Wooly Bully

I watched a documentary called Bully a little over a week ago--if you're ever looking for a solid reason not to have kids, you should watch it. Essentially what it boils down to is that kids are freaking terrible little creatures. And apparently, they're getting smarter, or adults are getting dumber, or something. Either way, it's getting completely out of control. Apparently, kids take to Twitter and Facebook now, and hell, I'm assuming they probably use Snapchat to send little messages like, "Go kill yourself," and then afterward, it just kind of goes away. And what was worst about it is that these parents have no idea what to do. I'm not saying there's a clear cut answer--God knows that having children is one area that I am not an expert in.
But the difference between these kids' experiences and mine is that their parents seemed lost as to how to fix it. And I guess there's not really a sure fire way that works when it comes to your kids and what happens to them at school--I'm sure if there were, a lot of girls I went to high school with wouldn't have ended up so pregnant by senior year. But my dad had a way of dealing with things--whether I liked it or not.
But I didn't always go home and report my bullying because that would have been all that I talked about, and I really liked to talk, so I had to ration out my topics. Most of the time I only reported general, blatant hate crimes--kind of like when Lindsay used to shake me in first grade or when Andrew tried to give me a haircut by cornering me with scissors. Ironically, the scissors were never going toward my hair, but rather my cheekbones... I like to think it was less about malintent and more about poor execution. But those were the good ol' days when bullying was pretty basic, and if your kid did things like that to other kids, it basically meant you were just raising a little asshole.
But later on, the basics were the least of you worries. hardly on my mind at that point.
I found myself in the crux of bullying--that awkward transition between making fun and full blown Internet warfare. Most everything pre-middle school was physically based. No one went out of their way to put me in a category--it was just kids being terrible on the playground. But it was in sixth grade that the big guns were revealed. Sitting in gym class, I was there rocking out my windbreaker pant/jacket combo when Megan Johnson came up and told me, "Josh Davis said you want to give all the boys in the sixth grade a blow job." At the time, I had no idea what a blow job was--actually, because someone in my house dropped the ball on anatomy, I thought everyone had a penis so any form of sex was
Being an inquisitive child, I pretty much went straight to the teacher to ask what a blow job was. Unfortunately, no one would answer my question because, well, it is not on the curriculum to explain those kinds of things to a sixth grader. So eventually I had to take it home and ask my parents, and in doing so, I had to explain why it was that I needed to know. And that was the first of many bully-related blow ups that happened in my house. I think I caught the gist of what a "BJ" was, but it was completely overshadowed by my dad's reaction to what had happened. Obviously, I didn't want to go around doing that to anyone in the sixth grade. I wanted enough lunch money to get pizza and corn from the cafeteria on Friday, and I wanted to always be picked to answer questions in Social Studies. Basic--I knew what it meant, and I was good.
After my dad left to calm down, my mom tried to explain to me the basics of sex, but she gets just as nervous about intercourse as I do, so eventually she gave up and just decided to give me double mashed potatoes at dinner to compensate for the rest of the sex talk. My dad came back into the room and told me, "Tomorrow, you're going to go to school and knock the shit out of him." Negative, Wendell. Contrary to the rest of my family, I'm not a fighter. I don't think it's because I ever feared what the pain might feel like or how much trouble I would get into--I think I was primarily concerned about my face. And I was right to think like that because I have a pretty symmetrical face. Later on, I would go to find out that a very small percentage of the world has perfect facial symmetry, so I think I ultimately made the right call.

A nice little sketch picture we got at the mall once
when I was in middle school.

But that wasn't enough for Dad because how can you just sit back and let some other kid at school hand out sexual favors on behalf of your son? In retrospect, if one of my dad's coworkers promised fellatio to all the other gu
ys on the construction crew on behalf of my dad, I wouldn't be too cool with it, either. But with limited options, there wasn't much to be done. I refused to fight, and I pleaded and pleaded with my parents not to take it to any of the teachers. The teachers couldn't do anything, or at least that's what I though.
So the next couple years were filled with stories like Josh's and mine. And they would all lead back to the same conclusion--no intervention: no fighting, no teachers, no nothing. Instead, I would go home and take a sheet of notebook paper and list random people from school: sixteen to be exact. And then I would sit for hours and decide how they would be voted out. That's right--I madSurvivor charts back home, and every challenge I would win immunity, and then I would be voted winner at the end of every game. By the time I was done with middle school I had about 247 million hypothetical dollars.
e fantasy
But eventually, the bullying didn't stop at school. Public access to the Internet was still pretty fresh out of the gate, and one of its earliest contributions to society was AOL Instant Messenger (AIM, lolz). Anyone who was anyone had an AIM screenname (rocketdog485--you're welcome) and a totally jazzed out away message to accompany it. It didn't take too long for the guys at school to get ahold of it, and eventually, they started sending me messages over that. They would call me fag and tell me how no one liked me, and eventually, they told me to kill myself. Yikes!
And that is where the buck stopped. I made the fatal error of telling my mom about the situation, who then told my dad, who then let everyone in a three mile radius know via uncontrollable yelling, and then it was settled. We were going to have to take a trip over to this kid's house. Somehow, in my mind, the only thing that seemed worse than being made fun of and having people tell me to kill myself was my dad going over to Matt's house to have a conversation about it... with him and his dad. And my dad wasn't really the type to ask for a cup of coffee and sit down in the den and "talk things through." No, my dad was more the type to show up with a cup of his own coffee, and then throw it in someone's face. I imagined what would happen--how the cops might be called. And God, what would the people at school say?
So, my dad loaded me up in the truck and drove down to this kid's house. I remember looking over at him--he hadn't even changed from work. Grease on his jeans and a tee shirt from the work day. Dad's always been a really hairy guy, so he had this monster sized beard, and his back hair was creeping up the collar of his shirt. At a glance, he kind of looked like an animal--especially when you took his words into consideration on the way there. He was pretty much silent, which is a sure fire sign that he's about to have a total meltdown. Occasionally, he would nod to himself and mutter something like, "Yep. This is going to get fixed. Tonight." I was 74% sure that I had shit in the passenger seat, but I didn't want to say anything because, honestly... who wanted to throw any more gasoline on that flame?
We pulled up to Matt's house and my dad started walking to the door. I stayed in the truck, partially because I had little to no feeling in my legs, partially because I couldn't stand to see what was going to happen. He stopped about halfway to the door and turned around and stared at me. I knew what he wanted, but I wasn't going to do it until he told me I had to. "Get out of the truck, you're coming with me."
Mortified, I made my way to the door--my dad opted to not use the doorbell, but instead just went straight for the full blown bang on the door. Not a little "shave and a haircut" knock, but more like a "YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE, YOU SHOULD PROBABLY GET OUT" knock. Eventually, this scrawny looking man in glasses comes to the door--the adult version of what I imagine his kid would have looked like once he stopped pantsing people in the locker room and using the term "fag" so freely in public. He asked if he could help us, and my dad cut right to the chase, "Well, your son has been picking on my son, and it needs to stop." Of course, his dad very calmly suggested that we go back to the beginning, but there was no time for that. We were here on a mission--a Kirkland mission--and that mission didn't need to take any more than five or ten really, really terrifying minutes.
Eventually, the man called Matt to the door, and there he stood--looking angelic as ever, as if he had just got done brushing the dog or doing homework or something completely unlike himself at school. His dad asked him if he knew who I was. "Yeah, that's Justin. We're friends at school." And that's when I got angry. Friends at school? Hardly. My friends were the acquaintances that I put on my Survivor alliance at 4:30 when I got home from school. This kid was not my friend.
Then his dad asked him one of the stupidest questions that you can ask a kid, "Son, are you making fun of Justin at school and on the Internet?" Oh yes, father. I call him all sorts of names. Names you might not have even heard of! Isn't it grand? "No, I would never do that." And that's when Wendell, formerly known as my dad, took over the conversation. "Don't stand here and lie to me, you little son of a bitch." Apparently, in most common suburban neighborhoods, calling a child an SOB is not a readily accepted term of endearment. Then again, SOB is not a term I heard very often back home either--it was usually reserved for our neighbor who would shoot turkeys behind our house and our pet rabbits whenever they would scratch Dad. The kid's dad looked back at us and said, "I don't think it's appropriate to say that," and then Wendell responded, "Well, I don't think it's appropriate for him to tell my son to kill himself online." And then, because my dad knows how to prepare for a situation, Wendell pulled out a stack of papers--printed out AIM conversation between myself and Matt. The jig was up--Matt had officially been busted.
His dad looked at the papers and then down to Matt, and said, "We're going to have a serious conversation about this, and you're probably going to be grounded from the computer for a while." Solid parenting, if I say so myself. But the conversation was not over, because Wendell did not find this a suitable enough warning. I could see those backhairs raising up, like a mountain lion about to pounce. He pointed his finger at Matt and said, "If this ever happens again, I'm going to come back here, and I'm going to beat his ass. And then I'm going to beat your ass for raising him." And then, he pulled out one of my favorite Wendell Kirkland moves, which I like to call the "Why Haven't You Said Anything Yet?" After he's said something like, "I'm going to kick your entire house's ass," he gives you about two seconds to process it, then raises his eyebrows and slightly shakes his head, as if you were already supposed to come up with something to say in response. It's his final way of saying, "I've won this battle. You can leave now." As a teenager, I was the victim of a couple of these responses when I did things like not get up in time for school, or a blatant disregard for cleaning the pool.

And this is what he's turned into today.

We got back in the truck and he looked over at me and said, "I think we got that taken care of," and then Matt never spoke to me again. Before I was out of middle school, we repeated this routine two other times with two other kids. Those kids don't speak to me either. I think by the time I was a junior in high school, most everyone knew that if you really went after me, my dad would show up at your house and essentially threaten to burn it to the ground. People always said things--bullies never really go away. They just knew when to stop.
Looking back on it, Dad's approach might have saved me from something really bad down the road. Sure, it was pretty ridiculous that your dad would go to your schoolmate's house and reenact an episode of Maury to get the point across, but every parent has their own way of getting the job done. Eventually, bullying pretty much came to a stop--somewhere near the end of high school. But to this day, if something bad happens at work or if I pass a jerk on the street, I think twice about whether or not I should tell my dad about it, because the last thing I need at this point is for my dad to show up at work to let my boss know who the boss really is.

Tina, Tina, Tina

In fifth grade, my family moved for the first time. It wasn't your classic kind of move, mostly because a big truck came along and pulled our first house off the foundation, put it in our back yard, then moved our bigger house back in. Ah yes, the classic trailer switch. For some reason, our family decided to make the switch in the middle of the winter, but because of the complicated nature of assembling the two pieces of a doublewide, we had to live out of the singlewide for a week. Most children would be concerned about not being directly hooked up to water or heat, but for me, the only issue that existed for me was--we were going to miss the premiere of Survivor: Australian Outback.
I was obsessed with Survivor, mostly because I would sit in class and contemplate how I could vote all of my classmates out but somehow manage to make them all still like me afterward. The year before, I watched Kelly Wigglesworth be completely undermined by the nakedness/baldness of Richard Hatch. It was both disgusting and enthralling to watch--but this season was going to be different: I could feel it. I demanded that we were fully moved into the new house before the premiere happened--there's not a lot of things that I demanded as a 5th grader, other than a full size recreation of Zordon from the Power Rangers and the premiere of Survivor. In reality, only one of those things were possible, and I didn't know at the time how important it would be for my development as a young man.
Once we got the all clear, we began to move furniture in--logically, I suppose we should have started with the couch or the bed, but we went straight for the television. Just by the skin of our teeth, we made the move just in time for premiere night. At the beginning of every reality show season, my dad and I pick favorites to win. The battle goes back to classic battles such as Clay and Reuben, as well as Carrie Underwood and Anthony Federov (which wasn't really classic at all, as much as it was just a really terrible decision on my part). But as the didgeridoo sounded from our old television speakers, I immediately knew who my pick would be. As the faces flicked across the screen, I saw her. No, she wasn't an Alecia, nor was she a Kel (obviously, because she would never be accused of stealing beef jerky. Hello), but I knew in my hear that she would win the game. Her name? Tina Wesson. She was from Knoxville, my hometown, and to me, if she came from Rocky Top, she was surely going to win. My dad told me that I was crazy right after he chose Colby. I wouldn't be moved though--I didn't care what happened because I knew that Tina was going to win.

Tina Wesson/Justin Kirkland, 2001

Looking back, as a fifth grader I was entirely too invested in the lives of people I didn't know. I would huddle the family around the television every Thursday night, hushing any company that might be over for dinner or to pick up a gun/bow/dead animal from dad. I was amazed by what I saw because as much as I love Tina, she wasn't that great at winning things. But still, at every tribal council, no one cared. Everyone just kept voting for other people and Tina lived on week to week all the way to the final three. I think maybe that's why Tina resonated with me so much--I wasn't good at winning things either, but people liked having me around. I imagined that if 2001 Tina and fifth grade Justin played Survivor together, we would probably make it to the final three as well.
Finale night came--I was a nervous wreck for a number of reasons. I was leaving for my first major trip ever the next day: a four day trip Washington D.C. I had never been away from home that long, and on top of my completely irrational anxiety over Tina's potential winning moment, I was on 24 hour nervous vomit alert. Colby won the final immunity and my dad immediately when into celebration mode. Colby was surely going to win against Kei... no. He took Tina. At the final tribal, Tina smoothly talked her way into the prize with a million-dollar-brand of Southern charm.  I cried that night--still not exactly sure if that was because of Tina's win or the pending trip, but either way, it was a lot of emotions. I boarded the coach bus the next morning with my special edition Survivor Entertainment Weekly, and I channeled that Tina Wesson power to make it through the trip. Mind you, I didn't eat and lost seven pounds in four days because of it, but I liked believing that was part of the whole "Survivor" mentality.
Throughout that summer, I begged my friends to play Survivor with me, which probably explains why I had such a tough transition into middle school the next year. You see, when you invite your friends over to play games that you've designed and made the rules for, then win every challenge, then vote each of them out of the game, sometimes you end up alone. Didn't matter to me though--I wanted to keep up that Knoxville Legacy. Eventually, my friend Lindsay told me that Tina was coming to speak at her church and that she would get me an autograph. With very few friends left and fewer and fewer people interested in playing Survivor with me, I decided that I needed to let this "Tina-hero-glory" go. I put the autograph on the back of a blue church flyer in my scrapbook and tried to let Tina go. My love for her was alienating. Everyone else's hero reports were on their grandpas or presidents or movie stars. Mine were about the 42 year old woman who once played Survivor. It was time to move on.

***

Skip forward four years: Tina was going to to be on Survivor: All Stars. She was voted out first. I choose to not recognize that it ever happened.

***

By the time I was a junior in college, Tina was a fond memory of my childhood--I had found other heroes, but like an old teddy bear, she had this place in my heart even if I didn't force my friends to play Survivor with me anymore.  Down the road from our college, the local Chili's would host a special night a couple times a year that part of the proceeds would go toward St. Jude's Hospital research. We would always try to make it down to grab dinner, and like usual, I had ordered a margarita and some kind of entree. 

My friends and I sat around the table trading stories from the day when it happened: out of no where, Tina Wesson walked in the door. I suppose the entire thing should have been simple. It had been ten years since the show premiered, and no one else seemed to make a big deal out of her being there, but I was frozen. Imagine if Superman walked in the door while you're casually sipping on margaritas... then you spit up that margarita on yourself and then go into a state of catatonic shock.

My friends had heard about my previous love of Tina Wesson at one point or another, most of the time after I had drank a number of margaritas and went back to those tender memories of elementary school. They kept telling me to go over, but I couldn't get up. It all seemed too crazy to be true. No matter who it ends up being, your childhood hero is kind of invincible. But the idea that mine was sitting about twenty feet away presumably weighing the benefits of fajitas over steak with her husband just seemed unreal to me. Eventually I asked the waitress to do a little investigation for me--she had confirmed it: Tina Wesson was in the restaurant.

I finished my margarita and mustered up as much courage as I could. After getting up from the table, I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to approach the situation. It's not every day that you meet your hero. Somehow, I decided on some kind of walk that resembled a mix between a serious limp and a grapevine dance step. I spent so much time deciding on how I should walk that by the time I actually got to the table, I had nothing to say. Tina and her husband looked up at me and waited for me to say something. I couldn't look her in the eyes, and then all of that nervousness from that pre-Washington D.C. night/Australia finale came flooding back. All I could think was, "Please don't cry or throw up on Tina Wesson's table at Chili's." Eventually, words just came flooding out in this weird whisper-grumble, "Hello Tina Wesson. My name is Justin Kirkland. I saw you sitting over here, and I wanted to say thank you because you're my hero and I watched you when I was younger and I thought you did great."

Justin Kirkland/Tina Wesson, 2013

She looked nervous, and I probably would have been too, honestly. I don't like being interrupted when I eat, and though it's never happened, I'm assuming my unsteady, borderline creepy vibe didn't really help my case. Of all the responses I thought she was going to say, she said, "How old were you when that came on?!" I told her about fifth grade, strategically leaving out the details about voting out my friends and the haphazard hero reports I did based on less than reliable information from Survivor fansites. I don't remember much more from the conversation because I think I started to faint or something.

***

Tina finished fourth last night in her third season of Survivor. I was still an embarrassing fan girl sitting on the couch screaming at the television, unable to eat my pizza because that fifth grade Survivor anxiety was back all over again. Every couple of seasons, I apply to be on Survivor hoping to be the next Knoxville rockstar on the island. People have asked me why Tina--there's been more impressive winners or sneakier players, or hell... people like presidents and celebrities to write hero reports on. But for me, it wasn't about Tina changing the world... it was more about Tina changing my world. She wasn't just a woman on a television show to me, as much as she is proof that you can do whatever you want, even if you're from down in South Knoxville. As long as you're not walking over to meet her at Chili's, that is.

Don't Even Look at Me, Peyton Manning

Today, for the first time in my existence, I got invited to join a fantasy football league. Sure, it was a pretty glorious moment, but in the same breath, it was a moment filled with complete and utter anxiety because I do not follow professional sports at all. I keep up with the SEC because it's part of the contract I signed as a Tennessee resident 23 years ago, but other than that, I don't really dabble in the sports community. There's a whole lot of suppressed memories that remind me that's not the world that I belong in, and I'm okay with that--it's similar to how I feel about not being welcomed in Anacostia, or most restaurants with vegan options. When asked by my roommate about how competitive I was going to be about it, I explained that I really didn't care if I won or I lost because I was mostly in it because of a heightened sense of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and the prospect of delicious hot wings. But obviously, I was going to need some help getting started.
I asked my friend Mark who invited me if he could offer some assistance, and he pretty much told me that this is not an aspect of life where people help each other: this is a part of life where people win. I respect that, but I also respect my dad, Wendell's, advice that he gave to me a long time ago, "If at first you don't succeed, find something you're good at." So, I pretty much gave up on it immediately. I don't care enough to actually learn about the players... that would cut in to the amount of time I have looking up Jennifer Lawrence GIFs and inside information about the 10th season of Grey's Anatomy (speaking of, let's all take a moment of silence for Sandra Oh's departure in nine very short months). I had no interest in learning, let alone mastering, the art of fake football--if I were going to do that, I would have just played. People throughout my life always said, "I'm kind of surprised you didn't play football," which is a nice way of saying, "Hey, I think you're kind of fat, but in a useful way." In fact, I played a couple of sports growing up, but none ever panned out: too many yellow cards in soccer for running into people as hard as I could, never placed on the actual volleyball team because I threw volleyballs really hard at practice, and constant benching in softball because I got bored and sat down in the outfield. Some people would say that it all comes down to the fact that I'm not patient or disciplined enough to be an athlete, but I think what, or whom, it actually comes down to is Peyton Manning.
One day in first grade, it was announced that we would have a special guest coming to class... a friend of one of our classmate's families. Mrs. Ellis could barely get the name out without shuddering in his woven-knit UT orange teacher vest. Peyton Manning would be making an appearance, and most everyone in class continued to pick their noses or playing with their toys, but I remember being so excited. As someone who ingested as much culture as he could from an early age, I knew who Peyton was. So, I went home and told my parents--my dad said UT football was stupid, and the whole thing was rigged, which also reflected his opinion on every Presidential election leading back to Reagan, and the outcome of any given season of American Idol. But my mom understood where I was coming from, so we drove down to Wal-Mart so that I could pick myself up a disposable camera. There was going to be picture evidence of how good of friends Peyton and I would be. I imagined that he would teach me about football, give me piggy back rides, and eventually, we'd go hang out in Neyland Stadium... I could hardly sleep the night before, I was so excited.
But the day came, and naturally some overbearing parents who caught wind of the Peyton-sighting showed up to class. Finally, the time was approaching for me to meet Peyton, aka MAH BEST FRIEND, aka my future personal-Judas. I stepped up to the desk he was sitting at with shaky hands, unsure of what I should do with the camera and the piece of paper and all the emotion. He didn't look as big as I imagined, which is probably because I envisioned him to be a giant. He didn't say hi, he just reached and got my paper and signed it. I stood there nervously and asked if he would take a picture with me, and all I heard was "No." Mrs. Ellis, in her totally baffled state, ushered me away from the table.
I took the autograph to the back of the room by me and stood with a giant knot in my throat. Peyton, why had you forsaken me? I couldn't even bare to be in the same room, which should have been a tell tell sign that I would go on to have a lot of resentment and boundary issues in my life. I didn't want to look at him because he had betrayed me. We were supposed to be best friends. He was going to be like the big brother I never had, notwithstanding the older brother I already had. I looked down at the signature, which proved that he had taken absolutely NO time to practice cursive in elementary school, and I ripped it up. I threw it in the garbage, and I never looked back. I went home that night and threw the camera on the couch, and said I wanted nothing more to do with Peyton Manning or football, which was not too much of a stretch because I didn't have a lot to do with it before. I refused to root for him, and when they won the title in 1998, I made a conscious decision not to eat Tostitos for a solid chunk of time. (Okay, probably for like, two weeks, but I really love salsa. Get off my back).
Many-a-Peyton-fan along the way has tried to make excuses for him: he was probably just flustered or he wasn't allowed to take pictures or maybe I'm just telling the story wrong. Regardless, Kathy bought me a five dollar disposable camera, and he really didn't have to be such a twat waffle about the whole situation. I'm sure he has no recollection of me--though we may never know exactly how (other than reputable athletic ability and an unprecedented presence at the University of Tennessee), he's seemed to make a career out of the sport and has probably met too many people to count. But when people watch his Saturday Night Live skit of him working with United Way and a bunch of children, only to physically and verbally abuse them, people giggle because they think, Oh Peyton, you would never talk to children that way. Well guys... Peyton would... Peyton did.
So, I eventually decided to do the fantasy football league. My team's name is "Peyton Manning Sucks," and I plan on filling the necessary positions with people that have really cool names. But most of all, I want this fantasy league to be vindication. I do care about winning... not over the other participants, but over Peyton and the ghost of that seven year old who was totally screwed over by one of the most inflated egos to ever grace the beautiful green grass of Neyland Stadium. I wanted a hero, and I got Mr. Manning. I would have even taken that alcoholic, Tyler Bray as a class visitor before Peyton Manning. From that point on, I focused on heroes that exemplified the skills that I wanted to emulate, like Tina Wesson from Survivor (I will tell you the much more gracious, heartwarming story about meeting her later), or David Sedaris.

Our Favorite Sins

My friend Anna and I were in her bed watching Grey's Anatomy one night during my junior year. Callie's mother told her that she would not be attending her wedding to Arizona because she couldn't stand the thought of her daughter marrying a woman--she couldn't stand the thought of her daughter, who she loved, spending the rest of her life in Hell. I immediately became disgusted, while Anna literally cheered the mother on. Immediately, I turned around and looked at Anna as if she had slapped me across the face. Anna is one of my best friends, but there she sat, cheering on a fictional mother as she told her fictional daughter that she would be spending her eternity in Hell for... marrying a woman. Anna and I immediately got into discourse with Anna's greatest defense being the morality of the Christian religion, her upbringing, the book of Leviticus, and the very limited references made in the New Testament (let it be noted, none were said by Jesus). I, in response, quoted a theme that occurs repeatedly over the course of both the Old and New Testaments: judgement. We'll discuss the aftermath of that conversation later.

This week, Jason Collins of the Wizards, formerly the Celtics, made the very bold announcement that he is gay--the first athlete of America's four biggest professional sports. I wasn't going to put much commentary in the conversation because I had already tried to state my position last year during the whole Chick-Fil-A debacle (oh, you didn't read What a Waste of Waffle Fries?!). I actually defended the idea of purchasing food from Chick-Fil-A. But what inspires me to address this Jason Collins issue is the comparisons that have been drawn throughout this week. I hear about how Tim Tebow has been persecuted for being a Christian and how terribly he has been bashed as a Christian player, while Collins is being revered for being an openly gay athlete--and that's where my issue comes up. Tebow, a Christian, has been bashed? As a child, I used to try and make the case about what it was like to be white or to be a boy or to even be a Christian. There's a lot of prejudice in the world, and I'm not saying that there's not prejudice against white people or men or Christians, because there is. There truly is. But in my twenty-three years of life, I can say that I've never been told that being any of those things was wrong, and I was surely never told that I would go to Hell for them. My eternal damnation was never on the line because of my race or gender or religion. And I dare say, this is not the Crusades anymore. Christians are not blamed for blowing up buildings; Christians were not gassed or burned in small confined spaces. If the Christian religion's biggest current hurdle is being criticized on MSNBC, then I think we're doing okay.

Posted the morning after the Collins
announcement

And I say we because I, myself, am a Christian. I find my religion to be immensely personal and not the topic of frequent conversation. My prayers are mine and God's, my beliefs are only applicable to me because I don't think it's my place to determine the rights and wrongs of others. I struggle enough doing right on my own. But I find it hard to explain to agnostics, atheists, non-believers what our message is and who we want to be when in the midst of our own "persecution," we use announcements like Collins as a "general reminder" that homosexuality is a damning sin. 
I don't write this to defend the followers of my religion or to convince others whether homosexuality is a sin or not. And I definitely don't write this because I'm a lover of sports. I'm an atypical cookie cutter man--I find very little interest in sports. I recently joined a volleyball league in DC, and it's practically a miracle that I did that because sports were the source of my unhappiness for the longest time. When I tried the whole sports thing in elementary school, that was the first time someone called me a girl. Toward the end of elementary school, when I wasn't coordinated enough, that was the first time I was called gay. When I moved to middle school, that changed to faggot. I wanted nothing to do with sports because when you weren't good enough, that's the kind of thing you became: a joke, a mockery, what others observed as a second rate human--and then after getting called that long enough in the sports setting, it began to stick. I was called those things outside of the game, and then it was my eternity that was in question. I went from not being good at sports to being eternally damned.
So when I saw the story of Jason Collins this week, I nearly cried reading it. He spoke of why he kept his sexuality a secret for so very long. He talked about how no one had done this in a major sport before him. He brought up the way that gay people have been viewed in the sports community, and then just for a paragraph or so, he talked about his faith. He spoke about his religious roots and how he still holds on to those things he learned, and he spoke about judgement. But when I think about Collins' proclamation to the world, I don't see it as some giant thing for the professional sports world--though it is. I don't expect a string of players to come forth and announce their homosexuality. I do, however, anticipate that this is the beginning of a new normal--where it's no longer okay to call someone a faggot on the playground because he doesn't know how to properly throw a football. Because calling someone  gay should not be an insult. And for the gay kid that does know how to throw a football (please teach me--I can't throw a spiral to save my life), I imagine that this is the beginning of a time when we'll evaluate his skills and not his personal life.
So, back to Anna. I left Anna's room that night out of frustration. We didn't go back to discuss the conversation because there was no way I could convince her and no way she could convince me. We didn't even mention the topic for months. And then one night, she sat with me on the porch of our dorm and she began to cry. She told me that everything she had ever known had been turned upside down. She explained to me the gay people that she had met and how great of people they are. She told me, If you ever told me you were gay, I just couldn't believe that alone would send you to Hell forever. I just can't believe that, and it doesn't make sense to me anymore. I don't look at that conversation as a victory--like I had beaten her or something. I did, however, look at it as a victory because her world had been challenged and for once, the idea that one sin could damn someone to Hell forever became incomprehensible to her.
And that's what I urge the world to do--to quit putting weight on your favorite sin, or any sin for that matter. Worry about yourself and quit trying to interpret what God views as okay or not okay in other people. Do not use the triumph of humanity as a crutch for an unrelated agenda. We did not tell the world this week whether or not it's moral to be gay--that's honestly not a question that anyone should be discussing in a public forum. But with it being such a point of contention, ask yourself if you are moral--in every sense of the word. Ask yourself if you've sinned, and then cite James 2:10. I do not see homosexuality as a sin, but I do see the persecution of others in the vanity of your own beliefs to be. We moved forward this week--we're one step closer to eradicating the terrible stigma that comes with "being different." And I don't think Jesus could be happier about it--his words in The Bible are meant to push our humanity forward. It's surely not meant to be used as a roadblock to keep us further separated.

God and the Stars

For Mom and Max and anyone who has ever been confused

I don't pretend to understand the world or how it works anymore because there's not a lot about it that makes any sense--I suppose that's something you learn as you get older. Every day is kind of a mystery, and it can get the best of you. Yesterday, someone in the world decided to set bombs off in the middle of a marathon... just athletes running for the sake of being alive, for the sake of being a human who can. And then out of no where, someone decided to change the course of too many lives to count, and we're left wondering what happened. There's still no one to blame, and even when there is, what are we supposed to say? There's nothing to say because life, again, failed to make any kind of sense.
The night I left to move up to DC, the car was almost completely packed; I hadn't shed a tear up until that point because I was more excited than I was scared. I was about to start this journey away from everything I had ever known, but then my mom told me to look up into the sky. I stared up and the night was as clear as it had been in weeks--every star possibly visible was shining brightly against the amphitheater of trees that surround our house. When I looked back down, she was staring at me with tears in her eyes, and she told me, When you look up at those stars, just know that those are the same stars I'm looking at, too. Look at them every night and know that I'm right there with you. And then I cried.
It's really no surprise because I've cried my entire life. I like to believe that it's become less and less frequent the older I get, but it's a recurring theme of mine that's haunted me since that first time I threw up in kindergarten. And a lot of times I've cried, I do it because I haven't understood what was going on in the world--things that other people come to accept pretty easily. It took me years to understand the concept that if my mom left me at school, she would eventually come back. Why that was such a hard concept for me to grasp, I really have no idea. It's like I believed that Kimberlin Heights led to Hell or Mexico or some other place that you don't come back from. But then, without fail, after one hour of throwing up and crying, two hours of learning, three hours of me showing people my puppy wallet that had a picture of my family in it, and an hour of recess, my mom would come back and get me, and we'd do the whole thing over again the next day. But when my mamaw died when I was six, I specifically remember crying once. I cried because, even at six, I understood that I wouldn't see her alive again, and after that, I didn't cry about it again.
The concept of death made sense to me because our bodies have a timeline, a specified amount of time that we are allowed to live, and then like all other things (puppy wallet included, though I miss it so), the wear and tear becomes too much. My papaw died seven years later, and I'm not even sure if I shed a tear. It was never the expected things that were difficult for me to handle, and at times, I had trouble relating to other people who cried when those things happened. We weren't meant to live forever--but we were meant to live for a while.
Things like Boston, or 9/11, or Newtown happens and the whole structure of things gets screwed up. The world's plan gets all screwed up, and we don't understand the whole of it. And though those events are devastating and stupefying, it happens every day. People are killed in car accidents or get cancer or drown or die in some other way that was never expected, and it doesn't make any sense why it happened, or specifically, who it happened to. And then I meet people, and occasionally they tell me that they are thinking about suicide. They've thought about ending their own life, prematurely, and it breaks my heart because I know they didn't decide that on their own. I know. My heart pours out for those people because it's another mystery of life--it's a catch 22 of sorts. And I know because I've been in that position where the only thing that breaks your heart more than the idea of being dead is the idea of having to stay alive--it's not a choice to feel that way. It is however a choice to choose life. But it doesn't change the fact that there is a God, or whatever force you choose to believe in, out there that allows these things to happen. When we're not being shaken by a freak of nature, we're attacking one another, and when we're not attacking one another, we attack ourselves.
So it makes sense when people give up on God or hope or life because, honestly, there's a lot of reasons to. But then with all the pain and hurt we experience, I have a friend who has been consistently updating Facebook with the status of her infant son, and when we're talking infant, we're talking baby. He had a lemon sized tumor at the base of his brain, and his chance of living was pretty much slim to none... but every day I'd get on Facebook, Jessica would be asking for prayers for Max and maintaining that God was watching over them. Max, against the odds, has steadily been getting better and better, and there's a very real chance that he could go on and live a normal life. And it's the first time in a while that I thought to myself, Maybe, in a way, God doesn't have so much to do with all the pain we experience in the world. No, I don't get it, but it's God or hope or whatever you believe in that makes life okay when everything else doesn't seem to be making sense. Yeah, there's the things in life that confuse us, but if we take the time we use trying to find someone to blame and use it toward finding someone to lean on or believe in, then it makes the healing time that much more bearable.
And then I return to the stars. I stare at them, and I know that scientifically the only thing that holds them up is nothing--the lack of gravity, and I've been told that the stars we're staring at have already burned out. But still, I use the thing that everyone says is already gone or non-existent as a way of finding my way back home. In that non-existant thing, I find love and comfort and peace, and whose to say that star that I'm staring at tonight is one that is already depleted. We see the stars in the same way that we sometimes look at the world: hopeless and all but gone, but when I look at them, I see something that isn't supposed to be. Something that defies the odd. Something that shakes me to my core and helps me believe in something bigger than me. And sometimes when I see them, I still cry.

My Life, On The Oregon Trail

As a small child in elementary school, I would tune myself out from the rest of the world and invest everything I had into the teal Apple computer in the back left corner of the classroom. Nothing anyone said to me was of any importance because this was a special time. For an hour or so, I was God. After the computer actually got started up after about 10 minutes, I double-clicked it: The Oregon Trail. And even from early adolescence, my inability to let trivial disputes go and my speedy attachment issues prevailed--exclude me from playing Four Square? You're going in the wagon. You told me we were best friends while we were learning about multiplication tables? You're going in the wagon.

Yeah she does. And she probably deserved it.

A lot of different things could get you in the wagon, but the most important factor in a venture on the Oregon Trail was the mood I was in that day. If it was a rough day at school, you could be sure as shit that I was going to ford the river every time. Looking back, if anyone had found out that I was using The Oregon Trail as a virtual means of revenge, I probably wouldn't have been allowed to play it anymore... actually, I probably would have ended up on a list somewhere. But in the end, I never cared too much about finishing the journey--that took like... four more hours than I had, and I never cared enough to save it to my floppy disk (YEAH, that was a thing). The Oregon Trail was my fix, similar to what I imagine someone feels after doing cocaine.
But after my seven to eleven year old vengeance was completed, I realized that there was no Oregon Trail in middle school, and that's a shame because middle school is definitely the time that you need some revenge-Oregon-Trail. The game persisted in my mind though, and even through college, sometimes I imagined who I would put in my wagon. I would assign people roles, and I contemplated which weak friend would be the one to come down with typhoid of dysentery. But when I moved up to DC and started living in an apartment and doing more adult things, I realized that The Oregon Trail, much like life, is not something that you plan. The Oregon Trail is something that happens to you. Life is pretty much reflective of everything on The Oregon Trail: sickness, lost materials, negotiating with people you meet along the trail, gathering over 200 pounds of food and having to leave some behind. But most of all, I realized that the more alcohol you add to the situation, the more out of control the trail becomes.
So one night, all us pioneers (Jill, Andrew, Ben, Nicole, Catherine, Catherine's brother, Nicole's boyfriend--yeah, I know you can only include five people in your wagon. This is my Oregon Trail, I do what I want) decided that we were going to go out for a night in Arlington. Everything seemed to be going well:

Weather: Fair
Health: Excellent
Food: Enough, I guess
Miles Traveled: 0

We all met at Jill and Catherine's and started to drink before going out to a nice place called Clarendon Ballroom, an establishment that houses a good 85% of Arlington's frat boys and hipsters. They only play 45 second clips of songs, and epileptics are not encouraged to go there. But while waiting for Nicole and her boyfriend to show up at Independence, Missouri, or the apartment, everyone had imbibed enough that we decided no one was going to drive, and thus, our first game move: wait for a ferry (taxi) across the river.

Weather: Fair
Health: Silly
Food: Less than before, but still okay
Miles Traveled: 1.2

We had to take two ferries to get to the bar because apparently Arlington doesn't have ferries big enough for everyone. After we got to the establishment, I regretted choosing farmer instead of banker because I needed to stop at the ATM. (By the way, why was farmer ever a good option?) I walked with Nicole and her boyfriend to retrieve money, and then soon after we entered. With me at my resting annoyed-rate of 4, I decided not to drink but rather watch those around me. I made people come out to the dance floor, and eventually, everyone started consuming more and more alcohol. People began to get more and more intoxicated, but it didn't matter because that's how you play the game--at a grueling pace. Nicole told me that I didn't know how to dance, and then her and her boyfriend left. I can only assume they were eaten by a bison or perhaps contracted cholera and died. Either way, they were off the trail. RIP.

Weather: Whatever
Health: Fair
Food: This will be more applicable later.
Miles Traveled: 1.2

Because Arlington is comprised of mostly rich, old people, the bar was closing at 1 that night and by that time, it had become painfully obvious who was going to be hung over and who was not. As I was ushering people out of the bar with Catherine and her brother, it was apparent that some members of the wagon had lost some wheels, axles, and approximately 45 pounds of food along the way. Soon after we got everyone outside, Catherine and her brother left, probably in passive disgust that they were even on the wagon to begin with. So, there I was--sober as could be with three people left: Andrew, who ran across the street without looking, Ben, who looked as if he had contracted typhoid, and Jill. Jill seemed to be fine, so while Andrew and Ben went inside a 24 hour diner, Jill stayed outside while I smoked.
Jill began to tell me about her life and how everything seemed to be different. At that point, she asked me if she could have a puff of my cigarette. By this time, I was just happy to have someone to talk with who could speak in complete sentences. But after just a couple of puffs, everything changed. Jill began to cry, and I asked her What's wrong? And with smoke still seeping out from her lips, she announced, Please don't tell the boys, but I think I'm pregnant. And then I went into panic mode. This is that point in Oregon Trail when everyone's dying, health is poor, no one has food, and the weather is hot. I immediately grabbed the cigarette from her and instructed her to go inside.

Weather: We're inside the diner, doesn't matter
Health: Terrible
Food: Way over the 200 pound limit, everyone ordered too much
Miles traveled: Too many

Within the first five minutes, Jill announced her "pregnancy," Andrew wanted breakfast, and Ben didn't have his debit card. So I had to go negotiate with the people at the bar, Indian style, to get the debit card back. By the time I returned, the food had arrived, and Jill was taking a leave of absence in the bathroom. She had forded the river, Virginia Woolf style. At this point, she was a goner. For my troubles, I left a substantial tip for the waitress on Jill's card because she was still in the bathroom, and then we got another ferry to take Jill home. Finally, it was just Ben, Andrew, and me. As soon as we got in the car to drive home, Andrew "fell asleep" in the front seat, probably from measles, which left on two surviving wagon members: Ben with typhoid, and me. I managed to get the wagon back to our apartment, but only after losing six of the original wagon members, seven oxen, all the food, and at least 4 boxes of bullets.
But that's the thing about The Oregon Trail, and life in general... you don't really play to be a hero and make the highest score--you just play to survive. We found out the next day that Jill was not pregnant at all--apparently that was just something she needed to say whilst on the trail. Andrew's measles nap was apparently completely premeditated, and everyone else's departure was made with clear minds. However, what happens on the trail is nothing to be ashamed of, and it's nothing we should hold over one another's heads for revenge because the Oregon Trail is a messy place. If life were as easily planned as a game that can be saved on a colorful floppy disk (mine was yellow, for those interested), then it would probably be a lot easier than it is. But we ford rivers and lose axels and sometimes people get cholera, but it's not about what happens on the trail--it's just about making it to the end.

Most Likely to Succeed

In life there are three categories of aspirations we have: what we want, what we need, and what we don't really say out loud because it's silly. For some of us, learning how to approach the latter one is more difficult than it is for others. For instance, in elementary school, there was a group that would meet at lunch once a week called "The Banana Splits." Because of my early-onset fascination with exclusivity, I insisted in my seven-year-old mind that I should be in The Banana Splits. I mean, these kids got to talk about themselves once a week, on a Wednesday I believe, while... wait for it... EATING ICE CREAM. As far as I was concerned, I met all the qualifications: I loved to talk about myself, almost as much as I loved eating ice cream. So, one day, with all the courage in my curiously malnourished looking body, I approached our guidance counselor and asked for membership.
I'm sorry, Justin, but this is a group you can't be a part of. This would be the first of a laundry list of groups that I would be excluded from, including, but not limited to: the Girl Scouts, Black Student Association, any baseball team, people who can afford to attend "Restaurant Weeks," the New Hopewell Baptist Church youth group, varsity-level soccer teams, the sorority at my college, and people who qualify for food stamps in the state of Virginia. Completely abhorred at the idea of not being included, I sternly asked, Well, why not? Ms. Cruz went on to explain, Well, Justin. The reason we get together is because their parents are divorced. Divorce is a hard thing for someone your age to go through. You should consider yourself lucky that your parents are still together. She finished with a warm smile on her face. I did not. I was not lucky. I was not getting ice cream. My parents didn't give me ice cream. They gave me hominy, which is arguably the most disgusting food that God created. I don't know what kind of crazy world this woman was living in, but I was most certainly not lucky, and I let my mom know as soon as I got home.
Mom, I need you and Dad to get a divorce. My mom was stunned by it. I went on to explain how they were holding me back from ice cream, and how the only real solution to this horrible discrimination was for them to get divorced. I'm sure if I were older, I could have pulled together some statistics, a chart perhaps, but after my main argument of "ice cream is really good" had quickly become tiresome, I decided to give up. It was the first time in my life that I had truly come to the idea that sometimes, people were going to get things that you wanted, and there's nothing you can really do about it.
Fast forward a few years, and I was in high school. Middle and high school were not particularly fun places for me. I wore wind breakers most of the time and I had these thick glasses and people casually called me all kinds of slang terms for homosexual: most of which I had to go home and Google, which really led to some awkward Google search results. To this day, I thank God my parents don't really know how to use the Internet, otherwise I would have had a lot of explaining to do. But then toward the end of high school, I began wearing real pants and I got contacts and all that bullying had equipped me with a really edgy personality that often resulted in me saying awkward/mean things that other people thought were funny. I like to refer to that point in my life as "coming into my Tina Fey." There's really only so many times that you can try to persuade people that you're not gay before you just kind of decide to focus your energies elsewhere, so I began honing in on my storytelling and the commentary of all those pregnant girls we went to school with, and I haven't stopped since.
But my senior year, superlatives nominations came out. For all of you who live under a giant rock, superlatives is a popularity contest where you choose people that didn't really speak to you through high school and assigned them to glorified labels. Then, they would live in the back of your yearbook as a reminder that you're really jazzed that high school is something that only lasted four years. In the midst of the nominations, I rallied for my brother to be nominated as "Friendliest," because Casey really is the friendliest person I've ever met. He's much nicer than I will ever be, and it's not even in a fake way. If we could get Casey on the ballot, he would win because not voting Casey friendliest is like watching a cat video on YouTube and saying, Eh, I guess it's funny. Eventually, Casey would not only appear on the ballot, but also go on to win Friendliest. To my surprise, my name appeared on the ballot twice: once for Most Likely to Succeed, and once for Mr. South-Doyle (with or without the hyphen, which is a point of contention in the South Knoxville community). I had always assumed that Josh Wesley would take the coveted third spot; after all, he was one of the most attractive guys in our class with one of the most dashing personalities. He beat me for the coveted role of Othello in our AP Senior English class, and I don't even think it had to do with him being black. Josh Wesley didn't need affirmative action. Josh Wesley was affirmative action.
But even Josh was not competition for the two other nominees. In essence, I was just the wild card vote that happened to slide in a solid performance of quirky commentary and self-deprecating humor in the final hour. Competitor one, Ryan, threw all the great parties at his house. I had never been to one, but rumor had it that there was alcohol there sometimes. I had, sadly, never been around alcohol up to this point. Even at 18 years old, I became slightly paranoid when I swallowed some of the mouthwash while brushing my teeth. I once saw an episode of Dr. Phil where teenagers would drink mouthwash to get drunk, and then they started doing other stuff like crystal meth and watching porn. I admired Ryan from afar, but I knew that I could never be Ryan... not in high school, at least. Competitor two was Jonathan, who was Ryan's best friend. I never remember him playing football before, but he was the quarterback of our football team senior year. He broke his leg or did something really bad to it, the details escape me, but he managed to return for the final game. That year, he led the team to its best record in five years. In addition, they had been quite popular for some time. They were a part of the popular-Christian circle, which goes a long way in East Tennessee. I could never break into that circle because my opinion of Passion of the Christ learned more toward a horror movie as opposed to "an unbridled cinematic depiction of Christ's love." (I threw up afterward.) Obviously, in this equation, I was going up against Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain for the Oscar. I, of course, was Quevenzhane Wallis. It was really more of an honor than anything to be considered for the prized role.

I would go on to win the category of Most Likely to Succeed, which is the equivalent of a BAFTA in the high school superlative circuit. And as I'm sitting here working on this in Washington D.C., three cigarettes, two Cokes, and a piece of cake in, I'm kind of wondering if the voters got it right. Sure, I made it to D.C. and I'm working on my Master's, but the biggest accomplishment of my day was getting everything I needed from the grocery store after three attempts in six hours. That doesn't quite scream "Excellence in Life." I'm working on solidifying a job for after my internship ends that doesn't require me to take food from one location to another. I give myself a high five when I remember to pay my utility bill before they send the late notice, and I purposefully schedule my work and academic duties around new episodes of Grey's Anatomy. I don't know if that's what would qualify me as "successful," but I guess in the grand scheme of things, I've done most of it kind of right.
But I guess after 99 blog posts and 22 years of life and multiple successes and failures, I have learned one of the Rolling Stones' most important life lessons: You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need. And as for the things that we want, but we don't talk about them because they seem silly... well, I think it's kind of silly to not talk about them. No, not everyone can be a singer or an actor or an astronaut or a writer, but if no one ever took the time to say the silly thing that they wanted, then no one would ever become any of those things. I didn't get my banana split, and I've lost a decent number of popularity contests in my day, but that doesn't stop me from announcing to the world what I want anyway. If it means enough to you, you'll figure out a way to make it happen. (Unless it involves you scheming to get your parents divorced. Don't do that.)

Death and All His Friends

Last night, I was sitting with my roommates, talking about our lives in the context of a television show, which happens pretty regularly around our apartment. At first, I think they loved it, but I can tell from their lackluster reaction that it has become white noise like most of the things I do and say around the apartment. But last night, as we were commingling life goals and television talk, I said that you can't just settle for something in life because you don't know how long you're going to live. Eventually that led to me asking What if one of us died tomorrow? Wouldn't that be a huge plot twist in the show? What if it's me? to which Ben responded, You can't die. That would be like killing DJ off in the first season of Full House. It was reassuring because I always considered DJ the most integral of all of Danny Tanner's daughters.

It's not the first time by any means that I've contemplated my impending death. At six-years-old, I specifically remember going up to my mom and telling her that I was going to die when I was 29, which is super sketchy for a six-year-old to drop in casual conversation. That moment always stuck with me, and it stuck with my mom as well, so we don't talk about it. And the idea of 29 haunts me every birthday because I know it's getting closer and closer each year, and as silly as it sounds, I don't really feel like getting to 29 to find out if my child-in-a-horror-film-esque proclamation was right.

Death has always been a tricky thing in my life because I've seen so much of it, so in a way, I never really thought much of it... almost to the fact that I've been obsessed with it. Death and Justin are a bit of a roller coaster because when it comes to the topic, I've always been a bit up and down on the matter. One of my favorite anecdotes I've ever read (about my silverfox mancrush, Anderson Cooper) was that he became so obsessed with journalism and taking in sights that he would take pictures of all the things he had seen throughout his line of work. One day, whilst taking a picture of some dead bodies he had come across, a friend took a picture of him and gave it to him; it was to show him what he had turned into, and from that day on, he has supposedly drawn boundaries for himself. In a way, Anderson and I have that in common. I become infatuated with death and the emotional consequences it can have (i.e. One Tree Hill school shooting) that I sometimes forget how incredibly real death is, and then like clockwork it comes rushing back, and I witness something death-related--and all blog candor and humor aside, it's not a joke.

So when I woke up this morning, I was weary of even getting out of bed because I had this inclination myself that this is going to be the day that I die. I suppose it could be a lead-in from the conversation that I had last night or maybe that the bed was just really warm and that my subconscious went to a really dark place so that I would stay there, but I really did have a gut feeling that this was going to be my last day on Earth. So naturally, I reset my alarm for two more minutes... and for twenty minutes, I laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, hoping that my intuition was wrong. In essence, it was very Meredith Grey in the bomb episode of me (2.13 "It's the End of the World," for those interested). And after resetting my alarm ten times over the course of twenty minutes, I admitted to myself that if this was really going to go down today, and this was my time, I couldn't really intervene fate when I don't actually know what the fate is. 

On the way to work, while very consciously watching out for other drivers, I thought about what I would want to do--how I would want to act--if this was the end of my road. So I called my mom, who started talking out of the blue about how she was happy that nothing had happened to me since I've moved because she has no idea how she'd get to me. Needless to say, when you have the pressing feeling in your gut that a catastrophe is bound to happen, and you're going to be its victim, the foreshadowing of your mother's praises don't help matters... so I told her I loved her, and I got off the phone. By the time I got to work, I had decided on my game plan... just be kind.

I didn't want to go to a special restaurant for lunch or take the day off (mostly because if I took the day off, then my chances of dying would have exponentially increased). I just wanted to be kind to people because I think that how's you should want to be remembered: kind. And it was probably the hardest thing that I did today because apparently no one else thought they were going to die today, or at least, they had a different approach to humanity if they did. I didn't want to tell anyone about my unconfirmed fate because I didn't want to taint the day, and I didn't want anyone to respond to it one way or the other, so the only person I told was my sweet, sweet coworker Liz who was mildly concerned and mildly frightened. As for everyone else, I just wanted them to act as is. I made an effort to call people on my breaks today to tell them hi or that I loved them, but it seemed as if everyone was busy or, honestly, just didn't want to talk. I made an effort to talk to an ex who would only respond in one word answers and quickly reminded me why we probably broke up. Others that I would hold the door for were downright hateful. I thought to myself Wow, you guys are really taking a giant shit on my last day on Earth. The climax built up to the walk to the metro when I nearly got hit by a car who sped through a red light. After I got to the metro, I accidentally backed into an Asian woman who flipped out on me in the middle of the car. 

That's when the take away kind of hit me: you don't live your last day on Earth (or at least act like it) for the praise of other people; you do it because that's how you're supposed to be every day. And for the logically-minded, I apologize for wasting your time with a whole bunch of nonsense revolving around potential death. If I had wanted to be logical, I probably could have spelled out all of the reasons that I wasn't going to die today (even though, today isn't really over. I still have to drive to class and back). However, and I may be stretching it, I don't think that feeling like I was going to die today was really the end-all-be-all lesson that came from my experience. People can be kind of cruel without even thinking about it, and it's even easier to notice when you honestly believe that it may be the last time that you'll ever see them again... even if it is just the door people at your office. But as crazy as it sounds, I really did believe when I opened up my eyes this morning that there was a good possibility it could be my last; it's a numb pain that's been with me all day. And as logic would have it, this will ultimately probably not be my last day, but it's a good reminder anyways because any day that you take out one minute, just sixty seconds, to remember how very fragile life can be... well... I would consider that a day well spent.

A Little More Competition

As I played my roommates in Scrabble this evening, I realized that I didn't start enjoying the game until I had secured a solid thirty point lead over second place. Until that point, I just kind of sat there with animosity churning in my heart. I always liked the motto that I grew up with, If at first you don't succeed, find something you're good at. And you know, as anti-team-player and non-traditional as that sounds, I think that ultimately it's an excellent motto. If you're not good at something, and you don't really enjoy being not good at it, then get your self together and move on to something else. And there have only been a few times that I've thought back on that motto with regret, because I'm confident that with some training, I could be an excellent football player now. Even with soccer, I was pretty decent, but I just kind of gave up on both because I wasn't the best. I moved on to things that I could dominate at because, let's be honest, being the best is so much cooler than not being the best.
I'm sure you think that the mentality is disgusting, but it's not as if I quit everything I'm not good at... and if I start something, I will definitely fulfill the obligation that I've signed myself up for. However, if it comes for signing up for it again, I will definitely decline. That's why I don't play 21 with my roommates anymore, and it's why I go to bars and clubs to drink and dance as opposed to pick up women. I know what I'm good at, and I know what I'm not. While you go and compete with all the other "bros in da club," I'm going to stand over here with my shot of tequila. I'm fantastic at tequila... like, you don't even know.
But if there's a chance that I may rise to the top, I will fight like it's my job to ensure that I've given everything I can. In high school, I gave up having friends (partly because I wasn't too popular, partly because I loved me some school) and focused primarily on getting the highest GPA possible. That's why when it was miscalculated, I marched my Walmart polo and jeans combo into the vice principals office and demanded a recount... essentially, I was the Al Gore of the South-Doyle High School 2008 graduating class. People wonder why it is that I take competition so seriously, especially when it comes to things as simple as calling shotgun or a game of Scrabble, and what I don't think people understand is that this comes from a deep-rooted, dark psychological place that I like to call: Daddy Issues. Let's recap.
As a small six-year-old, Wendell instilled the competition bug in me early on. In the wake of my grandmother's death, my parents bought me a Beta fish. His name, may he rest in peace, was George. I loved George and took care of him as if he were my own child. I would look at him, early and often every day. My dad must have been threatened by my love of George so he acquired his own fish... a small freshwater catfish. You can only imagine my surprise when I walked in and found the bottom half of George lingering at the top of the aquarium as the small catfish nipped at his remains. Much like the Titanic until the mid-nineties, the top half of George could not be found. I was devastated, and couldn't put my anguish into words. I ran up to my dad and said, George is dead! George is dead! Your catfish ate George! and he responded with only two words, Catfish. Domination. and he held his hands over his head in a way that would haunt me for years to come. Wendell never allowed me to live a subpar life, so I knew that I had to live mine to surpass all expectations... for me and for George.

And the "domestic competition abuse" didn't stop at any specific point. When we would have family game night, Dad always requested that we play Monopoly, and I would instantly get a knot in my throat. I knew how it would end... Dad would have Park Place and Boardwalk WITH hotels, and I'd just being sitting over there across the table with Reading Railroad and friggin Marvin's Gardens, counting how many white one dollar bills I had. He would offer to give me "a loan" to tease me along, and sometimes I wondered if he did the same thing to animals out in the wild... shot them in some terribly sad place just to let them bleed out in front of him. One time, I went so far to hit the table and mess up the board, after which I was given a speech on being a good sport. I wanted to give my dad (and pretty much any athlete I've ever interacted with) the "how to not be a assface when you're competing with someone obviously under your level." So, after a while, I honed in on my skills. I put together what I knew I was good at, how I liked to play, and what I was confident in and merged those things together to make a list of things that I liked to excel at. Over the years, I decided that I didn't do well at:

• team things
• movement that involved the cooperation of a group
• any social interaction that depended on confidence in my appearance
• anything that had to do with manliness or my sexuality
• actually, anything involving my own sex
• activities involving money, fake or real

But. That left me with my stronghold... books, pop culture, ironic and fast-paced wit, words and writing, and sports that only involved me or one other person (archery, shooting guns at things, fake gymnastics, ballroom dancing, and occasional tennis matches). And once I found the things I was good at, I found that I was a much happier person overall. No, I haven't sat down across from my father with a Monopoly board in years, but I like him a lot better this way than I did when I was in those crucial preschool years.
And maybe there's something deep-rooted in this competition bug; it could explain my absolute ferocious driving style and the reason I carry a metal pipe in the front seat... but that's a different blog for a different day. For me competition was so much more than someone being better or worse than you at something... my experience with competition was always a way to be belittled. If you weren't the best, you weren't privvy to the conversations and words that others had to say to and/or about you. Competition was the last thing I wanted to be apart of when I was younger, and in a way, that's why I try to avoid it today at all costs. At the end of the day, you have to sit down with yourself and say some words that I believe Confucius said first, Haters gonna hate. When I walked into the living room and found the Scrabble board on the coffee table assembled ever so carefully with a not so nice message, I found it reminiscent of my time in middle and high school, but I did not allow myself to go there... this Justin was not one who had gotten out first in dodgeball or awkwardly stood at the edge of the party with no one to talk to... no, this was a Justin with a steady lead in Scrabble and a command of words barely ever used in the English language, and that is a Justin to be proud of.

Lies on Lies on Lies

I have always prided myself on being an excellent liar; it's something that I worked on for years and years, and some would even say that it came innately. To an extent, I feel like I owe it to genealogy or maybe even my trusting blue eyes. People love to believe what I say because I guess I just appear to be someone that you can trust. It started pretty early on, and the first lie I can remember is when I almost killed my brother via glass light cover. We were sitting in our joint bedroom (in my defense, the bedroom that he kicked me out of when we were nine because he felt like he deserved his own room... I'm not bitter) playing the "throw the Play-Doh and make it hit the ceiling" game. Eventually, my obvious lack of athletic ability reared its ugly head and I smashed a giant wad of purple Play-Doh into the glass light cover. Thanks to my cat-like reflexes, I dodged the shards of glass as they rained down from above, but Casey wasn't so lucky. I'm still reminded of my indiscretions every time I see the vertical scar on his right shoulder. When my parents first stormed the room, I wanted nothing more than to tell them the truth, but like most proclamations I tried to make as a six year old, no one listened... even after the excitement was over. So in my six year old mind, I crafted a genius story: Casey threw the Play-Doh up and it hit the ceiling beside the light cover, and it must have shaken the roof enough that it knocked the light cover down... why no one ever questioned that story is still beyond me, but it wasn't until about 8 years later that the truth came out, and as Ashley Judd taught us, you can't be tried for the same crime twice.
I lied my way through most of my public school career, creating all of these elaborate yarns that I would convince people were actual [events, people, etc] in my life. I would make sure that they were interesting enough that people would listen to them, but realistic enough that people wouldn't think I was making them up. For the most part, people loved everything I had to say, and that's all that mattered. Yes, of course I have a horse. I actually have three. They live on a farm about 20 miles away, and my family goes and rides them on the weekends. Did I mention that my dad knows how to lasso? No. He can't show you. All of the lies made sense in my mind, and at times, I think I may have believed them all myself. I think that could actually be a psychological disorder, but I'm not going to take the time to look it up. I'm pretty sure I have a laundry list of other psychological disorders much more relevant to my life.
The older I got, my ability to lie became less focused on myself and more on the common good of others. My first official night as a resident assistant, two other RAs invited me to go out into the college woods with them. They had a six pack of Red Stripe, and it seemed like the most rebellious thing I could have ever done in my life. I mean, I was just a young, impressionable 19 year old, lured by the temptation of pseudo-import beer. Sadly, I was confined to the walls of my dorm because it was my "duty night." I watched them lurk into the woods with a satchel full of beer. Looking back on it, I don't know what was so charming about the situation. Like most beers, I didn't care so much to drink the Red Stripe or even be in the woods. I used a string of lies between the ages of 10-16 to avoid staying out of the woods as much as I could. I just wanted to be included in the scandalous activity of drinking two beers in the woods.
About two hours later, I got a phone call from Ellison. It was all Blair Witch Style; he was breathing heavily through the phone: Justin, we're caught. We're going to get caught. I had no idea what was going on, partly because it had the making of a cult classic that I still don't understand, partly because I had just woken up. We're trying to get back to Copeland. The dogs are coming. I have to go. Click. That was it. I sprung out of bed, contemplating what my next move would be. Eventually they escaped the dogs and made it back, sans satchel and beer. They immediately began to panic because John had left his ID in the bag. "Lie Justin" wiped the sleep from his eyes and focused up. My ultimate plan was genius: Ellison was to go back to Gamble, and John back to his room. Once the bag was found, the story was that John had left his door unlocked and bag by the door. Freshmen had broken in and stole the bag, which contained objects that we would later dispose of. Yes, John's ID was in the bag, but when he woke up, the bag was missing. Simple.
They decided instead to tell the truth, and in a surprising turn of events, Maryville PD and campus police let the entire situation go. John and Ellison went to Waffle House to celebrate their near brush with a county misdemeanor, and I just... went back to sleep. Soon after, I began to see that my desire to lie had waned. I didn't seem to be gaining much from a life of compulsive lying, no matter how airtight the lies were.
And all that leads me to now. Looking back on the past 10 months of 2012, I think this might have been my most truthful year to date... kind of. It's easy to tell the truth when you're leaving a place because you don't have to deal with the repercussions of what may happen if you stuck around. So, as I left Maryville, I came clean about a giant heap of information that I had kept quiet about for months or even years. A good deal of those things can be found within this blog. The issue that makes me question the validity of this year is "lying by omission." A decent portion of my life has consisted of lies by omission because... well, I'm a sneaky kid. Namely, I think of all the times that I skipped class in high school and just kind of drove places because I was able to check myself out when I was "sick." I think about the duty night my junior year of college that I just kind of blew off so I could go get the new Taylor Swift CD. But the lies that bother me most are the quiet lies that I've kept to myself to protect other people. As I sit in my ethics class, I find that public relations is a hard place to find a definite set of morals because you wouldn't tell a company's secrets if there's no absolute reason that you have to... but you have to wonder, what exactly would happen if you just told everything about your life without any regard for who it may affect or what repercussions may follow.
The exemptions we make for ourselves are interesting. I can't remember the last blatant lie I told, but I can't count how many lies by omission I've told. I mean, I have binders full of them. The question is: can you really say that it's a lie if you're the only one who knows it's not true?

How To Do Sex

In my personal experience, I've come to learn that I am apparently one of the least sexual creatures that has ever walked the planet. I don't go up and hit on anyone at bars. I don't talk about my penis, mostly because the concept of genitalia in general makes me laugh. When it comes to sex, I'm just not the person that should ever be consulted for advice, opinions, or general knowledge. To give you a brief background of my anatomical expertise concerning boys and girls, at about seven years old, my dad told me that the reasons that all men wear pants is because their penises grow down to their ankles, thus forcing men into slacks for the rest of their lives. I believed that until I was probably twelve years old.
This knowledge conflicted with my basic childhood belief that both men and women were sporting around penises, which probably explains a lot about my life now... but that's neither here nor there. Apparently, no one ever took me aside to explain what a vagina is, what it looks like, or what its function is. But around fourth grade, all of that began to change. It was obvious that my peers were becoming concerned about me, so they took me aside and told me about... it. Considering that as an adolescent, I became woozy at the thought of sexual intercourse, I only have three distinct times in my life that anyone has talked to me about sex successfully, and because of that, that's pretty much the only sexual knowledge I have in my repertoire.
The first time, the preacher's daughter of my church took me aside at lunch and started telling me about how sex worked. She skipped the basics, assuming that I understood that there were two kinds of sexual organs. She started telling me about the basic details of intercourse. Apparently, as told by Emily, what happens is that people start kissing, and you do that for a while. Then, you stop kissing and take all of your clothes off. Then, the daddy stabs the mommy over and over until someone screams. Then you're done. Being the early feminist that I was, I immediately became concerned because in my mind (since both parties at the time had a penis in my mind) it didn't seem fair that daddy did all the stabbing all the time... then the second question arose... where do they stab each other? I went home and inspected my own body, trying to determine where it was on a body that someone could get stabbed. Eventually, I settled on the idea that all sex, as defined in the tradition sense, involved the anus.
The next day, unsure of my current hypothesis, I decided to consult my teacher, Mrs. Adamson. Like most of my teachers, mentors, and professors, I felt closer to Mrs. Adamson than pretty much everyone else in the class, so it wasn't a big deal for fourth grade Justin to walk up and say, Mrs. Adamson... Dawn... I need you to explain this crime of assault to me that people call sex... or something like that. She approached the situation very carefully, though it was apparent that I had really put her in a position. She began to explain to me how sex actually worked and how it was between a man and a woman when they were truly in love and married. All of a sudden, sex didn't seem so scary. Maybe it could even be a kind exchange.
Luckily, I didn't have to discuss sex again until I was a seventh grader... but right there in the middle of Mrs. Holtzclaw' geometry lesson, Nicole (who had quite the reputation herself of knowing how to do sex) decided to verse me on all of the other things that can be done during sex that didn't get you pregnant. The whole thing made me ill... mouths and all these other organs in wrong places; the whole thing seemed like a really angry person trying to jam a puzzle together. None of the things she was talking about made any sense. If people were just supposed to do sex when they're in love and married and wanting to have a child, then why were all these other methods even relevant? And even as a twenty-two year old, I still sometimes struggle to realize what it is that appeals to people in regard to all the things that Nicole told me about.
Because I'm a distrusting people, I went home and asked my dad about all the things she had told me about, and if memory serves me correctly, he just kind of ignored the whole thing. Not in that "father doesn't want to be apart of your life, get me another beer" kind of way. More in the "I'm just going to let you ride this one out on your own, little buddy" way. Eventually, I just concluded on the fact that since Nicole was already getting around so much as a seventh grader, it probably was best not to take any of her lessons as fact. I liked the idea (and still do) that people just go into a bedroom, close their eyes, have traditional sex, and then it's over. And when it's over, you hug or shake hands or go catch up on the past week's television. Yeah, that's what people do.
Sadly, my introduction to sex was a three part series, and the final installment was as a junior in high school. I had been dating this girl named Ally for about two weeks, and considering that most teenage boys' hormones resulted in hand towels that were stiff as a board, my dad decided it was time for us to have the talk. I vaguely remember the exchange on our back porch, but honestly, I've worked to block out most of it. I do specifically remember that it was at night and we did not have the back porch light on. Essentially, I think that was to keep either one of us from having to look the other one in the eye. The speech went approximately as so:

So, you know a guy has a... goober. (Author's note: I have NO IDEA why our family ever found it permissible to substitute the word penis for "goober," but even as what most people would consider a full blown man, you will still here the word "goober" used on occasion at my house) And girls... well, the don't. Well, a guy takes his, um, and then the girl has her... well, you guys get into a rhythm and sometimes you'll work together, or she'll do the work, or you'll do the work... and then you're done. Do you have any questions?

Negatory. I wanted to say something like "BREAK!" and then run back inside or something, but I just kind of sat there for a while... giggling. It may have been because we were talking about sex, or because it was the most nondescript conversation about sex that I had ever had, or maybe it was just the recurrence of the word "goober" in conversation, but all I could do was laugh.
And as I've gotten older, I suppose I've gotten a better grasp on the concept of sex, why people enjoy some of the less essential parts, and how the whole thing works. My personal sex life is about as active as Mandy Moore's in A Walk to Remember, but that's partially because I don't search for random sexual activities like most lonesome and wayward twenty-somethings. I'm not saying I'm an angel... okay, I am. But in terms of learning anymore intricacies about why and how people do sex, I'm not really interested. Thanks to Emily, Nicole, and that really awkward blackout sesh on the back porch with my dad, I'm pretty sure I have the details of sex nailed down at this point... no pun intended.