Column for July 19, 2012

If you are like me, you look around you, watch the news, and wonder why you even bother with some things.  Quite honestly, I have been trying not to be so cynical lately.  Since I only have one column per week in which to express my opinions, I don’t want to take that one opportunity and rail on the same things time after time.  Sure, there are some core messages and values to which I do and always will adhere.  However, I don’t want to make every column about how Obama, Congress, the Supreme Court, our Governor, government, high taxes, and socialism all stink and how far from the vision of the Founding Fathers we have strayed as a nation.

Sometimes, I want to withdraw from my passions about politics and religion.  I would rather not care about church doctrine, good government, and the direction in which our nation is heading.  I would rather spend the time that I invest into writing this column and doing my television show into doing some stock trading, taking a college class, or holding my three-month-old.  My infant son has quite a personality at three months.  He smiles and laughs constantly, is fascinated by the world around him, and even gives me looks with his eyes while he is suckling on a baby bottle that reflect the joy he is already showing at that early age.  I would rather be watching a toddler TV show with my three-year-old, who asks me all the time, “Daddy, will you lay down and watch Caillou with me?”  He loves to lie on my bed and watch his favorite PBS cartoon on my television.  I would even rather be watching some chick flick or TV show with my bride.  As I write this, she is watching “The Bachelorette” without me.  When I am stuck in a hotel room for work on a Monday night and it is Bachelor or Bachelorette season, I even watch the show in my hotel room just so I can talk to my sweetie and feel connected to her.   I don’t mean to exclude my nine-year-old, but he is usually in bed by the time I sit down to compose my rants. 

I would rather have no concerns about my town, my county, my state, or my country.  I would rather not ponder the dangers of capitulating to radical Islam, treaties that have no real benefit to America but rather usurp the Constitution, the sprint current towards socialism, the upcoming election, or useless laws that only serve to leave a legacy or restrict freedom.  I still have concerns about things other than politics and religion, though.  Actually, I was thankful today for the beating the economy has taken.  I just got a great interest rate for a mortgage refinance that is going to knock at least five years off the length of my loan and keep my monthly payment the same or lower than it has been for ten years.  If President Obama and a liberal Congress had not run our economy into the ground, I would not have been able to get such a low interest rate.  Still, I would rather have a booming economy, since it is better for the country as a whole.

I would rather count down the days until I take my family on a vacation to Great Wolf Lodge than read the news about how Governor Beverly Perdue just signed another thirty-eight bills into law and yet vetoed the state budget recently.  There are another twenty bills on her desk on which she must take a decision.  Fifty-eight pieces of legislation passed along to the Governor?  As I looked over the 38 already signed, I see a lot of stiffening this penalty, making that crime carry a harsher sentence, blah, blah, blah. 

Important works of legislation will probably be better worked and passed in 2013, after the next election.  For instance, I can’t comprehend the US House of Representatives attempting to repeal Obamacare recently.  It is a foregone conclusion that such a bill, even though passed by the House, will never make it through the Senate, much less through President Obama.  Such serious legislation needs to be passed with a conservative Congress and President.  Well, the same applies to the State of North Carolina when it comes to voter ID laws, dealing with illegal immigration, and spending.

I suppose that I could rail on how President Obama just bypassed legislation concerning welfare requirements with an illegal executive order after hypocritically threatening the Supreme Court over the possibility of overturning legislation that was duly passed into law.  Then again, this type of stuff is really getting old, and hopefully, short lived.

Sure, things such as these cheese me off no end.  I truly wish that I could just ignore them, go about my merry way, and be blissfully oblivious to it all.  But if I did that, I would be ignoring who I am and was created to be.

Column for May 24, 2012

For the past couple of weeks, I have been slammed with work and family. When I have been home and do get to catch some news, it is in small fragments and my television viewing has been rather limited to whatever I can squeeze in between video-on-demand reruns of “Barney” and “Caillou”. Both of those shows are my 33-month-old’s favorites and anyone with fairly young children knows exactly to what I refer. When I do get to watch television shows I like these days, I am holding a baby bottle to my six-week-old’s mouth and hoping that I don’t encounter projective spit up afterwards. Yes, life has been extremely hectic, frustrating, often stretches my patience to the limits, I am grateful for it all.

I guess that this is all part of “cocooning”, as I call it. I ran across this to some extent when we had our last child. The affairs of life and family keep parents of young children busy. I don’t know if I am glad that I had to wait until I was over 40 until my firstborn child came into the world or not. I certainly have a different perspective on life and what is important in my 40’s than I did in my 20’s. In some areas I find myself infinitely more patient but in others still lacking. If there is one thing that I have learned is that having children, especially a toddler that is a Ritalin candidate, is that I am certainly only human.

I shared with the pastor of a Garner church recently only a fraction of what I had on my mind. I was literally in tears at his father’s funeral, not because I knew his dad well, but because he did. I lamented for his loss but also that I could never have a conversation with my own father while growing up and even into my adult life. He suffered a stroke while still younger than I am now, and I was only a toddler. His fine motor skills and some memory were affected, but his speech and temperament suffered most of all. See, my pastor friend is the son of a pastor, and had the good fortune of being able to get counsel from his dad on pastoring and on life in general. If I ever wanted anything in my youth, it was to be able to look to my own dad as a source of wisdom. I would have traded anything to have been able to have had a normal father-son conversation just once in my life.

For years, I vowed never to be like my dad was in how he treated other people. When I find myself getting angry and frustrated, I often reflect on how I was hollered and cussed at incessantly and don’t want to be that way to my boys or bride. With three boys in the house now, like I said, I am reminded that I am only human. I don’t condone child abuse, but I understand it. My dad was physically, emotionally, and spiritually sick. I don’t condone the way he acted, but I understand it.

For years, I have collected books on theology and history, hoping to share them and knowledge with my progeny. I have also intended to sit and read many of the books I have obtained. I used to be a voracious reader but have had little free time in which to enjoy that simple thing in recent years. I consider myself somewhat reasonably autodidactic, but I could always stand to do more. Fortunately, I now have a somewhat decent reference library for when I do need it. Hopefully some of the investment I am trying to make into the next generation will be of some avail.

I was never raised with any real political or religious opinions in the home, but I hope to change the course of instruction on those topics in my own home. See, political and religious views were considered excessively private. The name Jesus Christ was never used in a positive manner in our house, and God had a last name that began with D. Other than that, I was told nothing about politics but was angrily told that all Catholic priests were homosexuals and that all television preachers were just money grubbing scumbags. Now that I have been a born again Christian for over twenty years, I tend to think the latter to be more accurate than the former.

I chuckle at the comment about priests for two reasons. First, I heard just within the past few days that the homosexual brother of the man who told me that passed away at the age of 80. I wish I could have been able to see Uncle Raymond again before he died.

I have known a bunch of Catholic priests over the years, and though I personally have doctrinal issues with Catholicism, I have met some good priests and some bad ones. Though there have been recent scandals in the Catholic Church over the issue of child molestation, it reminds me that they, too, are human. I certainly am not condoning their sin, but I understand dealing with sin in one’s own life. That is the whole reason I still need Jesus. I am, after all, only human.

Column for April 12, 2012

It is the day after Resurrection Sunday as I am writing this, and I am thinking about Tuesday morning when I will get to hold my newborn son in my arms (past tense as you read this).  Here I am almost 44 years old and my bride and I are having another baby.  I commented on my Twitter account on Sunday, as we were anxiously awaiting little Benjamin’s arrival, “Today we celebrate a vacated tomb. Sharon and I hope to soon celebrate a vacated womb.”  Just today we got the news that our doctor wanted to schedule the delivery of our baby on Tuesday morning.

To give you an idea of where my thought process was going, earlier in the wee hours of the morning, I had written on my Facebook account, “I was woken up by a coughing fit (I think that my bronchitis is coming back) and laid awake for a while thinking about my next newspaper column and TV commentary. Yeah, I write those things in my head several times before ever typing them out.  I figured since I was up and needed my inhaler [prescribed for the recent bout with bronchitis], which was at my desk, I would sit and check online stuff.  The whole time I have been thinking about the impending birth of Benjamin, whose due date is just over a week away. I kept thinking about God's love, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, and how he loved me enough to give his daughter to me and entrust me with my family. This picture [that I shared online] was taken on our wedding day and is perhaps my favorite ever of Sharon and [my stepson] John.  Matthew was conceived the next day, and now baby Ben is almost here.  What an amazing journey it has been to have gotten here.  John has grown so much since this photo.  Lord, may I become the man you want me to be, the father I need to become, the husband I desire to be, and the son you have re-created me to be.  Thank you, Father God, for your grace, your love, your patience, your mercy, and your salvation through Christ, my risen Lord.”

I have given a lot of thought over the years about the values I want to teach my children.  I have my personal convictions, and some of them I will not push upon other people outside of my family, since they are just that, personal convictions.  I don’t mind sharing them, however.  I disagree with many of my contemporaries on some things, even with how one celebrates Resurrection Sunday (I don’t even really like calling it Easter).  I am amazed at how many churches, for instance, sponsor an Easter egg hunt.  I don’t equate the handling of pagan fertility symbols like colored eggs or cute, fuzzy bunnies with the risen Christ.  Nor do I personally find it glorifying to Him.  However, I am not about to condemn those who do celebrate as such. 

I don’t teach my boys about Santa Claus and I cringe when well-meaning people ask my children if “Santa has been good to them this year”.  I will teach them that what began as a great remembrance of a man of faith has been twisted into a fairy tale of commercialism and magic.  Santa will take on the same relevance as Shrek in an animated movie.  I just have a problem telling my children that there is a man who can break into everyone’s house across the entire world in just one night; that he knows when we are sleeping, knows when we are awake, and knows when we are bad or good.  I cannot in all good conscience ascribe attributes of deity (as my theologian buddies would say, incommunicable) to a mere mortal.  If I can lie to my boys about a mythical individual, whom they will eventually disbelieve, how can I expect them to believe in an omniscient God whom they also cannot see (shopping malls and parades with posers in red uniforms excluded)?

I have a hard time teaching the existence of a Tooth Fairy when teaching that Tinkerbell is only a cartoon character.  I have a hard time with teaching the existence of an Easter Bunny and yet teach the truths of Christianity over animism, and that Bugs Bunny is just a cartoon.

Again, these are only my personal thoughts and convictions, and I am not going to condemn anyone who promotes mythical holiday characters.  Every major holiday these thoughts come to mind, and especially now, since my baby boy is about to arrive.

 

Column for May 19, 2011

Today was a very frustrating day at work. I didn’t get anywhere near the amount of work accomplished that I had hoped. The past several days have been long and tediously frustrating, as well. My computer, which used to work well, started to get slower than cold molasses. I did some basic maintenance on it and it sped up nicely, but then started giving me massive problems with a connection to my company’s private network. It was one of those days.

Then I started thinking about some of the other things in my life. My television show lasted a little over six months and just recently went off the air because of a few different circumstances to which I can only shrug my shoulders and speak of my gratitude for the opportunity.

Occasionally I turn on the radio and listen to a disc jockey or talk show host and know that I am better at it than the person to whom I was listening, but still give thanks for the career that I have and realize that I am making more money now than I would be if I had pursued my broadcasting career. I have never been the best at any job I have had, but have always done well at most jobs and businesses I have held or owned. Some jobs I was not so well suited for, some businesses were not sufficiently successful to warrant my continued efforts. Nevertheless, I learned from them all.

I think about how the whole time I was growing up that I never won an essay contest, science fair, or craft fair but sure did have a lot of second place finishes. I think about how when I played Little League baseball, municipal league flag football, and high school football, I was never on a winning team. I learned a lot about teamwork, but I spent a lot of time watching other people play while I sat on the bench or stood on the sidelines. I was never a tremendous athlete, but I competed as I was able.

I think about how I have never won an election of any consequence (not counting some small club or organization) in school or in government, though I was always good at civics and social studies. I was always the one involved in youth government activities, reported on government affairs in my first media job, and did get the top overall social studies award in my graduating class. Though I have never gone further than I have, I am grateful for the influence that I do have in this little column, in my circle of friends, and on the internet.

I think about how my finances have gotten tight since my wife has been out of work for two years and I have had to take on another car payment recently out of sheer necessity. Then I give thanks that my wife is able to stay at home with my children rather than have some day care center raise my boys, that I have employment sufficient to meet all of our needs, and that I have been able to provide a happy, loving home for my family.

I think about how much work there is to do around my little quarter acre patch of earth. The hedges need trimming. The lawn that is looking shaggy. The house, shed, concrete drive and walkways, and fence all need power washing. I have a roof leak and some repair work to do in my kitchen. I have a finite amount of time in which to get it all done and don’t know how I will be able to accomplish any of it. Then I stop and give thanks that I have a temperate, dry house in which to live.

My wife and I are both getting older but have still been talking about having more children. I think about the stupid things I did as a youth that would make me a father of children the same age as the waitress I had the other night. I think about how my first marriage yielded no children for some thirteen years and how my present wife and I have suffered through two miscarriages just this past year. Then I stop and give thanks for the family I have. I have a dedicated, loving bride, a step son I love dearly, and a toddler that is truly the cutest baby I have ever seen. I have also been able to give my boys much more of a father than I got to have my own self when I was young.

You can usually find out where my thoughts are going from day to day on Facebook or Twitter on the internet, and today is no exception. I “tweeted” simply, “At least with Christ, I am always on the winning team.” In all the thoughts about how some things in life have not been as stellar as I would have hoped, I have other thoughts that can be summed up in this: His grace is sufficient for me, and for that I am grateful. Thank you, Father God, for your grace and for your son that you sacrificed for me, someone who never knew a winning team until you took me on as one of your teammates.

Column for Feb. 3, 2011

I am sitting in front of my computer with a raging head cold. My sinuses have been inflamed to the point that it feels like I have cement poured in my skull and I am just shy of coughing up my left lung. My wife has a cough that has lasted over three weeks, not responded to antibiotics, and today she came down with a fever. My seven-year-old had to stay home from school today with a migraine headache. My toddler has started to get a runny nose. I have to get to bed early because in the morning I have to take my toddler to UNC Children's Hospital for treatment of a birth defect. We are still dealing with my toddler's first but most stubborn ear infection that has lasted a solid month. If the infection does not go away, we may be looking at surgical intervention.

For over a week, we have been putting up with people spreading gossip, lies, and sowing family discord. My wife has had to endure a friend of the family passing away, an elderly family member passing away, and her childhood best friend dying of cancer. Granny has been in the ICU unit for days. One of my best friends just got into an auto wreck, and my water heater is on its way out.

My tax software purchase I had made prior to the beginning of the year to save a few dollars on the purchase price was canceled by the company for some unknown reason, so I had to purchase it again…at the higher price. One stream of income in our household is about to come to an end.

Have you ever had one of those days where you think to yourself that when you get to Heaven, you want to go up to Adam and Eve, punch him in the nose and slap her across the jaw? Then sarcastically thank them very much for ruining the perfect Earth created for us all? Then maybe follow that by, "What were you thinking???" Yeah, it has been that sort of week.

Ironically enough, a friend of mine posted on Facebook (while I was typing this column) "Ever want to say: try that again and they'll be tracing you in chalk!" The timing brought a chuckle to my heart. I wrote back, "If you only knew how this evening has gone, you would know how well that fits."

The bizarre thing is that some people would actually take the "they'll be tracing you in chalk" comment as a real threat rather than have a sense of humor about it. I just ran across that very thing last week. I said to someone who was running their mouth, (after emphatically requesting that this person desist from gossiping) "I could pimp slap you!" as a way of conveying my level of annoyance and desire that this person would just be quiet. The next thing I knew, people were accusing me of threatening violence upon this individual. I guess that people never heard of colloquialisms and sarcasm before.

I have a lot of unanswered questions in life. I hope that some day, God will answer a lot of questions that we still have when we get to see Him. I keep asking questions here on Earth. Sometimes he answers them, sometimes not. Sometimes I don't get an answer for years.

All right, so why did I write all of this? Quite simply, it was to say this. Through it all, we have not lost faith in God, in His goodness, or His provision. We will make it, regardless of what life throws at us. Everyone has tribulation to go through in life. We have our own to endure. The things I endure now are greater than before, but I also handle them differently. As I grow older I tend to have a different perspective on life and now consider many things petty that I used to think were insurmountable or extremely important.

There are some battles worth fighting and some trials worth enduring. It is how we grow and learn as people.

Column for July 15, 2010

I enjoy celebrating Independence Day here in America. Some consider July 4th as Independence Day, but I actually consider it to be July 2nd. On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress passed Richard Henry Lee's Resolution to adopt a declaration of independence. This resolution began "Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." The actual declaration was signed on July 4th.

I had resolved to spend the evening with my family in Uptown Selma. Over the years I have been to several of our town's July 4th celebrations and enjoyed them. Last year I did not go since I had some friends in town from Canada. These folks had never been to an Independence Day celebration since they are from out of the country, eh? When given the option of going to the town's celebration or to the countryside to play with my personal fireworks collection, they opted for playing with fireworks rather than observing them.

There was quite a choice of Independence Day celebrations from which to choose in Johnston County. When other towns had to either cancel their celebrations because of budget reasons or because of contractor availability under new, stringent state regulation. Kenly had a celebration on the real Independence Day, July 2. Clayton had theirs on the 3rd. Selma had theirs on the 4th, and Smithfield on the 5th. I had fully intended to go to Selma's celebration, since it is within walking distance from my home and Selma is my hometown.

As fate would have it, I got stuck working that Sunday evening. I was hoping I would get home in time to see the fireworks with the family and only miss the festival activities. Instead, I got stuck working on a stubborn computer in the booming metropolis of Roxboro and did not get home until about 11 PM. While working in that little concrete building, I had a few select words about the situation that I certainly will not type here, and was in a very foul mood as a result. I really did not want to have to explain to a seven-year-old why I could not fulfill my promise to go to the Selma celebration and fireworks.

Nevertheless, we figured that we could easily slide over to Smithfield for their "half priced, day late" celebration. We were hoping for some good, happy family time. Boy, were we in for a disappointment.

I wish that the Continental Congress had declared independence from Britain in October or April instead of July. Maybe they were cranky in Philadelphia because of the high temperatures and discomfort of July, and declared independence then because of it.

Temperatures were sweltering in Smithfield. The gnats were something out of a Mosaic plague. We could not take a bite out of our high priced festival food without eating a gnat. There were only three vendors at the Smithfield event, so we ended up spending $18 for the worst steak and cheese sandwich I ever ate, a hamburger, a hot dog, an order of French Fries, and 3 drinks.

Since we were dumb enough to get there around 6:30 and the fireworks were not going to be "bombs bursting in air" until 9:30, we had plenty of time to promenade on the River Walk. That is, until my lovely wife got tired of the hike and wanted to turn around. Add to that one bored seven-year-old and a squirmy almost one-year-old, and you have some quality family time.

Finally we found our spot on a hill, heard "I'm bored" about a thousand times, and stayed on the grass trying to rest until darkness overtook Smithfield. A few more thousand "I'm bored" declarations later, we finally got to see a few bursts in the night sky…right behind the tree directly blocking our view.

We moved up the hill some more to get a less obstructed view and waited for the grand finale, which only took eleven minutes to hit. The half-priced, day late fireworks display in Smithfield certainly resembled a half off clearance sale display.

Next year I hope to be able to just have the day off, relax, and enjoy the "pretty darn good for a small town" Fourth of July celebration that Selma puts on ever year. Either that or I will have to make a trip to South Carolina for a personal stash of some home spun fun. In the words of Jack Nicholson in the movie "As Good As It Gets", "Good times, noodle salad."

The fireworks I missed:

All American Festival Fireworks - 2010 from Lewis Mullen on Vimeo.

Column for Feb. 25, 2010

I have thought of my grandmother a lot today. Grammy LaPlante was born in 1908 in New Hampshire to a French Canadian immigrant family from the Province of Quebec. She was the descendant of both a King's Daughter and a Soldier of the Carignan Regiment, which I never knew (or heard of) until recently. For years I never knew much of my heritage past my paternal grandparents until I started investigating a bit. It turns out that being a descendant as well, I am eligible for membership in some elite genealogical society, "La Societe des Filles du roi et soldats du Carignan". OK, who knew?

Beatrice (Grammy) helped raise five children during the Great Depression. She was a frugal lady who grew her own blueberries, raspberries, a few fruit trees, and a huge garden. She did a tremendous amount of baking, canning, and cooking. I spent my childhood working in the garden, mowing the huge lawn at my grandparents' home, playing in their barn, and the like. They also had various farm animals on their land from time to time.

One of the things I remember about my grandparents was that they worked hard. My grandfather was in construction and even built the house I remember so fondly. Grammy worked the mornings at home taking care of five children then worked as a seamstress in a textile factory during the day. I heard stories of neighbors seeing her up until very late hours at night ironing clothing so that her children would look presentable. She even ironed underwear I am told though I never understood the point. The bottom line is that she worked harder than anyone I knew. My grandparents made a living during the greatest depression our country had known.

I learned a few values from my grandparents. I will admit that some of them have sustained and some not so much. The concept of reliance upon self and family has stuck. This is a core value that made America great. That concept is out the window, so to speak, with a huge number of people today.

Just today some unemployed, obtuse brute ran across one of my old columns on the internet. He took pride in the fact that he is making a good living sitting at home, playing video games, and living off the government monthly checks he gets rather than being forced to find a job. He literally thought himself entitled to do so, citing that he had five years work experience and paid taxes those five years, thus allowing others to sponge off the system. Since he did his part, he claims that he deserves the benefit of having others pay their taxes for him to live for a while.

Five years work experience? I have socks and underwear in my drawer more than five years old. I can probably even find some condiments in my pantry more than five years old. The more I discussed self-reliance, Biblical principles such as "if any would not work, neither should he eat", and stressed the poor ethics of the entitlement mentality, the more he employed self-justification and excuses for his slackness. I was even cussed out at the end of the conversation. I was told how evil Republicans are and how I must be one (actually I am not one), and how horrible it is that I can not fathom in hard times some money to someone like him while he bragged about eating twenty dollar steaks while on government welfare.

I must admit that it is more than self-reliance for me, it is reliance on the grace and provision of God in my life. Ever since I decided to live according to grace, my supply has been constant and sufficient. Yet these same principles are not exclusive to Christianity. Billions of people work hard and have their needs met yet do not have faith in Christ. Thus the principle is transcendent to the secular world, as well.

I chose a very different career path than my grandmother or grandfather. Then again, my path has been very different from all my family. However, I am no stranger to hard work. In times past I have taken minimum wage jobs and multiple jobs at a time to not even "make ends meet".

I am thankful for my job, my family, and the heritage passed on to me by my grandmother and parents. I look forward to sharing these values and even genealogy with Troy Junior some day. I still don't know that I will join some elite society for descendants of a famous group of men and women in French Canadian history, though.

Column for Oct. 1, 2009

As I write this, I am sitting in front of my laptop computer in a motel room in Greenville, South Carolina. The motel, by the way, is a very nice, very well run motel with no interior corridors. The motel is of a national brand and is one we do not yet have in Johnston County. Selma Town Council take note.

This however, is not the subject of my column. This week's column is actually fairly solemn topic and a plea. I am in the Greenville area for my brother's funeral. He died earlier in the week. I found out on Wednesday that he had died on a Monday afternoon. On Thursday, I packed up my wife and baby, and headed out of town. I had made contact with one of my other brothers and we chatted about the arrangements, or lack thereof. He lives in Upstate New York. I have two other brothers who live in New Hampshire.

Today, my wife and I spent the afternoon at my brother's house helping his son, a friend of the family, his step father, and his first ex wife (he had three ex wives, by the way) go through boxes upon boxes of stuff, searching for some sort of paperwork indicative of a last will and testament, insurance information, or anything helpful for the disposition of his property, for a way to pay for the funeral, his wishes for his remains, etc. It was not a fun day.

My brother, Ed, was apparently a pack rat. He had a garage he could not use because it was full of boxes. His family had already been searching the house for two days by the time we arrived. They had found some 401(k) statements, some old pay stubs, old bills, and the like. As I helped paw through boxes of stuff, I found more of the same.

As of this evening, there is no sign of a will. One of his sons (my nephew) said that he remembered my brother saying once that he wanted to be cremated. His mother is a practicing Jehovah's Witness, which Ed and his two older brothers resisted since their youth. She said that Ed would have wanted a Kingdom Hall memorial service. Knowing Ed, all of us brothers knew better. His mother was married to my father and they divorced in the early 1960's. Technically, that makes my three older brothers my half brothers, but I consider them brothers nonetheless.

As with many families, there are rumors, accusations, and emotions towards different family members. Since my family has always been fairly aloof towards one another, I have nephews I have not seen in many years, and in some cases, decades. Since Ed's mother remarried twice since divorcing my father (her religious conversion was one major reason for the split), there are a bunch of people whom I have either met seldom or never met at all. Since my older three brothers have a different mother than I and my younger brother do, we have not been considered close family. Oddly enough, his mother and both of my older brothers all consider that I was the one closest to Ed. He was nine years older than me. At age 50, it is possible that he had a major heart attack. The body still has not been released by the coroner's office.

Over the past year to two years, Ed and I had been working on redeeming the time and building our relationship anew. We had been planning a visit down here sometime soon. Now I am visiting, seeing a lot of people I don't really know, and helping frantic people attempt to find what my brother may (or may not) have planned for his heirs and his wishes.

Why do I write all this? I want to encourage you, whomever you are, to make some plans for the end of your life. I made sure that I did so. The day I got married, just after we said our "I do's", this same brother was a witness on my newly signed last will and testament, living will, and health care power of attorney. Yet, it is possible that he did not do the same for himself and his four children. Hopefully, something will be found, but it does not look promising at this point. I implore you to make plans, save your family the heart ache and work, and make your wishes known in advance. It is not hard, it is not expensive, and your family will thank you for it.

Column for April 30, 2009

The fun you can have with a little boy in the house

I can not count the number of times that my lovely bride has made the comment that she already has two boys to raise and now has another on the way. She has one son, there is me, and then Troy Junior who will arrive in about a dozen weeks. My father had five boys, my brothers all had mostly boys, and I had a lot of male cousins. I am used to how boys play and interact. My wife, having only a sister for a sibling, is getting a lesson in what boys are about.

Since we married in October, there has almost never been a dull moment in the LaPlante household. With two dogs, two cats, three birds, a kindergartener, a mother-in-law, and a newlywed couple, things are often boisterous. I have wanted children for years, and I am having a glorious time being a father.

Boys are different than girls, which was actually a headline some years ago for a major national news magazine. Since I had a younger brother while growing up and was raised with a sharp, New Englander, sarcastic sort of wit, I know the fun one can have with a boy in the house, much to the chagrin of my lovely bride.

My step-son is now at the age where he is discovering new words and the fact that boys and girls are indeed different. I am constantly amazed at how children categorize things. In his words, "girls do not have pickles". This is news to a six-year-old, and I can only chuckle. I can tell that I am going to have a chat with him in the not too distant future about some things.

With my propensity towards humor in every day life, I often find humor in things that make my bride blush. The boy came up to her one day and asked, "Mommy, is _____ a bad word?" My wife was aghast with the shock of the question and I was about rolling on the floor with laughter. I was informed how I was not helping the situation whatsoever. Meanwhile, I was wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes.

One day, I was driving on Pollock Street in Selma, and seeing the establishment, the boy asked, "What is a pawn shop?" My answer was simply, "They sell chess pieces". His reply was simply, "Oh," while his grandmother fought to hold back her laughter from the passenger seat.

John has just found out that he likes showers instead of always taking a nightly bath. I love the fact that the shower curtain is drawn, because he does not see me coming like he would if he was taking a bath, instead. A cup of cold water dumped over the top of the shower curtain and onto an unsuspecting child is a favorite past time. Ah, I can hear those little screams of surprise now. I can expect some payback eventually when he gets tall enough to retaliate. I am sure he now has a new tactic to practice on a baby brother of his own some day, as well.

I wish I had my video camera ready one day when I heard a small boy's voice singing as he banged on his toy keyboard. John loves country music. He was hitting the keys with one hand while holding the toy microphone in the other. In a singing voice that would make Simon Cowell wince, he was wailing repeatedly, "I saw God today," and doing his best George Strait imitation. That was funny enough as it was. Then he proclaimed, "OK, just one more song, then y'all can leave church!" I chuckled softly as I waited to hear what was coming next. He then broke into the 1980's pop favorite, "I'm too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt!" Ah, the things you see and hear without a camcorder in hand. So much for our appearance on "America's Funniest Home Videos".

Speaking of catching things on video, a couple of days ago, I was asked about an old movie that was on TV. "Why is that movie in black and white?" I couldn't resist. My answer was something akin to, "Well, a long time ago, the entire world was black and white. Old movies were made before the earth started to turn color in about 1939. Do you remember the movie, "The Wizard of Oz"? The movie started out in black and white and then suddenly turned to color. We have documented on film for all posterity the world's change over from black and white to color. That is what made that movie so famous."

Yes, sir, I am enjoying being a daddy. And in a few months, I get to have another victim…I mean son to play with.