Speak Up and Be Heard, but Don’t Believe Everything You Hear (The Downer)
As most of you know, I’m a person who loves to talk (to a fault, no doubt). I don’t know why, but it’s always been in my nature. Conversation is an art-form, and one that you must practice if you wish to excel at it. The problematic thing is that you can often fall into the trap of saying the wrong things or speaking to the wrong people. I’d like to say that such things as rumor-mills and gossip never crossed my path, and that I never engaged in them, but I’d be lying if I did; the odds are the same for you too if we’re being honest with ourselves. They seem to be integral to the human experience, particularly when we’re in our formative years and lack true wisdom and judgment. That being said, I genuinely despise rumors and gossip. Not only because I’ve been subject to them before – mostly miniscule and silly, others rather hurtful – but because the damage they can do to one’s reputation can sometimes be irreparable. Further, rumors and gossip can start amongst one or two people and then their nets can be cast far beyond your social and professional networks. People that you’ve never heard of before have now heard of you, only what they’ve heard is an untruth that you will have to work to discredit.
I think the worst rumor that I’ve dealt with is that I had spread gossip about someone’s personal life when I didn’t. When such things get thrown around to people that you don’t even know, it can sting; when they’re tossed to people that you have admired and deeply respected for a long time, it can feel like someone punched the air out of your lungs. And it can drive you nuts when you don’t know what the full extent of the damage is from something that you didn’t even do; all you did was be present in a conversation that shouldn’t have occurred, and got tainted. Like most situations in life, I suppose that you can take some positives from it. For one, it forces you to check yourself, what your character is, and what your words actually are. For another, it makes you re-evaluate your relationships with other people and gain a better appreciation for the persons that are really your friends. But at the same time, it can also leave you feeling deeply resentful for a awhile. You just have to evaluate, think it over, and then ultimately let it go…and pray that those whom you respected and admired don’t let you go.
Even worse are rumors and gossip that are started at places that are holy to you – literally. For whatever reason, church can be a breeding ground for half-truths and cooked up lies about people. I live 6,000 miles away from the place that I would come to every Sunday to worship, reflect, and get away from it all, yet I’ve heard more than a few different things being spread around about a few different people in just the last two weeks. Without getting into details – it’s all very obnoxious and pathetic – it’s troubling how something so un-Christian happens in a place of Christian worship. I think a lot of it stems from the insecurities that plague us, and the lack of confidence and wherewithal we have about who we are. It’s as if you want to hear other people being torn down and thrown under the bus because that’s exactly how you feel; even if I never said anything about another person, there have been times where I was so down and out that I felt exactly that way. But while we all have hearts that are bruised and battered at some point – sometimes bludgeoned - , that shouldn’t lend itself to the battering bruising of others’.
The Grilled Cheese Crucible and the Shrimp Pizza Redemption (The Upper)
This week, I had the joy of compiling a lesson on different foods and food-related expressions for my 2nd grade classes. I teach 4 2nd grade classes full of funny and adorable little kids, so it’s always a little bit of a treat to start my mornings off with them. I found a quick video clip of a cheese expert (what a title) serving up a grilled cheese sandwich, and thought it appropriate to use in my classes. After all, we can watch the video and learn some introductory vocab words: bread, cheese, butter, heart attack, clogged arteries, coronary, etc. So I downloaded the clip and put it into a neat little powerpoint presentation. I thought the kids might get a kick out of it, as anything that’s visually appealing gets wild raucous applause amongst these students. But not with this one…
We get to the video portion, and it starts to play. What followed was the strangest response to a cooking show that I’ve ever seen. Students started to gasp and awe when the bread was buttered and placed into the skillet (why is this so exciting?). Then, the cook flips the sandwich in the air with her spatula, and the kids go wild. “WWWWOOOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!!” was the common scream heard at about 65 decibels. But THEN, the sandwich was finished and thoroughly ready. The cook broke the sandwich in half to reveal the ooey-gooey cheese that would make any American mouth thousands of miles away from his home water. The kids’ reaction, however, was markedly different. There were screams of horror and agony, to the point that you’d think they were frightened and horrified by some ghost. One kid even pointed to the television scream shouting, “NO!” I was absolutely dumbfounded at the tawdry reception the great American grilled cheese sandwich had received.
The next day, I switched the video in favor of a Wolfgang Puck clip in which he made a shrimp pizza. It actually looks like a marvelous creation, though I wondered what response it would elicit from the students. So I put the video into the powerpoint and used new vocab words with identifiable pictures – tomatoes, cheese, shrimp, pizza dough – and let it rip. The kids loved it. Absolutely loved it. As all the toppings were being put onto the dough, there was a collectively mild “ooooooooohhhhh!!!” permeating the room. Wolfgang slid the pizza into the oven, and the kids were a little confused (probably because I didn’t translate the word “oven” was, or something). But once the pizza came out of the oven all fully cooked and at a golden brown, the students started clapping and chanting, “Yaaaaaayyy!”.
Moral of the story – Korean kids are funny. And grilled cheese sandwiches cause riots.
The 2010 San Francisco
are breaking my heart every week with new and inventive ways of losing. How wonderful it was to watch Nate Clements return a possibly game-winning interception, only to fumble it away because he didn’t go down in time. At 1-3, the 49ers would be only one-game behind in the NFC West. But instead, they sit at 0-4. I keep hearing all is not lost, and all is not lost for the 49ers; after all, they’re in the NFC West. It’s possible that an 8-8 team could end up winning the thing. And I don’t think it’s as bad a division as everyone says. Rather, it’s a terribly mediocre division. The Seahawks, Rams, Cardinals, and 49ers are all teams that have a chance for an 8-8 record; .500 isn’t awful, it’s just mediocre.
Still, I can’t keep waking up at 3am Monday morning to watch a game that will end up making me feel blue all day. If that’s the case, I won’t be the big jolly red man that the kids seem to endeared to.
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