Desperate Love

Volunteering makes one feel great!
I volunteered today and it made me feel great!
I volunteered at the Beloit Winterfest, which was described by one of my volunteer colleagues as "ghetto" and "dangerous," describing it so badly that it led him to believe that he should want to write a letter to a U.S. Representative because of it. Thus, leading me to believe that I should have no place volunteering at the afore-mentioned Winterfest in the future for fear of my own life.
Arriving on the scene proved that things were not at all as bad as they had seemed. I was signed up to work in the "crafts" department from 4pm - 6pm, with my good friends and fellow fraternal brothers Arune and Elon. I ended up working at the "rock climbing wall" from 4pm - 7pm by myself, keeping myself company with the gnarly music that was ever playing loudly all around me and by the energetic, curious youth that plagued my game with unrelenting interest.

In order to entertain these kids the way they wanted to be entertained, I was to strap on them a snug-fitting harness (which screams child-molestation suit) attached to a rope which went through a loop at the top and was held earnestly by me on the other end. I, the innocent bystander, the volunteer, was responsible for the lives, the very well-being of these strangers, these youth. While they strap themselves in eagerly awaiting my signal to scale this giant rubber pyramid full of air, I am at their feet contemplating all the different things that could go wrong while their lives are in my hands.
Some of these children are natural mountaineers, who quickly identify the perils and problems of rock-climbing. Some of these children are naturally petrified of anything that would bring them over the height of ten feet (this was me in my younger days). Some of these children are brats that have no compassion for other people's feelings and have poor manners and social skills. Some of these children are delightful people who have a wealth of intrigue and intelligence that will make them amazing grown-ups one day. Some of these children are ditzy teenage and pre-teen girls using this game as a desperate plight to get close to a cute older boy (yours truly). And all of these children have this innocence that allows them to depend solely on you for everything, even if it is only for a minute, and let you help them down without injuring or embarrassing themselves. I learned something important today, and that is that when you are encountering children in a manner that they are not directly connected to you, in order to get the full effect of that dependable, helpful, not-gonna-let-you-fall deity, you have to love each child like he or she is your own. This means being cordial, friendly, knowledgeable, and genuinely caring at all times, even if your relationship with that child last upwards of five seconds. Because no matter what that child looks like, be he/she black, white, bald, physically disabled, you can bet that someone in this world loves that child like you never could, and that no matter what you think of him/her, that child deserves that kind of love, so it might as well be from you. And even if that child doesn't get the kind of love he/she deserves at home, you are never going to know it and you're probably not going to be able to do anything about it, and thus you never know how much a little love from you could do for a kid like that. You could probably express the reasoning behind this in a hundred mathematical theorems involving sociology and child development and psychology, but I'd like to put it in a simple form for us all to understand: a little love goes a long way.

AIM Screen Names

Everybody has AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). And everybody talks to everybody else on AIM. It has been around since the dawn of online messaging, and since it was spawned by the most widely used internet service provider, it quickly became the most widely used messaging service. One who uses AIM is able to talk to any America Online user whilst keeping in touch with those who only have AIM. It is a great program, one that is easy to understand and follow and convenient and safe for all who use it.
The one vice with AIM and AOL is that when you first sign on to it, you must choose a screen name. This screen name is one that must be approved by America Online. It must not be already taken by someone else in its server. And furthermore, it must be your sole identity when using America Online products. This screen name sticks with you for the rest of the time you use America Online until you change accounts or change services altogether.
Now, when creating a screen name, it is similar to choosing the license plate on your car, save that you have a little bit more freedom. What many people do is try to put their name in there, only to find that some other person (surprise!) already has their name and is using it. The next thing to do is to keep your original idea, but just add numbers to it. This is a fairly commonplace strategy and typically involves the numerical representation of one's birthday (Leland93084) or the year of one's graduation from high school, which is typically the era in which you first got an AIM account (Leland 2002!! Yeah High School Diploma!!!).
These kind of names ultimately result in obsoleteness as when you signed up for this account you probably never realized that you would graduate from high school one day, and forever represent you online as LAME! or BORING! to all your friends and relatives and important people that you would meet later in life. Other people tend to opt for the other type of screen name. Of course I mean the kind of screen name where you think of something creative that only means something to you and maybe your close friends at the time of its creation, so that years down the line you meet somebody new and the first part of the conversation is always, "What is your screen name supposed to mean?"
Therefore, until AIM comes up with a system where one can update one's screen name, such as in ICQ or MSN, there is really no point in asking about a person's screen name, because you will most often be faced with an answer that is either LAME! or BORING! or DOESN'T MAKE SENSE TO YOU! To those people who, on the very rare occasion, create a screen name that is both clever and applicable for eternity, I tip my hat to you, as for the rest of you, here's to a listing of all my friends and their alternative internet identities that I can't remember most of the time anyway.

On Happiness

A good friend of mine recently asked me how I retain my happiness in the face of such adversity and misfortune. The recent tragedies I have witnessed and others around me have witnessed strike a person right where it hurts them the most, the soul. It's not an emotion you can describe or share. It's not something physical that would be pictured in an anatomy book. It's something that gets you off-guard, maybe you're already off-balance a little, maybe you're looking the other direction, then you turn...and it hits you and knocks you down. But the resilient person gets up and continues on his or her way, not without batting an eye, not without shedding a tear, nor without taking the time to collect oneself, but he or she eventually gets up and continues.
This person might have new goals, new motivation, new ideas, but he or she is still the same person and is still not giving up because of tragedy. Happiness might be something that isn't felt the same way any more, maybe not felt at all. Happiness might be the persistent goal to find, and the pursuit of it be the motivation for getting back up.

In an old Simpsons episode, Marge quotes, "Happiness is wherever you find it." Maybe that means that happiness is in the strike that you bowl at the bowling alley with your friends. Maybe it means that happiness is in your favorite song that comes on the radio just when you need to hear it. Maybe happiness is found in the fact that you have a best friend who is never going to leave your side, no matter how far away from you he or she lives. Maybe happiness is giving your mom the biggest hug the when you haven't seen her for over a month. Maybe happiness is in the pair of underwear that you spent $50 on. Maybe happiness is in something that you worked so hard on for weeks and months or even years, and finally seeing it through.
Happiness could just mean seeing other people that you love being happy. I don't know if I have an answer. I live my life one day at a time. I don't always find happiness, but far more often than tragedy, happiness finds me.

Discrepancy in Advertising

While I was on my way back to school, I was listening to the NFL playoff games on the radio and in doing so, I heard many commercial advertisements for a product called "Jointritis." The Jointritis web site says, "At last, science has found a way to combine a clinically proven external pain relief medicine (menthol) with the support of lanolin, glucosamine and chondroitin triple skin conditioners to fight dry skin."
Now, I listened to this commercial at least a dozen times while on my way back to Beloit as it was being advertised on the sports radio station and was obviously meant to appeal to the arthritis sufferers who listen to sports radio. I found one discrepancy in this advertisement, however, in the many times that I heard it. During the commercial, they announce that the product Jointritis will relieve even your (the consumer's) worst MINOR arthritis pain. This sentence struck me as odd. It will relieve your WORST MINOR arthritis pain. If it relieves such bad MINOR arthritis pain, why wouldn't it relieve MAJOR arthritis pain? Maybe I'm being too picky, but I really feel that this is faulty advertising.
I for sure would not want a product that only relieves minor pain. And I really wouldn't want a product that is too afraid to say that they can't relieve major pain. And furthermore, when I'm in pain, how am I going to be able to tell where the line is between MAJOR and MINOR pain? The bottom line is, don't use a product that uses such shifty advertising and can't be sure about the product it is they are advertising.

Pickles

I've always not liked pickles. They have never interested me. Yet, for some reason, they are something that the American culture embraces. They put pickles everywhere: on top of hamburgers, next to sandwiches, in the flavoring of potato chips, and they crush them up to put on top of hot dogs. I just don't see what the big deal is. I don't like pickles and I don't know why they became such a premium condiment on so many of the foods that I enjoy.
I am curious with the whole entity of the pickle mainly because I do enjoy the cucumber. In fact, it is one of my favorite vegetables. So much so, that if I had to name a favorite vegetable, the cucumber would probably be it. My whole life I have enjoyed cucumbers. They are just delicious. Far more delicious than pickles, which brings me back to my point. I don't know what they do to the cucumbers in the pickling process that turns them so vile, but it is this process that turns me off from the pickle, and seems to be something that America just can't get enough of.
Now, I can tolerate pickles on my fast food burgers as such if they are small and insignificant, and if there is more flavor involved than just that of the pickle. But when the pickles take over the overwhelming authority of the taste of a hamburger, that's when they have crossed the line, and I have no problem picking off the pickles in question so that I may enjoy my hamburger without the taint of said pickles.
When I was driving on my way back to school last week, I was eating a hamburger that seemed to have an entire jar of pickle slices loaded on it. Now, let me tell you, normally eating a hamburger while driving is an easy enough task to accomplish that I often don't give it much second thought, but driving while extracting half a dozen pickles from the bun is quite a difficult task and I am truly lucky to be alive right now.
America's obsession with the green, sour, slimy vegetable and my finickiness with eating and driving almost caused a mishap and I wouldn't have known who to blame.

Can one truly take responsibility for the actions I took when the fast food industry is shoving pickles down the throat of a person who doesn't like pickles? Am I wrong? Tell me people why the pickle is such an icon of our physical sustenance and tell me if I am truly out of place to despise such a thing. I am merely trying to search for answers in a pickle-infested world.

Fear of Babies

I have a certain feeling towards babies of other people. I feel more or less uncomfortable being around other people's babies. By babies I mean young children who are not able to eat, walk, or talk on their own, up until about two years of age. This feeling is something that has come about just in the last few years, when there have been a lot of new babies who have been introduced to me, who I am not directly related to.
Not being directly related to a baby puts a person in a situation that could make him or her a little uneasy, like me. In recent years, I have had older cousins and relatives of close friends who have had children. And in family gatherings and such, I have been placed alongside the rest of my family with close contact with these newborns.
What makes me uncomfortable first of all, is the fact that I don't really know the cousins or relatives themselves very well, much less, their newborn children, and I don't exactly feel right about holding the babies or giving affection to them, for the main reason that I don't really feel any affection towards them to begin with. When being introduced to a baby, there is really not any kind of guideline or code of etiquette to employ. Any kind of greeting, from a tiny handshake to a showering of kisses to a monologue of incomprehensible nonsense words will do. The baby doesn't really feel anything. He/she has no idea who you are, and probably doesn't care either.
Therefore, the only goal to keep in mind when being introduced to a baby is keeping the parent(s) in mind and not embarrassing yourself or making them feel weird about letting you be around their baby. I have been in close contact with babies since I was very young. Being the oldest of four children, I witnessed the births and upbringing of my two youngest siblings, and was thoroughly involved in their immediate childhoods.
I did a lot of holding, nurturing, caring for, and giving affection to my little brothers, and have remained an important part of their lives since then. I feel that by being introduced to someone at a young age helps to grow an attachment to that person, and I feel very attached to all of my siblings. On the other hand, that kind of attachment is not something I would try to develop with any of my cousins' kids or any baby that I am not going to be around for the majority of his/her upbringing. Thus, I would just as soon not be introduced to any of these babies at all, and just kind of observe them from a distance, rather than be placed in the limelight and responsibility of showering them with attention and holding them.
I have another fear of holding babies that stems from my childhood when I dropped my older younger brother, Ethan, when he was only a few months old, breaking his leg. I don't think I have ever fully recovered from this, even though he recovered just fine, and doesn't even remember it. I do not like holding babies as a result of this, and I feel especially uncomfortable holding a baby who is not mine or closely related to me. I have tried and will continue to try avoiding this responsibility until it is time for me to hold my own children and I can actually cling to them.
I don't think my "fear" of babies is exactly irrational, and I don't think it's exactly a fear at all, but I coined it that way because of the way it makes me feel. I would just as soon get to know these children from the age when they can actually remember me and have fun with me, rather than just stare and bubble at the mouth. Until I have my own spitting image staring and gurgling back at me, I will wait to get intimately close to a baby.