Sprung

It's hard to believe, but hurricane season is only two months away.

I heard this on the TV news this evening. Yes, it's April 3. Yes, it's 40-something degrees outside with daylight still left. And, yes, hurricane season is (only) two months away.

I'm not here to rant on about the news. They've got a difficult job, having to communicate with few words and curious selections of images.

But, kind of indirectly, it makes me think about something I've noticed after 34 years living in South Carolina. Something about the idea of springtime in a place that everybody assumes has to be warm all the time.

This is the Deep South. When you think of April 3 in the Deep South, you don't think of 40-something-degree highs. I would say, "Well, that's if you don't live here," but that's not the case.

For whatever reason, people who have lived here their entire lives seem to live under this delusion of expected warmth.

The truth is, it starts getting warm here in the spring ... but each and every year, there are plenty of days that it's cold. Cold as shit, in fact, if shit is cold.

Yet people who should know better say all the time when it's cold in March and April and even a bit into May that they "thought it was supposed to be springtime."

It took me awhile to realize this. When I was 19 this time of year, I distinctly remember shivering in shorts and t-shirts in denial of the fact that just because the sun had officially crossed the equator didn't mean it was license to so-easily put winter behind me.

Because putting winter behind you is work, an uncomfortable, plodding transformation.

Something that I've grown to like about where I live is the changing seasons. It's like a liturgy that binds you to a fundamental understanding. Each year, we live through a symbolic-yet-very-real cycle of life and death.

The dead, brown leaves that a March wind blows seem like ghosts hissing when the first blooms are emerging. On a day when the sun feels like a merciless taskmaster, you can't imagine that the ground your sweat drips on was and will be again covered in a sheet of ice.

It's taken me three decades, but I've learned that no amount of thinking otherwise will change the fact that spring is a season I just endure.

It's a harsh time, much like birth seems to be (though I neither remember being born nor have to bear the burden of giving birth).

I don't like the flowers of spring.

I don't listen to music in the spring.

I don't try to actively enjoy anything in the spring.

A 65-degree is not ideal to me. Nor is a 75-degree day.

I like it 85.

Or more.

Or 35.

Or less.

Spring here in South Carolina is a reflection of the general rawness of our culture.

It's ironic that the people of a state so used to dysfunction wouldn't recognize the bi-polar nature of its most-misunderstood season.

Double Time

Eight years today he's breathed life on this planet -- beginning at 1:12 a.m. April Fool's Day 2000.

My first son. No more or less loved than my youngest son but presents to me a unique second-to-second series of revelations, because he and I are treading this path first together.

And after eight years, I've begun to see a pattern in how I lament each birthday that comes.

I've found myself indulging in a masochistic equation:

Age x 2 = a factor that increasingly scares me.

The equation takes into account a restrospective comparison on much time has actually passed, related to the sobering reality of how the fact that "they" said it would all go so fast was a cliche, but that cliches are recognizable because they are so true.

At first, it was easy.

Age 1: 1 x 1 = Yeah, whatever.

After all, when they're babies, I just look ahead to the time when they can wipe their own ass and cook their own cheese toast without waking me up in the morning.

Age 2: 2 x 2 = Cool.

Four? That sounds great. Maybe he'll be wiping his own ass and cooking his own cheese toast by then. And still, he's off the public school system grid, which means he's still a baby -- but without all the menial responsibility.

Age 3: 3 x 2 = Neat to think about.

Six? That doesn't sound too old. Sounds like it might be fun. I bet you can throw him a fastball. And I bet he still will give you a kiss and still call them "spoiled" peanuts. And that tooth-line will have a few gaps.

Age 4: 4 x 2 = Where we find ourselves today.



I bet he'll think a lava lamp is cool, and I bet he can appreciate and will remember forever his first Jack Johnson show in Atlanta. I bet his teacher will say during his cookie-cake party that she calls on him last when asking a math question because he always gets it right. And I bet he'll prove to be an all-star-caliber baseball player when he practices on his birthday and his coach tells him the only way to throw him out is to cheat. And I bet he'll still curl up with a stuffed animal that causes him to become severely distraught if it were left at a car wash.

Age 5: 5 x 2 = A decade. Hmmm. A decade. Have we talked about sex yet? I was 9. That was a little early, but not too bad. But maybe 10. We'll see. Whatever's natural.

(The 15-year-old down the street who plays baseball with him already told him that taking steriods causes your junk to shrink and that "you want that to be as big as possible." Not a bad lesson).

And I bet he's graduated to cooking a grill cheese sandwich over a stove.

Age 6: 6 x 2 = Middle school. And another stick of Right Guard to buy at the store. And hoping that the steady chipping away of my faults that I've tried to engage in have been enough and at a fast enough pace so that my glaring weaknesses are at best not obvious.

Age 7: 7 x 2 = "Yeah, high school's weird, son. And, no, you can't have that girl over at the house with you two all by yourself. I hate to do this to you, but I need to talk to you about that thing they call 'safe sex.' It sounds paradoxical, I know: telling you how to do something that I'm telling you that you just shouldn't do yet. I promise, your time will come. And when it does, realize that it's ideal to wait for marriage -- but good luck with that, man. Just have some self-respect. And I know Google is the name of a state now, but do you remember when we first realized it could be a verb, too?"

Age 8: 8 x 2 = "You might have a driver's license, but I told you when you were 8 that you had better start saving that piggy-bank money to buy your own car. Of course, that wouldn't have done you any good, because I stole all that money so that I could render your driver's license a distinction signifying nothing. Yes, I know you hate me, but you told me when you were 8 that you extra-promised you wouldn't."

Age 9: 9 x 2 = On to college. "Did you manage a baseball or math scholarship? Because that would really help us out a lot, kid."

Age 10: 10 x 2 = ... 20.

OK, no reason to go any further than where we're headed next.

Though watching him sleep, and thinking of his day today and who he's become in a short-yet-long eight years ... I'm hoping I'm correct in thinking that the worst problem I'll have is that I'll miss him.

I already do.

That's What She Said ...

I worry about what this says about me that the very first thing I thought when I opened this press release this morning was that it had to be somebody's idea of a really, really, really over-the-top attempt at satire:

For Immediate Release

March 23, 2008 Re: Casting Call

BE A PART OF A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

Seeking people from across the Carolinas for the Feature Film “NAILED”

HUNDREDS of 7-12 year old girls are needed for filming!
ALL TYPES and AGES are also needed.

It took a couple more (in my frame of mind amiguous) paragraphs before I realized exactly what we were talking about here:

“Nailed” is an original comedy about a small town waitress who gets a nail accidentally lodged in her head causing unpredictable behavior that leads her to Washington, DC, where sparks fly when she meets a clueless young senator who takes up her cause. Jessica Biel and Jake Gyllenhaal are slated to star under the direction of David O. Russell. Filming is scheduled to begin this spring in the Columbia area.

A ... unique ... plot. I certainly didn't nail that one.

All That's Left Of A Man

Let me tell you about this belt I saw today ...

I'm sitting in a federal courthouse pew. Next to me are three people -- two young men and a young woman. They're there to be sentenced for their part in a drug conspiracy.

A peculiarity of the court system is that you can be sitting next to a condemned man and not know it. Not everyone who is about to spend a good portion of their life in prison is already in jail. If they behave well, they get to live free until their day of judgment comes (if you call it freedom with what's looming on the horizon).

The first man is called up to be sentenced.

He's given a break on his sentence because he wore a wire, bought drugs and helped bust up another drug ring. He's sentenced to several years in prison and allowed to leave the courtroom and report to prison on his own in the coming weeks.

The second man makes his way before the judge. This man is guilty of the same crime, except that in addition he had a gun in his possession when the house was raided.

The gun means that he gets a stiffer sentence and that he's required to be taken into custody the moment the sentence is rendered.

He cooperated similarly, providing enough information to force the first man to admit what he did instead of maintaining innocence and forcing a jury trial.

Like the first young man, his cooperation allowed him to mingle among society until his sentencing day came.

He's wearing a collared shirt with a tie, dress pants and a belt. He walked into court today knowing he wouldn't leave a free man. Still, he's dressed as if he weren't a criminal. You have to suppose it can't hurt.

***

Whenever someone steps forward from the crowd for sentencing (instead of being led through a side door wearing bright-colored jumpsuits and bound by chains), the U.S. Marshals -- dressed discretely in suits, blending in with the lawyers -- position themselves in anticipation of what they think a sentence might be.

If they know someone is on the verge of being taken into custody, they block any path back out the courtroom double doors. Just in case the passion of the moment takes hold.

It's a surreal display, watching someone being surrounded ever-so-subtly in a strange reality theater.

The young man gets 14 years.

He's been in jail before. This isn't his first crime. Once the sentence is imposed, he looks around for direction on what to do next. A mixture of confusion and familiarity.

The marshals lead him to a side door and point at his waist. The door closes and he's gone.

Immediately after, the young woman, who had been struggling to catch her breath before her turn, walks before the judge. She's in less trouble. She simply helped them keep the "stash house" in order.

The second young man was her boyfriend.

As she stands before the judge, sobbing and begging for forgiveness, a marshal re-enters the courtroom with a belt in his hand.

It's one of those kinds of laced belts that has all the holes where you can stick the metal clip through any part of the belt (the kind that people who seem to be uncomfortable dressing up often wear).

The marshal sits down casually in a chair as the woman is sentenced. She gets a couple of years behind bars and is allowed to leave and report to prison later.

As she walks by, the marshal hands her the belt and tells her someone has to take it. The alternative is that it's thrown away. The fear is that a desperate man might try to hang himself before he's stripped of his possessions and dressed in prison clothes.

This man won't be seeing another belt until he reaches his mid-life crisis.

***

We die with each second that ticks toward inevitability, whatever that might be. In this particular reality, we have created a manufactured inevitability. The kind that makes loss of life seem ordinary.

The belt is well-worn. The leathery material is crusting off.

The marshal is holding it like a dead, decapitated snake.

As I look at the belt, I think of how a young man died today.

Or at least a part of him.

Or at least the man he was.

A free man.

The belt looked like something a beast would expel from its stomach after it devoured a person.

Like spitting out indigestible bones.

"Missi ...Whatever"

CLICK THE IMAGE FOR A LEGIBLE VIEW



The 13 things I love about my 7-year-old son's 2008 March Madness tournament bracket:

1.) On its face, it's a gutsy bracket with serious darkhorses but manages by the Final Four to maintain sanity with three #1 seeds along with one #2 seed (important because the tournament never works out to have all #1 seeds in the Final Four).

2.) "Oklahomea."

3.) Spelling all of the names of the schools out, but saying screw it on "Mississippi St." and just making sure there's a "St." and an "m" and an "s" and a "p."

4.) The random use of cursive for Kansas by the time they reach the Elite Eight.

5.) The ability to set aside emotions and go ahead and pick Clemson to win that game that we expect them to win (even though we don't want them to).

6.) Then to abruptly kick them out of the tournament when they meet an SEC team.

7.) The willingness jettison USC when they meet Kansas -- even though he thinks the USC he's axing from the tournament is his own beloved Gamecocks.

8.) "Miami (Fla)." Hey, he's been to Miami, and he knows it's in Florida, but that's what it says, man -- even if he has no idea why there would be a Miami anywhere else, let alone Ohio.

9.) Only one win for the weak Big Ten conference.

11.) Admitting to having no idea who Drake is and no idea how good they might or might not be, but still picking them over San Diego, even though a father would expect a kid his age would pick a team based on what his favorite NFL team is. He knows LaDainian Tomlinson isn't on scholarship.

12.) "Samford."

13.) UMBC to the Sweet 16. Who is that? I don't know. And I'm the adult.