The past has PASSED, the future is NEAR, so view today as a PRESENT (as in Christmas present), and the present will be CLEAR.

It’s similar to footprints in the sand.

But there was someone who was braver even than I. Her name was Glory. And before “Mrs. Bell” came into my life, Glory was my soul mate and companion. She was beautifully built, with big moist eyes that even a hardened man could get lost in. Glory B. Bell was the best dog to ever roam the wild foothills of Farmington, Utah.

I have always loved animals, and I always wanted a dog. During my toddler years my family owned a tiny, fluffy mutt named Cuddles (you’re seeing a pattern in great dog names here aren’t you), but the Folks sent Cuddles away while my oldest brother—Cuddles main proprietor—was away on a week-long scout camp. True story.

“I’m home from that scout camp you made me go on. Great to be back. Where’s my best friend in whole wide world, Cuddles?”

“Cuddles? I have no idea who you’re talking about. No one named Cuddles lives here presently. Welcome home. Go weed your 7 acre section.”

I was probably 4 when Cuddles was basically snuck out of the house with a bag over his head in the middle of the night. And for the next 7 years I begged my mom to let me have a dog. She hated dogs. They ruined everything and smelled bad, and she knew she would end up being the caretaker. But I never gave up. I begged and whined and petitioned and promised. She gave in. So one day a lesbian couple came to the house to show us a dog they had saved from the pound but didn’t have enough room to keep long term. The dog’s name was Casey. She was gorgeous. A brindle Boxer. You might reasonably have qualms with their utilitarian faces, but if Michealangelo was commissioned to dream up a dog’s ideal form and put it to marble, I think it would resemble the Boxer’s, with that strikingly powerful neck and chest tapering into one of the most graceful hindquarters found in the natural world.

It was love at first sight between Casey and I. We re-named her Athena (which I’m sure came from the young nerd, Ryan), but she wasn’t smart enough to remember that. So someone suggested Glory and that stuck. Glory and I were virtually inseparable. She slept on my bed, we peed together every morning and night in her usual “potty” spot outside our house, and we spent a lot of time at the river and in the mountains.

A few months after adopting Glory, my mom was fed up with her slow potty training, and told us that the next accident would get her sent back to her last owners. During this anxious time, one night we returned from grandparents visits in Ogden. Davis and I went downstairs and saw a big dump waiting for us on the carpet. Panic. We were hurriedly discussing what to do when we heard my mom’s footsteps upstairs. She was coming our way.

Davis: “There’s no time, just grab it and follow me!”

Me: “Grab it?!?”

Davis: “Just do it!”

Davis grabbed half the pile with his naked hand, and I retrieved the second half. The ultimate test of pure love. We ran it to the toilet and Mother was none the wiser. She probably smelled something but the proof was halfway to the sewage treatment plant in Roy.

But inevitably, Glory did it again and was caught. It was the last straw. Glory was being shipped off the next morning. Tears, rage, confusion. Again, Davis showed brilliant tactical facility by organizing a spiritual fast. He, Eliza, and I would fast that Mother’s heart would be softened and Glory would be spared. Guess what happened when the woman who had taught us the power of fasting all those years got wind of our fast? Glory stayed.

Glory was friend to all humanity, but scourge to all beasts. She was endlessly patient with babies crawling on her and poking here, but she judged every nonhuman moving thing to be her mortal enemy, so I was always vigilant about her unleashed proximity to other animals. Once, my siblings and I found a small, hairless, dying bird chick that had fallen out of its nest in our tree. Someone fetched a water dropper and attempted to nourish it sugar water, to no avail. We knew it was close to Bird Paradise, but until that happened we needed to keep Glory away to avoid her chomping and shaking it to death. But Glory was curious what we were all kneeling around, so we had to take turns keeping her at bay. After a few hours of this all the protectors ended up taking breaks at the same time. I came out of the house and saw Glory lying in the area the bird had been in and my stomach turned at the what must have happened. I raced up the hill and was relieved and shocked to see the dog protectively lying around the unharmed bird, gently nuzzling and licking it. She stayed in that same position until the bird died hours later. Good dog.

Before getting into the minivan that would take me to the MTC and North Carolina for two years, I gave Glory a big hug and said goodbye. She could sense something was up, because she ran after me and jumped into the van, which she had never done before. Six months after I left, Glory became testy with kids, snapping at a couple. She was old after all. They had to put her down. I wept when I read the letter telling me she was gone.

My daughter loves dogs, and when the time is right I want to get one. After that, I hope to have an unbroken sequence of dogs around me until I die. But the dog of a boy’s youth is always the one he remembers most.

This post is dedicated to Glory B. Bell.

Not daring to do something that others did without hesitation was humiliating, and besides, the water slide actually looked like fun. But every time I waited in line and got within a few feet of the slide, my legs lost their ballast and my entire body seemed to collapse in around my heart, which started beating like a hummingbird’s wings. It wasn’t a mental or emotional process. It wasn’t that I was scared of something specific. I just felt terrified, in a purely physical way. I spent days like that pretending that I had just gotten done with a ride, or acting as though I was just about to go take another ride – “No, go ahead! I just have to take my osteoporosis medicine and then I’ll catch up!”

It’s not that I never got to the point where I’d do things like go down water slides as a kid – it’s just that I first dared to do them around 2 – 3 years after most kids my age. This embarrassing situation was made worse by the fact that Kook, 3 years my junior, was born with only two fears: work and Ryan’s preternaturally strong hands. Thus, I was sandwiched between Ryan, who was reasonably daring for his age, and Kook, who was reckless to the point of self-endangerment. The fact that my Dad successfully concealed what I now know must have been nearly overwhelming anger, shame and disgust with my cowardice will be what narrowly saves him from being placed in the Guatemalan Working-Rest Home alongside his wife, who will be free to return home when she’s picked three weeds for every one that I did from ages 4 – 18.

As I got older I gradually learned to do my best to ignore the fear I felt when I was confronted with a rope swing/roller coaster/girl. And to be honest, I think I did a fairly good job of overcoming the fear that was hardwired into my system. I don’t think any of my friends from childhood or adolescence would tell you I was Evel Kneivel, but there wasn’t ever anything they did that I didn’t, which is no small accomplishment, given that the years from 5 to 20 were filled with almost daily opportunities to face and overcome physical fear. Unfortunately, adults don’t get too many chances to overcome fear, which is why I love longboarding.

I spent my first 3 or 4 years in New York longboarding pretty regularly. We started out by going to a parking garage downtown late at night, which is more or less where I learned how to longboard. Take the elevator up, skate down 6 winding, oily floors, hop in the elevator, and repeat. And while it definitely took me some time to figure out the skills and techniques involved, it took me much longer to learn how to ignore the physical message of fear that my body sent my mind at every turn and carve, demanding that I bail out any time I started moving faster than the speed at which a little girl can ride her bike up a very steep hill. I started out by telling myself I had to go two whole levels of the garage without bailing out. It would take me a few runs to meet that goal, but I eventually got there, at which point I’d set a goal of 4 floors. And then the whole garage. And after a little while, the garage started seeming kind of easy.

So we moved uptown, and tried a bunch of hills – The Big Easy, The Poop Chute, Slippery Summer, The Stam. I eventually developed the ability to get down some decent-sized hills without killing myself. And while I was always more or less scared when I went down The Stam – the whole time, every time – I learned to ignore that fear, that constant demand that I bail out, go home, and take up Bingo. (And in my defense, the Stam is really scary. It’s about 7 blocks at a pretty steep angle on one of the busier avenues in New York. You have to know how to time the lights, and there always exists the possibility that a garbage truck will come plowing through a perpendicular street, looking to give someone a closed casket funeral. But there’s a Dunkin’ Donuts at the bottom, and if you time it right, you can get warm donuts, so it all events out.)

After going a once a week for 3 or 4 years, we kind of stopped. It’s been three or so years since we did, and the other night after a rough day I grabbed my board out of the loft and went for a ride in the park. It only took me a few runs to remember the physical motions involved, but I was shocked by just how much my ability to ignore my fear had deteriorated. I’ve been a time or two since then, and it’s taking me longer to build that immunity than I would have liked or expected. But I’m going to build it back, and I’m not going to lose it this time. And then I’m going to put on some water wings and go down the water slide at Cherry Hill all by myself.

I moved out of an apartment full of guys to marry a girl.  They were cranky and lazy and mostly intolerable, and I would never marry them, not for millions of dollars and an impenetrable prenup.  But they did have a few special insights about my needs in life.  They knew that sitting slumped over on the couch together for a long time was important, no matter what we were watching on TV, or even if the TV was off.  Guys get that just sitting there in the family room doing nothing but talking about really random stuff is kind of a mental hygiene.  Brainstorming about good inventions or funny date ideas or ways to make a football out of garbage, or what kinds of Mexican food would be good combined with pizza.

We spent a lot of time sitting around doing this kind of stuff in college.  It’s interesting now to look back on how these strange conversations developed, and where they took us.  One such conversation twisted and turned until somehow we decided to put together a huge 64-spot bracket of the hottest girls we knew of, and spend an entire day and night voting on each bracket to find a final winner of all the hot girls (ties were decided by calling a random guy we barely knew from another apartment and telling him to just choose one of the names we told him.  And yes, we did take into account a girl’s character and accomplishments as well).  Another conversation ultimately resulted in someone writing down a really strange nickname for each of us on the apartment whiteboard, nicknames that everyone used really faithfully for about two weeks (most of those nicknames have faded from memory, except that we all still call Norm ‘Jordache’ from time to time).  Yet another conversation wandered around until eventually two of us were taking girls to the science building to look at cadavers for a Friday night date.

Such a good date

Though I’m sure there are exceptions, these are conversations you don’t often have once you get married.  You leave them behind.  What you do get when you get married is “working together,” and “compromise,” so it’s definitely worth it.  But you are unlikely to ever spend several nights in a row sitting in the kitchen tossing a potato back and forth to each other, over and over and over.  And you’re quite unlikely to just wander out to the nearest patch of open space to every so often to punt things to each other.  Because of that, marriage is both a very good thing, and a little bit of a sad thing.

We took a trip with my family a few weeks ago, where all the siblings and my parents got some condos together by a lake.  The condos all back onto a big, huge field of well-kept lawn.  We had balls of every kind on hand during the trip, and they were all just sitting there on the grass by the doors to the condos.  And there were a bunch of dudes on hand– brothers and brothers-in-law and Dads and even little nephews and nieces (who can be laudably guy-like in the right circumstances).  On a normal vacation I might pick up a football or volleyball or frisbee just to palm it and toss it from hand to hand three or four times a day, and then set it down and go do whatever my little family needs me to do– braid Lucy’s hair or spend an hour and a half trying to fit an outfit onto Molly’s Polly Pocket.  But on this trip, I’d pick up one of those balls, hold it for a second, and then look out to see one of my brothers or brothers in law streaking down the grass waving an arm at me.  That guy would always be rewarded with a well-timed football, or an aerobie, or maybe a grape thrown perfectly into his mouth.  Every time one of us picked up a ball, there was someone who wanted it thrown at him. You could hardly walk into your own condo without spending ten or fifteen minutes transitioning through a game of catch of some sort.  What a great thing it is to have a few dudes around.

There it is.  The grass field.  Makes you want a frisbee, huh?

After playing catch, we’d always walk in and join the family, help with dinner, clean up the place, etc.  And each night was filled with the great conversations and “communication” that you come to expect when you’re married.  In that way, it was an absolutely perfect environment.  You’re with your wife, you’re helping and enjoying each other, but at any moment, a super-intense soccer game might break out, and you won’t have to drive fifteen minutes and organize ten other married guys to all show up there at the same time (they won’t ever all show up at the same time).

It made me realize that even after ten really happy years of marriage, sometimes I still miss that old easiness of having several dudes around.  My friends are all just a phone call away, but there’s nothing like just picking up a football and immediately having someone to throw it to.  And I’ve found that you don’t just call up one of your buddies to come over and throw the football around, or a potato.  There is one thing about marriage, though, that specifically mitigates this problem.  Sons.  I got a little giddy in the last month, as Rex has started being able to catch and throw a full-size football, even on long routes.  That goes a long way toward replacing those guys I left behind.  We had a birthday party here on Saturday, where we filled up dozens of helium balloons for ambiance.  After the party was over and the clean-up was done, the girls went inside with Mom to play with the new dolls received at the party.  Rex and I grabbed my wrist slingshot and walked out into the dusky backyard.  We lay there for 20 minutes shooting rocks at all the balloons.  We got so we could pop a balloon from 25 yards on the fly, in the wind.  After ten years, it’s nice to have that kind of company around again.

We went to a barbecue joint we like. We sat down, the only patrons there aside from one other guy, and our server approached. Average-looking, friendly woman in her late twenties.

“Hi guys, what can I get you to drink”

“Um, I’ll have a water”

“Hold on, I don’t have a pen.”

Me: “I think I have a pen you can use. Yep, here you go.”

When she brought the drinks back she started by giving me a Cola instead of my water. Then she gave every other person the wrong drink. A little weird, but not the end of the world.

“Are you guys ready to order?”

“Well, we really need to look at some menus first, do you have any?”

“Oh, ya, no problem.”

The menus proved enormously helpful in understanding what dishes the restaurant was offering. 15 minutes after ordering, everyone received their food except me, for some unexplained reason. Mine was another 15-20 minutes, even though it was basically the same dish as the others.

The final test for our waitress was when Jack, and Jack alone, asked for a drink refill.

“Let’s see if she can get this one refill right.” we exaggerated, knowing she could obviously get that much right.

She took his glass to the soda dispenser 20 feet away, filled it, brought it back, and looked at me with a furrowed brow.

“Is this yours, er…?”

I love when people end a question in “er.” One of my favorite ways to end a sentence. Second only to “so.” It means “I’m basically already sure about this, but I want to be CRAZY sure, but I really don’t even need to ask, it’s mostly me just being polite and deferential.”

I pointed to Jack, then put my face in my arm and giggled uncontrollably (after she left). Poor girl.

Her only problem was that she lacked the specialized skill of remembering who ordered what. And the talent of having something to write down orders. As well as the gift of remembering to bring menus. And every other facility a server needs. Kind of like a doctor who is super friendly but vomits at the sight of blood and sickness and who went to crabfishing school instead of medical school.

But none of us were upset. She was just so nice and it was the funniest lunch I’ve had since last week (when I ate lunch while listening to my daily Wanda Sykes podcast). And I can relate. I’ve done things that I was just absolutely the worst at. I hope she finds her thing someday, be it landscaping or PR or bicycle design. But it’s not waitressing. And it’s probably not professional memorizing either.

If you think about it, you’ll realize that football season elicits a much more powerful and charged emotional response than basketball and baseball seasons do. Unless you’re talking about the 12 or 13 die-hard baseball fans left in this country, you won’t find large groups of men salivating over the fact that OPENING DAY IS FINALLY HERE. Let’s face it: baseball is a national tradition shrouded in history and meaning and sentimentality that nobody happens to actually like watching. It makes for a lovely setting for a pleasant conversation with friends. I like nothing more than to go the ball park with friends or family, order a hot dog, soak in the surroundings, hang out, admire the beauty of the field, and chit chat the day away. I even like the sound of the bat hitting the ball. But the sport itself? Kind of terrible.

Although there are more everyday college hoops and NBA fans than there are MLB fans, you won’t find the basketball guys sending one another emails that say, “HANG ON, OPENING TIP-OFF IS IN ONLY 37 DAYS.” That is largely because the NBA isn’t fun until the play-offs. Indeed, I advocate scrapping the regular season in favor of a two-month tournament. Based on how regular season games are played, I’m guessing most NBA players feel the same way. And as far as college basketball is concerned, I consider anything before March to be “pre-season.”

But football, that’s an entirely different ballgame. (Nailed it.) And to be honest with you, I’m not entirely sure why. The anticipation surrounding the arrival of football season can’t be entirely – or even mostly – explained by a simple preference for football over other sports. It isn’t a simple matter of saying, “I like football more than basketball, so I’m more excited for football season.” No, football season is evocative of something that goes well beyond the idea of watching 12 – 15 games over a 4-month period.

As I try to explain this, the first idea that comes to mind is that for whatever reason, football season feels much more like a season. It feels like an event that occurs during a well-defined period of time marked by certain emotional cues. Basketball is winter and spring. But you don’t think of winter or spring and have those thoughts immediately followed by thoughts of “Basketball!” Winter and spring aren’t defined by basketball. The relationship between summer and baseball is a little closer, but it’s nothing compared to the relationship between fall and football. Fall means football, and football means fall. Which makes football season much more of a season that defines a quarter or so of the year. You say “football season” and I think of leaves turning and temperatures cooling. I think of pulling sweaters and blazers out of storage. I remember going school shopping at Mervyn’s and VF Factory outlet and considering my options for getting placed in a foster home where the parents allowed the kids to buy school clothes that weren’t going to socially ruin them.

I think another reason football seasons carries such meaning is the fact that it’s tied to two specific days – days that have very positive associations. Basketball season? Makes me think of a freezing cold Tuesday night. Doesn’t exactly warm the cockles of my heart. Baseball season? Thursday game at 1 PM. When I’m working. Football season? Saturday! Sunday!

Finally, football season feels . . .meaningful. There aren’t very many games, so each one counts and players play hard. You have 50,000 – 100,000 screaming fans. Marching bands. I don’t want to overanalyze this, but the pageantry and the hoopla lend a certain gravity to it all. Add to that the suspense of the high physical stakes involved, and its hard not to get invested even in a game where you have no direct rooting interest.

Oh, and I won’t get into fantasy football, because I don’t want to responsible for any divorces. But that really helps, too.

So, that’s why football season is the best. And it’s here. Thank heavens.

So even though I was pretty sure I’d enjoy lawyering, some part of me always kept its distance, making plans for an escape if I ever needed one. I guess by the time I graduated from law school I had a bunch of possible escape routes.  I was okay entering a profession I would surely detest, because at any given moment I could easily jump off the train and become a businessman, novelist, song-writer, judge, politician, philanthropist, community organizer, or inventor.  That’s not a made up list.  That is the actual list of exit strategies I had at one point (okay, not really community organizer).  I considered each of them to be somewhat plausible, and I planned to just follow my career along its path and watch what doors opened up.  Maybe I’d be sitting at my desk and someone would call up their favorite lawyer and tell me they needed a good philanthropist, and I’d be just the person.  I had faith that one of these doors would eventually open, so I curated my list with great care.

Pick up the phone, Bill.  You know you want to.

Song-writer got knocked off the list pretty fast.  I let it go pretty easily, knowing how fanciful that entry had been.  I graduated and started working for a judge, then went onto a firm.  That first year at a law firm ended up surprising me.  I kind of liked it.  Hadn’t seen that coming.  Around the same time I noticed that making arguments about mundane business transactions could be fun; but thinking about the mundane business transactions in my briefs left me really cold.  So businessman fell off pretty quick too, and I didn’t mourn it too much.

Anyway, you can kind of guess the trend.  I realized that I loved practicing law whenever I was allowed to collaborate closely with other lawyers, trying out arguments on each other and working through strategy.  That realization made me sit up one day and say “wow, I guess I’d probably die if I had the solitary life of a judge.”  My list kept getting shorter.  Politician was one of the hardest to let go.  For some reason I just always assumed I liked politics, just because I thought I was a smart guy, and that’s what smart people like.  Turns out I don’t pay it a lot of attention, especially the Fox News/MSNBC kind.  How am I ever going to run for something if I can’t form a strong opinion about where to build a mosque in New York, or how to react to the Arizona immigration law?  Meanwhile, the strongest opinions I had always revolved around whether my client was reasonable in relying on a fraudulent letter, or whether a company could fire its SEO specialist without paying him commissions in perpetuity.  It always surprised me whenever I’d turn around and find myself saying things like a real lawyer.

The list came down to novelist and inventor.  That was all there was left.  it was obvious that neither of these is a very plausible way of making a living, so finishing life as a lawyer started looking more certain.  It made me feel trapped, not because I was unhappy, but because I wasn’t supposed to like it.  So I kept clinging to the inventor and novelist backup plans, certain that they could work out if I needed them to.  That’s where Fisher Price comes in.  Macy and I were at Toys R Us last week shopping for Molly’s birthday.  She grabbed a dress-up and a Disney princess music player and headed to checkout.  I examined the toy guns.  Then I saw something that made my heart sink.  The Fisher Price Turbofill Blaster.  A water gun that comes with a special station hooked up to your garden hose, that docks tightly so that the station both fills and pressurizes the water gun in just a few seconds.  It’s genius.  It’s innovative and clever and useful and a little exciting.  It has the potential to revolutionize water warfare.  And it’s my invention.

Dang.  It still makes me angry seeing it.  They don’t have my super cool accessories and a few of the cooler modifications.  Plus, it’s Fisher Price.  Who wants to buy a cool water gun from Fisher Price?  But the magic’s gone now.  I don’t know how I can go on.  Fisher Price stole my idea before I ever told anyone my idea.  (Well, I did tell it to Davis and Kook, who both acted totally unimpressed.  I guess they were impressed enough to tell all their toy industry friends).  My best, most plausible ace in the hole fell apart under fire from a high pressure futuristic hydro-weapon.  I was crushed.

Scratch inventor off the list.  It’s down to lawyer and novelist.  And we all know I’m never getting to novelist, with this blog around to take all my writing time.  Where does that leave us?  That’s right, I’ll be a lawyer forever.  The surprise is that I guess I’ve always known that, and it feels good to admit it.  Turns out I like doing what I’m doing, even though I’m not revolutionizing any type of warfare.  Plus, it gives me exactly the right skills at the right moment.  Watch headlines for Bell v. Fisher Price, coming soon.

Now, I recognize that arguing that one’s performance in paintball offers hints about how one would perform in war may sound a little ridiculous, and I hesitated a little before doing so.  My hesitation in this case was very similar to the way I hesitate before comparing having kids to having a dog.  I’ve been eye-rolled right out of the room several times for making the dog/kid comparison, so I don’t make the paintball/war comparison lightly. I don’t care.  All you eye-rollers:  it’s a comparison, not an equation.  Yes, there are many, many differences between having a dog and having a kid.  But there are also enough similarities that certain comparisons can usefully be made.  I believe the same holds true for war and paintball.

Seriously, until they put one of these in your arms for the first time, you don’t know what love is.

Getting hit by a paintball hurts, so you try to reduce the amount of times you get hit.  Taking a hit also wounds the ego, since it means a buddy got the best of you (and the ineffable satisfaction that comes from shooting a friend with a high speed projectile.  Seriously.  It’s an amazing feeling.)  To say nothing of the fact that in getting hit you’re letting your team down and contributing to a victory for the other team, which is full of buddies to whom you hate to lose.

And that’s the thing:  getting shot is just so incredibly easy.  You have no way of knowing whether you’ll be able to move to the next clump of trees or be dealt a hail of bruise-inducing fire.  You peek your head above a rock and you get splattered six times by a well-concealed foe.  It quickly dawns on you how random and cruel all of this is – sometimes a paintball just has your name on it – and how little control you have over the whole affair.  The combination of your desire to avoid getting hit and the knowledge that you’re almost certainly going to get hit can lead you to, you know, just kind of hang out a little too long behind some trees, playing it a little too safe.

Kook.

And we’re talking about paintballs.  If we substitute paintballs with bullets, and  there is now a really good chance that I could get hit by a real bullet and die the minute I stick my head out?  I’m not sure I’d ever move.  I mean, I hope I would, and part of me thinks I would.  But another part of me wonders.  But all of me knows that guys who fight in wars are awesome.

I guarantee this guy has a Medal of Valor from the Paintball Congress.

You know what else paintball has taught me?  How stupid it is in movies when the good guy can make a dead run while hundreds of bad guys with huge guns continually miss him.  Sure, everyone thinks that this is unrealistic, but only serious paintballers like myself know it.  I’m tired of this in our movies.  It’s time for our movies to reflect the knowledge that paintball has given us me.  And I honestly can’t take the whole “Million bad guys can’t hit the good guy, but the good guy can drop them one by one with a pistol” dynamic anymore.  I’m done with it.

Am I being a huge wet blanket about all of this?  Probably.  But while I’m on the topic, one more thing:  Mr. Hollywood, just because computers have enabled you to make it look semi-realistic for a non-cartoon human to do three back handsprings off the wall and then slice a bad guy’s carotid artery with their sharpened pinkie nail doesn’t mean you should.  Let’s just have some realistic fighting, OK?  I’m looking at you, everyone who made “Salt.”

I tried to find a clip that provides an example of the things I’m talking about, and stumbled onto the mother lode here.  Take the time.  It’s worth it.

You know what else I realized about war?  I realized that if I had to drive a vehicle in combat – any vehicle at all – I would choose a wave runner.  I’m 100% serious about this.  Has a wave runner ever been used in actual combat?  I don’t know.  Probably.  If it hasn’t already happened then it will when our world turns into this:

Whether I’m fighting in our current world or Waterworld, I’d want a wave runner more than a tank, plane, truck, or motorcycle (which was my second pick).  I envision myself driving the wave runner while someone – I’m considering and evaluating a few different candidates, who will be notified shortly for purposes of training – mans a large mounted machine gun on the back.

Why a wave runner?  A few different reasons.  First, they would make war dangerous AND fun.  Would you rather train with a Humvee, or a wave runner?  Second, I would rather crash while on water than in the air or on land.  (Oh, by the way, this applies only to wars fought on lakes.  If you think you’re getting me on a wave runner in an ocean war, where I could get hit, start bleeding, and then fall into the ocean, then you are absolutely mistaken.  I’ve read too many books about the U.S.S. Indianapolis.)  Finally, I just have a sense about it.  I am almost 100% sure I would be very good at wave runner-based warfare.  It’s just one of those things I know.

We had a beautiful vacation this year.  The motorcyclist that was thrown from his vehicle by a Pew driver on the PCH survived, and the junk food levels were kept in sufficient moderation that we didn’t have to give any of the kids an enema this year.  Toward the end of the week, the whole family was outside playing a game of Koob on the beach.  It was one of those perfect Southern California summer nights when the heat is dissolving around an ocean breeze and the sun hovers out over the water as a reminder to everyone in California that we are down to just one more hour of looking tanned and ripped.  People were unwinding and having a good time and it was all extremely zen.

Last call for looking totally chill

There were people at the beach house next to ours this year, which was unusual.  That night they were out on the dunes near our game drinking and laughing, a family with an older mother and several adult kids with various spouses and significant others.  Their mom wandered over and spoke with Macy’s mom, and in literally less than one minute, the two were embracing.  And it wasn’t a casual hug, it looked like it meant something.  We eventually overheard that this lady was Brazilian, and the hug immediately made sense.  These ladies spent several minutes conversing arm in arm like old war buddies, and then Randy, my brother-in-law, was motioned over to join the conversation.  Randy served a mission in Brazil, so he charmed her a little in her mother tongue.  I ended up over there too a few minutes later to see if my Portugal-Portuguese would impress anybody.  It didn’t, possibly because it’s half Spanish now, and because I don’t actually speak it anymore.  The lady was sweet and we had hugs all around, and everyone was happy that we’d made friends with the neighbors.

Then our new Brazilian friend mentioned that all her kids were here and we should all play volleyball together.  My mother-in-law strongly agreed.  I love volleyball.  I dragged my ball and net halfway across America on the off-chance there’d be enough people to play with, and hadn’t broken them out yet.  I said, sure, we’d play volleyball, and I eyed the two or three strapping twenty-something guys down the beach.  Could be fun.  So I went and got my ball and she went and got her people.  It was a little weird to ditch the family on one of the last nights of our vacation, but I could tell my mother-in-law wanted us to build a rapport with our neighbors.  And that whole Portuguese thing added a weird missionary vibe that made us all act super friendly, I’m not sure why.  Randy and I, and then our other brother-in-law, Tyson stood out on the court and waited for the Brazilian dudes to come over.

The dudes stayed where they were sitting.  The girls came instead.  Three semi-attractive young Brazilian ladies, ready to play volleyball.  Feeling awkward about this turn of events, I gave a few sidelong glances at the other guys, they sort of shrugged, and then we split up and started the game.  Our wives and kids sort of stood around for a minute watching, and then they kind of quietly surrendered the beach, almost like they were trying to give us some privacy or something.  The whole Pew clan just holed up in the beach house to talk about how weird it was that their husbands were out on the beach with these . . . people, while we began a volleyball game with our three new Brazilian lady friends. Paula, Priscilla, and somebody else.

The volleyball wasn’t great.  It was pretty windy, and no one was very good.  And nobody seemed awkward about the situation.  But I was kind of dying.  And it wasn’t easy to just extricate ourselves from.  We were there as a kind of uncomfortable emissaries- as neighbors, as former missionaries, maybe Americans?  I’m not sure what the weight of responsibility came from, but I sort of felt like I was playing by assignment from my mother-in-law, I guess.  And they’ll deny it, but our wives felt like that too.  These are three firecracker women who speak their minds, but all of them had the same sense that we were taking one for the family here, so they acted weirdly quiet about it all too.

Regardless of the convoluted circumstances, every few points I would look up and think “Huh, it’s our last night on vacation with our families, and we three guys are spending it playing volleyball with three Brazilian vixens while our wives have quietly disappeared.  Where is this going?”  The answer to that question was . . . Bianca.  Mid-way through the second game, Bianca, the last of the girls in the Brazileiro family, came over to play.  While the other girls were at least sort of dignified, Bianca was flirtatious, loud, lively, and plastered.  She also happened to be uncomfortably voluptuous and dressed to prove it.  When someone else was serving, Bianca would talk to Tyson and Randy, her teammates.  When she learned their names, she’d repeat them coquettishly- “Tyson! Tyyyson!  Tysoooooon! ” and giggle, and then dive drunkenly for a ball.  My teammates, the more serious of the bunch, would roll their eyes.  And then Bianca would start in again “Rannnndy!”  Randy’s wife Molly ran out to tell us dinner would be ready in five minutes, and then demurely retreated back to the beach house (the only time I’ve ever seen any Pew girl do anything demurely).  It all felt like some weird trap.  Bianca made all of us uncomfortable.  It’s a testament to how well trained we are that playing volleyball with a Brazilian tart, even when basically assigned to do so by your wife’s family, still makes you feel like something’s not right.  But Bianca didn’t see it that way.  I think she had a thing for Randy.

A Brazilian tart

Finally we pulled away and rejoined our families.  But then Macy’s mom wanted a family picture taken, and someone suggested that one of our neighbors could come over and take it.  Tyson looked into the distance and quietly said “Bianca.”  They sent one of the guys over instead.

“Where are you from?…

‘Utah!’ I responded to two cute girls, both from New York. It took them a couple minutes to ponder this statement.

‘I couldn’t live anywhere,” said Eliana, “Where wild animals could just wander into my house.’”

…

I (Christian) thought that was so funny. Wild animals? Just coming and going as they please?

Jadrienne: Mo-ooom, Sesame Street’s about to start but there’s a cougar on the couch again.

Mom: For the last time, Jadrienne, just deal with it! You know that’s his favorite spot and if you try to move him he might injure or kill you.

Jadrienne: {whining, pre-tantrum voice} But I want to watch Sesame Street and the stupid cougar is in my way!

Mom: Then why don’t you take your fancy airs and move to London where you won’t have to deal with this sort of thing! My goodness!

Dad: Which one of you broke the arm off the big Captain Moroni?

Chazz: The one in your room?

Dad: No, the big one. The one above the fireplace!

Brigdon: Why you looking at me?

Chazz: I didn’t do it.

Brielle: Me neither. It was probably a bear or a moose. The mooses have been particularly reckless lately; chasing the rattlesnakes around the kitchen table.

Dad: {Sigh} Freaking mooses. I’m so tired of them. In fact, I’ve just about had with ALL these animals. Honey, how are the wild animals wandering into the house all the time?

Mom: Through the door frame, I imagine.

Dad: Well, why don’t we keep the doors closed then?

Mom: Because we don’t have doors, dear. You know this. No one in Utah has doors. What do you think this is, an expensive motel in New York City?

Dad: That’s true. Good point.

Chazz: Remember when wolves ate 4 of our siblings in their beds?

Brielle: That was the worst. Sometimes I wish we didn’t live here.

…

But there is something else strange going on in Utah: all the HCG and plastic surgery billboards on the Interstate. What’s going on there? It’s embarrassing. Isn’t being the world capital of multi level marketing quite enough? Dr. Heidi, we want answers! (as well as any brochures you can send my way about buttocks implants for tall males with jelly bottoms. For a friend of mine.)