Monday, April 27, 2009

Dr. Bob


Back in the sporadic moments of my young childhood when we had television, I watched Jim Henson’s “The Muppet Show.” This was vaudevillian entertainment at it finest! Puppets doing stand up comedy routines, sketches, tap dancing, juggling fish, cooking segments…it even had hecklers. Man…that was entertainment.

Some of my favorite characters of that show were Dr. Rolf (a surgically minded dog) and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, the scientist (incomplete without his laboratory assistant Beaker.) They always made me laugh…but since I was always on the verge of giggling back then, it couldn’t have been too hard to make me laugh.

I guess what it really came down to is that I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted people to call me “Dr. Bob.” Now my particular area of expertise narrowed as I understood the gross things that a doctor had to do to patients. Dealing with unsavory body fluids of sick people just didn’t appeal to me. I thought that I could become a veterinarian…but I quickly realized that it involved the unsavory body fluids of sick animals.

Ew.

So I took medical “Dr. Bob” off of the table. I thought that maybe a doctor of psychiatry or psychology would fit the bill, but they deal with crazy people. I already had my brothers, sister, and parents to work with…and that required no advanced degree. Granted, I wasn’t their doctor or anything, and I did not treat them in any way (in fact I may have contributed to their individual psychosis), but I knew from experience that I would not have the leather couch and charge $300 an hour to listen to people talk about their fears and anxieties.

I could have moved on to a research doctor, but as I didn’t even know what research was, I never explored the option. I figured that Dr. Bunsen Honeydew was a doctor of medicine (remember, I was a kid…what did I know?) Also, we had no cool shows like “Mythbusters” back then, so I never considered how cool science could actually be for me. Had I known that doctors could also play with explosives…well I may have overcome my fear of numbers and gone into physics.

No, I settled into the idea of a PhD in some academic field. Most likely “Dr. Bob” would write papers and books on other people’s papers and books. What’s more, I could become a teacher and teach my obscure thoughts on the punctuation practices of John Milton and William Shakespeare. I could wear turtlenecks and tweed jackets with leather patches at the elbows and keep an unlit tobacco pipe in my mouth. I would get summer vacations, Christmas breaks, and make millions as a famous doctor of English.

Then I grew up…

Becoming a doctoral candidate takes time, can grow boring quick, and the world has no shortage of useless PhD’s living off of government welfare programs. I understood that in working towards an academic doctoral goal, it was so important to choose the right school when doing my undergraduate work. I chose the School of Hard Knocks for my undergraduate degree program. I learned that in that school we had no sports teams, no school spirit, graduation day never came, and no one appreciated my level of education. Also, it all programs were kind of a dead end programs: no other schools took students of this school for post graduate work (since students never graduate.)

Don’t get me wrong, I tried to transfer my credits, but other institutions were loath to accept my college’s accreditation. Something about it neither being nationally, nor regionally accredited…I should have looked into it before I applied for admission and started paying the tuition. I did take some tests and get credit for “real world experience,” but schools just don’t transfer my credits one for one.

I still, however, persisted in my education. I secretly enrolled (so that the administration of the School of Hard Knocks wouldn’t find out about how I explore my options) in various college programs. I did earn credit for these programs (accept for CollegeAmerica—I don’t want to talk about it…) but I never finished any undergraduate work with them.

Today I feel that the academic experience, as we have been raised to seek after it, is bullocks. Even if I were to complete a degree program, pursue post-graduate work, and become a doctor of Philosophy, English, History…whatever...I don’t see that it would matter either in my own life or the course of the world. Sure, the planet Earth would have a few more books getting dusty on shelves in school libraries. Yeah, the United States would have one more person educated beyond any usefulness in the workforce. Granted, the human race would have one more talking head to ignore. But what will any of that matter when the world economies fall and Jesus comes again?

That is not my dream of “Dr. Bob.”

So I compromised and bought one square foot of land in Scotland. I am now Lord Robert of Lochaber. Not a PhD…but it sounds just as cool and the certificate on my wall is just as useless.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

BRONCOS FAN

When does one truly know that they have become a fan of something?

These days we have the benefit of Face Book to show what date we became a fan of something. But before we had the benefit of the internet to state our fan-hood, when did we know? I like to think that I was born a football fan, specifically a fan of the Denver Broncos. I doubt that my media frenzy or parental upbringing contributed to my Orange Crush fan-dom. On some serious reflection (brought on by a question on Yahoo Answers…on the internet) has me thinking that my fanatic attitude sprouted from a two week period in 1978…the build up to Super Bowl XII: Denver vs. Dallas.

Ms. Beckwith’s second grade class lined up dutifully to go to the all school assembly. We walked with proper 8 year old decorum to the gym and took our places near the front. We sat on the floor with the other kids in grades 1-3, the 4-6 graders got chairs. They were old and soft, and we didn’t want any of them breaking a hip or something getting down on the cold gym floor.

January in Colorado was cold. I don’t care what kind of heat bill a school district is willing to pay, nothing can warm up the parquet gym floor. Mr. Fieldman, our gym teacher, had out his portable turntable and spun some 45’s while we walked in. One of the songs was used on a Mazda commercial at that time…something about a great little car…it’s all I could think about while that mod tune played. Once we were all in the gym the faceless man that they called the principal addressed us and told us the great news: the Denver Broncos were going to the Super Bowl.

“Ya rootin’ tootin’ sidewindin’ lily livered…Broncos Fans!!” came a yell from the back of the gym.

Mr. Belf, the science teacher, marched up to the front of the assembly dressed up in blue and white Cowboy chaps. He had stars on his boots! He had a white leather gun belt. He had more tasseled fringe than the entire cast of “Fame.”

“You’re not gonna beat my Cowboys!” He shouted as he shot caps in the air from his shiny silver six-shooters (replicas).

The crowd boo-ed him and mocked him. Me, being the young paladin that I was, I pitied him, and took his side. You see, I had never really paid attention to football before. We didn’t have a television, and it seemed more fun to play football than watch it on t.v. I wouldn’t know a Bronco “D” from hole in the wall. (Well, actually, as Greg and I were rough-housing youngsters…I was quite adept at recognizing a hole in the wall, and shifting blame to others when I found one.)

For the next two weeks I touted up the Cowboys. I told people that the Cowboys were going to win and there was nothing the Broncos could do about it. Secretly, I began to repent of my Cowboy crush, but I had committed myself to a course and I was dead set on staying that course.

January 15, 1978 came along. Dad, Greg, and I went across the street to Joe and Cheryl Murray’s house to watch the game. This was the first game that I ever had watched from beginning to end. Keeping true to my form, I rooted for the Cowboys. As the game went along it became very apparent to me that I had chosen the wrong side. You see, I liked the team that I thought was the underdog…and the Cowboys weren’t it. Sure we had Red Miller, Craig Morton, Lyle Alzado, Otis Armstrong, Steve Foley, Randy Gradishar, Rob Lytle, Riley Odoms, Bob Swenson, Billy Thompson, Rick Upchurch, and Louis Wright. But most of these names I had heard because of the build up to the game. None of these great players ever made the Hall of Fame. The Cowboys had Tom Landry, Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett, Randy White, Mel Renfro, and Tony Hill…most of these guys are in the Hall of Fame!

Yeah, Denver lost 27-10, and I never felt so badly in my life. That’s when I knew that I was not a Dallas Cowboys fan…but a full fledged fan of the Denver Broncos. It explained why my blood was blue and orange whenever I cut myself. I finally understood why sunrises and sunsets were so awesome: God is a Broncos fan, too.

I wondered how I would save face in front of the entire school when I rooted for the Broncos from that point. Fortunately, we switched schools before the next football season started. See…God is a Broncos fan.