Crazy Times

It’s a beautiful day here on this 2020 Mother’s Day.

The world seems so green and lush and healthy with the deep blue of a clear sky, the yellow rays of sunlight and the colours of the flowers springing up through the ground.

It’s hard to believe the world is sick.

Well, not the planet - but the global population of humans that inhabit our world remain under a stay in place isolation order of varying degrees.

It’s crazy.

You’re living through all of this too, so I won’t bore you with those details you already know.

As for our little family, a lot has changed.

My wife Darlene and I have have separated now for two years, amicably and there is no reason for anyone to shed a tear on our behalf, as it has a been a very positive experience for all.

My two little girls - Alannah and Ashley-Rae are now 19 and almost 18 respectively and have both become quite accomplished young women in their own rights.

And some eight months ago I met one of the most special people I have ever known and fallen madly in love with her in the process.

During the last nine weeks of pandemic self-isolation I have been working from home, my laptop set up with three monitors and a keyboard in the corner of the living room, with the honour and pleasure of working with a fantastic team on one of the most exciting projects of my career - using Microsoft Teams and Zoom to collaborate we meet online several times a day.

Alannah has successfully completed her first year of college, and Ashley-Rae participates in online classes and course material for the remainder of her senior year. If anyone in our house has suffered from the self-isolation mandate during this pandemic it has been Ashley-Rae. Her Senior Year Prom cancelled, her final year of both high school softball and dance team competitions eliminated, she, like most other high school seniors is constantly impacted by a string of disappointments.

The next disappointment is likely to be the cancelation of this summer’s travel fast-pitch softball schedule. The majority of the team’s schedule slated to play in both Michigan and Ohio in a time when the opening of the U.S. - Canada border to non-essential traffic seems highly unlikely until at least the fall, it appears apparent that this season will be another casualty,

Given my age nearing sixty, my daughters have mandated I do stay home - no shopping - no visiting - except to visit Jackie and her daughter Mackenzie - who is the same age as my two daughters - I am now homebound.

I’ll admit I spend a lot of time with Jackie, either at her beautiful home a few miles away, or here at our modest little homestead.

But there is so much unsettled in our world right now.

There are a lot of questions that will be decided by the laws of economics as the world awaits the opportunity to reopen after this shut down.

Will we ever return to a normal office work-life again is will it be the new norm to work from home? Given that there will likely be a six-foot separation rule when businesses try to move back their traditional workplaces - will that reduced optimization of office space make I cheaper to have staff work at home? What will the productivity rates of people working from home be?What will these shifts really mean to our local, provincial, national and global economies?

Will we ever enjoy going to restaurants, movie theatres, shopping malls and such places ever again? What happens to music concerts and professional sports events now?

Or will we simply open up and go back to life exactly as we left it?

To me, it comes down to confidence levels - at several levels. From the global level to open up borders depending on national confidence levels, the more local levels to determine what the safest number of people to gather in one place will be, and our individual confidence that interacting with our world is safe enough yet.

But certainly there is still great opportunities out there for those who have the skills to chase them. We are already seeing some - such as delivery services - from food to purchases - even entertainment. And the realization that we reached our technology level just in time.

And other new opportunities will arise - the most notable in my mind is to offer the skill to help companies and corporations figure out how they will pivot their business practices to survive in this new world.

But will we see the end of professional sports? The end of arena sized music and entertainment concerts? The Theatre? Will we ever again celebrate events with parades and fireworks? And how can the way we take care of our senior citizens change - because nursing homes and long term care facilities definitely need to be overhauled.

What can we afford to do?

Who knows? I don’t. But I suspect we will never again be able to feel comfortable in large crowds - at least not without masks and gloves?

But I think it’s safe to say that if your industry supports health care, delivery of goods, or any kind of internet based transactions or home improvement services, you are likely to boom after this. But manufacturing has no option but to further automate using robotics.

Our world - I believe - will be different.

And I hope that the impact to your world is more positive than negative.

The next question though - when this is all over - will be “did we handle this right?” A lot of retrospective about self isolation and personal distancing will happen - after the crisis - after we are immunized - if we are ever immunized. There will be a lot of finger pointing and blaming. And the current great divide between the left and the right will likely grow larger - as will the divide between the have’s and have not’s. And conspiracy theories - already appearing - will fire dispute in that each will claim that the other is lying or covering something up.

And the scientists will be monitoring closely how this incredible reduction in human activity has allowed this planet we live on to heal. That should be interesting. Or even more concerning - depending on what we find out.

It’s bound to happen.

It’s who we are.

And these are crazy times.

Rolling Around the Sun

This big blue waterlogged rock of ours keeps spinning around the sun.

I guess this means that time just keeps moving forward, one second after the previous one. Baby steps along.

It did so before we got here. It will continue to do so after we leave.

I find time so fascinating. It is the only man made invention that was here before we got here and will continue long after we are gone to no longer measure it. Even long after our water logged rock and our blazing sun. Even after the Milky Way galaxy that our sun orbits is gone.

It hurts my brain to think about this.

Time that I am speaking of is the measurement of consecutive moments and knowing where we are in that measurement.

Others – much smarter than I – talk about it as an entity – relationship with and a dependency on gravity. The stronger the density of gravity – the quicker time passes – supposedly proven by using atomic clocks to compare time between the earth’s highest peaks and at sea level, several nanoseconds of difference between the two.

Is that really proof, or a flaw in the mechanics of an atomic clock?

I think of this as people I know and love pass away. It’s part of that conceptual question of “what happens when we die?”

Do we continue to exist? Or is it the same thing as turning off and unplugging the living room lamp?

Well, I certainly am no Einstein.

But all things of nature are so perfectly designed. Perfectly balanced. Perfectly fit to fulfill a role. Leaves on trees stretch out to receive the sun, or collect the rain. Seeds from those trees dispersed by wind or animal or both to extend be reborn after the parent tree dies, and rots away, becoming the nutrients needed for the next generation of all things around it.

So why would our being – our soul – be any different?

We have no math to prove it. No scientific experiment to shed even a hope. We do have legends, and antidotal accounts that demand it is true. Our religions tell us it is true. But we have nothing scientific to back it up.

Our existence on this planet, our cognitive awareness that we are here and our interaction with the world and the thoughts – thoughts is the key word – our perception of what we see and smell and taste and feel, combined with our emotional responses – that’s what makes us … us.

It’s brilliant. So if everything else produced by nature is regenerated again – lakes to gas to clouds to rain to water as food to lakes again as an example why would we just assume that the lights go off when we die?

That seems too easy an answer. But scientifically it is the only conclusion we can make so far.

We have no data to support anything else.

I used to have a boss named Bob. Bob would never say that we didn’t know anything or couldn’t do anything without adding the word “yet” to the end of the sentence. It was always a challenge to learn. The subtle instruction was “go figure it out”.

I loved working for Bob.

And I don’t believe the lights go off at the end. Maybe our consciousness doesn’t continue in a manner that remembers the existences before – maybe it all gets rewired – re-used somehow. Maybe we do get planted elsewhere. Around and around again and again – waiting for the right opportunity to develop to exist.

Just like our big rock spinning around the sun, once molten lava, then drenched with water, then frozen, then thawed, then green with life and then the next thing – whatever it may be. And whatever it may be again after that. And after that again.

We just really don’t know … yet.

And before I close this – please do not pummel me with comments about heaven or hell or reincarnation. Those are ideas, perhaps even theories. And their truth to you is directly related to the amount of faith you have in those beliefs.

I am not here to debate or even question your faith. Honest.

I’m just reiterating that as a collective, we don’t know …

Yet.

But when we pass away, then will we know?

I sure hope so.

Conceding the Gap

It’s interesting how the generation gap makes itself evident every once in a while.

Sometimes it’s even kind of awkward.

One evening after work last week, I was unwinding with a drink, my iPad, and a Bluetooth speaker on the back deck by the pool. I have tons of old music loaded on a media server that sits in the living room, but no matter how much music I add, I never seem to find the music I am in the mood for at a given moment. I never really know what I'm in the mood to hear until I hear it.

Such was the case this evening.

So I switched the setting of my app to simply play random selections in “shuffle mode”.

One song comes up from a live Bruce Springsteen concert album. You can hear the cheers and crowd noise in the background and then the base guitar kicks in hard with a familiar repeating riff interrupted by the smash of drum and cymbals  between each. And then the Boss starts in …

I’m driving in my car …

I turn on the radio …

I start pulling you closer …

At that point my youngest daughter Ashley-Rae comes out, bored from a summer day with nothing to do, and sits down beside me.

“Ash, this is a great great tune … listen …” I said to my fifteen year old who thinks music before 2012 is too old to be bothered with.

I hit the double arrow icon on the tablet to start the song over. The crowd noise rises again as it did before, and Ashley-Rae sits patiently to humor me.

I’m driving in my car …

I turn on the radio …

I start pulling you closer …

But you just say No ….

You say you don’t like it …

But I know you’re a liar …

Because when we kiss … ohhhh …

Fire …

“Dad, is this song about rape?” asks Ashley-Rae.

“Huh? What? No …. No no no”, I stammer … shocked at this twist, not sure if she’s teasing me or seriously asking. “No this about when a man … you know … and he thinks the girl is playing hard to .. you know …”

And I stopped.

“Dad, no means no”.

“Uh yeah – yes it absolutely does … “ remembering my audience is my very pretty fifteen year old daughter that I am very proud to hear say this back to me.

“So is this song about rape?”

At that moment the neighbor lady across the corner came to the back gate announcing her arrival with “Hellloooo?”

Perfect timing. I jumped up and hurried my way to the arbor gate and let her in. She was asking to borrow a garden tool. I found it surprisingly quickly in the shed and as I was handing it to her I asked “Hey do you remember an old Springsteen song … “I’m driving in my car …”

“I turn on the radio …” she continued and she sang the next two lines as she did a little dance.

“Ashley-Rae just asked me if that song is about rape …”

The nice neighbor lady looked up at me surprised. “huh?” and she started to sing the next lines … “ohhh … gee … I don’t know … it’s such a great song … how do you handle that?”

At that moment that I realized that whether or not we thought it was a great song or not didn’t matter.

“ASH” I yelled, hoping she was still outside.

“Oh hi miss Melinda”, she said as she appeared around the corner.

“I asked miss Melinda, and she agreed that the song is about rape”, I said and the nice neighbor lady played along by nodding, accepting her new stance, understanding why.

“Okay” said Ash as she spun back around to go back in the house. “Too bad though, it’s a pretty good song”.

Oh and Four and a Wedding

My daughters’ fastpitch softball has been over for about a month now. The season ends way too soon for me.

This was the year they would have more talent than any other year before. A team of strong bats, and team of strong defensive players. But for some reason the team never got on that roll we were all waiting for.

Both my daughters played for this team.

A team of 16 year old's with the exception of my daughter Ashley-Rae who didn’t turn 15 until the final week of the provincial championships.

Ash had a break out year, earning outright the second base position. And moving up to the top half of the batting order. She made clutch hits, she made clutch plays.

Alannah – my eldest – did not pitch her best this year. She blamed a tough school year, her new part-time job, and my inability to catch her pitching practice due to a leg infection I fought off the first half of summer.

Excuses. Teenage girls.

There were some highlights – at least for me as a sideline dad.

There was the beautiful double plays from Alannah at third to Ashley-Rae at second to McKay at first. I got one of them on video – well – I have the ground underneath the plays on video – I was too busy watching.

There was Alannah’s home run – which I also have on video – a hard swing at a fastball up around the letters she caught square on the barrel. In the video it looks effortless – all she was looking for was a line drive for a base hit, but it flew over the right center field fence with barely an arc.

There was another game in Toledo – the girls playing an elite Michigan team – down by three – with Ashley-Rae hitting a line shot off the fence in left field to bring in two runs – followed by Alannah hitting a line drive the opposite way to right off the fence to bring in two more – one of them being Ash.

Great moments for this Dad.

In my years of being a Dad on the sidelines I have mastered the ability to cheer humbly for such things – cheering for the team, not for my girls – I do that privately with them when it’s over. And never to be the loudest parent cheering. The humbler the better.

This year we also had some coaching challenges. One of the coaches was the boyfriend of the manager. Our manager was and still is a great player in her own right in her own day, and just now coming into her own with this squad of four years together. I hold her in the highest regard. One day she was running the bases as the team was working on those “where to throw the ball under what circumstances” situation defensive skills sessions. In a run down, one of the girls tried to make her throw too quick and caught the manager right in the mouth. A hard thrown ball, the manager couldn’t hide her pain. As she went to the side to recover, the boyfriend coach gathered the group into the middle and used every swear word in the book to chew the group out for this accident.

Every word you could imagine was used.

Every parent attending behind the fences heard every word of the obscenity lased diatribe strung together as only swearwords can be that makes no sense but gets the anger across.

That was never forgotten.

In the following weeks – one night sitting outside the hotel in Toledo, I asked the boyfriend coach about this over a beer.

“I have been to many clinics and workshops and listened to many great coaches talk about being a great coach”, he said justifying, “and they all say that you should be very supportive during games – but a real prick in practice”.

“And you think this works then?” I inquired – suggesting he should re-think his pontification.

“I have coached elite boys in hockey and baseball …” he started.

“I have coached and raised girls”, I replied, “and that shit don’t work with girls”.

“Well it’s getting late”, he said, and went back inside.

I tried.

We had yet another challenge this year as well. My wonderful cousin whom I consider a niece although she considers me a cousin was getting married. We received the invitation the summer before, and my girls – never having been to a wedding yet – were very excited. The date was a Sunday in late July.

It was in Kitchener, Ontario.

Shortly after we received the wedding invitation, the date was announced for the next provincial grand championships. It was that same weekend – the final games to be played on that Sunday. But which town in Ontario was going to host them was still unknown.

“It’ll work out – it always does” I told the girls, because it’s true.

In late April the decision was made that the Grands would be held in Stratford – a tiny town known to the world for its Shakespearean plays … and yeah … it’s the home of Justin Bieber.

Stratford is only 45 minutes away from Kitchener. And since hotels in Stratford in the summer are so hard to get – we would stay in Kitchener.

“There ya go”, I said to the girls.

“Great Dad, but we will be playing Sunday, we are better team this year, and we always make it to the Sunday final bracket”.

“It’ll work out”, I promised. “It always does”.

The week before Grands, the girls played in a warm-up tournament in Brantford, Ontario, the home of The Great One … Wayne Gretzky.

At sometime early in that tournament the coaches were warned for “chirping the umps” from the bench. It was the boyfriend coach – the one who was being supportive of the girls during games. Balls and strike and safe and out calls were all being questioned.

After that first game, the team received a “bench warning” sometime during that first inning of each game following. The word was out, the umpires were not putting up with this guy.

Games were played – more lost than won, and we exited Branford early Sunday morning.

The next weekend – we headed to Stratford.

The truck was loaded down with ball equipment and canopies and lawn chairs and coolers and medical bags and suitcases – and dress bags and make-up kits and suit bags. Twice our normal cargo – because we had a big wedding to go to.

The first inning of the first game, our pitcher was throwing fine, but no strikes were getting called on close pitches. The boyfriend coach chirped. The bench warning was administered. These were the same umpires from last weekend.

The Saturday afternoon game came due. The girls had to win this game to earn a spot into the Sunday bracket. A record of three losses and no wins of course put them below the cut-line. A win here might still get them in to the bottom seed.

In the first inning – they hit our starting pitcher hard, and after she took a hard line drive off the knee cap, she was done and injured on the bench. Alannah came into pitch – knowing that she would not get a strike called unless she threw it right down the middle of the plate. Balls on the corners, drop balls and risers were all called balls. So as hard as she could she threw fastballs down the middle. And they hit her all over park too.

Finally the boyfriend coach said something about a pitch that caught the inside corner. The ump stepped from behind the plate and took two steps towards the dugout and said “It was this far inside“, holding his fingers an exaggerated distance apart.

“Sure it was” mumbled the boyfriend coach.

“You’re outta here!” screamed the ump who whirled around with his arm in the air.

The manager stepped out to try to talk to the ump – but before she got both feet on the field he whirled back around and yelled “You too!”

With both the manager and the boyfriend coach gone, our remaining two coaches – both with more experience alone had than most of the opposing managers and coaches in the tournament, led our girls to a comeback – rallies were countered by the other team’s rallies. Great defensive plays on both sides. And the gap was being closed by our girls. But no close calls went our way, and the strike zone for our pitchers remained the size of a keyhole. And in the end – our girls fell short. But not for lack of trying, and not for lack heart.

And it was over. They were done on the Saturday afternoon.

And in the car, Alannah muttered “well, at least we know we can go to the wedding”.

“I told you it would work out darlin’, it always works out.”

The wedding was awesome, but that deserves a story of its own. 

The Smoke Obscuring the Horizon

Where there’s smoke, there’s confusion.

North Korea is threatening. So is Iran. The Middle East tensions are now global. Racial tensions have reached a boiling point again. Something’s up with Russia, but for now it's speculation.

And our climate is changing.

And the rich are getting richer.

The history revisionists have their quills wet with ink, wanting to rewrite what the world already went through to make it more palatable to the masses.

Where there’s smoke there’s fire. And man, there’s a lot of smoke.

Man there’s a lot of confusion right now.

Where there’s confusion, people make blind choices. The smoke of the confusion is blinding.

Blind choices make one search out a side to join. There is safety in numbers. You have to say you agree with one side or the others views – facts are dismissed as alternate facts – you have to buy in before you can join a side.

Man the water is really murky. The media forces the people to make murky choices.

You either like team CNN or you like team Fox News. Or you have given up on both.

You read, but the papers and the new media of the internet make you choose the same teams.

People who were moderate now are taking firmer stances on the left or the right – succumbing to the forces pushing them there.

The common definition of what is right and just is now not accepted as right and just for some. The Alternative Truth.  Ignorance is complimented by laziness. Thinking is just too hard. People beg to be told what to think.

The real truth lies somewhere down the middle – and we all know that. But to go with the flow, the path of least resistance takes one down the road in quest of the approval of the side you chose, you dismiss what you know as reasonableness.

Reasonableness is just not sexy. Reasonableness doesn’t sell.

Extreme sells.

Say all this took place on a stage. A world full of actors. A global play, or a global wrestling match and the world is the ring. Twists and turns of plot. Overacted and deliberate but grandiose wresting moves and dirty foul play.

It all makes reasonableness look boring.

But say you could look down on this stage. Remove yourself from the scene. Perch yourselves above it all – sitting on a rock in a cool breeze as you watch the world unfold. And you quietly contemplate what it is you are really witnessing.

Is this the start of the end?

The pot on the stove is starting to boil over.

People are pissed. On both sides. All over the world. People have had enough of what was. They want what should be – again based on the side you have chosen to dictate what should be.

Is this the crossroads that will determine what kind of people we become? Yes.

Does America traverse this crossroads alone? Or do we all get caught up in the wake. Do we all go through this metamorphous together, or do we all change based on how the falling dominos impact us directly.

We all go through it together.

What will this world look like when we come out of this change? What is the world my daughters will grow up in?

Will this world make it through this?

There’s a lot of rash threats flying around out there.

And there’s a lot of people vying for attention.

All thoughts are now broadcast worldwide in a mere second. Twitter and Facebook and Instagram are the new network news. And everyone is an anchorman.

The world now truly is a stage. And yes, we are now truly are all actors.

But I wish I could read ahead in the script and see how this all ends.

But it’s just too damn smoky and too damn murky.

The masses will follow the path of least resistance. You see the path, it always flows downhill. If the flow builds up to much speed it will crash at the bottom.

And then, only then, will the world come to a more common conclusion. 

Ode to the Eccentric Computer Programmer

I’ve been in the IT industry for 30 years now.

The most memorable people I have worked with have been software developers.

I’ve seen the change from guys wearing white short-sleeve dress shirts with pen protectors in their breast pocket and thick black rim glasses punching holes in cards and running them through card readers to compile the code to run on the only computer in the company or institution, to guys wearing ear-bud headphones listening to their playlist of death-punk rock as they pound out code on the keyboard and reviewing it on the top middle monitor out of six that wrap around their workstation.

And while it seems like these guys are totally different, they are in fact the same guy.

They don’t live in the same world we do.

Their view of art is code that compiles cleanly the first time and passes every unit test without fail. 

They dare the testers on the QA team to find a bug, and offer them a reward if they do.

They tell jokes using binary code and tape them to the office fridge, taking joy in the fact that nobody else understands it, let alone gets the punch line.

They stay late. They come in early. They would rather be at their workstation than out in the world of social interaction. They decorate their workstations with strange posters and knick knacks of comic book heroes and science fiction space ships. They greet you with the Vulcan salute of the raised hand with the middle two fingers spread apart.

They speak perfect Klingon.

They only venture out in public when a new Star Wars movie is opening, fully dressed in their best Darth Vader, Storm Trooper, or Jedi Knight costume – but they look nothing like the character. And the weeks afterwards are spent dissecting the movie, where it betrayed the historical knowledge of that universe, and how they believe it should have been scripted.

These people are different.

They are committed.

They should be committed. But we need them.

I have known so many of these guys.

They care little for the real happenings in the world.

They do not pay attention to or are oblivious to the office politics that arise in every IT department.

They are loyal to the systems they create, not to the leadership of the team. And they will defend their creations to the death if they have to, often grabbing the nearest light sabre at their desk to defend themselves, leaned against the wall next to the skate board they rode to work that day.

And when you do convince them that there is really and truly a bug in their code, using rational they understand and test case scenarios targeted specifically at that trouble spot, they have it fixed before you can return to your desk, and unit tested, and promoted to the staging environment, and they appear as you sit down with your fresh cup of coffee that you poured on your way back from your desk expecting you to test it right there and right then to prove to you that it works – and for you to take back all those mean nasty things you said about the quality of their compiled application.

If they could, they would promote right into production. After all, to them, it’s more important that the world uses their code in perfect condition than any of that pomp and circumstance layer of protocol, process and paperwork that a production release entails.

“Just let me deploy it”.

And they debate the requirements that you gave them, and explain to you again and again how your requirements are really wrong, and this is what the code is supposed to do.

And when there is a problem someplace else in the system, an application that is not theirs, they dive into that problem like a wake of vultures attacking a now dead possum on the side of the road – looking for the bug, and telling the unfortunate programmer responsible how to fix it, and sharing between them the comments of how stupid the bug was to begin with.

And they hate peer reviews.

I love these guys.

But it’s hard to keep these guys around.

They move on. Usually for the next most exciting project they can find, or for an environment that sees their odd behavior as pure genius. They want cool stuff to work on, and your respect of the obvious fact that they are the very best there ever was.

They rarely move for the money. Or the benefits.

These guys can drive you nuts.

If you should find yourself out in public with these guys, like at a Friday lunch at the local hangout, or a team building night out at the local watering hole, you will find yourself quietly sitting, looking at your watch or your phone, waiting for this genius to finish regaling you with their word by word dialog re-enactment from the scene from Star Trek Wrath of Khan where Spock dies inside the chamber that powers the warp engines and Kirk watches helplessly outside.

And in that restaurant, this brilliant programmer will end their re-enactment by screaming “KHAN!!!” at the top of their voice, and once they get their breath back, state “I love that scene”.

They don’t make movies about these guys. At least not where they are the central character. Who would pay to watch a guy sit at a keyboard, staring at a monitor, shaking their head to the beat of the guitar silently playing through their ear-buds.

Okay, there was Zuckerberg in The Social Network. But he was rarely at the keyboard.

And he’s a billionaire.

A rare find to see the guy who wrote the code wind up in charge and with all the money. Ask Bill Gates or Steve Jobs who wrote the code.

So Zuckerberg is an anomaly.

There should be a story about a team of these guys – all as eccentric as I have described – faced now in a world where there is no electricity or computers – and they have to survive.

I’d pay to see that movie. Even before one of these eccentric fellows put it up on Kodi to stream for free.

Now, before I get an inbox full of women saying “Hey, dipshit, women are programmers too ya know!”, let me just say that in 30 years, I have never met an eccentric female programmer. They have been brilliant, but not eccentric. They are highly organized persons who can juggle many things at one time, understand the requirements without you having to specify them, and their code compiles and runs as perfectly as their male eccentric counterparts.

But I haven’t met even one yet that is nuts.

And these guys are all nuts.

And I love them for it.

I just don’t want to have one for a roommate.

Timely Advice

When it comes to life in general, there are two schools of thought.

Some will tell you to live for the moment. Look no further than right now and savor it.

Others will tell you to live your life today in preparation for tomorrow.

Today is just a passing thing.

And tomorrow never comes.

But every action you take today will have an impact on your tomorrow.

You cannot see your future today because you have not taken the steps yet that get you to tomorrow.

So we set goals. Objectives. And we plan.

We plan for tomorrow. But when tomorrow gets here, it is always today. There’s another tomorrow to plan for. And we spend that today planning for the next tomorrow.

But technology, it seems changes everything. So far it has changed how we communicate, how we learn, how we are informed. And how we travel.

Technology is not done yet. It’s just begun. And much of what we have today was dreamt up in science fiction a hundred years ago.

So what’s next?

A time machine? One that takes you back in history, and forward into the future? So many stories have been written and movies made about time travel, that well, given our drive to make these science fiction dreams come true, it just seems inevitable. Impossible just doesn’t exist anymore.

But as I sit and ponder this for even a moment, it becomes clear to me that if we were to build a time machine, one that takes you forward in time, that machine would use totally different calculations than one that would take you back in time.

To travel back in time would simply be to retrace the steps that we have already taken. Kind of redundant, don’t you think? So the bigger opportunity would be to invent one that takes you ahead in time, to the unknown.

To move forward in time, you would not simply pick a date and wait to be surprised at where you land. No, it would be more like the navigation system in your car. You pick a destination, and the system tells you step by step how to get there.

My car has a cheaper version of the GPS. It does not show me the route I am about to take, but it simply points me down the next road. I blindly follow the female automated device. And voila … I reach my destination.

So in the future, time machines may very well have the same types of features and models, based on price range.

If it were to be possible to set your time machine future destination and then to be at that spot instantaneously, you would then look back at the history of the steps that were taken, and you would see what you did to achieve your goal.

If you were to type in a destination of a wealthy future, once you arrived, you may find yourself sitting in a jail cell, waiting for your trial.

“How did I get here?” you would ask. And you would look at the travel log, and see that you did despicable things. And you would say “this is not the future I hoped for”. So you would use your one phone call to call the customer service desk of future travel device.

“How may I help you?” would answer the voice on the other side.

“It appears that your device has landed me in jail, awaiting trial for fraud.”

“What destination did you enter into the user interface?” the voice would ask.

“Wealth”.

“Oh. Yes. Did you read the instruction manual?”

“I tried, but it was a little too quantum physical for my understanding”, you would reply. “I just wanted to test it out and see how it worked”.

“So you jumped right into the “Wealth” option then?”

“Yes", 

"Did you select a route?"

"Uh .. no".

"Well, the default value is 'fastest route possible', and you didn't take the time to go through the options to teach it about you as a person. You really should have read the instructions".

"How can I undo this?”

“You can use the ‘back-in-time’ feature”.

“I only bought the future traveling model. I couldn’t afford the back in time feature”.

“Oh, I see. Well, Mr. Brill, I see here that you did accept our end user agreement”.

“Yes, I clicked on the ‘accept’ button. Who has time to read all of that legal mumbo jumbo?”

“And you didn’t read the user manual either then?”

“No, I told you that”.

“Well, I am very sorry, but you are where you are because of your own actions”.

“Look, if you don’t fix this, I will sue you for every penny your company has!”

“But you already waived us of any liability for the use of our product when you clicked the ‘accept’ button on the end user agreement”.

“Can I buy the ‘back in time’ model now?”

“Will you be paying in cash?” asks the customer service representative.

“Well, no, I do not have any cash on me and they have taken all my personal belongings, so I don’t have my wallet, but apparently I am quite wealthy. Surely you can accept my credit?”

“Mr. Brill, you are on trial for defrauding everyone you know and love. Why would I accept your credit? Besides, it says here in our records that all of your accounts are now frozen”.

“So I am screwed?”

“You did it to yourself Mr. Brill”, says the customer service representative, with a deep sigh, likely because they have answered this same type of call a thousand times before.

“Is there anything else I can help you with today, Mr. Brill?”

Later, at the trial, the lawyer approaches the bench to speak to the judge.

“Your Honor, it appears that Mr. Brill was just testing his new time travel device”.

“Let me guess. It was a Fabco Time-Forward 3000” replies the elderly judge, peering down over his bifocals impatiently at the lawyer.

“And this fellow bought his device before the Federal Government shut them down for reckless endangerment to the public …”

“Yes Your Honor”.

“And he didn’t read the user manual”.

“That’s what he said”.

“And he clicked ‘accept’ on the end user agreement …”

A deep sigh from the lawyer. “Yup”.

“And he can’t afford to now purchase the “Back-in-Time” model …”

The lawyer hung his head. “All of his accounts are frozen. I am doing this pro-bono.”

“So in fact, he did all the things he is accused of”.

“Uhhh … yes, it’s all documented in his Time-Forward 3000 history log.”

“And all these people sitting in this court room should just forgive him, it was all a big dumb mistake made by an impatient idiot too lazy to read the instructions?”

“Well … yes …?”

“Guilty”, and the judge slams down the gavel. “Next Case!”

It’s just a matter of time before this technology is invented, and just a little more time until a company like FabCo develops a means to deploy it to the masses. In all of its models, with various options available at affordable and not-so-affordable prices.

And when this time comes, my advice to you is read the user manual. And understand the end user agreement before you hit accept.

And pay the extra thousand dollars for the Back-in-Time feature.

I did.

The Bus Stop

There’s a bus stop in Pensacola.

It sits on the westbound lane of 9^th Street at the Beverly Avenue intersection.

It sits in front of the emergency entrance to Sacred Heart Hospital.

I spent many moments during the Thanksgiving week standing at that bus stop and trying to figure out what was the right thing to do. 

Praying for an answer.

And the answer came.

Sometimes the answer of a prayer is not the answer that we want. But it’s the answer that we get. It’s the answer that we need, like it or not.

I had flown out of Detroit on the Saturday night before, in a snow storm. The first storm of the season. I had spent the night sleeping in a chair in the Charlotte airport by the American Airlines ticket counter, hidden by a Nissan Sentra displayed in the lobby by a local car dealership. The next morning I landed in Pensacola, emerging in the baggage claim area to find my brother Paul waiting.

We drove directly to Sacred Heart Hospital, to find my sister-in-law Leigh Ann sitting in a chair beside the bed of the intensive care unit room. My mother was sitting beside her, covered in blankets to keep her warm, and wrestling with the grogginess induced by the sedative medicines, an oxygen tube in her nostrils to assist her breathing.

I don’t know if Mom recognized me or not. I thought she did. But looking back now, I think she was too confused.

The next four days were spent at the hospital from the early morning to midnight, and returning to Mom’s little apartment only ten minutes away where I slept until the next dawn.

On the Tuesday morning, as I sat beside her, Mom woke up. She looked at me and her face lit up with a delighted surprise.

“Oh my goodness, what are you doing here?” she asked.

“I came to be with you, Mom”, I replied.

“When did you get here?”

“Two days ago”

“Oh my”. And the happiness remained as she looked around the room and herself, trying to determine the status of her situation. “I have so many questions!”

But she asked none.

So I explained her situation.

“We really need you to cough the stuff out of your lungs” I said. “And we … well … we really need you to … uh .. to poop”.

“Oh, I see. I have so many questions”. She raised her hand and took mine. Smiling as she looked into my eyes. She was actually with me for those moments.

But she wore down after a little while, and she fell back into drowsy confusion.

No questions asked. And the answers I gave were likely not understood.

Over the next hours Mom grew weaker and weaker.

Mom could not cough hard enough to clear her lungs. And she didn’t poop either.

The doctors and nurses asked me to speak to the Palliative Care team.

When I first arrived on the Sunday, I asked the security guard where he wanted me to smoke.

“Go to the bus stop”, he said, “Everyone goes to the bus stop”

So every three or four hours I would succumb to the nicotine cravings and would take refuge standing at the bus stop on 9^th Street.

I would stand there and think.

I would stand there and remember.

And now with Mom under Palliative Care, I would stand at that bus stop and pray. Pray for a miracle. Pray for the wisdom to make decisions. And pray they would be the right decisions.

And each time I went to the bus stop, I would be more confused. And the miracle seemed less likely each time. And Mom seemed weaker each time.

Paul and I would discuss the options and agree on our decisions throughout each day.

Sometimes I could get Mom to eat. And I thought she was turning the corner. Then she would sleep. And she would not eat. And that corner seemed to be missed.

On the Wednesday, when feeding her soup, her instructions were simple.

“More”, and I would fill another spoonful and place it in her mouth.

“Done”, and I would cease, clean the spoon, and place it back on the tray.

That day the Palliative Care team asked Paul and I to meet with the Hospice counselors. They said that our only option left was to comfort. Comfort until the end.

And we made the decision.

And I went down to the bus stop, and I asked God if we were right. And he said yes. Not in a booming thunderous roar with lightning bolts. No, he just put the words in my head that yes, this was right, this was kind, and this was love.

God is love, you know.

Not all prayers are answered with the answer we want.

Later that afternoon they transported Mom to the Hospice by ambulance. The place was beautiful. It was out in the country, and her room was spacious with large French doors looking out on the wooded back yard where the gazebo is. It was warm. It was very nice.

In the early hours of Thanksgiving Day morning, Mom passed away.

And the words in my head said “it’s alright” and “she is safe”.

Maybe prayers do come true. But maybe sometimes we don’t know what to pray for.