Old Cars and Boob Jobs

Sometimes, in the Metro parking lot, someone will leave a “ticket to heaven” gospel tract on my car windshield.  Though well intentioned, I find the “ticket to heaven” so irksome that if I wasn’t a Christian already, the “ticket to heaven” would probably accomplish the opposite of its intended effect, causing me to dig my heels into the filthy mire of stubborn unbelief, and giving me a ticket straight to hell. The customary “ticket to heaven” is probably why it took me a while to notice that someone had left an actual, personal note on my car windshield.

Actually, Vince noticed the note and brought it to my attention the next day.  It read:

I was sitting in my car and saw the person who hit your car.  It was a woman in a red Acura with the license plate number of xxxxxx.  After she hit your car, she moved her car into another space.  Call me if you need a witness. 

What!?!?  There’s damage to my car and I didn’t even notice!?!?

That’s not so surprising, actually. Let’s see — there are the indentations on the rear bumper from when I misjudged and scraped a parking lot pole, but there wasn’t sufficient damage to warrant spending my $500 deductible.  And if you squint your eyes, the newly added indentations with telltale red paint residue left by the red Acura kind of blends into the additional bumper damage that’s related to another note that someone left on my car windshield months earlier.

On that day I was shopping at Staples without my cell phone and Vince and I, pursuing our varied shopping interests, got separated.  When I couldn’t find him, I went out to the car to see if I could find him waiting for me.  He wasn’t there, but I found a note left on my windshield.  “Oh,” I thought tenderly, feeling warm fuzzies arise in the core of my belly.  “My sweet husband must have left a note telling me where to find him and, no doubt, he added something loving, like he usually does.”  I fetched the note with a half-smile on my face, expecting directions to an affectionate reunion with my thoughtful spouse and, at the very least, a “Te quiero” sign-off.  I would have to remember to kiss him, squeeze his arm, and bask in the warm glow of knowing that I have a husband who yearns for my company and cares enough to write loving notes in anticipation of our reunion. Instead, the unsigned note said:

 “Don’t you know how to park!?”

It was like a stab to the heart.  Why would someone go to the trouble to leave a mean and accusatory note on my windshield just to spread the venom of their hyper-critical nastiness?  I examined my parking job.  It wasn’t perfect, positioned a little more to one side than the other, but it wasn’t bad and the parking spot had ample room. I was upset and mystified until I noticed the damage on my rear bumper.  Suddenly, I understood.  No doubt, someone had hit my car and, in a false display for witnesses, left a note to make it appear as if they were leaving contact information.  But it was just a ruse coupled with a rude and mean-spirited attempt to blame the victim.

So now, here was this new note from a Good Samaritan letting me know that someone had added damage to the already damaged bumper of my 2001 Mercury Sable station wagon with almost 200,000 miles on the odometer, or as I like call it, the “silver bullet.”  A part of me wanted to just forget about it, especially since I will probably drive the car into the ground until it’s good for nothing but parts anyway. But the fact that the hit and run driver relocated to avoid accountability made me unwilling to let it go. 

 On the other hand, even though I’d like to drive a nice-looking car, at what point do I have to relinquish a desire to have an old car look new and unblemished?

 In my experience, a car’s lifespan is about 10 years or 200,000 miles, before something so major or systemic goes wrong that you  have to essentially euthanize the car. After that, it can become dangerous to drive it, like the time my son was driving our old Pontiac Bonneville, hit a bump, and the entire rusted out steering system disengaged and dropped out of the bottom of the car (thank God, he was fine, but the car was not. And I really miss that car.)  The silver bullet is pushing the outer edges of the longevity stats. Spending time and money on cosmetics for my car would be like spending lots of money on a boob job for an 85-year-old.  In keeping with this analogy, my car also hogs gas, so it would be like buying a boob job for an 85-year-old who is also spending all my money by eating me out of house and home.  Is it really worth the trouble and expense?

It reminded me of something Vince said recently. “Before we die, we should have a really nice car, just for once in our lives,” he announced.  “We deserve it.”

I knew he was kidding, mocking the deluded sense of entitlement that often spurs human beings to spend money on bad investments.  After all, even if I had 30 grand or more sitting around to buy a new car, there would be much smarter ways to invest my money than in 3,000 pounds of plastic and metal that can do nothing but lose value.  

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t begrudge people driving nice cars and if I had money to spare I would probably consider it my moral obligation to drive an expensive car in order to reward manufacturing excellence. Besides, there’s a part of me that’s fed up with driving beater cars and yearns for the snazzy sleekness of new wheels. When you’re young you can justify having to drive a crummy car as a temporary inconvenience but, at our ages, we both know that it probably doesn’t get any better than this.  If we don’t have nice cars by now it’s doubtful we ever will.  Still, since I don’t have money to spare, I’m sort of a prisoner of my own practicality, but that’s better than being a prisoner to debt. Eventually, I will have to buy a new car, but it will be a practical, used car, not something sleek and new.

My 20-something neighbor used to own a black Honda Accord that he treated lovingly, washing and polishing it every weekend.  I would love to buy a car like that. But suddenly, the Honda disappeared, replaced by a new-looking Mercedes, which the neighbor described as “sportier.” Yep, I’m guessing about $30-40,000 sportier than the Honda.  Now, every weekend, the neighbor lovingly washes his Mercedes and, in a neighborhood with a dearth of parking, he deliberately takes up two parking spaces in order to avoid having an adjoining car scrape or scratch his temporarily perfect specimen.  I’m guessing that “sportier” is a euphemism for “sexier” or at least more of a chick magnet, if you want to attract a woman who seeks those kinds of accoutrements— at least until she finds out that he still lives with his parents.  As far as I can tell, he’s still waiting for the Mercedes to work its magic.

Oh well, at least I’ve advanced beyond the car I drove in the '90s with the plastic dinosaurs and other assorted toys glued into the car’s front grill because I couldn’t afford to fix it. And at least I’m not driven by anxiety to have my clunker take up two parking spaces.  Like Janis Joplin sang, “When you’ve got nothin’, you’ve got nothin’ to lose.”  The silver bullet has served me well and, like me, she has a few miles on her.  We might want to look as spiffy as we can as long as we can, and we’re not quite ready for the scrap heap yet.  But at some point, the silver bullet’s dings are like my crow’s feet  -- evidence of endurance.  We may want to look as good as possible as long as possible, but we’ve given up on looking anything close to pristine. The silver bullet and I are two of a kind -- past our prime but hanging in there – and you’ll just have to accept us both dents and all.

No boob jobs yet for either me or the silver bullet  -- but then again, I'm not ruling anything out.

Traffic Court

“Don’t show cleavage,” advised Vince, when I asked what I should wear to traffic court. Not that I would deliberately show cleavage, but things sometimes do slip and slide a bit, and he urged caution.

“How about this?” I asked holding up a seersucker-inspired striped pantsuit. He shook his head. “Too playful, you want to look like you take your case seriously.”

“How about this?” I repeated, holding up a bright dress in my favorite turquoise color, but my courtroom fashion consultant looked unenthused.

“Too colorful?” I asked, and he nodded, adding, “But a dress is good. You want to look serious but cute and vulnerable.”

We were strategizing with all the conniving of the Casey Anthony defense team, all for a traffic ticket.

“I’ve got it,” I announced holding up a black and white dress that I could wear with a black shrug sweater and my white necklace.

“Remember, no cleavage,” Vince repeated.

I looked at my black and white, no-cleavage ensemble that was serious but girly and cute at the same time. Perfect.

But at that moment, the day’s brief rendezvous with perfection came to a screeching halt.

I could remember grabbing my Metro card on the way out the door, but once I got to the car I couldn’t find it. By then, I was running a little late and I was afraid I wouldn’t make it on time, so after a frantic and futile scan for the card, I just left without it. Once at the Metro station, I made the error of diverting from my usual pattern and went in Garage One instead of Garage Two. The garage was full on the lower levels, but I could see empty spaces ahead. The empty spaces were a mirage. Yes, there were spaces, but they weren’t legal ones until 10 a.m. My stress level started to escalate as I drove around frantically searching for a parking space. Finally, I found one and then there was more futile searching for my Metro card, so after rushing to the station, I purchased a fare pass, bolted up the escalator, and I finally made it to Rockville. By then I was feeling more sweaty than cute.

I knew the courthouse wasn’t far from the Rockville Metro station, so when I arrived in Rockville, I asked a Metro manager to point me in the right direction. “Just go up the stairs and over the bridge,” she said, as if I would run smack into it. I walked over the bridge and the courthouse wasn’t obvious, but I followed signs with arrows pointing to “Courts” until I saw an imposing stone building with “Judicial Center” carved into the stone façade.

While I was going through security, they stopped me. “You can’t bring this in,” they said, holding up the Red Cross pocket knife attached to Vince’s keys. That darned knife gets us into so much trouble and the identical knife has been confiscated many times at airports, but we just replace it. It’s only a $10 dollar knife but, by now, replacing it has probably cost more than $100. I was at least relieved when they allowed me fill out a tag and essentially “check” the keys and attached pocket knife. At least I didn’t have to throw it away again.

Once inside, I asked to be pointed in the direction of traffic court. I was running late but could still be on time, or so I thought until they informed me that I was in the wrong building. “You have to go down the street and around the corner (which meant that the “court” arrows didn’t direct me to the correct court).”

I retrieved my checked keys and hurried off in search of the traffic court building. By now, I was afraid I would be late and I was huffing and puffing and sweating some more into my cute but serious black and white dress.

Fighting back panic, I finally made it to what I was pretty sure was the right courthouse. “Here, you’ll have to check these,” I said, holding up the keys with the pocket knife. The security guy shook his head. “We can’t hold those. You’ll have to go back and put them in your car.”

“But I don’t have a car,” I said. “I took the Metro. The other courthouse was going to check it; can’t you check it for me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Different rules.”

By then, I was very perturbed and becoming unraveled. I wanted to throw the keys at the guy, but instead, I had no choice but to unhook the pocket knife and throw it in the trash, where it landed with a decisive thud, propelled by the pent up force of my frustration.

When I got to traffic court, there were only about ten people in the courthouse. “All rise,” said the bailiff as the judge, a woman, emerged. I knew then that my attempt to seem cute and vulnerable was to no avail and I was especially glad that I wasn’t showing cleavage because I’m pretty sure that would have backfired.

One man’s name was called and the judge told him his charge was dismissed because the police officer wasn’t in court. The man seemed flustered, clutching notes in his hand and you could tell he was just itching to present his case.

“If I were you I wouldn’t say anything and I’d just take my papers and get out of here,” advised the judge. “It’s like it never even happened.” Finally, the reality of his pardon struck him and he exited smiling, the object of my envy. The judge moved quickly through her cases until the only people remaining were an elderly gentleman with his daughter and me.

“If you’re still here, that means that, according to our records, you are pleading guilty or guilty with explanation,” she said. “If that is not the case, you’ll need to let me know right now. In the case of a guilty plea, I can’t let you go if the officer isn’t here, because the officer wasn’t asked to appear.”

So only the other guy and I had confessed, but that meant we were idiots. If we hadn’t confessed, maybe we could have gotten off, like the guy with the notes. The elderly man was called up first and his approach was simple and direct to the point of being sweet. “I was on my way to visit my sick wife, which I do every day, and it just happened,” he said, of the speeding charge. “I’m sorry.”

The judge launched into an explanation of what she was about to do, which was to offer him probation before judgment, meaning he would have no points on his license and no permanent blot on his record, provided he received no tickets for three years. I was also hoping for probation before judgment, otherwise known as p-b-j, in order to avoid having a charge on my record that would affect my insurance rates. However, the judge offered even more explanation.

“Supposedly, with probation before judgment, the insurance companies don’t have access to a record of the charge,” she said, “but I don’t believe that for a minute. I think they see everything.”

Maybe she was just trying to be helpful, but it was like she was just rubbing in the fact that the best we could hope for after entering a guilty plea was probation before judgment and that was a sham. If we were going to plead guilty, maybe it would have been better to just pay the ticket and avoid the morning’s stress.

I was the last person in the courtroom, so I brilliantly deduced I was next.

“Do you intend to plead guilty with explanation?” asked the judge.

“Well, yes, that was my plan, but after what you just said about probation before judgment, I’m not so sure,” I replied.

It was a bad start. My plan had been to speak with contrite gentleness, but the stress, frustration and now confusion of the entire morning seeped out. Rather than sounding entirely contrite, my voice had just a bit of an edge and I was in danger of coming off as difficult.

“That’s neither here nor there,” she said, and I realized there was no turning back.

“Yes,” I said, decisively. “I’m guilty with explanation.”

“Then, let’s hear your explanation.”

“I was making a right hand turn at a stop sign, and I stopped momentarily, but I didn’t come to a complete one, two, three stop before making my turn. When the police officer stopped me, he said, ‘You’re going to have to make more of a stop than that,’ and he’s right. My stops were getting sloppy and it was good to be reminded of that. Since then, I’ve been more cautious and deliberate about my stops. Since I’m usually a very cautious driver, I was hoping for whatever mercy you can show me.”

At least by the end of my little speech I had the demeanor I had been going for and I think the judge was sympathetic.

As expected, I got p-b-j and a $120 fine.

On the way out of the courthouse, I stopped at the front and peered into the trash can. I could only see a Starbucks paper cup in a plastic trash bag, so I fished around and retrieved the pocket knife, feeling somewhat self-satisfied, despite the fact that most observers would assume I was a mentally ill, trash scavenging hoarder.

On the way home, I passed a car on the side of the road that had evidently struck and killed a dog. The dog, obviously someone’s beloved pet, lay on its side in front of the car. The dog had trimmed, curly style hair that made it appear lamblike. The people in the car must have cared or they wouldn’t have stopped. My heart ached, both for the family that lost their pet, and for the car’s driver, who must feel terribly guilty over what was no doubt an accident.

Some guilty people get off scot free. Others, like me, get some measure of mercy. And some, like that poor little, lamblike dog are just victims in a fallen world where innocents, whether dogs or children, are often slain, and where justice seems capricious.

Some people say that God doesn’t see us, but I don’t believe that for a minute. I think He sees everything. And for now, after all, we’re really just on probation before judgment.

Transcendent Moments ... or My Life as a One-Hit Wonder

We filed into the shell of a gym at a community college for a ballet class.  The faint smell of decades of perspiration seemed to seep from the wood floors, and the shellacked blond brick walls echoed back the sound of each movement --  the squeak of a shoe, a sigh, the thump and crash of purses and other possessions being dumped on the floor. 

The class was a diversion for us, a kind of elegant impulse, a unique way to get some exercise – “Hey, let’s sign up for a ballet class” -- but suddenly, no one seemed to want to be there, especially the teacher. We were all amateurs, totally unfamiliar with ballet’s terminology, let alone the disciplined movements. The teacher tried to describe the precise, stylized movements to us, but we stared back at her with bovine blankness, at first eager to learn, but then surrendering to a cloud of confusion.

After a few warm-up exercises and a brief explanation, she asked us to perform a pique, which is sort of a series of turns in a straight line.  But each clumsy attempt seemed to end the same way.  The person would start out with a look of intense concentration that would dissipate into a discouraged, deflated jumble.  Instead of rotating, we’d end up in an uncontrolled twirl, our torsos spinning off in errant directions like spinning tops that would slowly lose momentum, followed by floppy arms and legs.  As our feeble attempts faltered and floundered, our teacher’s frustration became more apparent, and the weight of her disappointment robbed the experience of any pleasure.  

Suddenly, I decided to give it a try.  For a moment, no one else was in the room.  I entered a dimension where I drew from something deep and, as a result, preternatural ability emerged.   I could feel myself turning and turning, my face whipping around rhythmically, my body propelled through space as if carried on a breeze.  When I finally stopped spinning, the teacher and other class members all stared at me in astonishment. Finally, the teacher spoke.  “That’s what I mean. Do that again.”

But I couldn’t. Suddenly, I was self conscious and I couldn’t repeat what I had just done.  It had been a magical, elevated moment, where I had become a part of the air, fluid and transcendent, but now I had returned to the the ground. Now, I was just another untrained, awkward kid in a community college ballet class with a grumpy teacher who scowled at me in disgust and disappointment.

I had experienced something that gave me a glimpse of a world where passion and ability merge in an expression of effortless transcendence. But that moment had passed and I didn’t want to be reminded that I had fallen back to earth. I never went to ballet class again.

Another time, as an even older adult, I was trying to learn to ski.  In my lifetime, it was only my second visit to the slopes, and I couldn’t get beyond the bunny hill.  Just when I thought I was making some progress, I’d go for one more run down the bunny “slope” and end up on my rear end or topsy turvy.  Finally, I figured that I couldn’t improve if I didn’t push myself, so I decided to give the intermediate hill a try. 

As I headed down the hill, no one was more surprised than me when I didn’t fall.  The packed, icy snow propelled me forward faster than I anticipated but my knees eased and rotated with a natural responsiveness to the terrain.  The speed was exhilarating. The wind seemed to caress me with giant, unseen hands into just the right angle and rhythm and I felt like skiing was what I was born to do. I felt my Scandinavian ancestors come alive in each fiber of my being, and it was like every molecule in my body buzzed.  Take that, mere mortality! I had connected with a thrill shared by skilled skiers throughout the ages.

“Wow! Did you see that?!” I hollered, as I came to a perfect stop, scraping the landscape with a spray of snow worthy of an Olympic skier.  “That felt amazing!”

I couldn’t wait to try it again.  But this time, as I headed down the hill, I was hit by a wave of fatigue. I careened off the side of the mountain with no strength left in my legs.  After I tumbled into some kind of perverse pretzel shape, I was buried in snow and couldn’t even make myself get back up.  It was like temporary paralysis and I started to cry.  I can’t even remember exactly how I made it back down, but I do remember the exhaustion and fear.  I haven’t gone skiing since.  I intend to go skiing again eventually, but for now, it just seems like another transcendent moment that I may never recapture.

Finally, in another recent incident, while practicing to play the non-speaking role of the biblical Martha in my church’s Easter drama, I was put on the “hot seat,” meaning that I would be queried by a church volunteer named Stephanie in an acting exercise designed to help me get into character.  

She asked me about myself and I told her in detail who I was, or who Martha was, because at the moment, we were one in the same.  I talked about my family and how I had grown up knowing Jesus and that he was no ordinary man, but that it had taken me a while to recognize him as the Messiah.  I told her about my brother, Lazarus, and how Jesus had raised him from the dead.  “Were you there when they crucified Jesus?” she asked.  “Yes,” I said, trying to choke back tears that, nevertheless, flowed freely.  

It wasn’t an exhilarating moment like the others because of the somber subject matter, but it was energizing nevertheless.  I had transcended my own identity and entered a character and place beyond my own. When I was finished, and everyone else had finished their exercises as well, Stephanie gave me a hug.  “Thank you for that,” she said.  “You really blessed me.”

This coming weekend, I’ll take on the character of Martha for seven performances.  During practice, I’ve often transcended my experience as I’ve relived the wonderful story of the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus.  Still, I don’t know if I can recreate it with the same intensity seven times and, of necessity, I approach this weekend with an awareness of my total dependence on God’s power.

So far, my life has been filled with “one hit wonders,” but I’m thankful that God continues to supply the wonder, even when my own limitations provide the “one hit” part.

The free, reserved tickets are gone, but you can still  watch online at church-redeemer.org.  Here's a preview. You’ll get a limited sense of the drama online, but still hear the story. And I’m praying that -- not through my feeble power but through the power of God’s Spirit -- you’ll have your own transcendent experience as you encounter Jesus.  

Dear Santa: Drop Dead

I don’t know how old I was when my parents ‘fessed up and told me that there was no Santa Claus, but I do remember my response:  “I know.”  Eventually, any astute kid can piece the clues together, tipped off by things like the disparity between sometimes creepy mall Santas with their bad breath and disappointing fake beards, as well as the dawning realization that it’s totally implausible that anyone could physically deliver presents to the entire world on the same night.

I was reminded of that cynicism-inducing realization recently when 11-year-old Anisa announced that she’s too grown up to want to see Disney movies anymore, and she’s also  just so over this Santa Claus thing – but not over the getting presents part.

Her newfound sophistication is bittersweet, representing a necessary and expected maturity, but it also represents the passing of childhood innocence. What concerns me is whether the exposure of this whole Santa Claus story as a ridiculous fraud causes her, and children everywhere, to be less trusting of the parents and family members who perpetrate the fraud year after year – and, therefore, make children less likely to believe other things that parents teach?

Childlike faith is a precious thing, something that Jesus said is necessary to enter the kingdom of heaven.  But the Santa myth manipulates that child-like faith.  And that’s why I would like Santa to trudge away off into the frozen tundra never to be heard from again.

Some people might think that makes me a Grinch, but let me explain.

As a Christian, I’m a huge fan of the real message of Christmas, which definitely has to do with a gift –but it’s the gift of God’s Son.  Now that we’ve got this Santa thing going on, we’ve almost totally forgotten about the real meaning of Christmas.

The Santa myth perverts the purity of the real message, encourages out-of-control consumerism, and manipulates the willingness of children to believe what their parents tell them.  Think about it.  Those of us who are Christians tell our children that they are not the mere product of slime that suddenly appeared out of nowhere and then formed into a randomly produced life form that will live an ultimately meaningless life and then die, disappearing forever.  Instead, we tell them that they are a unique creation of a powerful and all-knowing God, who designed them in all of their miraculous complexity and that this all-knowing God wants to redeem their eternal soul through the gift of His Son, forgive their wrongdoing, empower them to live right and love others, and form a relationship with them that will last eternally.

At the same time, we tell them that there’s this jolly gift-giver who “sees you when you’re sleeping.  He knows when you’re awake.  He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.” He’s a god-like figure but without the capacity to offer forgiveness because, if you blow it, you just get coal in your stocking, or more than likely, you’ll just get the threat of coal in your stocking (because I’m glad that I’ve never heard of a parent who actually did that.)

We tell them that this god-like Santa guy demands that they “be good” or else they won’t get any presents, when the Biblical way is the opposite – we receive the present of God’s Son and the free gift of salvation, which then empowers us through God’s spirit to do good out of love, gratefulness and a pure heart.

When the Santa fraud is exposed, what kid wouldn’t think that the God story, with a similar all-knowing character, wasn’t also fraudulent?  In fact, I’m convinced that some militant atheists, at their core, are just grown-up versions of disillusioned, heartbroken children who want to prove that they will never be gullible again.  They’re now way too sophisticated to believe in that Santa Claus/God stuff.  The result is the pathetic situation of someone like Christopher Hitchens, who is dying of cancer but too proud to even entertain the possibility that there might be a God because of the fear of believing in something or someone that could be a sham.

Personally, when my kids were growing up, I never told them that there was a Santa. I wanted my kids to know that I was trustworthy, so I never thought it was fun to deceive them with the Santa myth or any other lie. Instead, I would say things like, “Isn’t it fun to pretend that there’s a Santa?” and then I’d do the whole leaving-cookies-out-for-Santa and presents-under-the-tree thing, but only after I had already made it clear that it was just pretend.

 I enjoyed the annual ritual of my nephew dressing up as Santa and distributing presents to little children who are enthralled by the mystery of it all and who just know that it’s fun getting presents.  But, for me, that’s as far as it goes.  I’m not going to tell my children that this Santa guy in the weird, red suit is some all-knowing figure with the supernatural power to bring them presents if they’re “good.”

Apparently, the Santa Claus myth has its roots in the behavior of St. Nicholas centuries ago.   Maybe it’s my jaded, modern persona, but personally, I’m suspicious of old dudes who habitually give gifts to non-related children. At the very least, such activity merits an investigation of motives. What did they have to do to be “good”? And that living with elves story?  Pretty weird.

Wikipedia states that Santa Claus could be the result of Christians superimposing the story of a kind-hearted bishop upon a framework of Germanic paganism or vice versa. “According to Phyllis Siefker, children would place their boots, filled with carrots, straw or sugar, near the chimney for Odin’s flying horse, Sleipnir, to eat. Odin would then reward those children for their kindness by replacing Steipnir’s food with gifts or candy.”  Fast forward to 2010 and, instead, you have kids ripping open packages that leave them asking, “Is that it?” while their parents are left with a staggering credit card bill during tough economic times.

All I know is that the real St. Nick, if he existed at all, dropped dead centuries ago. And IMHO, it’s about time for the diabolical Santa myth to drop dead as well.

Merry Christmas.

Stevie Ray Vaughan-Inspired Ruben V Gets it Done

Ruben V was a musician in a Judas Priest-wannabe band when the music of blues artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan spoke to him.  “In Texas during the 80s, it was all about metal,” he told me recently at Doctor Rockit’s Blues Bar in Corpus Christi.   “But when I heard artists like Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughan, I knew that was what I wanted to play.  I wanted to bend a string like that.”

And learn to bend a string he did.   I can attest to that fact because I paid a $7 cover change to hear him two other band members play a few sets in front of a small crowd in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he went after Thanksgiving to “wear off some turkey.”

And he was amazing.  It takes guts to cover people like Santana and Hendrix, but Ruben pulled it off with aplomb and got the crowd dancing with his original music, which also grooves.

Check out some of his music here. 

We bought a CD and asked Ruben to sign it so he came over and talked to us for a while, in the same way that he stopped and talked to most of the people in the small crowd at Doctor Rockits.

He told us that Stevie Ray used to play at the same place “and there would be less than 100, maybe 50 people in here.”  But after Vaughan died, his popularity sky-rocketed. “I was working in a record store at the time,” Ruben said, “and we had maybe 20 Stevie Ray Vaughan disks but there was such a demand, that people were lined up out the door.”

Suddenly, the injustice of it all inflamed him. 

“I jumped up on the counter and started yelling at people, ‘You know what, people, you all suck!  When Stevie was alive, you didn’t support him, but now that he’s dead, here you are’.”

Needless to say, the record store fired him, but he landed on his feet.  He now opens for acts like Robert Cray, playing Latin-influenced music and Texas-style blues, and he’s well known in his hometown of San Antonio, where the city awarded the title of “Best Guitar Player,” as well as “Best Songwriter” and “Best Blues Band” – but he’s still working hard to make a name for himself nationally, and at 44, he’s not exactly a young turk.

Nevertheless, he’s an immensely talented working musician who seems to have his head on straight, playing music that he loves.  And I love that he had the guts to vent his passion, even though he now sees things a little differently.  “People get upset when I say this, but one good thing that came out of Stevie Ray’s death is that, now, people know who he is.  Everybody knows Stevie Ray Vaughan.”

I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I think that I know what he means. 

I hope that Ruben lives a long and happy life, but if his popularity soars after he dies, I’ll be the first one jumping up on the record store counter, or whatever counter exists, yelling passionately that, “You know what, people, you all suck!”

Me, surrounded by three cool men: brother-in-law Richard, Ruben V and my hubby, Vince.

House Lust

I’d like to blame the people behind HGTV (home and garden television) but, in reality, they’re only partly to blame. OK, maybe they’re not to blame at all. Maybe they’ve just created compelling television and I’m the one who has morphed it into a pathological addiction.

Like an alcoholic who can’t handle having just one drink, I can’t watch just one HGTV show, so I have to avoid it altogether. But sometimes, like recently, I slip up, planning to catch just one episode. And then, the next thing I know, I’ve gorged myself on hours and hours of house-lust-inducing home improvement television.

Each show starts out by stirring up a need-to-know curiosity that’s akin to hunger and grows into a compulsion. I NEED to know. How will they transform the dated, discombobulated room into a dazzling showpiece? Which house will the couple choose and what will it look like three months later? How will they re-do a drab façade to possess attention-grabbing, jaw-dropping curb appeal? Each time, when the answer is revealed at the end of each show, I experience a sense of exhilaration, a rush that must set off serotonin surges in my hypothalamus—but it’s short-lived because then the hunger starts all over again and I keep coming back for more, more MORE!

It’s an endless tease in search of another aesthetic high, presided over by hip design priests and priestesses who are like seers of old, only instead of seeing future events they envision future environments with elements like travertine, accent lighting and coordinating fabrics in pleasing combinations beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. And then they conjure up the vision by mobilizing teams of carpenters, electricians, and assistants who do their bidding with skill and precision, all compressed into a 30-minute time slot.

Post-binge, when I’m finally exhausted by it all, I start to feel disgusted and depressed. My house is so UGLY! I need a design team to descend upon my humble domicile and transform it into stunning display of creativity that’s practical and functional yet sleek and inviting. And it has to have something that “pops,” according to the oft-repeated refrain of the HGTV design divas.

And unlike me, the design divas always seem to know exactly what they want. For example, it’s taken me months to try and choose a paint color for my dining room, where I turned the walls into abstract art from the application of myriad paint sample colors as I tried to make up my mind. Seriously, I must have bought at least 20 paint samples. Of course, part of the problem is that I was – and still am – dealing with dislocated, multi-colored furniture that wasn’t really designed to coordinate, resulting from the merging of my household with that of my husband’s. But the design divas have no such dilemma. They simply sketch a design, compile swatches, seemingly manufacture the components out of their fertile imaginations, and voila, there it is, design perfection!

Watching HGTV isn’t a waste of time, but it’s just that I lose all capacity for moderation. But I do get ideas and learn things, including facts about other cultures. For example, in one episode, I learned about a girl who was looking for an apartment in Saudi Arabia. The apartments she had to choose from each cost about $60,000 a year, which had to be paid for in an upfront lump sum, a provision that would exclude just about every prospective renter in the U.S.—but in Saudi Arabia it’s no problem because, according to HGTV, each Saudi is worth about $16 million, and besides that, 80 percent of the people in Abu Dhabi are foreigners and their employers often pick up the tab. In the case of the prospective renter, a Canadian, she was paid about $60,000 for teaching young children, plus she received a whopping $65,000 housing stipend from her employer. Not bad for a twenty-something who saw a bidet and asked, “What’s that?”

HGTV also provides an opportunity to see how other socio-economic groups live. Sometimes I can relate and other times I can’t, like when a couple that had a $2 million budget to spend on Napa Valley housing sniffed at a gorgeous home because it didn’t have a vineyard view.

Sometimes, the ideas are great but definitely beyond my skill level to implement them. For example, I would love to construct an inexpensive fountain/water feature out of plywood, pipe and slate, but lack the required carpentry cred. And by the time I factored in the cost of a carpenter to construct it, it would cost a couple of grand, decidedly more than the advertised "design on a dime" cost of materials.

The other day, I combined hours of watching HGTV with home magazine reading and talk about other peoples’ homes, resulting in irritation and dissatisfaction with my own home. As usual, Scripture provides the only antidote to carnal craving that’s beyond the bounds of what God has provided.

“Keep your lives free from the love of money,” says the book of Hebrews, “and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’.”

OK God, help me, please … but first just let me see how the amazingly talented Candice Olson infuses this hum-drum space with a touch of glam and pizzazz … and then transforms this Disney-ish kids’ room into a sophisticated space a teenager will love … and then …

Naked and Exposed

I think the neighbor saw me naked. It was just an unintentional flash as I walked past the window which, for some inexplicable reason, had both the shade and blinds drawn up. Fortunately, I think he just saw the top half of me which I’m more comfortable and confident about than my bottom half, but still, I’m a little embarrassed and concerned that we might develop a reputation as the weirdo, nudist flesh-flaunting neighbors.

Usually, the window has horizontal blinds that we leave down even during the day, although we open the louvers to let in some daylight. At night, we close the louvers and also pull down a hefty, opaque shade that totally blocks the light when the morning sun hits the window, allowing me to sleep like a baby, at least past a few snooze alarms.

So why in the world did I have both of them drawn up? And why in the world did I decide just at that moment that I needed to get something from the end table? And why did I think, ‘Hey, I’m going for it because what are the chances that, just as I walk past the window, the neighbor will be outside, which he rarely is, and look up?’” But I did, and he did, and in one mortified moment, I realized that he had probably seen me flashing my chubby, white self, or as I prefer to say, my ample assets of a certain ripened vintage.

As soon as I realized what had happened, I did a drop and roll on the bed to get to the other side of the room, ducked and did a guerilla warfare-style crawl out of eyesight. Still, I held out hope that maybe the light was such that, from the outside, I would just look like a vague, amorphous shadow. Intense light can be merciless, but diffuse or backlit light can be kind, and maybe the time of day and year and the quality and direction of the light would all coalesce to somewhat conceal me and protect me from myself, or—best case scenario—project an enhanced version of myself as a shapely and alluring but sufficiently modest silhouette, you know, like those on trucker’s tire flaps.

Over breakfast the next day, I told Vince what had happened, especially since I needed his help to test my hypothesis. But maybe in the back of my mind I was also thinking that I needed to tell Vince to alert him just in case my neighbor became so inflamed with lust that he would venture to commit a crime of passion like Scripture’s usually devout King David who impregnated Bathsheba and connived to have her husband Urriah killed after he saw her bathing on the roof. Ha, like that would happen! More likely, he could report me to the police for public, or at least quasi-public, indecency.

“I want to do a test,” I told Vince, “I’m going to go outside and stand at approximately the same angle as the neighbor and I want you to stand in the window and I’ll look up and see if I can see anything.” He agreed.

Later that morning, at about the same time of day as “the sighting,” I looked up at the window. Vince stood there shirtless and plain as day. He pranced around a little and did a Gypsy Rose Lee striptease-style chest shimmy that made me laugh, but it blew my hypothesis to smithereens because I could almost count the hairs on his chest—and he’s not even a gnarly, hairy guy.

If it’s true what Blanche DuBois said in A Streetcar Named Desire, then I’m in a heap of trouble. “After all,” she said, “a woman’s charm is 50 percent illusion.” So now, when it comes to my neighbor, I guess that whatever mysterious charms I once possessed are neither mysterious nor charming, but they just are what they are.

But I’m just thankful for God’s gift of a body that can enjoy so many things.

So dear neighbor, I apologize and, someday soon, I may actually be able to look you in the eye again, as long as you’re not looking back lasciviously because that would be just “Ewwww.”