at Newsweek’s latest feature on college athletics, “The Case Against College Athletic Recruiting,” which is a troubling (if admittedly oversimplified) investigation into how important playing a sport can be in the college admission process... at all levels for schools of all sizes.

After my rant about our local paper, perhaps I’m beating a dead horse here. But sports are often hurting the very people it claims to help -- the students. It’s hurting them physically with concussions, torn ACLs, broken bones, and it’s taking advantage of their pipe dreams by giving them “scholarships” and then making millions of dollars off them. And those great college scholarships earn them majors in amazing things like “sports management,” “African-American Studies,” and “General studies.” (The top 10 list is here.)

What I’m saying is, the claim that these money-making athletes (read: D-I basketball and football players) get a free ride in college and should be grateful is a lie we all know to be a lie. We want to be deceived. We also prefer to believe that football is “safe enough” because they wear armor and are super-sized humans with super-speed. We say this even as we watch approximately 45 players get carted off the field during the Clemson v. Auburn football game last weekend. (OK, slight exaggeration, but myself ant at least three friends declared that game “one of the most violent football games in recent memory.”)

At some point, the willful self-deception will have to stop. Because it always does.

We are currently riding a sports bubble not unlike the housing bubble and dot-com bubble of the recent past. BThe economic unfairness of the college system, and the evidence piling up on the kind of permanent physical damage we’re doing to teens and young adults will eventually force us to wake up. And we will wake up. We will eventually decide that the risks are more costly than the rewards.

Sports won’t die. Nothing at all like that. But I do believe my grandchildren will grow up in a society that doesn’t use phrases like “select sports” with quite the same zeal and focus. It’s possible this will be because everyone speaks Chinese and plays table tennis. Or it’s possible we’ll all be dead because an astronaut hit us or we did something to our planet that we can’t fix that wipes us out.

Or maybe the zombie virus will actually come. (And oh hell yeah I’m gonna watch “The Walking Dead” on AMC. You betcha! I say, to quote our most famous American zombie. I have a huuuuge soft spot in my heart for zombies.)

Cheating

Glasvegas--"It's My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry" (mp3)
George Harrison--"My Sweet Lord" (mp3)

I met the brother of a cheater the other night. It was very awkward. He had gone through his entire school career and had never had any contact with me whatsoever. I had seen him all night at a social function, hanging out with a bunch of guys I knew, and I had no idea who he was, so when I went up to say goodby to all of them, I was introduced to him.

"Oh,"I said, suddenly understanding, and I looked at all of the other guys and said, "I've never met _____, but _____ and I have a history." He nodded. He knew. His parents, with whom I had several conversations while I was teaching his brother and had gotten to know and to like, had never spoken to me again. All because I had caught his brother cheating, and his brother had been kicked out of school as a result.

His brother had stolen an essay off of the Internet. That's the cheating part. Now, here's the stupid part: the essay he had stolen did not even begin to fit the assignment I had given to my students. It was on the same book; it was on the wrong topic.

Today's teacher, or even a teacher from eight years ago when the infraction occured, is pretty savvy. We all know that basic essay topics on popular school novels are fairly easy to locate and purchase, and so we try to change up the topics, to create some new approach to a novel that can't be easily borrowed from an essay-selling website. The book in question? Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neal Hurston.

The student I caused to get kicked out went to Sewanee. He is now in law school. He seems to have gotten past it, weathered the storm, overcome his mistake, learned his lesson, etc.

But cheating is not a victimless crime. In the wonderful world of cheating, the person who catches the cheater is, arguably, the one who suffers the most, especially if you are of my generation, when there is little that is more reprehensible than being a "narc." And even if your school has an Honor Code, as ours does, when it comes down to a student actually getting kicked out, when all of the dust settles, even though the entire administration and faculty support you, you are the one who caused the student to get kicked out. Because you turned him in.

It's pretty clear to you, I suppose, that just seeing the brother of the boy who got kicked out has stirred up all kinds of guilt and pain, even though I did the right thing. It is not easy to act in such a way that causes a student to no longer attend the school where you teach and where he attends (or attended).

What we're really talking about here, of course, is a very specific kind of cheating--plagiarism. It is the stealing of someone else's ideas. Vice-president Joe Biden has apparently done it. So have respected historians like Stephen Ambrose and Barbara Tuchman. But those have been passed off as a careless handling of sources, a rush to get a book to press.

But then countless numbers of other students since the Internet have also made such an act a relatively easy matter of cutting and pasting. Which is certainly not to blame the Internet. Ease of accessibility cannot be considered the primary cause of crime, I hope. More likely, it is simply human nature being human nature, in this case, a boy who didn't read the book or who didn't think he had time to write the paper taking the easiest way out.

And it must be said that most teachers do not go looking for cheaters. The student practically has to hoist the large fish of his infraction and slap us in the face with it in order to get us to act. His mistake must be egregious. He must do something that is so out of character that it sends us looking. In the case of this school, it must be his 2nd, or even 3rd, offense, depending on the timing.

But when you were the teacher, none of that is any consolation. You are doomed to face an eternal awkwardness anytime the situation comes up. Should the student in question come back to visit, every other teacher is free to welcome him and to ask how he is doing and to help him reconnect with his old school, but you, you must hang back, perhaps get nothing more than a nod, or perhaps less, just a look of recogntion, because you're the one who pulled the trigger.

Every teacher, perhaps every employer, if he or she works long enough, carries this scar.

George Harrison, of course, was mightily sued when his "My Sweet Lord" was prosecuted as an obvious rip-off of the Shirelles' "He's So Fine."

Church Monogamy

Church - Lyle Lovett (mp3)
Once in a Lifetime - Talking Heads (mp3)

My church and I are like that married couple that met when they were in Kindergarten.

I've been a member of the same church since I was five years old. My step-father married my mom and adopted me. I took his name and began attending his church. I never had a say in it, nor did I really care to for a long time.

Over the years, we've had our tough stretches, our estrangements, times when we weren't talking or I would sleep on the couch. I guess that's bound to happen in an arranged marriage that goes back 30 years, right?

In my teenage years, I discovered that all my friends went to churches where actual groups of teenagers congregated and did cool stuff while I languished at a church where a heavy teenage population was, like, five kids.

This was my first revelation -- the first of many -- that my church was frumpy. She was terribly uncool. She had an outdated sense of fashion, the kind you could have just by shopping at TJ Maxx or something. She was Millie from Freaks + Geeks, the too-straight, too-uptight nerd who was already too old for their own good yet also totally clueless.

So yeah, I admit it. I snuck around on her. I visited a few other churches with friends, and I didn't tell her about it. But I wasn't unfaithful, really. It was more like I was sneaking out of my house late at night just 'cuz I wanted to see if I could get away with it, to see if I'd get caught.

I never did, but I never really left my church for long, either.

When I went to UNC, I ended up moving away from her for six years. I thought we broke up. Sure, when I was home for a holiday or something, I'd visit her, and she was all sweet and pinched my cheek and told me she missed me. And I'd hug her and tell her I missed her, too, even though my mind was far away from Chattanooga, a town most decidedly in my rearview mirror.

Problem was, I never got past a first date when I was away from her. I attended maybe a eight or nine services at a handful of churches in North Carolina and Georgia, but they were awkward blind dates, and nothing ever really connected for me.

When I found myself back in The 'Noog, my wife and I tried not to go back to my first and only church. We visited an Episcopal church, and a Methodist church, and maybe a couple of others. I even thought about becoming church celibate, something millions of American Christians have chosen rather than deal with the relationship hassles of a church. It would seem lots of folks seem to think church, while a nice girl with lots of promise, can be a pain in the ass and occasionally an insufferable bitch.

It wasn't long before my parents asked me to come back. They kept seeing my old church even after I'd broken up with her. It's tough to get away from someone when your parents keep bringing them around to visit.

I've been with her ever since. Conservatively, that's 28 years. But I've been a member there since I was five, and I've never so much as signed another church's visitor sheet, so it feels to me like I've been married to her for going on three decades now.

This isn't the part where I tell you I'm happily married to my church. You've got the wrong fairy tale.

This is the part where I tell you I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night and wonder how the hell I got to this place. How have I spent almost three decades with a church that has failed and disappointed me time and again? Did I ever even love this place to begin with? Was it an arranged marriage orchestrated by my parents, and I just blindly and dutifully remained faithful?

Lately, I find myself driving past other churches and staring a little longer than I should. The adorable archways. The rugged steeples. Parking lots bigger than some malls. What would it be like to date one of these supermodel churches, or even one of those older more traditional ladies that's maybe like my church, but maybe not... Maybe that other one would love me more. Maybe that one would be more fun at parties, and maybe she'd make me breakfast on Sunday mornings and have Sunday School classes with more than eight people.

Am I in an abusive relationship but just don't know it, because it's the only relationship I've ever known? Has this church sucked away far more from than than it's given me? Would any other church have been any different? Is that, as the Rembrandts said in their lost-'90s hit said, just the way it is, baby?

These are the kinds of things Billy is contemplating as he enjoys a week in DisneyWorld with his family. Support your starving artists by purchasing some Lyle Lovett or Talking Heads or Rebekah on iTunes or at Amazon.com's mp3 site.

Better Living Through Chemistry?

When It Falls Apart - Matthew Perryman Jones (mp3)
It's Only Me - Todd Thibaud (mp3)

The huge rise in allergies has been attributed to our society's increasingly antiseptic lifestyle. The irony is lost on no one. We fight germs and clean our counters and keep our kids out of the dirt, and biology mocks us by making our children's carefully-protected immune systems more vulnerable to more pathetic things. Like milk. And peanuts. And eggs.

Or, as some doctors say, stop worrying about making your children wash their damn hands before dinner. A little dirt never hurt nobody.

"A little dirt never hurt nobody" is my general approach to most of life, and my approach to health and medicine has always been similar. A little cold never hurt nobody. A little piggy flu never hurt nobody. A little gonhorrea never hurt nobody. This approach is clearly more philosophical than scientific.

But what good is science nowadays? Scientists can't even agree on things as basic as global warming or whether Sweet-N-Low causes cancer. You can read studies until you're blue in the face and still not know for sure whether women should drink more wine to protect them from Deadly Problem A or stop drinking wine to protect them from Deadly Problem B.

In much the same way Bob expressed frustration with professional athletes and the steroid problem, I've recently been wrestling with the issue of "neuroenhancement." The oversimplified definition of Neuroenhancement is: people who take ADHD-type medicines but don't remotely have ADHD so that they can do stuff better than they could otherwise.

Regular Harvard students (or students here in our own school) use Ritalin and Adderal et al to help them stay up and on task for ridiculous stretches. They use it to help them focus when taking tests, or when studying. Some professional poker players use it to intensify their attention while at the tables. Lots of people are using drugs never really intended for them in ways they deem beneficial to their brain and life.

At the gut level and my philosophical level, I'm strongly opposed to this. It feels like cheating. And not just "fudging a little," but outright cheating.

Well, there's also this little bitty other thing.

I can't deny that I'm forever scarred from the "Family Ties" episode where my hero, Alex P. Keaton, got addicted to speed before the first commercial break and was having a meltdown by the 20-minute mark. Even now, when I see those "5-Hour Energy" commercials, I have flashbacks to Alex wigging out in his room until Michael Gross steps in and smothers his son with his beard and cardigan sweater. (Insert Mallory and Tina Yothers jokes here.)

On the intellectual level, however, especially after reading this New Yorker article on the subject, I'm not sure if my reaction is justifiable. We have long ago let the horse out of the barn when it comes to granting medicine the right to fuck with every aspect of our lives. From asperin and penicillin to seratonin re-uptake inhibitors and blood enzyme regulators (a.k.a. "little blue pills"), we as a society seem plenty comfortable with drugs, drugs and more drugs, so long as they're manufactured by Glaxo instead of farmed by Fredo. Hell, we're totally OK with injecting botox, collagen, silicone, and God-only-knows what other unnatural substances into our flesh if it helps us be ready for our close-up, Mr. DeMille.

Neuroenhancement is, simply, mental steroids, mental temporary breast implants. It's adding chemicals to your brain that allow you (in theory) to do things better than you could without them.

But here's where my philosophical concern kicks in. I've long been a firm believer that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, that nothing in life is free. If these chemicals increase something in your brain, it's almost a certainty that they decrease something else, or they take a toll on the brain or body in order to render these results.

Steroids shrink your dick or make you stupid or violent. Cigarettes leatherize your skin and kill your lungs. Even marijuana, everyone's favorite cuddly illegal substance, the river otter of the drug world, has plenty of problems that come trailing along with the high it brings. I'd mention what those problems are, but I have the munchies and can't stop laughing. And these little bugs are crawling on my legs but I can't find them. (And if you've never had that last reaction, then I've uh only heard about it from friends.) Even when we do something to our bodies or brains that have no clear and undeniable side effect, it can still affect us emotionally or mentally in ways we don't grasp until it's too late.

Is my belief highly flawed? Sure it is. I can't think of any serious karmic consequences from taking Advil on a regular basis, for example. Certainly other medications and medical procedures have minimal cost for tremendous reward.

So maybe my objection is an egotistical and snooty one. Maybe I object to overweight people cheating by getting lap bands and lipo. Maybe I object to less intelligent people dosing themselves into a more agreeable study stupor. Maybe I object to less gifted athletes dosing themselves into studlier rainmakers. It all reeks of Icarus and the Tower of Babel to me.

But both of those are just myths. So maybe at some point I'm supposed to put aside my childish philosophies and accept the realities of modern science. I'll chew it over on my way to pick up another coffee from Starbucks...