Those Movies

What Makes Us Go

What do you do when you go to the movies? Get the popcorn, soda, and maybe a candy bar. Then amble through the auditorium looking for an empty seat. Now the misery begins as there is no place to set your drink or popcorn, and you're elbow to elbow with the person sitting next to you (it's a full house). You can't ask the person next to you to hold them. As you may guess, the floor is a likely spot, so there they go.

Now on with the movie. Just as you get interested in it and are enjoying your popcorn and soda, the person next to you has to go to the restroom and squeezes out in front of you and, in the process, kicks over your soda. And it runs over the shoe of the person in front of you, who complains. You apologize while spilling your popcorn all over the floor. The person next to you returns and squeezes in again.

Okay, you didn't get to enjoy your soda or popcorn, and the person next to you is just too fat. Not to mention you missed the best parts of the movie. Sound familiar?

The moral of the story is to stay home and rent the movie next time. You're just too much of a hazard to others to ever go out!

Ah, Willpower

We hear a lot about karma and our spiritual well-being these days, with the word 'fitness' becoming more popular. But wait, when was the day that fitness wasn't popular? It's always been out there; all we ever needed to do was reach out and take part in it. There would be a lot more healthy people in the good ole USA if it weren't for one curse word: 'willpower'.

I can say I am nowhere near being fit. But I can be, by just listening to my own 'willpower' and being more of a friend to it. Friends stick together, and when one suggests something that makes sense, we listen to it. We heed that willpower's voice commanding us to control our urges.

Willpower is a strange thing, though; it drives who we are and what we do and just seems to impede anything fun. Just look at eating pizza: you want to eat another piece, but your 'willpower' jumps in and says NO! Darn that 'willpower' sits over there and shuts up; I'm grown, and I'll do whatever I want.

Now we get on our favorite set of scales the next day, and when we look down, we say, out loud, I should never have eaten that extra piece of pizza if I only had the 'willpower' to put it down. Darn, that 'willpower' I never listen to it.

We all need a ... friend, don't we?

It's Cold Out There

DESTITUTE .. a person who is dead broke, without a cent.

VAGRANT .. a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging.

America ..... doesn't matter the time or place, whether 1 or 4 am - the night remains dark and cloudy with the wind blowing, keeping the ground wet and frigid. One sentence describes the life of a destitute person. But why relate the worst of the night's condition to being destitute?

Destitute, that's a curious word. What does it mean? Being dead broke is the basic definition. I used to hear this. "If you don't improve, you could grow up without a penny to your name." If you are poor, aren't you too destitute?

Stop that man; he's a vagrant! If proven, you are a vagrant; you might go to jail. That was once true. Now the laws look the other way. If the police arrested every homeless person, the streets might appear deserted.

A homeless person suffers under two definitions: destitution and vagrancy. And definitions drive us. Throwing things out there without a legal definition might prevent law enforcement from describing what being both destitute and a vagrant is, thus causing confusion.

But, these days, confusion seems relevant. Not only do homeless people suffer shame, but a stigma points to them. They fall into a legal definition, and that's bad because law enforcement might act. Remember, we are a nation of definitions. We must define a crime before we can act. What sensible law enforcement or governmental agency will arrest anybody without due cause? The public simply would not stand idly by and let that happen.

Homelessness defines both destitution and vagrancy. Don't you see? If you can be homeless, many possibilities present themselves! Gosh, if the definition fits, wear it. Go ahead, get the benefits you deserve. Well, maybe 'deserve' is too greedy-sounding. We'll say 'don't deserve'. The fault is yours for being homeless. Isn't it? Although many people become homeless by choice, most fall into the role by force.

Today you have a well-paying job. But in a month, you're laid off. Unemployment starts, but it's not enough to pay the bills. Over the next 6 months, you get further and further behind. In a year, you're homeless, living on the streets. If you're lucky, you live in your automobile. No job; unemployment ran out. You're both a statistic and a' - wait on it - definition. Ha, now you're official, and those governmental agencies are waiting with open arms. Your tax dollars at work.

My Remembrances

Life in Como, Mississippi

Have you ever eaten grits? Try it; you might like it. Everywhere I went in the Air Force, they served grits in the mess hall. It was grits, scrambled eggs, and biscuits. Now that's a breakfast to live on.

I remember my favorite Sunday meal then and now. Baked beans, potato salad, and meatloaf. Friday nights were hamburger nights, and through the week it was vegetables and chicken right out of our garden and chicken yard.

We had a rather large garden and an average-sized chicken yard (my oldest brother was the chicken executioner ). There were also grapes, figs, apples, and pecan trees. My mother and father grew up on farms and knew the value of being self-sufficient. My father had served in the Army during WWII and the Korean Conflict, so he knew just how to raise 4 boys and keep 'em busy. We worked in the garden and shelled peas, butter beans, and snap beans (green beans). Picked squash, tomatoes, grapes, figs, and other stuff.

Now I think back on my days as a boy and the fun times we had living in a small town where everybody knew each other. Sundays and Wednesday nights we were in church, weekdays were school or summer, and evenings were riding our bikes around town and fixing flat tires at the old service station on the back street. It was football at school and in the front yard, there was the little league in the lot beside the sawmill (I can smell the fresh-cut wood today), and the taste of a stolen watermelon or cantaloupe.

Life was different back then, and regardless of how hard an effort is being made these days to change things for the better, not much has changed. Regardless of how far away I go, I always return home to the South.