G.B.B.

“Where are your underwear?” she asked.

This is a true story (best I remember) of my short career in retail. It was near Christmas break of my sophomore year in college at the University of Tulsa. I noticed on a bulletin board in the student union that Sears was hiring seasonal help. I applied and got a job. After an orientation about the history of Sears and some basic training, I was given a name tag and assigned to the vinyl record/8-track tape department. That suited me just fine.

Christmas shopping was just beginning to get traction so there were times during my shift that things were pretty slow, giving me time to sort the records in their racks and do some browsing among the stereos adjacent to my department. It was here that I learned of a marketing strategy that Sears and other retailers, but especially Sears, used effectively. It was called the G-B-B plan: Good, Better, Best. On a shelf there would be three hi-fi systems or three lawnmowers or three cameras, A Good choice, a Better choice and the BEST. Each step up would add features, quality and a higher price tag. We’ll come back to this.

One night a couple came up to me and asked me to recommend a hi-fi system for their teen-aged son, a Christmas gift. In my browsing of the systems I had picked a favorite so I took them over to the shelf and pointed it out to them. They had some questions and I explained what I liked about it. As we were visiting, a real SalesMan came over. Their nametags had their name in red. They were on commission and sold the big stuff like TVs and stereos. “I’ll take over here,” he announced. The dad said, “This young man is helping us.” “He’s not qualified!” instructed the pro. The mother said, “Either he makes this sale or we’re going somewhere else.” “Fine!” said the pro, “As soon as you decide, I’ll ring it up for you. He (pointing to me) doesn’t work in this department, so his employee key number can’t be entered into the register for this sale.” He wanted that commission.

At some point a manager got involved and somehow the sale of the stereo and a bunch of records to go with it was credited to me. The next day I was transferred to the toy department.

That year the popular boys toy was a remote-controlled vehicle called “Dune Buggy Wheelies”. They flew off the shelves like Cabbage Patch kids in the 80s. I think they sold for like $5.99. I felt like I spent most of my shift each night telling people that we were sold and offering an alternative. “How about a Red Ryder BB Gun?”

“He’ll shoot his eye out!”

One day the phone in the toy department rang. I answered it. It was a Sears catalog store in another part of town. They had received an order for four Dune Buggy Wheelies for a customer, but the customer had found them elsewhere and didn’t want them. They would need to be taken to our store for sale. A light bulb went on in my head and I told them I would tell the manager. I didn’t. After work, I drove to that store. When I got there, I asked if they by chance had any Dune Buggy Wheelies. “Why, yes we have four.”

“I’ll take them!”

Early in my next shift, someone asked desperately about Dune Buggy Wheelies. “We’re out, but if you’re willing to pay a little more, I know where you can get one or four.” I priced mine for $10. I made a few bucks, was severely reprimanded by the manager of the toy department when he found out, and was transferred to the menswear department.

The next shift, a lady came up to me as I was sorting ties or something. “May I help?”

“Yes,” she said, “Where are your underwear?”

“I’m wearing them,” I said. How could I not?

And that was the end of my career in retail.

But, let’s talk about G-B-B; not as sales strategy but as a way to take measure of a life well-lived. I heard someone say the other day, “Are you living your best life?” They were not asking me individually, but I did ponder it for a moment, and said to myself, “Probably not. But it’s not my fault! If it weren’t for this pandemic… If I hadn’t lost so much of my retirement savings in the 2008 crash… If we could push the flush handle on Washington D.C…” You know the song.

Of course that’s all baloney. If I’m not smart enough, wise enough, old enough, and spiritual enough to see that the goodness, betterness, or bestness of my life does not hinge on stuff outside of me; shame on me.

How about collectively as a human race? Relatively speaking, right now, are we being our good selves, our better selves or our best selves. Or, have we slipped to a different tiered metric, something like: Bad, Worse, Worst. And, which direction are we going?

There was this guy named Nicodemus, for all appearances, a thoughtful guy. He came to Jesus one night with a question or maybe a few questions. To the big one, Jesus gave the answer we’ve all heard hundreds of times: “Ye must be born again.” (I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t say, “Ye”, but that’s the way King James wanted it.)

Not to put words in Jesus’ mouth, but what if, maybe he meant, in addition to that big one—the spiritual rebirth—we should be born again EVERY day. Maybe that’s what the dawn is for.

Let’s assume that sometimes we get weary, we lose focus and inspiration. I don’t know about you but sometimes I trade dreams for despair these days. I feel like I could use a rebirth. Maybe sometimes, not just in a chronological sense, in our hearts, our souls, our thoughts we become old and cranky; maybe a little narrow-minded. What if we could start new, seeing with eyes of wonder: like a child.

Some days I live life Good enough. Some days I strive for Better. Every now and then, for a moment maybe, I live my Best self. Not often enough though.

Back in that Christmas season of 1970, during my short stint as a salesman at Sears I got hit with a hard slap of reality. Maybe it helped to explain some of what I believe the manager of the menswear department called a “smart-ass, college-boy, wisenheimer” type attitude.

One evening, I returned home after work to find a letter from the Selective Service informing me that my lottery number for the draft was coming up, and giving me the date that I would report for my physical for the Army. I assumed that I would be heading to Vietnam soon to fight in a war I despised and had protested against. Fortunately the war ended before my number was called. Unfortunately, many of my friends and family were not as lucky, or whatever you want to call it.

Many are comparing the current state of our nation and world to the tumultuous times of the late 60s and early 70s. I don’t know that the comparison helps anything. We don’t seem to learn much from our past.

I do know this: we are better than the collective life we are living right now. You can see glimpses of it in many places. You can also see the American Dream twisted by greed and arrogance. I just sat through a two day conference on leadership. It is one of the premier leadership conferences in the world. It is even called The Leadership Summit. The resounding theme of the meeting this year (held virtually for the first time ever) was that effective, impactful leadership is characterized by empathy and humility. I would go so far as to say that without those two, what you are left with isn’t leadership at all, but rather something akin to “bad company corrupting good character.” —1 Corinthians 15:33.

Don’t worry. I’m not getting ready to offer an alter call. I am going to continue to self-evaluate, hoping to see beyond my blindspots and cynicism, praying for a new birth everyday, seeking a BETTER version of myself, shooting for an occasionaly BEST-Of, and counting on that being GOOD enough; for now.

THE EYES HAVE IT

FIND A DIFFERENT DOCTOR. That was the advice my Dad got from a friend a few years back. Mom and Dad, along with Mom’s siblings and their spouses, made a winter trip to south Texas. While there, Dad had a heart attack and ended up having by-pass surgery at the hospital in Harlingen, Texas. After several weeks of rehab there, I flew to Harlingen to drive them home in their motorhome.

As we were unhooking the motorhome, preparing for our departure, a number of their friends gathered around to wish them well. Several of the old guys were veterans of the heart surgery wing of a hospital. Each had some advice to offer. My mom was asking them all questions about a new heart-friendlier diet and exercise plan. She mentioned that switching to a low-sodium diet would be challenging for them. One of the old guys said, “My doc told me to lay off salt.” Mom asked, “What did you do?” His reply: “Found a different doctor.”

When it comes to lifestyle choices, you can always find an “expert” to back up your choice. Right? Whatever it may be. Back then we didn’t even have Google or Facebook. Now you can truly find support for most any theory or opinion you want to have. And of course, you can also find hearty disagreement.

Take this hot potato for example: masks or no-masks. There is the argument about effectiveness. You can find support for the safety of wearing one. You can find mockery if you do. Some will say they are thinking of others when they were their masks. Others will tell them they’ve sold their soul to Bill Gates and given up their Freedom. Some will say to those refusing to wear masks they have simply sold out to Trump. Those will respond that if you wear a mask you love AOC and hate statues. Some will say, “My doc says I should wear a mask becausee I’m old.” Some will respond, “Then find a different doctor.”

Believe it or not, this post is not about further arguing the point. I figure by this time everyone has made up their mind on the matter. This post is about something wonderful I’ve observed in the midst of mask-wearing. It happened first at an eatery. I won’t mention the name of the place except to say that they do have good chicken nuggets and they seem intent on making an art form of drive through and curbside service. My favorite item from this little joint though is their frosted coffee drink.

One afternoon on a social-distancing road trip, My Amazing-Missus and I decided to get one of these tasty treats. I put on my mask. All of the worker bees in the drive through had on theirs. When a young lady held out a tray with our drinks on it, I said, “Thank you.” And then it happened.

Something I never would have noticed had it not been for the masks—I noticed her eyes. After my “thank you”, she replied. I’m not certain what she said, her voice was muffled some by the mask. But I’m certain, she said, “My Pleasure!” And then she smiled———with her eyes.

We don’t leave the house much, but occasionally we pick up food curbside. I never miss the opportunity to look into the eyes of our masked servers. Hopefully, they can see the smile in mine. In case they can’t, I’ve also become a bigger tipper. Wouldn’t it be weird if somehow in the midst of diminishing humanity from arguing and side-taking, we might actually discover a beauty in our fellow strugglers by looking each other in the eyes and smiling.

Can excessive doses of CO2 from mask wearing cause one to become a sentimental old fool? I’ll have to Google that. I’m sure I can find someone that supports the notion.

Be Still and March

IT WAS MONUMENTAL. Can we all agree on that? I would even go so far as to say it was momentous.

I wish we could separate the event from the issues that prompted it for just a minute. Of course that’s not possbile; the matter is too emotionally charged.

As if providentially, my watch just pinged, reminding me it’s time to take a few deep breaths. Seriously. Join me. Deep inhale… Exhale. Six more. My watch now tells me my heartrate is at 61 BPM. That’s down from 318 when I started writing this after spending a few minutes on Facebook.

Why does a love for the First Amendment mean you want the Second stricken and vice versa? I love them both. I am happy we have both, and the others as well. I wouldn’t go as far as I heard one citizen opine: “I think the president should switch them and make the Second Amendment number 1, because without guns we wouldn’t have any other freedoms.” But, he has the freedom to say it.

For me and for this essay, I just want to celebrate the essence of the "March for Our Lives" for a few minutes and words. The “essence”?

Sometimes the most wonderful outcomes of something like this are things that were unexpected and unintended. I worked with teenagers for more than 30 years, and I have to say that any time you can get them to raise their eyes from their smartphones, open their ears and pay attention, something good can happen. It’s an opportunity to awaken a bit, to march on from apathy, narcissism and naivete´.

When you make a poster, join the march, become a part of the conversation, you begin to form a worldview and to be a part of something bigger than yourself. Maybe you take a giant step up Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs from safety and security needs, to belonging needs, to esteem needs, to self-actualization.

I know this from intimate experience of working with hundreds of teens and from my own personal experience.

Similar to the highly charged arguments of the day that fill our common air like so much smog, the causes I marched for and against in my day were equally divisive and misunderstood. I wrote about it in a post a few years back. Here’s a snippet:

The Kent State shootings occurred at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. The Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds on unarmed college students on Monday, May 4, 1970, killing four students and wounding nine others.

As a result, student protests were organized across the country. Hundreds of universities cancelled classes and locked down buildings. I was proud to be a part of the event at OBU. But as we sat through the day and overnight on the OBU Oval, wearing black arm bands, discussing the state of our country and world, and wondering whether we could make a difference, it all seemed a little silly and isolated. Maybe we did make some difference though. At least I was different. I wanted to DO something. I still do.

Don't skip this part. Back then, no doubt I had delusions of importance and occasional altruism. The fact is I was pretty self-absorbed; oh, not in a Justin Bieber brand of narcissism kind of way, but in a way that dictates at least this: for all of those who knew me back then, please forgive me. Maybe the Washington Elite was right--maybe I was too stupid to vote at 18. The dean of students who encouraged me not to return to OBU for my sophomore year certainly would agree with that.

My intent here is not to romanticize those days, but if I have, well... After all this was my first Coming-of-Age. It should be a bit romantic, right?

---

There was a recurring experience in youth ministry that I dreaded and hated. I still do. It is the experience of seeing the passion and enthusiasm of youth crushed or belittled. Let me try to explain with a couple of examples:

Every summer I would return home from summer camp with a group of students recommitted and energized to make a difference. I knew that soon they would be met with an indifference that would suck the wind from their sails. There would be patronization and diminishment and “reality”.

Another example. Numerous times in my years of youth ministry there would be a young woman with a strong sense of calling to leadership in the church. I knew full-well that the predominate attitude among baptists was that the role of women was to be a submissive wife to their husband—not a leader in the church. I hated the moment when they this ugly fact would become real for them.

When you pat an energized young person on the head and dismiss them, you plant a seed of cynicism, hopefully seeds of determination and vision will grow strong and choke those out.

You may see their efforts as being misguided, even dangerous, but I am telling you there is value in the experience for them. And who knows, maybe they will survive, get in line, register to vote and fight for a more acceptable cause someday. 

Look at me: I’m still a rebellious liberal, but I’m a functional liberal. And while I love the First Amendment and the Second, and the rest, I believe there is a higher calling, a higher freedom than any a govenment can legislate. It goes something like this:

Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God. --from the Bible, Micah 6:8, sort of.

I could write that on a poster and march around the capital, the courthouse, the church, and the marketplace; if only I wasn’t so tired and cynical. In the meantime...

The Thing is

“It’s Your Thing—do what you wanna do.”

That’s the title and first line of a 1969 Isley Brother’s song. It has a sort of live and let live vibe to it, doesn’t it? The zeitgeist. More on that in a minute.

The other day I was sitting in a “waiting” room at the AM/PM; waiting. That’s what you do. I overheard this conversation between a lady and her brother-in-law who had driven her to the clinic:

HER: What are you doing on that phone; Facebook?
HIM: Candy Crush.
HER: You really like that, huh?
HIM: It’s sort of my Thing.

Your THING?! What kind of guy makes Candy Crush his Thing? Maybe I’m judging too quickly. I don’t actually know what Candy Crush is. Maybe if I tried it, it would be my Thing too. Probably not.

Then I had this moment where I imagined asking the guy, in a condescending manner, “What do you mean, Candy Crush is your Thing? How can that be? Is it your only Thing? Or is it just your Thing when your sitting in waiting rooms with your sister-in-law?”

Then I imagined him saying, “What’s it to you, wise-ass?” I imagined him to be the kind of guy who would use a word like that, while giving you a look like maybe Candy is the only thing he would like to Crush.

Then I imagined him saying, “So, what’s your Thing?” And I panicked, because I couldn’t think of a Thing right then. I mean I had already scrolled through Instagram for new photos of the Grand-Girls, and now I was pretty much just checking out the people in the waiting room trying to guess their ailments and wondering about my chances of getting out of there without catching whatever it was they were spreading. But that’s not a good, manly Thing really, is it?

So for the rest of the time in the waiting room I occupied my mind in a kind of transcendental survey of noble Things I could adopt as my own. That kind of stuff has always been important to me—well for at least as long as I can remember. I believed I wanted to pursue noble things, worthwhile things, at least as I understood them to be.

I worry sometimes about becoming irrelevant—not having a Thing, one of those old guys who has been bypassed by the pace of technology and popular culture and the vitality of life. I used to know stuff. There was a time when I could have told you for instance, which artists were up for the top Grammy awards. Now I recognize few of them. I don’t stay up late enough to see them on Jimmy Fallon, so I’m out of touch. And frankly, I’m becoming so geezerish that I’m of the sincere opinion that most of them are not truly Grammy worthy musicians anyway.

I used to have a utilitarian understanding of the kids’ slang and could use some of it in sentences in a way that seemed natural and credible. You might say I had my on fleek moments.

Maybe being able to converse with the kids isn’t a worthwhile Thing for me anymore. Maybe I’ll keep trying though, and that will make me one of those corny old, cardigan guys. I’ll say stuff and the Grand-Girls will roll their eyes and say, “Oh, Pops, you’re silly.” And maybe I’ll say, “That’s sort of my Thing.”

There was a time, not so long ago, I would have said my Thing was being a “creative catalyst”. It all started when I attended a meeting in New York City with a group called the International Arts Movement. I became a part of the movement and even served on their board of directors. It gave me a language, a vision, and a plan to encourage young creatives, and to look for ways to bring them together in a catalytic way to collaborate and to work as only artists can. It was my Thing for several years and I loved it. I cherish the friendships and memories of that experience.

I am convinced, more than ever, that our world needs the beauty, goodness and truth that art and the creative processes alone can bring. We need creatives to do their Thing and we need it more desperately every day.

There’s another line in that Isley Brother’s song that says:

"I'm not trying to run your life, I know you wanna do what's right."

That brings me back to the start of this post—the 60s zietgiest; or my version of it. The live-and-let-live kool-aid was sweetened for me as a journalism major at the University of Tulsa. We were taught that news reporting, REAL news reporting was objective. “Don’t make value judgements,” we were taught, a guiding principle I tended to think applied to life beyond the reporting of news as well. This synced with my desire to not have my values judged, and my Judeo-Christian upbringing to “Judge not, lest you be judged.”

Maybe that’s the part of the current zeitgeist (as I perceive it) that is so disconcerting for me. It seems that “lines” are being drawn so hard, so furiously, so emotionally. Maybe a better song for the day is Tina Turner’s mid-80s hit, “What’s love got to do with it?” and her cynical lyric, “what’s love but a second hand emotion?”

Don’t get me wrong I am still hopeful and a bit idealistic. I do believe that there is something within us that will prevail. After all, we are created in the image of a Creator, who created us with a capacity to understand that it all comes down to love, ultimately and eternally.

So, my apologies to waiting-room guy, if you’re listening, “I’m sorry for judging. If Candy Crush is your Thing, crush it my brother, crush it!”