acorn

Posted on by December 16, 2013

Image

I was thinking about a post I wrote a couple of days ago where I mentioned that our new baby, Sparrow, was already a “person”.

In spite of her “newness”, she already is a big part of the way towards being who she is going to be.

I don’t understand genetics.  I don’t really have a handle on the mysteries of nature.

There are a lot of things that I don’t really understand.

But I think I understand that there’s more than just a lump of clay… to be formed by us…. laying in our arms when we hold her.

There’s more to her than that.

Somewhere in all that young spirit and sinew, there’s more to her than meets the eye.

I was thinking about acorns, too.

Can you imagine the power to be found in an acorn?

Expressed, an acorn’s power can blot out the sun…it can topple huge buildings…cross oceans.

An acorn is a powerful little nut.

Sometimes, I feel like a powerful little nut…but I guess that’s a different story.

I don’t see what something really is.  I see what I think it is, carpeting a forest floor, just another…another amongst hundreds of others…nondescript in juxtaposition to all the other acorns next to it.

I lose track of miracles.  Everyday miracles are hard to notice.

I take them for granted.

But think about this: an acorn, for some strange reason, is allowed to begin to grow next to a strong building.  It grows and spreads its roots, grows under and around this building, its root system as large as what we see above, spreading and growing…until….until…the foundation of the building starts to crack a little.

It starts to crack…then starts to crack a little bigger…bigger, bigger, bigger as the little acorn “expresses” itself…then, if things are allowed to take its full course, the building might be damaged enough to come down completely. Something small like an acorn could bring down something we’d built to be strong.  That’s wild.

This little acorn had all that in it all the time.  That’s pretty amazing.  Who would have thought that?

It was a little round seed, laying on the forest floor, that I walked over….maybe I even pushed it down a little, pushed it into the ground by walking all over it…maybe I was the one who helped it grow?  I doubt I would have noticed…after all, it was only another acorn.

So, if I recognize the power in a little acorn, and I recognize the miracle of a child, and I can make the connection between potential in a seed and potential in a young life…then all children deserve a little more respect every day, right? They deserve respect because of who they are…and who they can become.

I think that’s a conclusion that wouldn’t be hard to come by.

I’m not saying that little babies should rule the roost.  I won’t let someone who weighs less than 10 lbs boss me around.

I’m not going to let that happen.

I may run when she cries…let her keep us up at night sometimes…but she’s not the boss of me.

She’s only “another” acorn…she’s just another child.

But, in her own small way, she’s a builder of worlds.

30 years in….voila! You’re an expert.

Posted on by December 16, 2013

My father made lefse.

He’d make huge batches at Christmas so that he could share with our Scandinavian friends in the area.

He didn’t have a commercial facility…just a flat stick, a griddle, a cloth to roll the lefse out on, and a bunch of flour and potatoes.

It was a big deal for some of these families to get some lefse if they lived down south.

You can get chowchow…but if you stop at a roadside stand and ask for some lefse, they usually look at you kind of funny.

Watching this video, you wouldn’t believe that lefse could inspire such excitement.

These Scandinavians have an understated way about them a lot of the time…excitement is hard to read a lot of times.

My father’s lefse was really good lefse…all the Norwegians I know who had a chance to taste it thought so.  It inspired a lot of Scandinavian overstatement and excitement like, “This is good lefse that your father makes.”

No one ever said, “That lefse? Uff da.”

I watched him make it for years…mixing up the potatoes, flour…and I think a little salt…butter?sugar? I can’t remember….not too dry, not too moist…rolling it out on the cloth and then picking it up with the flat stick so he could transfer it to the griddle.

This was a long time before the internet..so I think he learned how to make it from his mother.

I watched him, but I think that it would take a while to get up to speed with any of my attempts.  I should give it a shot…I don’t know that anybody in the immediate family is messing with making lefse.  I bet they’d enjoy eating some again.

Dad had a very calm and precise way of doing things…so his lefse was pretty consistent.

When he made a batch, he knew what to expect.

People knew it was going to be good.

I slept in this morning…6:30 instead of my usual 5:00…so I’m feeling more tired than wired today.  Something about “over sleeping” makes me groggy. I’m groggy so I needed to write about something calm…like a Norwegian potato “bread” called lefse.

I should be eating a piece of lefse…buttered and sprinkled with sugar, rolled up like a Nordic burrito…I should be eating a big piece of lefse and looking out over a fjord somewhere in Norway. That would be an interesting thing to wake up to with my family.

We need to get Sparrow her passport…and then?  Who knows where we might end up.

Lefse and a fjord….here we come.

Here’s another YouTube video I found.  A different feel to this one…dreadlocked lefse making with a rock soundtrack is different than a tour of Northern Minnesota “Scandinavia-ville”.

who’s this baby gonna be?

Posted on by January 13, 2014

lying-in_hospital_nursery

Language is a funny thing.

I think it’s funniest when it’s not intended to be funny.

I don’t think puns are funny, really.  Clever isn’t really very funny.

But language is funny.

Funny strange.

If I said something like, “Whose baby this gonna be?” I’d know the answer immediately.

I could say, “Why, this baby gonna be our baby…that’s whose baby this baby gonna be.  This baby gonna be our baby for a long, long time.”

If I said, “Who’s this baby gonna be?”….well, that would be a much harder question to answer.

Actually, that would be an impossible question to answer.

You can’t predict the future.  You can nudge, you can aim, you think you can direct…you can keep safe and warm, fed…supply them with the things they need to the best of your ability…but you can’t really predict how things are going to turn out.

If I was one of those “pusher dads”, I might say “this baby is going to be one of the greatest quarterbacks the NFL has ever seen! Without question, that is this baby’s path from here on out.”

You might question that…might mention that “um, this baby is a little girl…a ‘little’ girl…maybe you should rethin…..”

“DON’T QUESTION MY JUDGEMENT!!!! THIS BABY IS A WINNER!!! IF I SAY SHE WILL BE A PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE BY THE TIME SHE ENTERS PUBERTY, WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION MEEEEEEEE!!!!”

That would be pretty crazy.  That would be full-on nuts.

Now earlier I mentioned that a baby is kind of a blank slate…ready for us to “write on” and influence, ready for us to mold into what we think the child should be.

This morning, I’m thinking that’s not really true.

Even though her language skills are kind of insufficient at this point in the game, this little Sparrow is her own person.

She’s no blank slate.

She fills up the space like any baby can…but she fills it up with “Sparrowness” like no other Sparrow on earth.

She’s her own little person.

I guess that a parents job is to shepherd as much as possible…to keep that child away from danger, to encourage, to support and allow to grow.

The “allowing” part isn’t really accurate…they’re going to grow whether we “allow” it or not…but maybe what I mean is that we need to figure out how to take a step back and let them make it on their own.

Let go of the bicycle seat so we can hand them the car keys.

That’s terrifying.

It would be easier to be a “Svengali Shepherd”…a junior OZ, almighty and powerful, hiding behind the curtain and pulling all the strings.

( Maybe that’s what all parents really are now that I re-read that sentence…maybe we really do try and control what we can?  We’re just nervous…no harm intended, usually…right?)

I could handle being almighty and powerful…but that’s not the way I roll.

I guess that when someone asks, if they ever did, “Who’s this baby gonna be..” the answer would have to be that this baby already is.

This baby already “is”.

There will be changes galore…the metaphorical GPS will have a chance to yell out,  “RECALCULATING!! RECALCULATING!!!” many times over the course of Sparrow’s life…but the becoming part happened somewhere a long time before we had a chance to meet her for the first time in the delivery room.

It’s not my job to answer the question, “Who’s this baby gonna be?”

She is.

Maybe somewhere up in Heaven, my parents are looking down at me…and asking the question, 53 years into my life….”WHO’S THIS BABY GONNA BE?!!!”

Well….well….um…you know…really….I “IS”, TOO.

pie

Posted on by December 13, 2013

blueberry-pie-slice

If there was a piece of pie sitting on the kitchen table, and I wanted it, I would circle the table like a wolf around a campfire, teeth bared, eyes blazing in the firelight, growling…

Now of course, if someone else was in the room, and they felt like they’d enjoy a piece of pie, I would probably defer to them.  I know they’d enjoy it more than me…and they probably deserve to enjoy a nice piece of pie more than I do, too.

Just kidding…I’d fight for pie.  I’d want that pie for myself.

That’s the way it might go down in the physical world.  I like pie.  I want some pie.

Now, metaphorically speaking, I’ve started to think about the pie from a little different angle.

I’ve read some things that talk about how people sometimes think that if someone gets a piece of the pie that there will be less pie to go around.

If someone gets a piece of the pie…I won’t get my piece because it’s already been claimed.

They ate my pie! THEY ATE MY PIE!!!

Darnit…why don’t I ever get a piece of pie?  It’s just my luck…coming to the kitchen for a piece of pie and someone else beat me to it.  It happens every time.

I’ve figured out though, for selfish reasons, that I want all my friends to have a piece of pie.

I want everybody in the whole world to have a piece of pie.

Somewhere, somebody is thinking, “HEY!!  WE’VE GOT TO GET OVER TO RORVIG’S HOUSE!!! HE’S GOT PIE!!!”

I don’t have any pie.

What I was thinking is how much fun I have when the people around me are having fun.

That’s where the “selfish” part comes in.  I realize how keeping people happy benefits me.  I reap the benefits of someone else’s satisfaction.

Now, I’m not even close to completely altruistic.  Or even partially altruistic.

I’m as selfish as they come sometimes.

If I was sitting around a table of pie eaters, and I was the only one without a piece of pie, I be pretty PO’d.

I’d be seething.  I would not want to be at a party like that.

But it sure does take the edge off when the people around me are happy.  I like that.

If I can be a vehicle to drive my friends to Nirvana, then let’s all pile in the clown car and have a good time.

That sounds like a blast to me.

If it means that I have to watch my friends eat the pie…and the best I can do is say, “Is it good?!  It sure looks good…I bet it’s good, huh?!” well…that may be just another part of my fun.

There is pie galore in the world.  I’m not going to have just one chance at a piece of pie.  I can share the pie.

“My world is better when your world is better when their world is better, etc., etc., etc.”

PIE FOR EVERYONE…LET’S HAVE A GOOD TIME!!

the wheels on the bus

Posted on by December 12, 2013

…go round and round.

I was thinking about the logistics of being a child this morning.

If you listen to some of these songs that are written for children, life sounds like it was designed to roll pretty smoothly.

Except for “Humpty Dumpty”, most of the songs are pretty positive. “Humpty Dumpty” is pretty tragic…but most everything else is pretty positive.

That’s kind of cool to be conditioned to believe that things are probably going to go your way.

We don’t sing, “The brakes are failing on the big pink bus, they’re failing on the bus, failing on the bus…the brakes on the bus are failing now…all around the town.”

We don’t go there.

There’s no need for reality to intrude on a child’s life.

Maybe it’s optimistic of me to hope that all children get to wear the rose-colored glasses as long as they can.

I know that’s not the case all the time. Everyone has a different row to hoe…everybody has something happening around them that could be good…or could be kind of bad.

You never know what’s going to happen in this life.

I sure don’t.

But I love having a background in all these happy little songs.  It’s a good thing to have only positive things to pull from when I needed to.

Some people say, “That ain’t reality!  He’s living in a fantasy world!  The world is HARD…people don’t roll like that. That baby needs to grow up, have another cigarette, and smell the coffee.”

God Bless Reality.

Sincerely, I hope he actually does “bless reality”…I hope he blesses the whole shebang.  Blessings on blessings on blessings on blessings. I hope He blesses it all so much that people pay attention.

I hope we really start to pay attention.

Things aren’t so bad if we notice the blessings.

So what was I saying?

Oh…that it can be good to be a kid.  It’s good to live in a world where maybe everything works…or you think that everything works.

We had some hard stuff going on in my family when I was a teenager…but my parents worked to keep things on as even a keel as they could.

They wanted things to be as normal as possible.

We didn’t sing the “Wheels on the Bus” song…but things rolled as reasonably smoothly as we could make them roll.

We worked at making things good.

I had some good parents.

I knew that then…I still know it.  They were good people.

It’s a beautiful thing to be able to give to a child…the chance to view the world as someplace that might be a benevolent location to grow up in.

Right now, the world’s the only location we have to grow up in…so it’s probably kind of beneficial in the long run to look at it from a positive angle.

This world is what we have….might as well make the best of it.

The wheels on the bus roll on and on…all around the town.

the monk and the boombox

Posted on by December 11, 2013

buddhist-monk-footprints

You don’t see many monks walking around grooving to loud music. You don’t see many monks with boomboxes on their shoulders.

I stopped listening to my radio yesterday.

It’s busy at the post office…frenetic.  My Jeep Cherokee is piled with mail and packages…I usually can’t even see out of the windows when I leave the office to begin my deliveries.  I have a small hole on either side of the car…and if I crane my neck just right, I can get a view of who might be trying to hit me, in spite of my flashing lights and signage warning that I stop a lot.

Previously, I’d been listening to music cranked LOUD.  I thought that it might be a motivator…might spur me on to higher peaks of adrenaline fueled “mailmanning”.

It did…I was a manic mailman delivering all those packages and Christmas cards.

I rocked.

But it also made me kind of nervous.

If I need to amp it up a little more to get through an already amped up time of year, there might be something a little screwed up with my logic.

Maybe it’s smarter to try and bring it down a little.

Calm myself.

Breathe.

So I stopped listening to the radio.  No loud music, no conservative talk, no PBS reports on why the bees might be dying.

It was so peaceful.  It was easy when all I had to think about was each mailbox and the mail I was putting in it, then the next, then the next.

It made it kind of meditative.

I could almost go into a Postal Trance without some really loud Jonny Lang to keep me hyper.

But I really liked it.  I’d written about keeping things “quiet” before on the blog.

I think I titled the post “fear the quiet“.

It’s always a revelation to feel what a difference some silence can make in how the day goes.

It really can be kind of peaceful if I don’t let someone else’s frantic “art” intrude on my day.

The Bible says “Be still…and know that I am God.”

That’s pretty simple, really…but kind of hard.

We’re just a bunch of squirmers…who would want to take things down a notch just so we could hear the word of God?  Who would want to tone it down when we could go through life just ROCKING OUT!!!! Overly caffeinated and manic, bouncing off the walls and in heavy attack mode…beating each day up before it has a chance to return the aggression?

Who’d want that?

The Gospel is a simple message. Simple, simple, simple.  It contains some simple directives. “Love Me..”, “love each other”…pretty simple, really.

We complicate it.  We drink another cup of coffee and let our minds go wild, explaining to the world who “God” is.  All our theology and intellectual maneuvering doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s a simple message.  It’s a simple message that we won’t leave alone. We politicize and divide something as big and grand as spirituality because it’s what we know…it’s what we do best.

We have to leave our mark on the Word.

Maybe it’s like everyone trying to talk at once at a party…we just get excited and think that we have something to say?

I don’t really know about that…too much.

I do know that this world can be a peaceful place if I let it be.

Disclaimer:  I’m not a monk…and I don’t carry a boombox.

water from the wrong side

Posted on by December 10, 2013

faucet

In the pack I run with, I am known for being a magnificently coordinated man.

Actually, that’s not completely true.

If I was known for any attribute pertaining to my motor skills, I probably am more known for being “functionally coordinated”.

I’m not the sharpest tack in the knife drawer, but I do get around.

I get around.

I do alright.

Last night, I was presented with a new challenge.

We have a pedestal sink in our bathroom.  Last night, on one edge of the sink sat my son’s large plastic tugboat.

On the other side, the side closest to the bathtub, there was a neti pot.  That’s pretty weird.  You use a neti pot to irrigate your skull.  Look it up…it’s the truth….but I digress. I can’t get hung up on what a weird thing it is to force water through your sinus cavities. I can’t go there…I have other things to do.

Anyway, there was stuff up on the sink that I wasn’t used to being there.

In retrospect, it was like a lot of things in my life that I could easily fix.  I could have moved either one pretty easily.  I could adapt my environment to suit my needs.

But I needed a drink of water right now.

The angle was wrong, but I positioned myself near the tub, craned my neck around, put my disoriented lips under an unfamiliar flow…and drank.

Water ran down my cheek in an unusual pattern, I gasped for air…getting only a partial drink where usually I’m pretty efficient.

It was water from the wrong side that was screwing me up.

It was my environment…it had nothing to do with my physical ability.

When I stood up, I was thankful that the tugboat isn’t positioned there permanently.  It was a problem that could be fixed.

If I had to drink strange water everyday, I think I’d just go out of my mind.

It was like a really gentle, really benign… waterboarding.

It was pure torture to have to manipulate my body like that just to get a drink of water before I went to sleep.

I’ve heard people say that sometimes one of the steps towards entrepreneurial success is a move to a new location.

Apparently, it’s not necessarily the new place that presents increased opportunities…it’s that the person starting the venture looks at the situation with a fresh perspective.

They see opportunity where, in the place they lived before, they used to only see obstacles.

After my “water from the wrong side” debacle, I wondered if sometimes the new-found optimism might not be delivered to us by situations that force a new perspective on us.

Sometimes, we get caught up in something that we had no hand in orchestrating.

It could be something traumatic (like a toy on a pedestal sink)…or it could be something kind of minor.  It could be just about anything…but, whatever “it” is, it acts as a fulcrum to help us see new opportunities and new positive outcomes.

We change, we grow…we learn new ways of avoiding using a glass to get a drink of water.

Maybe, sometimes, it takes something like a neti pot to force guide our hand and make us look at things from a different angle.

Taco Bell is Hell

Posted on by December 9, 2013

Taco_Bell_Border_Sauce_-_Fire_337794

I’ve heard that Hell is a lake of fire….a place of endless torment and gnashing of teeth, wailing…terror and pain.

We ate at Taco Bell yesterday…and it got me thinking about what Hell might also be.

What if Hell was more subtle than most of the pictures we’ve seen?

What if it was a place of constantly lowered expectations and ever-present dissatisfaction?

What if it was a place where your needs were “almost met”…but you were always sorry you’d ended up there?

Or maybe a place like a Taco Bell….where the door only opened in, and when you’d stepped foot in the restaurant, you couldn’t exit.

We ate at Taco Bell yesterday.

It was more “painfully interesting” than usual.  Bone chillingly cold ( the heat was broken or something) and the food definitely reflected the happiness of the employees.

It was pretty sad.  Bean burritos the size of a roll of quarters…everything else haphazardly prepared and …lacking verve.

Maybe that’s it….these fast food employees had lost their verve.  No verve at the Bell.

It was so bad…it got me thinking about Hell.

It was that bad.

Now, somewhere, someone may read this that takes unction with any earthly comparison with eternal damnation.

“BLASPHEMER!!!! THOU SHALT NOT EQUATE MY HELL WITH A POORLY RUN FAST FOOD RESTAURANT!!! I HAVE A LIFETIME INVESTED IN ESCAPING THE FIERY PIT….AND I WON’T ALLOW YOU TO MAKE LIGHT OF IT.  I’LL CAST YOU DOWN MYSELF BEFORE I’LL LET YOU MAKE LIGHT LIKE THAT!!!!”

It seems sometimes that for some folks, the main pleasure of Christianity is being on the side that escapes damnation.

All that “other stuff”, the stuff like Love…and Salvation…well that’s just a vehicle for avoiding a wrong turn into the LAKE OF FIRE.

It’s like Christianity is just a well programmed GPS or something…”turn right, turn right…RECALCULATING, RECALCULATING, RECALCULATING!!!!”

I love that old story about two banquets.  I don’t remember how the guy gets to see the two feasts…but when he enters this room there’s two beautiful dinners prepared at two long tables.

The angel that’s showing him around takes him to the first table.

He’d never seen so much beautiful food. Piles and piles of deliciousness….ready to eat and enjoy.  But when he takes a closer look, he notices that all the people on both sides of the long table have 3 foot utensils, forks and spoons, attached to their hands.

They are frantically trying to eat…but the “extensions” make it impossible for them to reach their mouths. They can’t do it. As hard as they try, they can’t get any food.

The angle is wrong…they can’t reach.

They can’t even take care of their own needs.

It’s pretty dire..pretty grim.

Then the angel takes him over to the other table.

This table is different.  The food is the same..but the people are happy at this table.

It’s a raucous party…unrestrained and joyful.  These people are really enjoying themselves at this second table.

The man studies the table for a second and then notices something interesting.

Instead of trying to feed themselves and failing, the people at this table are feeding the people across from them.

The “3-foot attachments” are perfect for that.

Everyone is satisfied at the second table.

The angel asks what the person saw, and the reply is that at the first table everyone was sad…they couldn’t take care of their needs.

At the second table, people were helping each other and they were joyous.

The angel replies that the answer was correct…and then he explains that the first table was Hell…and the second table was Heaven.

That is a cool story!

I think Hell is a lot worse than the worst Taco Bell.

A small burrito is not eternal damnation.

I do start to wonder if constant disappointment wouldn’t be a pretty bad thing to endure for eternity.

A chance of finding joy covers a lot of ills.

 

Bouncing on God’s Knee

Posted on by December 8, 2013

beautiful_sunrise_on_green_meadow

My daughter, Sparrow, is just a little over a week old now.

Sparrow laughs in her sleep sometimes.

Big smile and then a little baby laugh.

I wondered about that the other day.

A week into a life, you don’t really have a big repertoire of experience to draw from.  You don’t have a lot of happy…or sad…experiences.  You start out fresh…tabula rasa…and collect “reasons to act” as you grow into being a fully formed human being.

That could be what’s going on, at least.  I don’t really know how a lot of stuff really works.

I was watching her sleep, getting a kick out of her smiles, when I thought, “What if she’s smiling about a remembrance of being with God?”

That would be pretty amazing.  I know she spent more time with Him than she has with us…and she’s little enough that she hasn’t had time to forget yet..so maybe she’s smiling about something good. Maybe she’s smiling about something good….like God?

Now, some people may say that “it’s just gas”.

That’s a possibility.  Our little girl may just need to expel a lot of gas.  She may be full of it and just needs some pressure release.

Ssssssssss or Brappppp….from my own experience, either way works.

That may be the reason she’s smiling.

But I think it’s a lot more accurate, and certainly more poetic or romantic, to suppose that she’s smiling because she’s remembering bouncing on God’s knee.

I think that we come from…and, eventually…return to God.

We’re given to this life for a short while…and then we return.

That’s pretty straightforward.

That’s a simple…maybe simple-minded?…theology…that we are “given” to this life and that at some point…hopefully at least a little ways into the future…we are allowed to return.

It is a gas…I guess the pun is too obvious not to be intended…to see Sparrow smiling in her sleep.

I remember, even at the youngest age, hearing and knowing that “Jesus loves the little children”. That was an accepted truth…that I was loved and that God loves me.  It was a simple message that was approachable for a little child.

“You are loved”.

That’s a powerful message to be conveyed in a few words.

Now I suppose I could insert some footnotes…pull out my thesaurus…cite multiple and learned references and kind of muddy the pool a little….make things opaque enough that unless I had someone with some “spiritual training” to explain things to me, I’d never be able to decipher what it really means to be a Christian.

Or, better yet…maybe I could just sit in a pew somewhere and listen to all the Latin….just take someone else’s word for it that God was in the house.

Or I could just look at a baby’s face and see that smile…and marvel that maybe it isn’t just gas.

Maybe she knows something that I’ve forgotten.

There is a connection that we run from.  We put up as many distractions as we can manufacture.  We busy ourselves to avoid what can’t be escaped.

“We are loved”.

Sparrow knows that.

My Scholarship…or how a young man learns to view every single mile as an education

Posted on by December 7, 2013

raptor mailbox

They are sticking it to us at the PO these days.

They are sticking it to us in the best sense of the word.  We are going through our paces big time during the early part of this Christmas season.

Lots of packages, lots of mail…lots of packages coming from different places at different times.

If we don’t spend at least part of the morning waiting for late mail to arrive from somewhere (the cryptic “somewhere”), it’s unusual.

I go in at 7:30 to start the day…and finish up around 5:30 or 6:00.

It’s a busy time.

But I know that I could be busting rocks in a South African prison or something like that, so I know I have it pretty good.

I have a good thing going…nobody yelling at me or getting on my case is a good thing.

I’ve been listening to “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” as I drive around.

I’ve read that book a couple of times…but I must have listened to the audio version close to 10 so far.

I’ve mostly been listening to it to see if I could decipher some of the latter parts.

Some of it is kind of dense…impenetrable (to me).  I use the excuse that if I didn’t have to concentrate so hard on the mail I was delivering that I’d catch more of what he was talking about. That’s a good excuse….I can blame my job.  That works well for me.

The whole book is a discourse on “quality” and what that word means…but in the latter part of the book it gets really philosophical and he kind of loses me.

I do listen to every word,though…just like a good monkey waiting for the light to come on so I can press the button and get another treat.

I listen like something is going to click and it will make sense.

Yesterday, it occurred to me that a mind game I could play while I’m delivering all this mail is to tell myself that I’d been given a grand scholarship to a rolling, hidden university.

My mail Jeep is my classroom and the paycheck I get every other week is what they’re paying me to learn all this great stuff.

I don’t think the NRLCA union would back me up on that if it ever came to light, so my disclaimer at this point would be that my primary and only directive is to seek what is best for the USPS and my community of eager mail recipients.

I know in my head that I’m a real “learning fool”, though. I’m a fool for the learnin’.

Big time.

So…thankyou, America, for funding my education.  They should put me on a public service TV spot…smiling blithely as I deliver another huge package, some philosophically challenging audio book playing loudly in the background.

I think the country could really get behind a “learnin’ fool” mailman.

The slogan could be something like, “Save the USPS!  Save Peter’s education!!”.

It really isn’t all about meeeeeee….but a good bit of it really is.  I’m, unfortunately, for better or worse, the hub of my own universe.

This whole scholarship thing is a spin that might just carry me through this busy time.

Now if I can just avoid being late to class.