If Everyone is Incredible, Nobody Is

Recognize that quote? It's from "The Incredibles", that absolutely entertaining kids movie that was released a few years back. I'm sure you've seen it. It's about a world with superheroes, except the superheroes are forced to go underground because they were taking too many liberties: too many people were getting hurt, or people were getting saved that didn't want to be saved. Well, the bad guy of the movie, was spurned by the main character, Mr. Incredible, and so he goes on an inventing spree and develops this incredibly invincible robotic monster that knocks off each incredible one after another. His main goal is to rid the world of incredibles, mass market these super weapons so that everyone can be incredible, because in his words, "if every one is incredible, nobody is".

But that's not the way I see it. Because truly, we are all incredible, or at least we have incredibleness embedded in our DNA just waiting to come out. We all sell ourselves way too short, and its easy to do. Life is hard, full of setbacks and missteps. We struggle through ultimately just hoping to provide food, clothing, and shelter for our families over our precarious lifetimes, always feeling slightly on the edge, like one wrong move, and things could slip away. At least that is how I sometimes feel, doesn't everyone else? But even when we feel secure in our most basic needs, tapping into our incredibleness genes is still an incredibly tricky thing to do, there are so many barriers. We have to be absolutely honest with ourselves and our own abilities and talents. We need to be brave, willing to forge our own independent paths, learning from others, sure, but also willing to be fiercely independent in our goals and direction. We also have to be strong and disciplined, able to shed ourselves of the infinite distractions society throws at us, and we have to be willing to tap into the personal inspiration of deity, being willing to tap into a power much bigger than ourselves. All of this is possible for every last one of us, but so few really recognize it and have the confidence to step up to it.

But its true, our world is filled with true blue Incredibles. And I think this is the beauty of democracy and a truly free market. Where the individual has all the opportunity in the world to produce products other people desire. Where the government is run and controlled more by the people at large than by a few selected elite. At least that's the theory. The real world is not so clean. In reality, you tend to have a handful of super stars making all the money, doing all the heavy lifting, and the rest of us are way too dependent of the decisions those folks make.

Some of this is just plain a reality. There are some superbly gifted people out there, while the rest of us toil away with our lives. Only a few people, relatively speaking, are required to churn out Facebook or Google, while the rest of us are just happy consumers. And the economy is based largely on this. Rather than uniquely architected custom homes, most of us are more than content with some half baked template that gets duplicated over and over again. They throw in a few thrills, some archways, some big gothic pillars, some vaulted ceilings. Then they mass produce, and we consume happy to get something so nice, so cheap, and so new.

But it seems like things are starting to turn a little bit. The internet evens the playing field some. It used to be only the small minority could really contribute to the nationwide conversation, those lucky folks working for our newspapers, publishing books selected by the major publishing companies. But right now, I'm publishing my essays for all the world to see, no matter if only five loving readers are actually taking advantage of my generous offerings. But not just me, millions of others are publishing every day of all kinds of quality, some of it quite good. The fact is so many people are contributing, producing, and they are doing it for love and not for money. Intellectual commodities are flooding the market at dirt cheap prices.

And it seems, for some reason, society at large is making a shift. It used to be that a high school education was all that was required, but now advanced degrees are now almost becoming as necessary as high school degrees once were. The strangest jobs are now requiring people who work in them to study Shakespeare and Thoreau, and then to write deep essays on them.

Read this essay. Really, read it. It's absolutely fascinating. The author teaches English at a junior college in the evenings on the side largely to working professionals who are required to get more credits for their jobs.

Consider this quote where the author talks about the possibilities that seem at the taking for each class member as they begin their course work:

Class time passes in a flash—for me, anyway, if not always for my students. I love trying to convey to a class my passion for literature, or the immense satisfaction a writer can feel when he or she nails a point. When I am at my best, and the students are in an attentive mood—generally, early in the semester—the room crackles with positive energy. Even the cops-to-be feel driven to succeed in the class, to read and love the great books, to explore potent themes, to write well.

The bursting of our collective bubble comes quickly. A few weeks into the semester, the students must start actually writing papers, and I must start grading them. Despite my enthusiasm, despite their thoughtful nods of agreement and what I have interpreted as moments of clarity, it turns out that in many cases it has all come to naught.

And I can really relate to that. I remember enrolling in a class with an exciting, interesting sounding subject, stepping into class with my text books in hand, clean white notebooks, and an enthusiastic motivated spirit. And for a while, I'm keeping up. But subjects are always harder than they appear. The process of learning something is very tedious, the work is arduous, and those times where I'm not fully prepared with the prerequisite knowledge, or if I just simply doze off one too many lectures, I fall behind, and I'm forever, hopelessly lost, until through my own sheer force of will, manage to catch up (usually when a midterm looms).

For the students of this professor's class, however, the situation is much more dire. These students are so thoroughly unprepared for college, and they lack the time or the means to really catch up. The professor talks about how he just can't pass these students, how he's forced to fail a large percentage of them. Here's another quote:

There seems, as is often the case in colleges, to be a huge gulf between academia and reality. No one is thinking about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass. The colleges and the students and I are bobbing up and down in a great wave of societal forces—social optimism on a large scale, the sense of college as both a universal right and a need, financial necessity on the part of the colleges and the students alike, the desire to maintain high academic standards while admitting marginal students—that have coalesced into a mini-tsunami of difficulty. No one has drawn up the flowchart and seen that, although more-widespread college admission is a bonanza for the colleges and nice for the students and makes the entire United States of America feel rather pleased with itself, there is one point of irreconcilable conflict in the system, and that is the moment when the adjunct instructor, who by the nature of his job teaches the worst students, must ink the F on that first writing assignment.


Or consider this quote about a student of his who just couldn't cut it writing a term paper:

Her deficits don’t make her a bad person or even unintelligent or unusual. Many people cannot write a research paper, and few have to do so in their workaday life. But let’s be frank: she wasn’t working at anything resembling a college level.


But should our society be so widely educated?

There is a sense that the American workforce needs to be more professional at every level. Many jobs that never before required college now call for at least some post-secondary course work. School custodians, those who run the boilers and spread synthetic sawdust on vomit, may not need college—but the people who supervise them, who decide which brand of synthetic sawdust to procure, probably do. There is a sense that our bank tellers should be college educated, and so should our medical-billing techs, and our child-welfare officers, and our sheriffs and federal marshals. We want the police officer who stops the car with the broken taillight to have a nodding acquaintance with great literature. And when all is said and done, my personal economic interest in booming college enrollments aside, I don’t think that’s such a boneheaded idea. Reading literature at the college level is a route to spacious thinking, to an acquaintance with certain profound ideas, that is of value to anyone. Will having read Invisible Man make a police officer less likely to indulge in racial profiling? Will a familiarity with Steinbeck make him more sympathetic to the plight of the poor, so that he might understand the lives of those who simply cannot get their taillights fixed? Will it benefit the correctional officer to have read The Autobiography of Malcolm X? The health-care worker Arrowsmith? Should the child-welfare officer read Plath’s “Daddy”? Such one-to-one correspondences probably don’t hold. But although I may be biased, being an English instructor and all, I can’t shake the sense that reading literature is informative and broadening and ultimately good for you. If I should fall ill, I suppose I would rather the hospital billing staff had read The Pickwick Papers, particularly the parts set in debtors’ prison.

I like the point he makes further on (unquoted), that its purely an American idea to provide the highest level of education to anyone in society who wants it. To democratize knowledge is America's legacy to the world.

But for those folks in this professor's class, it is a struggle:

For I, who teach these low-level, must-pass, no-multiple-choice-test classes, am the one who ultimately delivers the news to those unfit for college: that they lack the most-basic skills and have no sense of the volume of work required; that they are in some cases barely literate; that they are so bereft of schemata, so dispossessed of contexts in which to place newly acquired knowledge, that every bit of information simply raises more questions. They are not ready for high school, some of them, much less for college.

And really what is college for? I'm not really sure I guess. For so many of us, its just a way to get the door open a little wider for a more lucrative career. I went to engineering school, which is largely, nothing more than a souped up technical college experience. I barely did any writing in college. I took my required English 101/102 courses as a freshman and that was it until I had to take one credit hour (one hour/week) course on technical writing the last semester of my degree. We only had to take to the bare minimum number of humanities courses to give us a "well rounded" education. Largely our course load was filled with math, science, and engineering courses, and nothing more. And even much of this has not been directly useful to my day to day work activities. There are definitely plenty of successful programmers out there who have never set foot on a college campus.

But, what about those jobs referred to in the article I'm so heavily quoting? Why would a hotel manager need a college degree? Or a police officer?

Well, its because Democracy demands it, I suppose. If we are to really, truly to realize the ideal of democracy and of capitalism, we need to democratize brilliance. Despite what this teacher has experienced, I think we have in the large view, a growing sense of this democratization. Just one example, in the old days, there were the superstar poets that everyone knew, those we all studied in school, Yeats, Keats, Wordsworth, I'm sure there were other less talented poets during those days that nobody remembers now, but surely the sheer quantity of poetry writing and publishing now is exponentially larger than was found then. And the quality is better now too. At least thats what I've read.

But, as noted in the article, we have a long way to go before we have reached the ideal. And I think the ideal, the dream, is to make genius ubiquitous. If the market can be flooded with brilliant craftsman, artists, architects, programmers, musicians, actors, scientists, doctors, and nurses, the salaries of those professions would most certainly go down, but then we would all have free or cheap access to it. My dream would be to hire out an architect to custom design my home, have skilled carpenters construct it, have interior designers decorate it and fill it with really nice furniture. Right now, this kind of thing is only reserved for the wealthy. But if labor costs were cheap because talented people were buzzing around like flies, anybody would be able to afford to do this.

In fact, this sort of thing seems to be happening right now to some extent in NY City, my sister lives there, and she is always telling me about how she has attended some local theater production and the talent of the actors were amazing because amazing actors are simply everywhere over there, all congregating in NY City trying to catch a break. She's told me a professional jazz pianists accompanies her daughter's ballet class. And my sister is not rich, its just that this kind of stuff is available to almost anyone who wants it.

So an educated and talented workforce generates wealth, and as this talent is distributed in a relative equal level throughout the citizenry, you would expect wealth to be distributed equally as well. Consider this quote from the book Development As Freedom:

"This approach goes against - and to a great extent undermines - the belief that has been so dominant in many policy circles that 'human development' (as the process of expanding education, health care and other conditions of human life is often called) is really a kind of luxury that only rich countries can afford. Perhaps the most important impact of the type of success that the East Asian economies, beginning with Japan, have had is the total undermining of that implicit prejudice. These economies went comparatively early for massive expansion of education, and later also of health care, and this they did, in many cases, before they broke the restraints of general poverty." (p 41)

And further, the author compares the developmental effects in India and China:

"The contrast between India and China has some illustrative importance in this context. The governments of both China and India have been making efforts for some time now (China from 1979 and India from 1991) to move toward a more open, internationally active, market-oriented economy. While Indian efforts have slowly met with some success, the kind of massive results that China has seen has failed to occur in India. An important factor in this contrast lies in the fact that from the standpoint of social preparedness, China is a great deal ahead of India in being able to make use of the market economy. While pre-reform China was deeply skeptical of markets, it was not skeptical of basic education and widely shared health care. When China turned to marketization in1979, it already had a highly literate people, especially the young, with good schooling facilities across the bulk of the country. In this respect, China was not very far from the basic educational situation in South Korea or Taiwan, where too an educated population had played a major role in seizing the economic opportunities offered by a supportive market system. In contrast, India had a half-literate adult population when it turned to marketization in 1991, and the situation is not much improved today." (p 42)

There has been a ton of discussion (myself included) in how to improve our health care system and educational system, but it should not be difficult. Consider this one final quote form Development as Freedom:

"Surprise may well be expressed about the possibility of financing support-led processes in poor countries, since resources are surely needed to expand public services, including health care and education. In fact, the need for resources is frequently presented as an argument for postponing socially important investments until a country is already richer. Where (as the famous rhetorical question goes) are the poor countries going to find the means for 'supporting' these services? This is indeed a good question, but it also has a good answer, which lies very considerably in the economics of relative costs. The viability of this support-led process is dependent on the fact that the relevant social services (such as health care and basic education) are very labor intensive, and thus are relatively inexpensive in poor- and low-wage - economies. A poor economy may have less money to spend on health care and education, but it also needs less money to spend to provide the same services, which would cost much more in the richer countries. Relative prices and costs are important parameters in determining what a country can afford. Given an appropriate social commitment, the need to take note of the variability of relative costs is particularly important for social services in health and education."

Slight political digression here. Our country is doing well, when compared to many developing countries, in providing general education and health care to its population, and we are doing well, in my view, in educating the population as a whole when compared to any other country in the world. But in health care, we are falling painfully short. Health care costs have risen drastically over the past few years when compared to other goods and services. This shouldn't be, and its directly a result of a system and political failure in our country that must be addressed, and I hope will be addressed once we get a new president.

But the point is, a talented, healthy and motivated population produces wealth.

I do have some more to say on the importance of personal education and the impact we have as smart consumers and not just producers. An intelligent consumer is someone who pays more for quality and thus rewards smart producers. Consuming smart takes about as much skill, effort, and talent as producing smart. Its simply almost as difficult. Smart poets produce great poetry, but how much better would our society be if we had a nation of poetry readers. Great symphonies come from many people willing to spend a lifetime sacrificing their time to hone their talents, but its all for naught, if nobody is around to listen and appreciate it.

In contrast, how much skill does it really take to post naked pictures on the internet. But pornography is a huge industry, but sadly only enslaves those who consume it into painful addictions and often broken families. A prime example where both the producers and the consumers act to make our country poorer.

It's for this and other reasons that the value of an individual sacrificing years to hone a skill is not just valued simply because of the opportunity to have a career. My wife, who I am enormously lucky to have in my life, started piano lessons at age four and half and stuck to it all the way through a Master Degree in piano performance. She entered my life as she was just beginning her Masters degree at ASU. I remember her crying many times as she was trying desperately to prepare for her Masters recital, where she was to memorize and perform an hours worth of intense classical music. She pulled through the experience and did it. But for what? She continued on as a part time piano teacher, charging as much (or maybe marginally more) as many other teachers with less education and experiences. She is now teaching one student, and is relegated to using her piano skills as an accompanist to a church's volunteer choir. Surely she didn't need a Master's degree for that.

But the experience of pushing herself to the absolute peak of her potential, to really understand what it takes to master something at a high level, to appreciate and know music as well as she does now because of that experience, is part of the reason why living on this earth is so enjoyable. The fact that each of us has the potential to pursue some interest, whatever it is, the fact that almost any subject imaginable is wonderfully complex and deep enough to offer a lifetime of study, and the fact that we can with our knowledge, skills and talents, give back both to our economy and our community in ways that can deeply affect each other's lives in real tangible ways, makes each day so exciting (and at times frustrating), but immensely rewarding.

Genius is within our grasp, if only we have the self-awareness to reach out and take it.

About a Boy

Ahh, memories. I remember quite vividly the feeling of graduating from college and getting my first big job at Motorola in Scottsdale. Tucson was a big highlight of my single adult life, and I miss the place a lot. But it was exciting to get into an apartment in west Mesa, and extend my single adult life, this time with more spending cash. I still remember the feeling of going to Motorola my first day, wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase, desperate to mask all of my fears and feelings of incompetence. Motorola back in 1996 was still a high flying large company, the biggest private employer in Arizona with thriving businesses in cellular, space, semiconductors, and defense. Remember Iridium? Motorola's vision of the future of telecommunications where everyone would own telephones that could link directly to satellites. Well, Motorola was in the middle of spending gobs of money on that technology while everyone else was going digital... I remember actually wishing I could be a part of that action.

Instead I joined the government group, the only group in the company offering new employees fresh out of college the opportunity to enjoy a three month training class where they could take all day classes and participate in a fake school-like project. It was Motorola's way to ease the transition from school to work. Really, it was a way for them to spend a portion of all that cash they were rolling in at the time.

It was during that training class that a representative from Valley Big Brothers Big Sisters did a presentation trying to convince a few of us to volunteer. Immediately, I was convinced, for some reason its far too easy to convince me to do stuff. But, this opportunity just seemed like an excellent opportunity to give back, and an opportunity to get some daddy preparation (at the time I was hoping marriage was soon to come).

I have always had this urgency to really make a difference, which is admirable, sure. But just making a some small intangible difference is not enough for me; I have to do something big, something that a made for tv movie could be made out of. Is that sort of delusional thinking common? I am not sure, but I am sure that it had something to do with the inordinant amount of made for tv movies I watched growing up. And I wonder if that is not one source of society's discontent. We immerse ourselves in fantasy so much, that we assume real life should work the same way.

Nonetheless, I was excited and inspired, so I jumped in, I became a big brother. I signed up, filled out the application, did the interviews, allowed them to perform all of the necessary background checks, submitted to the training, and eventually was to be matched to a little brother. For those of you who don't know how this works, its all about matching kids from single parent families with adults who can act as a mentor for the kid. This idea is a good one in most cases, I am sure. Statistically, the program seems to work. Statistics, however, are one thing. I was about to test this thing out for real. But its an impossible test to really take. We will never know how the trajectory of this kid’s life would have been if I had not been a part of it, and maybe that’s a good thing.

Regardless, I was in, and I was matched with a twelve year old kid named Thor (you know, I simply don’t remember why he got that name, I wish I would have written more of these things down). Thor was the oldest of four children, he had two brothers and a sister. His dad, sadly was in jail, Thor explained the situation of his early life, but I don’t remember the details. I do remember things weren’t so easy. His mom, though not educated enough to really enjoy a comfortable life, seemed to be managing at some level. They squeezed themselves into a low-rent two bedroom apartment they lived in the entire time I knew them. Interesting enough, they also happened to be Mormon.

It’s actually an interesting story to hear how the VBBS case worker decided to match me with Thor because we didn’t have that much in common. Thor really did not play sports, not the traditional ones anyway. He did love to roller skate, and do other more high-risk X-games sort of activities, but nothing traditional. He also loved to draw, especially comic book characters. I still have a couple of samples of his art. So, he was apparently tough to match, since most big brothers wanted a little to take to ball games, to play catch with. However, based solely on the fact that I loved to go to art museums, I was matched with Thor. But I wasn't matched yet, first Thor would have to approve me as his big. But I was committed; I could not back out after we met because that would mean just one more rejection in his life. He, however, could reject me. I’m not sure how common littles reject bigs, but I can imagine this not being very common.

I do remember that first day we met. I went to their apartment on Apache Boulevard in Tempe, so close to ASU. Thor and I talked at a picnic table outside his apartment. I don't remember that conversation much at all, but I do remember thinking he was a cool kid, but really most kids at twelve are cool. Thor liked me enough, I think his exact words were something like, “he’s nice”. And we were matched. I remember my first feelings were how desperately I wanted him to like me…

I do want to give you a quick run-down of my general approach to being a big brother with him, some of it was conscious, but most of it was sub-conscious, all of the issues I brought into the relationship:

1) I worried about spending too much on him initially, but eventually I just did. Its just easier. I had money, I lived cheaply in so many ways, so I had plenty of extra spending cash I spent too little effort keeping track of, and I spent a pretty decent amount of that spending cash on Thor.

2) I probably did 1) because part of me wanted Thor to like me. It’s a terrible way to behave, but I simply couldn’t help it. Like I said before, I wanted to have a pretty significant influence on him, I probably wanted that too much.

3) Similarly, I think my expectations were probably too high; I was hoping for too much of a payoff, especially early on. I just couldn't appreciate the moments I was having with him while I was having them.

4) My general approach was to include him in my life. I took him to events with friends of mine, even took him on some young single adult ward events, one most notably was a water ski trip. I took him to work with me on a "Bring your Child to Work day". All of my friends got to know him pretty well, and most if not all the girls I dated got to know him as well.

I probably had sort of a secret sub-goal as well, one that I’m not very proud of, I probably used him a little bit as a way to get girls to like me. Remember the movie that came out a few years back, it was called About a Boy , it starred Hugh Grant. I guess you could say I was having a far less Hollywood version of that. I remember telling my sister this and she literally laughed out loud knowing how this would definitely be an impressive thing to do for many Mormon women, however, I don’t think it had much influence on Sara…

At any rate, I will not bore you with every last detail of our big brother/little brother experience, but I want to give you some highlights to maybe provide the general feeling of the experience.

Very poignantly, I remember shortly after we were matched, he would often say that now he had three brothers, I being the third. For some strange reason, I kind of blew that off. Again, my expectations were just way too high, I just couldn’t appreciate what I was getting at the time. Some time later, a woman called me to do an interview on my big brother work because she was doing some research on the whole program. I think she was attending NAU. I told her this experience, and of course she recognized immediately the significance. I wondered right then why I hadn’t.

One of the very first activities we did together was also very funny because it was a typical Scott Turley thing to do. Remember he was a newly converted Mormon. I’m not sure they attended much, but at the time he was in the Scouting program, and me, all Second Class scout of me, someone who knew nothing about Scouting at the time, decided we could work on his scouting requirements together. That lasted all of about one hour.

Instead, we tended to do easier stuff. We watched a lot of movies, we went out to eat a lot. Like I said, I took him with me to hang out with friends. We went to a Halloween haunted house. I did let him come with me and a few of my friends to see the very first Star Wars (the first of the last three released).

Once, I even took Thor and a friend of his to San Diego. We went to help Dicky, a work friend of mine re-locate there for his work. We helped Dicky move, stayed at his apartment and went to the beach. I was supposed to take him to Sea World or something big like that, instead he wanted me to spend that money on this remote control boat that they tried out in the water, I remember feeling very annoyed at that, but why. I should have just went with that. Thor and I did get in one of the only fights I remember getting in with him. Thor refused to take a shower at Dicky’s, something about not feeling comfortable showering in another person’s house. I think I finally relented, but there was some yelling involved, and he felt very bad about it.

I also remember trying to help him in school, working with him on Math, taking him out to dinner as an incentive and then working with him on those problems as we ate dinner. He was depressingly so far behind in school. I'm not sure how well he read. I bought him a book once as a gift, but I don't think he ever read it, he claimed that he lost it. I'm not sure he ever graduated from high school, I lost track of him before I could find out... The thing about school, and I'm guessing this may be a bigger problem for boys than for girls, is that if you fall behind, and especially as you get older, say junior high and especially high school, you're ego and pride get in the way. You simply do not want anyone to know how far behind you really are. And once your ego gets in the way, learning is almost impossible. And even though Thor and I were pretty close, he was ashamed to show me or anyone else (as far as I knew), just how much he struggled. I guess this is why early childhood education is so critical.

The cool thing about being in VBBS is you get a lot of free and discounted tickets to events. Cool, if your little actually likes the events you get tickets to. As I said earlier, Thor hated sports, but for some reason I had this weird obsession to attend stuff that was presented to us as gifts, and Thor (I’m not sure) didn’t always like to tell me no when I asked him if he was interested in something. I took him to a Coyotes game this way (our local professional hockey team). I also tried to take him to a Suns game. We had tickets in the suites, where you get free food while watching the game, but for he wasn’t at home when I drove by to pick him up. I was really frustrated knowing that those tickets could have been given to someone else, but looking back I should have realized he wasn't into the Phoenix Suns.

Thor was active. He liked thrills. He loved roller blading. I went to a few skating rink events with him where he would compete doing these kind of roller blading dance routines with other kids. Kind of hip-hop on skates. His younger siblings also did this. He was good on the ice skates as well. I also took him, multiple times, to the local rock gym to climb, which he really enjoyed, and where he showed some skill.

Also, its funny to say, I dragged him to museums, art musems, a classical music concert (while I was dating Sara), the Arizona Science center. One of my goals was to expose the kid to stuff that he wouldn't get any other way. He went along too, and I don't remember much complaining, but I'm not sure how much of it he was into.

Toward the end, as he was getting older, it got tougher to stay connected with him. We started having less to talk about, and probably I began to be less cool to him. When he was younger, I remember feeling he probably was proud to present me to his friends as his big brother, I wonder if I had that same appeal as he aged. Because I am a lot of things, but cool is not one of them. I made some attempts to do stuff with him regularly. I had this hair-brained idea to build a miniture house, complete with internal wiring, but this time, I wanted Thor to help pay for the materials, but he had no job, no way to do it, so that kind of fizzled.

We did get into a routine where we lifted weights together at a gym near my apartment, this was after Sara and I were married but before we had Elizabeth. I remember we lifted weights without saying a whole lot. It didn't last very long.

Also, I was terrible at getting him thoughtful gifts. His siblings also had various big brothers/big sisters as well. Some had multiple bigs as they inevitably moved on to other things for various reasons. There were a few times where we all would get together to do a gift exchange during the Christmas season, except I would claim I didn’t have mine and I would give Thor’s my gift later. I just couldn't do it, I couldn't compare what I would give Thor to what they would give Thor’s siblings. I think I always disappointed him a little in that department.

Soon after that, we had our first baby. Things got busier for me, and when I did try to call Thor, he stopped returning my phone calls. I think he moved out of the apartment at about that time. Soon after, I stopped calling at all, but I had Thor’s mom's phone number memorized, so I knew I had some way to reconnect if I wanted to. Some time later, I tried to call it, but the number was out of service. Thor and his family were out of my life for good.

So, Thor was twelve when we first hooked up in 1996, and the last time I've seen Thor was shortly after we had our first baby was born in 2001. So, we saw each other at least 3-4 times a month for a solid five years.

I'm terrible at taking pictures, and I'm sad to say I have so few pictures of him. One picture I do have of him, though, is a picture of him holding our baby Elizabeth shortly after her birth. It was probably one of the last times I’ve seen him.

I have had various attempts to do volunteer work in my life, in an effort to fill this internal need of mine to make a difference. I have learned through some of these experiences, that is enough to have a desire to serve, but it really helps to have skills. Good intentions are not always enough. Sometimes, I wonder if in your attempts to make a difference in another person’s life, how much do you let your own personal baggage get in the way. I know I try to give gifts, but sometimes, sadly, those gifts come with strings attached, and so they aren’t received with as much appreciation, and they aren't really as helpful as they could have been.

Mainly, I became a big brother to learn how to become a father. I am a father now, although my kids are now much younger than Thor was when he was in my life. I’m finding that a relationship between a father and his children are much different than the relationship I had with Thor. Something about being with your own children every single day, having your DNA in them, I think it makes the bond stronger, the connections easier to make because I think you have some understanding of them since they have a little of what you have. Some of the problems I had with Thor is that we were probably a little too different. I know he had his own issues, some of them major. His dad’s abandonment, his crazy apartment that was often very chaotic. His problems with school. He had no perspective, he knew nothing about money or what it took to make it. Most of these problems I really couldn't really relate to, and I did not have a good strategy on how to help Thor work through them.

But, Thor was very good-hearted, very generous (the television we owned for the first 6 and a half years of our marriage came from him), very self-confident, and in many ways, he was talented. All things considered, I really appreciated all of those experiences. I must say, though, every time I see that picture of Thor holding my baby daughter, I feel sad he is no longer in my life.

Hookah Lounge

Sunday I found out through a member of my church that a public hearing was taking place to allow a Hookah lounge to operate across the street from Tempe High School, just down the block from where we live. It's item number 3 on the May 20th agenda.

The letter I wrote to the mayor, Tempe City Council, and those running in tomorrow's election is below (unfortunately I spelled Joel Navarro's name wrong and he didn't get it). Hut Hutson and Julie Jakubek actually responded back, funny since they are actually running tomorrow. Hut, the only incumbent running, promised he would look into it. I hope he does.


Dear esteemed Mayor, Tempe City Council, and those running for City Council:

I am a concerned resident in the city of Tempe in the neighborhood between Mill Avenue and the railroad tracks south of Alameda Dr. Our family has two young children, ages three and five and attend church with families who also live in the surrounding neighborhoods some of whom have children attending Tempe High.

It has come to my attention that the business HB is applying for a permit to operate a Hookah Lounge in the Walgreen's shopping center across the street from Tempe High school. The business also intends to extend operations from 3pm to 2am, opening its business just as the Tempe High School will be releasing its students from classes.

I am concerned because I frequent this shopping center often. The corner restaurant, El Penasco, is a local favorite for our family, and we sometimes walk their to frequent it and other businesses in the plaza.

About four years ago, we were looking to buy a house in the area. We did not want to follow the trend of many of my friends who were buying brand new houses on the outskirts of town. We chose Tempe because we love Tempe. We bought an old house in an old neighborhood because we liked the amenities of the city. However, one of the distinct disadvantages of being in this part of the city for us is the number of tobacco type shops close by. There are three, including this one that we could literally walk to from our house.

Much more important, having such a shop right across the street from a high school is a direct violation of city law. And for them to operate such a shop at 3pm so close to the hours of operation of a high school just violates common sense. I do understand the shop was operating before the city law to ban such establishments was in place, but the law was passed for a reason, and common sense needs to dictate in this case.

I strongly urge all on this list who have the power to limit operations of such establishments to locations not near our schools, and they especially should not be allowed to open as students are walking nearby.

One final note, I am a concerned and informed Tempe resident. I have researched those running for city council this Tuesday and I am planning to vote. I am generally excited at the direction Tempe is currently going, but I definitely want to see neighborhoods like mine looked after to ensure a safe, family friendly environment for all who reside here.

I appreciate your time on this matter.

UPDATE:

I was not able to attend the meeting that happened today at 1:30pm, but I did get an update from Ben Arrendondo, one of the councilman I e-mailed. His staff member called me personally and told me the request was approved and gave me a little more background:

HB, the company in question, opened its establishment in 2006 before the city ordinance was passed.

Local neighborhood residents complained to the city about this establishment being literally across the street from Tempe High school, and as a result of their complaint, they got the city to pass an ordinance prohibiting the sale of tobacco within so many yards of a school.

HB was able to remain open in their current location as long as they only sold tobacco products, not smoke them. Well, they've been smoking before the ordinance and since, and recently found to be in violation. Today they submitted a request to get an allowance for smoking. It was approved because they were able to show they were that type of establishment even before the city ordinance was passed.

The lady who called me was not aware of the change in the time they would be open, but I'm supposed to get a call back tomorrow.

I now have fourteen days to appeal the approval if I'm so inclinded. I'm currently in contact of my neighbors to assess their feelings.

I appreciate the comments in the post about Hookah lounges in general. However, I do feel that repetitive exposure to certain products has an effect on behavior. I think this is why businesses blast commercials at us constantly trying to get us to partake in their product. Its why tobacco companies can no longer advertise on television. Tobacco is an incredibly addictive and harmful substance. High school kids are not mature enough to really make good decisions about tobacco largely. I know many people now addicted to tobacco all because of stupid decisions made in high school.

I do not feel there's anything we can do about the Hookah lounge now, but I'm hoping a compromise decision can be reached. Where they at least are not allowed to open business until 7pm.