Category: Current Affairs

Get Lost

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

There is a little-known fact about me – or maybe it’s not so little-known – that I like disasters.

I mean, I don’t literally like disasters.  I don’t enjoy seeing people suffer and  when things happen in the world (Haiti) that cause very real suffering for  very real human beings, it moves me… Although, to be fair it does not move  me to the extent that it does most people.

What can I say?  Life is hard, shit happens.  It sucks but you get through it and you move on.  I haven’t sat glued to my TV to watch the coverage of the  devastation in Haiti.  I haven’t watched and cried as they showed images of the hundreds of thousands of homeless and destitute.  I haven’t watched and clapped my hands giddily at the images of the completely demolished and  unrecognizable buildings that once stood on that island.

Truthfully?  I haven’t donated any money.  I didn’t watch “Hope for Haiti,  Now” and call 1-800-SOB-STORY with the hope of speaking to my favorite  celebrity and giving my credit card number.  I didn’t text Haiti to 90909 so that an additional $10.00 could be added to my already too high cell phone bill.

I have my own financial hardships to alleviate and since I’m a tax paying citizen and it was a given that President Obama would write yet another big check that we can’t really cash, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve already made my donation to the relief efforts and I really can’t afford to do it twice.  I know, I know that sounds cold and heartless…  What do you know?  Another little-known fact about me.

No, I don’t like to see people suffer, but if there has to be a disaster, I want to see it.  If I can see it happen, so much the better.  I watched enthralled as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center and experienced equal  parts grief and morbid fascination as each of the towers fell.  I can’t even tell  you how many times I’ve watched Titanic and every time, I’m struck by the  incredible and, I’ll say it, exciting scenes as the ship sinks.

For ten months, I lived in San Francisco and worked in San Carlos on the peninsula.  I used to drive highway 280 twice a day, every day and there is a  stretch of highway 280 that passes, at the top of the mountain-ette (too big to be a hill but not really big enough to be a mountain) that looks over San  Francisco International Airport.  On my way to work I would look over and  see the planes coming in to land on the runways and all the bustling activity  at the airport.  On the way home, driving in bumper to bumper, start and stop traffic, I would frequently see planes that had taken off toward the mountain-ette (too big to be a hill but not really big enough to be a  mountain).  The planes had to make a steep climb to clear the mountain and once cleared they made highly perceptible banking turns to achieve their plotted flight plans.  The planes were generally higher in the air than they  seemed, I’m sure, but they were still low enough that you could usually easily make out the airline and the sounds from their straining engines were  piercingly loud!

I used to sit in my car and watch the planes climbing overhead and I would imagine them suddenly exploding mid-air much like in the opening scene of the first Final Destination movie.  Of course I never wanted that to happen!  “That would be a tragedy,” I would think, “but if it’s going to happen, I really want to see it!”

Tomorrow night is the season premiere of the final season of the television show Lost.  I have mixed feelings about it being the final season.  I’ll be glad when it’s over because they’re going out on their own terms, their own  schedule, and have promised to answer the majority of the outstanding  questions.  I’ll be glad when it’s over because I’m tired of the seemingly  endless periods of time between seasons with no repeats so I forget what was  going on at the end of the previous season.  I’ll be glad when it’s over because, frankly, I watch too much TV as it is.

But it’s a really good show and I’ll be sad to see it go, too.

When I first heard the premise of Lost my first thought was, “Bunch of people ship-wrecked on a deserted island?”  I remember watching that show when  they called it ‘Gilligan’s Island’!”  My second thought was, “Bunch of people  stranded on an island and having to survive on their own?  I remember  hating that show when it was called ‘Survivor’!”

Side note:  When I first heard about Survivor and the premise for it, I thought, “That’s so stupid!  That sounds like a lawsuit waiting to  happen.  Nobody will ever watch that show!  Nice move CBS!  That  show won’t last!”

Word to all television executives: I’m ready and willing to help you  pick successful TV shows, because clearly I know what I’m talking about!

Anyway, I decided to watch the first episode of Lost because I wanted to see the plane crash.  Fictional disaster is always better (and usually more  spectacular) than real disaster anyway.  I wasn’t going to watch the series.  I  had no interest, but I wanted to see how they would handle the plane crash.

After the first episode I was hooked and I haven’t missed a single episode since!

My friend* Jorge Garcia posted this YouTube video on his blog recently to help us refresh our memories about the goings on of the island over the last five seasons.  Please enjoy as much as I did!

*By “friend” of course, I mean, I’ve never actually met him and don’t
imagine I ever will, but I happened across his blog and subscribe to the feed
and therefore he is now, of course, “my friend Jorge Garcia.”

We Will Be Victorious!

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

It’s a cold and dreary day in the Bay Area.  It’s been raining since I woke up this morning, and probably longer than that. I haven’t washed my new car since I  bought it two months ago, because every time I thought about it, the weather  reports threatened rain.  Of course, even when it did rain, it didn’t rain on my car.  I have a garage at home and an in-door parking garage at work and so the rain  always held off until the car was in one of those two places.  My car was filthy!  This morning it poured down rain the entire way to work.  Admittedly, that’s only four miles and in some people’s eyes today is a holiday so there wasn’t much  traffic.  My drive was a short one, but the rain was coming down in sheets and I  think my car is probably sparkling clean again!

Today, as most of you know, is the day we commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. and his efforts in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.  Having been born in 1975 and coming from a northern family, it’s hard for me to conceive of a time when blacks and whites were not considered equal.  Separate schools?  Different water fountains?  Really? That’s preposterous!  Laws prohibiting the marriage of a black person to a white person?  Surely you jest!  “Separate but equal?” There is no  such thing and every conservative I ever knew would tell you so.  We live in a  civilized society where everyone s treated equally and with respect and decency,  right?!?  The idea that all these things existed, just a few short years before I was  born was simply outlandish to me.

Despite growing up in a family which hovered dangerously close to the poverty line (which, by the way is a joke for how low it is) I was privileged.  I’m male.  I’m white.  I have blue eyes.  One could even argue that I’m blond (or was before I lost my hair).  What advantage could I possibly not have?  I mean, really!

Three years ago, I finally accepted something about myself that I really had known  all along.  And in that moment of acceptance, I took a step into a foreign  land.  I found myself in a place I could not comprehend.  I found myself to be a minority.  You see, I was a blond haired, blue eyed, white male, with the world as my oyster (or so “they” would tell you), and every advantage imaginable (except for a fat bank account.)  But with that acceptance, I became a blond haired, blue eyed, white, gay male in a world steeped in controversy over whether or not I  should be allowed to exist; a world that questions the validity of my natural,  God-given preferences and desires; a world that thinks that who and what I am is a choice and not a fact of my life, and therefore, is not worthy of equality; a world that would just as soon send me to a separate school, and have me drink from a separate water fountain and tell me that my rights are equal to theirs, just as long as I keep them separate from theirs.

As a kid, I always thought that some day, many, many years into the future,  Marriage between two people, regardless of race or gender, would be no big deal.  It would be legal for two people to get married and love each other and have a happy and fulfilling life together without fear or retribution from society.  Yes, I was raised to believe that homosexuality was wrong and that those marriages between  two people of the same gender would be immoral, but I was also taught the very  important concept of separation of church and state and therefore believed that marriage between two people of the same gender should be legal even if it was  immoral.  (My beliefs about the morality of homosexuality are different now, but that’s not what this post is about.)

I always believed that some day, right here in this country, we would reach a point  in our political culture where it would be agreed that legalizing same sex marriage  would be the right thing to do.  I also always suspected that it would be when I  was very old, or even after I had died.

It is not without some sense of irony that I began to accept myself for who I  was,right around the time that the mayor of one bustling metropolis decided that it was discrimination not to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples and issued an edict to his staff to change that.  Soon after, loving, committed same-sex couples from around the country flocked to that mayor’s office  applying for  marriage licenses and saying their vows before a justice of the peace, finally  gaining a sense of acceptance and normalcy that they had longed for.

A few months later, that mayor was ordered to cease and desist issuing same-sex marriage licenses and the marriages that had been performed were deemed  invalid.

In May, 2008, six separate appeals were brought before the California Supreme  Court protesting the constitutionality of this action which ultimately resulted in the  court determining that prohibiting same sex marriage was indeed unconstitutional and ordered that same sex marriages be legalized and licenses issued, not just in the thriving metropolis, but throughout the state.

I was surprised.  I was also pleased, because not only had an injustice, that I had seen to be so my entire life, been undone, but it actually mattered to me  personally because it affected me personally… or at least it could, someday.

And then the campaign started when a hate mongering group of people put together a petition to add a law, later to be known as Proposition 8, to the  November, 2008 ballot.  Proposition 8 was intended to add an amendment to the state constitution which would define marriage as existing between one man and  one woman and making any other type of union illegal.  I became aware of the question early on, but I was complacent and delusional.  I saw countless “No on 8” signs, bumper stickers and television commercials, but nary a one “Yes on 8”  anything.  Everything I had read on-line and in magazines was anti-Prop 8.  And the legality of same sex marriages was already in place.  I couldn’t believe that in a state like California there was any chance that a bill like Prop 8 stood a chance  of passing.  I didn’t do a thing beyond casting my own vote against Proposition 8.

I, like the majority of the rest of the country stayed up late, watched and waited for  the results.  November 4, 2008 was an historic day for all of us and I wanted to know how it would turn out.  Who would be our next President?  And by how much of a majority would this hateful, horrible Proposition 8 be defeated?

President Obama won, by a landslide… early even!  Not really a surprise there, but worth waiting up for all the same.  Prop 8, on the other hand, was too close to call  and the ballot counting was taking an eternity, it seemed.  When I awoke on  Wednesday, November 5, 2008, I was shocked and devastated by what I had learned.  Moreover, I was pissed!

I wrote this and posted it to my previous blog:

An Open Letter to 52% of the Voters of the State of California

Dear 52% of the Voters of the State of California-

I want to thank you!

I want to thank you for recognizing that I am every bit as much of a human being as you are!

I want to thank you for finally acknowledging that Separation of Church and State means that even if you don’t agree on a moral level that I should be entitled to marry the man of my dreams, you at least realize that yours is a religious perspective and not a political one and therefore decided to grant me my fundamental human rights to marry the man I love.

I want to thank you for recognizing the direction this country is heading, catching up with the rest of the world, and agreeing to consider me equal, deserving of all the same rights as you.

I want to thank you for voting to defeat this hate mongering proposition to take away my rights to marry the man of my dreams, because you realize that whatever your personal opinion of marriage might be, this issue is much bigger than you or me, and therefore you MUST vote to maintain those rights for all Californian’s regardless of sexual orientation.

I want to thank you for all of these things…

Sadly, I can’t.

Those of you who read my blog on a regular basis have probably noticed a glaring absence from my post recently.  I can’t answer for the first week of January, other than that I was just back from a trip and had work piled up on my desk, but last week (and possibly the rest of this week) I was very preoccupied with keeping myself informed of the goings on with the federal appeal in the courts now (not today – they view it as a holiday) to consider the prospect of overturning Proposition 8.  The defense in this case, the side that wants to continue to  withhold my rights, fought very hard to keep the public from knowing what’s  happening in the court room.  The question of televising the case was shot down.  The United States Supreme Court overruled the sitting judge’s intention to record  the proceedings and post them on You Tube.

There are many outlets available, I’m sure.  I have chosen the Courage Campaign Prop 8 Trial Tracker for my source of information.  Rick Jacobs, the founder of the Courage Campaign Institute, has been in the court house overflow room, where the proceedings are being shown to a small group of media, and has been typing his little fingers to the bone to get as much of the information out, up to the minute, as he can and I have been fastidiously following along.  See, I decided that this time, I do not want to be a bystander who knew nothing about what was happening until  the outcome was announced on the news.  This time, I wanted to know the truth.  I wanted to know what actually happened in the court room that brought us to the  conclusion the judge will reach.

I must tell you, it’s discouraging information.  “Our” side is making compelling, rational, logical arguments that would be hard – in my opinion – to refute.  The Prop 8 side is making irrational, childish, I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I types of  arguments that are short-sighted to say the least and ludicrous in most cases.  It’s hard for me to comprehend that anyone could believe the things these guys are spouting and yet, it’s much the same hogwash that is spouted by my family.

I’m reading this coverage and I’m trying to logically process what’s being said and  it seems like any logical human being would have to come down on the side of overturning the law.  But there’s something inside me…  A voice in the back of my head.  It’s the voice that I often think I need to learn to pay better attention to  because it tends to know things, tends to be pretty accurate…  That voice in the back of my head is saying, “Our side is making an excellent case.  Prop 8 side is acting like ignorant children.  No one in their right mind would side with them…  And yet?  We are going to lose.”

I hope that voice is wrong, but I doubt it.  And the truth is, whether that voice is wrong or not, it won’t end here.  Whoever loses this case will take it to the next  level of courts to appeal it again and again and again until it can’t go any farther.  And there are those who believe that if this question goes to the Supreme Court of the United States and if the SCOTUS rules against “us”, it will be another generation before marriage equality is in place.

Seems that my child hood belief may not be so far from correct after all.  I believe this country will have marriage equality some day.  But if we want to have it, we  will have to fight for it, every step of the way!

There’s a song that came on my iPod the other day and has been in my head ever since.  The band is called Muse and the song is called Uprising.  I first became  aware of it when the chorus was used in the promotional ads for the new TV series V, and the video for the song is nothing short of bizarre.  I’m quite sure I’m making the words fit my own cause and really I’m OK with that because they do fit.

This is Uprising:

The paranoia is in bloom, the PR
Transmissions will resume, they’ll try to
Push drugs, keep us all dumb down and hope that
We will never see the truth around, so come on

Another promise, another scene, another
Packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed with all the
Green belts wrapped around our minds and endless
Red tape to keep the truth confined, so come on

They will not force us
And they will stop degrading us
And they will not control us
We will be victorious, so come on

Interchanging mind control, come let the
Revolution take its toll, if you could
Flick a switch and open your third eye, you’d see that
We should never be afraid to die, so come on

Rise up and take the power back, it’s time that
The fat cats had a heart attack, you know that
Their time is coming to an end, we have to
Unify and watch our flag ascend, so come on

They will not force us
They will stop degrading us
They will not control us
We will be victorious, so come on!

Rumble

~ riggledo ~ Leave a comment

On Monday, I told you about thinking there had been an earthquake as I was drifting off to sleep:

“…In the ‘unnecessary details’ department, I have sham pillows on my bed that I don’t have anywhere to put when I’m actually in the bed so they sit leaning on the headboard which reduces the amount of space for me to sleep in.  This is  generally not a problem but I hadn’t realized I was lower on the mattress than normal.  I was lying on my stomach and had  my left leg extended straight down with my foot pressed up against the foot board.  I was just dozing off at about 12:05 AM  when I heard a loud popping/creaking sound and felt my bed shake.  I was wide awake after that, certain there had just been  an earthquake.

I grabbed my trusty iPhone and pulled up the USGS website with the recent earthquakes maps to see what magnitude the  quake had been and there was nothing for the Bay area.  I waited a couple minutes and refreshed the page to see.  Still nothing.  I waited a few minutes more and checked again, with the same result.

That’s when it dawned on me that with my foot pressed against the footboard, I must have had a muscle spasm in my leg and shaken the bed.  And shaken myself…awake.  I turned on my side, pulled my knees up a little closer to my chest and was out like a light.”

This just happened:

Earthquake

This is a “shake map” from the US Geological Survey.  It shows the epicenter of an earthquake and how far out it can be felt.  I live right around the northwestern edge of the blue area, which means this earthquake might have been detectable at my house if I’d been looking for it.

I did not feel this one.  Ah maaan.  I never get to feel the good ones…

Apparently, I need to get my psychic powers tuned up.

The Other F Word

~ riggledo ~ 6 Comments

There is a word in the English language that can hurt me more than anything else you could say.  Maybe it’s a mistake for me to make this known but, here we go all the same.

You could call me a bastard and I wouldn’t really care all that much.  I know what the word bastard means, and I know I am not one.  And if you want to call me a bastard to tell me I’m being a jerk, I will react with the knowledge that what you’ve done is minimized your own intelligence by using a word that doesn’t apply to more harshly convey something that may or may not apply.  Bastard?  OK.  Whatever.  Moving on.

You could call me an ass hole, but given that once again, I have a vocabulary, and I know what an ass hole is, it seems pretty clear that I am not an ass  hole.  Neener neener.  I don’t care.

Dick?  Dick head?  Fucker?  The list is never ending it seems.  All you’re really doing is showing me and the world that your vocabulary is limited and  you’re not really very smart.  The emotion behind it is hurtful and I probably will be somewhat effected by that, but the words?  They just don’t matter to me.

No, there is one word (and one derivative) in this language of ours that will cut me to the core.  That word is “Fag” (or “faggot”).  That word cuts deep  and leaves me bleeding for days.  It hurts me because a) its true (unless you’re British, in which case, no, I am not a cigarette), but more importantly, b) its  always used in a hateful, demeaning way, like being a “fag” is a horrible thing.

My brother once used the word in a conversation, not referring to me, in what he claimed to have been a joking manner.  I told him that word was offensive to me and I didn’t want it used in my presence.  He said, fine and apologized and we moved on.

My mother used that word once, with a tone of disgust, when we were riding the 38 Geary bus through San Francisco and a guy got on the bus that she  perceived to be gay (I don’t think he was, and in theory, I should know).  I told her I found that word offensive and I didn’t want it used in my presence and she said, “Tough.”

When used in this way it’s a hateful, ugly word and I can not accept the “we’re taking it back as our own” philosophy.  That F word is simply never an appropriate, acceptable word (unless you’re British and you’re referring to cigarettes and even then you better be clear).

Sidebar: I now have the Robbie Williams Strong stuck in my head, the first line being “My breath smells of a thousand fags.”  When he  performed it live in studio of my favorite radio show he had to stop there to explain to the Yankees that “Fags” were cigarettes in England.

I’ve just read an article on Edge on the Net about LGBT middle school kids facing more harassment than older kids and adults.  Without much effort, reading the article took me right back to my own middle school days and I realized I absolutely knew, first hand, how true this is.

The article says:

Part of the problem, the article said, was a perception that kids that young cannot possibly know whether they are gay or not, leading adults  to look the other way when anti-gay slurs are tossed around. But part of the problem, too, is that emotions run high at that age, and stigma  can cut deep.

It never ceases to amaze me how closed-minded, straight adults think when it comes to these things.  On some levels its true that “kids that young cannot possibly know whether they are gay or not” in that kids that young are still figuring themselves and the world around them out, but I believe if you talk to most out gay people, myself included, they will tell you that they did know at a very young age, even if they didn’t know they knew.  I couldn’t face it and as such couldn’t bring myself to admit it to myself, let alone anyone else, but some part of me knew it to be true.

And this is where the perception part comes in.  I may not have been old enough to know I was gay, but the kids in my class perceived it.  They assumed it.  And they responded to it.  Even when I was too young to understand what I was feeling and how my actions might betray my true self, my peers saw  it, and they were relentless!

For me to be a grade school, middle school, even early high school kid and have the people at my schools call me “fag” and push me around and threaten  me (and have none of the adults in the school – or my family) do anything about it, when I was convinced that I was not gay, was terribly painful.  How much worse must it be for a kid who has an inkling that he might be gay and those around him shame him for it!

Aside from the two instances at the beginning of this post, I haven’t heard that word used in my presence since high school.  I realized as I read the article that it doesn’t matter.  The absence of the word hasn’t made it hurt any less, hasn’t made me despise the word any less.

What is it going to take to change our society?  What is it going to take for “tolerance” to be more than just a buzz word?  What is it going to take for  “acceptance” to be something we do and not just something we talk about?  What is it going to take?  It’s time!

Gooooo Joe! Go Far. Really, Really Far!

~ riggledo ~ 5 Comments

Last Sunday brought another outing with Little.  He wanted to see GI Joe and his mother said it was OK, so I set it up.  Our normal meeting time is 2:00 but because the movie started at 1:50, I arrived at his house at 1:15.  I have a pet peeve about cutting things too close and I’m kind of particular about where I like to sit in a movie theater.  I like to be in the top row whenever  possible, because there always seems to be a  little more leg room there, the next best option is the first row of the stadium seating area.  I knew it would take about 15 minutes to get to the theater, I figured there’d be popcorn and drinks to be obtained and I wanted to make sure bladders were emptied prior to the start of  the movie (particularly mine.)

When I arrived at Little’s apartment he was sitting on the living room floor with his brother playing a video game.  He was wearing track pants and a t-shirt and I thought he was just ready and waiting for me, (I was about two minutes late).  His mother said something to him in Spanish, but the only word I was able to make out was pantalones (pants).  I thought that was strange because he looked ready to go to me, but he paused the game, got up from the floor and ran off to his  room.  His brother reset the game so he could continue playing on his own (He  and his Big Brother go out on a different day).

That’s when I noticed it.  The game they’d been playing was set in a warehouse of some sort.  What’s shown on the screen is from the perspective of the character’s eyes.  So you see the room around you, you see the boxes and crates that are  spread about and you see the other characters in the game.  Off in the distance  you see a red cross-hairs and at the bottom of the screen is an assault rifle  pointing ahead of you.  The objective of the game is to put the cross hairs on the enemy characters and shoot and kill them.  I asked Little’s brother who was  winning and he shrugged and said, “I don’t know.  You just shoot people.”  The only thing that made me feel at all better was that twice as I watched him play the  game, his character was shot by the bad guys and he died.  Of course he just hit reset and started the game over so the consequences may not be really driven  home, but at least it’s not just him running around killing other people.

Little re-emerged from the back of the apartment, having changed his clothes to  blue jeans and a shirt with a zip up hoodie jacket.  He also had his hair gelled and styled.  His hair is cut such that he can have a “fauxhawk” and he wanted his  mother to style it for him, it’s actually really cute, and I’m a little jealous.  We got a late start because of this but we had plenty of time.

We arrived at the theater and there was a bit of a line, but nothing too bad.  I asked him if he wanted to get something to drink but he said no.  I asked him if he was sure and he said no again.  Once we finally had the tickets and were inside the building I asked him if he needed to go to the bathroom.  He hemmed and  hawed about it a little bit until I said, “’Cause I need to go to the bathroom so we  have to go in there anyway.”  We both went and I was impressed when he went  straight to the sink and washed his hands without me saying anything at all.

We walked past the concession stand after we left the bathroom and Little said,  “OK.  I changed my mind.  I do want something.”  I asked him what he wanted and he said he wanted popcorn.  Last I checked you can’t drink popcorn, kid!  I didn’t mind, I was going to offer that as well.  So I got a small popcorn (In movie theater  terms, small is relative) and two bottles of water.  This was going to work out fine because I drink water more slowly than I do Diet Pepsi and I thought maybe I could make it through the whole movie without having to go back to the bathroom.

By the time we had our snacks and got to the door of the theater it was 1:52 and  the previews had already begun.  I was prepared to tell him to wait inside until our eyes adjusted to the dark but when we got inside there were only about six people in the whole theater.  I let him pick the seats and he did a pretty good job.

I don’t know what Little weighs but he is still small enough that he has to sit in the  back seat of the car.  He ended up fighting for his life with the seat as it tried more than once to fold back up with him inside.  I’m going to have to work out how I can help him with that.

We settled into our seats and started eating the popcorn while watching the previews and he was pretty funny.  He would pick up one kernel of corn and put it  in his mouth and immediately pick up the next one repeating this method over and over till his mouth was full and then he’d chew it.  Whatever. He was happy and  that’s what really matters.

Now, the movie…  The movie was really pretty terrible.  It was clearly all about the action, and there was a lot of action and I’m realizing that action isn’t enough for  me. I like an action movie as much as the next… not terribly macho guy but I need more.  K once told me she didn’t like a certain movie because, she said, “there  was too much plot.  I don’t like a lot of plot in my action.”  (And no K, I’m not  calling you a macho guy.)  I am different though.  If there’s no plot in my action the action isn’t worthwhile.

I’m honestly wondering if I have always been this way or if it’s a new development  but, given the concerns I’ve raised previously with Little and his preoccupation with guns, I found myself far more acutely aware of the gratuitous death.  It’s funny how we, as a society, tend to turn a blind eye to death and destruction in our  “entertainment” as long as it’s the bad guys that are dying.  Watching Fast & Furious, just the other day with Michelle, I actually cheered a little bit, at the end  when the bad guy died.  But in GI Joe there was a lot of the bad guys killing good  guys (extras though they may have been) and there’s a scene where they’re driving through the streets of Paris and the bad guys are crashing into and flipping cars right and left, if not killing then at least injuring innocent civilians in their  path.    Putting aside, for a moment, that I would not have seen this movie to begin with if not for Little, I do not know if I would have been bothered (or as bothered) by this if Little hadn’t been there.  In general, I felt that this movie was much too much for seven year old eyes.

But the plot, my God, the PLOT.  The plot was riddled with as many holes as the characters lying dead or dying on the ground.  I was left with so many questions and had I cared about the movie to begin with I’d have been terribly dismayed instead of just annoyed as I am.

Lesson number one for Kevin, when taking a seven year old to a movie, he will have to go to the bathroom at the height of the action.  Little spent most of the  movie staring intently at the screen barely speaking.  I suppose it could have been very different.  He could have talked through the whole thing.  Every once in a while he’d say, “Whooa.  That’s coooool!” but that was about it.  I glanced over at him a few times and as the movie progressed and got more intense I noticed he had his index fingers in his mouth and he was rocking forward and back in his seat.  I asked him if he was OK and he said he was.  I thought maybe he was nervous.  I didn’t know that this wasn’t just a thing he does, like sucking his thumb.  But I had my suspicions about what it meant, and sure enough just as we were reaching a pivotal moment in the “story” he leaned over to me and said, “I have to go to the bathroom.”  That was OK.  I did too!  But to this day, I do not know what happened to The President.

This week, we’re going to  see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs which seems much more up my—er, his alley.  I’m actually looking forward to it and Little doesn’t know it, but we’re going to go see it in 3-D.

I had a check-in call with  Hadley, the Match Support Specialist this  week.  They require it in  the early stages of the  match, but I wanted to  talk with her anyway.  I wanted to know, from Big Brothers and Big Sisters  perspective if I was  over-reacting to the gun thing.  Hadley confirmed  what I already suspected; that I can’t really say  anything to Little’s mother or even to him as far as telling him that this is “bad”.  But she also agreed that it’s unfortunate that he’s exposed to so much of it and  that I should just keep an eye on it but make every effort to keep the focus of our time together off of such things.  So I’m on the look-out for other things I can do  with him.  Thanks so much to Jody for some great thoughts in the comments on  my recent post for things to do with Little.  It was a great help.  I’m open to more  suggestions from any and all of you if you’ve got some insight you’d like to share!