April 2006

Was up all night working, not a great night.

Sometimes it’s really hard to believe that each day is a new day.

Previously: Hiding Eggs 

Two terms that are sort of fascinating the sort of odd, and which I thought were more widely distributed, and which I really like, are: “word finding” and “word salad:”

Word salad:

In the mental health field, word salad (originally from the German Wortsalat) is used to describe the symptom of confused, and often repetitious, language that is symptomatic of various mental illnesses. It is usually associated with a manic presentation and other symptoms of serious mental illnesses, such as psychoses, including schizophrenia. It describes the apparently confused usage of words with no apparent meaning or relationship attached to them. In this context, it is considered to be a symptom of a formal thought disorder. In some cases word salad can be a sign of asymptomatic schizophrenia; e.g. the question “Why do people believe in God?” elicits a response like “Because he makes a twirl in life, my box is broken help me blue elephant. Isn’t lettuce brave? I like electrons, hello.”

Word-finding is a common, and often annoying, problem. Almost every head-injured person has this problem to some degree. Head-injured people may talk normally; speech flows evenly and it’s easy to understand. But they’ll have this very odd problem—they’ll know the word they want to say but just can’t come up with it. Professionals call this “anomia,” which means “can’t name”. Everyone has an occasional anomia; those with a head injury have it frequently. It is particularly annoying if you are dealing with people all day long. For example, it will stand out if you’ve got to give a lecture to 100 people and you stumble over words. You develop poor self-esteem because you’re just not sure of what you’re saying anymore. A variation on this problem is that you say the wrong word. Instead of saying, “pass me the spoon”, you might say “pass me the noon.” Or, instead of using a similar sounding word, you may use an entirely wrong word. Instead of “pass me the spoon,” you may say, “pass me the car.” You may not even recognize that you said the wrong word until people point it out to you.

I love that when flickr makes its’ 75 pixel by 75 pixel thumbnail of the San Diego Blog logo, the only letters showing are “ego.”

To wit:

Rolling down the 89, we’re suddenly in a teeny town, doing 35, mindful of the possibility that the local constable might want to give us and our California license-plated van a ticket, when suddenly we see this:

Which reminded everyone of the scavenger hunt game we had played looking for “farm equipment on a pillar” just the day before. I initially drive right past it—a block past it. We want to take a picture, one of us. I forget who. I pull over to the right and stop.

Then I make a u-turn and begin driving I drive a block, and then suddenly, from the back, Tyler says “Stop, stop”—there are some cars coming, and I do my best to make a left turn into the driveway, and Ty has his mouth covered, and is getting up from the back set and going towards the door, now opened for him. He makes it to the door, then one step out, then SPLAT!—out comes Ty’s red gatorade. He had not been feeling well, so had declined breakfast, or that would have been there too.

I went into high-alert mode, what do we do? what can we do? And Leah says to me “it’s okay Joe”—which somehow snapped me back into reality and I was not amped up as though ready for a Code Blue at the hospital. I really don’t have a lot of experience with simple sick-kid stuff. If someone’s heart stops, I know precisely what to do. If someone stops breathing, I know what to do. But a simple vomiting episode or other child-crisis tends to bring in “Code Blue” Joe. I like to think that in the next kid-emergency moment, I’ll be able to be be ready and calm on my own.

(See also: Posts That Might Be)

Yeah, horrible. I have one again. It’s been a few years.

I cut my right toenail too short, then I pushed a gas pedal for 14 hours. This is a terrible state of affairs.

Must. Soak. Feet.

(See also: Posts That Might Be)

Driving south on Route 89 in Utah, specifically through the small towns, I noticed that many of the houses right on 89 had pretty cherry blosson trees in their front yards. They were pink and bright in the lovely sunshine on Easter morning.

For some reason I really liked seeing that adornment.

Later we talked about adornment with tattoos and piercings, and their moral right or wrongness at Leah’s folks’ place. I find them to be morally neutral, basically.

Does that make the cherry blossoms neutral? Why am I suddenly reminded of the discussion of the gas we pass conversation?

Sadly, we took no photos of the cherry blosson trees, but in my mind’s eye, there they are, pink and bright and beautiful.

(See also: Posts That Might Be)

Say that my mother-in-law brings dirt, in large boxes, to one of her daughters. These are heavy boxes, very heavy boxes like the ones reams of paper come in. Filled with moist earth intended for gardening.

There are three boxes. Young men, two grandsons carry two of them.

The third box is carried by two of the sons-in-law, together. And even together, these are heavy boxes. Old (well, thirtysomething and fortysomething) men know their limitations, and know to protect their backs.

The young might not have learned this lesson yet. Or maybe they’re just stronger!

(See also: Posts That Might Be)

So this little anecdote is not from the trip to Utah, it’s from the weekend before, after the boys’ track meet.

The boys were explaining to me that black kids are faster because there’s an extra bone in their ankles. Inside my skull, a million angry neurons fired as I tried to think of the proper response to race-based physiological malarkey coming from the mouths of the kids whose education I have partially taken on as part of my role as stepparent.

I caught as much of my adrenaline in my throat as I could, then I opened my mouth. My response was, “No, there is not an extra bone in the ankles of blacks.”

Ty said to me, “yes there is, Devon totally looked it up and showed me it.” I said, “okay, that’s great, but I don’t believe you. It’s not true.”

I can’t remember now who suggested a bet, but either Ty or I said “what do you bet me that this is so/not so.” Now, Tyler is an ace poker player. Even at 12 years old, he does pretty well. He likes a good bet, and he was ready to wager. He also knows me, and knows that I have a broad base of general knowledge. Also, given he’s been around me going on four years now. We’ve had a few bets of a penny, or a quarter, or a dollar. I think the max was maybe five bucks. When I’m not very confident, I’ll say “yeah, but I’d only bet 5 cents for that one” or “that’s about a five dollar bet.” There’s a direct relationship between my confidence level and the amount of the bet.
How much did I say I would bet? I offered, “fifty, no… one hundred and fifty dollars. If you can prove to me that black people have an extra bone in their ankles I lose.” This is not an idle bet. Tyler is a very hard worker, and has saved money from mowing lawns. He would be good for it. I was daring him to bet me, really.

Leah chastises me, gently, “come on, give him a bet he can actually make!” (She told me later she found my behavior a little juvenile, and she’s perfectly right about that, but I also have very strong feelings on the subject of race, and though I was a little amped up with outrage, it was not really an uncharacteristic moment for me).

I say “we could use the money!!—hey, wait, make the bet eight hundred and fifty dollars, are you interested?” I offer my hand. Will he take the wager?

Ty regards my hand with a kind of horror. I like to think it’s at this point he knows that I’m right. But he’s still unsure, which is perfectly valid. I mention that I have taken anatomy and physiology. I put down my wager-hand and Dev comes around. A laptop comes out, and internet research commences. Search terms are tried—“black” and “african american” and other various searches are tried. I put my attention elsewhere. The pro-extra bone contingent come up with nothing. They’re a little disappointed. It feels a little like I’ve killed an ant with a bazooka. But I’m not unhappy with my conduct. I didn’t lose my temper or lose my breath arguing. I put my money precisely where my mouth was.
Dev and Tyler keep searching, but then we’re onto the next thing, we’re to go out to dinner for pizza. The subject is changed.

In the car, later, Leah mentions the episode to me, a little aghast at how I handled it. I admit it was a strong reaction, and I know that it would not be how she would have handled it. But instead of feeling guilty about it, I re-run the interaction in my head and I’m happy with how I handled it. I tell her so. Nobody got hurt, and even feelings were not hurt. A claim was made, a strong and bizarre one. I objected strongly. And I did what I did in the spirit of not tolerating pseudoscientific bull. Who knows where this extra bone theory came from. It’s so bizarre, and like a weed in a garden. It has to be plucked out. This kind of wive’s tale thinking has to be challenged. Why it has to be me, and why I tend to get self-righteous about it is an issue that I need to do some personal self-examination about, but the weeds are out there. I have no shame for being a little nuts about it.

Even now, I think a week later, the notion gets my dander up, and I’m happy with how I handled it. I might be a little crazy, but I was really sure of my facts.

Leah also mentioned privately to me that in the interim (after the bet and before pizza), a website was found about the controversy. The problem was it was a debunking site, and it basically disproved their contention.

(See also: Posts That Might Be)

Leah was not feeling real hot, so on Easter it fell to me to hide the eggs in Grandma & Grandpa’s backyard. Tyler could not get in on it, he was feeling too ill to compete. If you know Tyler, you know that that indicates he was really really sick. The boy has competitive spirit in his bones.

I had a blast hiding eggs. I hid them in the taller grass along the raised planters. In the holes in the fence, under and on the playground equipment. And it was even more fun watching Dev, Alex, and Tony search for the eggs. They were pretty fast, but only one or two stumped them. All told I hid 41 eggs. As a stepparent I have little if any real authority over the kids, except to back up and support my wife. If she was gone I would have no legal rights or responsibilities whatsoever toward the kids. But man, as a guy with no biological kids of my own I am really starting to “get” the parenting thing. There’s a lot of fun to be had. Of course, there’s plenty of stress and sturm und drang as well, but the positive perks are really fun.

I totally want to do it again next year.

There may be photos later in the week of some of the searching.

(See also: Posts that might be)