Learn from Rooty-Toot Jasperson

So I've been a bike commuter for a while. I started riding while I was a college student in the early '90s because a parking pass cost way too much, I made way too little, and walking to classes often meant being late due to the vast distance between them. I remember the first time I rode to college was a vastly liberating experience. I just got a new Gary Fisher Hoo Koo E Koo, and I was especially proud of the front shock (a shock on mountain bike was a luxury item for the time, rear shock was unheard of). I commuted to campus through stopped traffic (holy crap, I'm actually moving!) and then blazed in between classes with time to spare. Truly, a bike was superior to both car and legs, I reasoned.

That first Fisher bit the dust about 6 years later when I found myself caught in a pickup truck's wheel well and vaulted slo-mo into the air, coming down headfirst into an intersection during rush hour. While I was in midair I remember thinking so clearly "Dammit! This is going to ruin my ride, and probably my bike." My helmet sacrificed itself to the greater good but my right clavical (aka collarbone) was pissed. I crawled out of the intersection thinking I was going to get run over and learned that my right arm wasn't going to cooperate. Everybody was shouting for me to lay down. I was no longer feeling well, so I did.

My commute has varied between a 4-5 mile round trip all the way up to a 30 mile round trip. Currently I'm putting in an enjoyable 17 miles a day.

Since that fateful bike/truck collision I've learned a few more defensive tactics. Among my arsenal is lots of hand signals to let everyone know, I AM NOW TURNING. However, no matter how much eye contact, hand waving, lights, and signals, some folks still don't get the message.

Last week I attempted my usual left turn onto the home stretch (toward the office, not home, so I guess I should call it the "office stretch" but I thought that might confuse all of you, which of course is none of you since no one really reads this blog) at about 7:20 am. I had the right of way as there were no stop signs or signals on my road, and no oncoming traffic. A few cars were waiting the stop sign to turn left onto my road (and I was turning left, onto theirs). I began my turn after signalling as many times as I could prior to the turn. As I approached the front of the waiting cars, one of them began to accelerate right in beside me. Fortunately he stopped before I was T-boned. I too stopped before proceeding just to make sure he wasn't going to hit a moving target but a fixed one. Why not make it easier for him?

As I passed him, he was yelling at me behind his rolled up window while he was talking on his cell phone. I too felt the need to express my reasoned position on the incident by making sure he knew that I was signaling and that driving while talking on a cell phone can certainly be a distraction, my good man. Feeling satisfied that he learned what he needed about bike safety, I rode on.

I have since discovered a gem of a cycling/LSD public service video made in the early '60s (actually, I hijacked it from one of my favorite sites). But there is one flaw. Sometimes, Rooty-Toot Jasperson, it doesn't matter how many times you signal, there will be drivers who are determined to remove you from the road.

Uncanny!

So I saw the Wolverine movie last night with a great friend of mine. The movie was alright, as far as movies go. Actually the first hour was pretty good. It was the last 45 minutes or so that it lost me. More of that in the next post, but first, a little flash back, comic book style (but with a lot less super powers).

In the early 80s, I entered Junior High School, or Middle School as it was more appropriately called in my case. Middle School meant serious maturity. It was time to put away those childish Elementary School things and grow up. No more Spiderman, Captain Marvel, and Isis. My superheroes (the thought of no superheroes wasn’t even on the radar) had to reflect a newfound maturity. Of course the only place to adequately feed after-school imagination was that hotbed of creativity: the Save-A-Step convenient store on the corner of Moser and Shelbyville Road in Louisville, Kentucky.

As frequently as our meager resources would allow, my friends and I would take a pilgrimage to the ‘Save-A-Step’ (it’s long gone now). I recall the store sign was a huge orange footprint with Save-A-Step written inside. It was your typical convenience store with lots of candy, magazine racks, and the all-important comic book rack. On a fateful day in Fall1985, I picked my first copy of The Uncanny X-Men.

It was a revelation. To my 12-year-old-mind, this was a very intellectual comic book. It almost didn’t deserve to be called a “comic” but unfortunately that was its pedigree. And it would be a few years until the term “graphic novel” was adopted to describe an extra long, extra special comic book (I think it was adopted because adult collectors wanted to be taken seriously - and don't worry guys, we take you seriously. No really). The word “uncanny” wasn’t a usual entry in my personal glossary so I read in my mom’s dictionary: “having or seeming to have a supernatural or inexplicable basis; beyond the ordinary or normal; extraordinary.” After I looked up “supernatural,” and “inexplicable,” I began to read the book itself. That dictionary would be a companion to X-Men until I had caught up to the vocabulary about 10 issues later.

Number 200 was the first issue I bought. It was a double-size special issue, and Magneto (I wasn’t sure who he was, but he seemed like a good guy) was on trial for crimes against humanity (again, I had to catch up to what these were, having not had much exposure to World War II history). Apparently he’d reformed his evil ways, gave up his helmet, and turned himself in to a tribunal. And ironically, he was on trial for the very thing the Nazis that he hated were.

At first, I wasn’t a fan of Wolverine or of any superhero in particular. I was just trying to figure out the storyline. Soon all the characters were increasingly interesting, especially their backgrounds. Also, all of the main characters had totally diverse backgrounds which added immense color to the story lines. Rogue was a southern gal, Wolverine was Canadian with a very hazy past, Colossus was raised on a Soviet farm commune, Storm was Kenyan (I think) and was personally detached, Nightcrawler was German. Each character had their accents written into the text, and frequently reverted to their native languages, and used native terms of endearment for each other. Also, as frequently, stories took place in their homelands, which exposed the reader (however best a comic book could) to these regions of the world.

One character that deserved everyone's admiration was Cyclops/Scott Summers. He was the leader of the X-Men, due to his talent at distilling murky situations down to right and wrong, which allowed the team to act unanimously. He was never an ambiguous moral figure as was Wolverine, but more often than not, his actions led the team to doing the right thing. That is rare in real life.

The comic constantly explored civil rights between mutants and humans. I’ll never forget a short episode where a couple of X-Men saved a man from a brutal beating from two thugs. It turns out the man they saved was spray painting “Mutants Die!” on an alley wall when he got jumped. He was horrified at his rescuers and fled.

Wolverine easily became my favorite, but he certainly wasn’t an object of attraction (as portrayed in the movies). In the comic, he was much shorter than a normal man, and was quite hairy. He had a foul mouth, smoked cigars (since they didn’t affect his health at all), flirted with every female member of the team, and had other unsavory habits. But he was the one with the most personality, not to mention he had claws that came out of his hands. Just think what a 12-year-old could accomplish with those. Although, in the X-Men of the ‘80s, Wolverine rarely used his claws against either mutants or humans. You almost never saw blood, but there were always other uses for them, plus plenty of mechanical bad guys needed slicing and dicing.

By my sophomore year in High School, comic books were deep-sixed, and it was time to concentrate on the next big thing: girls and music. I think there was a distinct down-turn in my grades from that point until my senior year as a result.

While I think my wife is smarter than me in probably every aspect of life, she sometimes asks me where I learned certain vocabulary, or even geography that she missed. I have to laugh, but she missed it because she wasn’t reading X-Men.

Locked and Loaded... Nerf Style

As a trained anthropologist and a dad of three, I’ve learned that one can know your children best by watching them in their element (actually, you don’t have to be an anthropologist to do that, I just thought it made me sound more important – ego thing, just go with it). It’s amazing when you put something in their hands how the object can reveal previously unseen personality traits like the sun shining through the parting storm clouds.

Against my wife’s better judgment (and maybe mine), Santa brought the kids a lot of guns and ammo last year - we discovered the wonders of Nerf dart guns. I’m telling you, these aren’t the guns that you and I played with. Remember when the game TAG (The Assassination Game) was all the rage in school (I’m talking early-80s), and was played with dart guns? Remember those guns? They shot a pathetic plastic dart about 10 feet. Remember trying to stick them to windows by gobbing a bunch of spit at the end of them only to result in a nasty splatter on the window?

Well, not anymore. Behold, I give you my three mercenaries wielding the power of Nerf:

Don’t let their cherubic faces fool you. Behind those unassuming doe-eyes lies the hearts of merciless killers. First to their weaponry: the intro level gun is what Alec, the one on the left is holding in his right hand. The finger hook at the back end of the gun (the “hammer” or “slide” if you will) makes it easy for a 5 year old to lock and load. The only draw back is that you are constantly loading, and for Jack (on the right), my oldest and most competitive child, that makes for some unnerving down time.

So he prefers the Maverick. It’s the other one Alec is holding, and Emma has one too. This is by far, the most superior weapon of the arsenal. Its six shooter barrel allows for repeated fire, and it holds every kind of dart that Nerf makes. A massive advantage when everyone is shooting mixed ammo – you can collect spent rounds and fire them back. The Maverick can take a beating too, holding up to countless drops on ceramic tile.

Now I know you are all staring at the big one Jack is holding. Yep, it’s inspiring. It’s a sniper rifle that I – I mean Santa bought – I mean built - in his workshop for me. Despite the looks, it has several disadvantages. It only shoots one kind of dart. So if when you run out of ammo, you have to stop the massacre to pick up your darts, then you have to reload, then you give the ok, and you’re ready to go. It doesn’t shoot any further than the Maverick (that I’ve noticed), and it jams too much, and when you are taking a barrage of fire from some toddlers with blood-lust and poor aim, that means ignominious death. Bottom line: the first one who successfully dives for an unused Maverick will prevail in the firefight.

And the darts – they stick to everything without any help from saliva glands. Textured walls and ceilings from 30 feet away are no exception. Nothing is more fun than seeing a narrow miss stick to the wall behind the intended target.

So much for armaments. How does this play out in the hands of my little gunnies?

Jack is a sniper by nature. His tactic is to hold his ground with intense ferocity. He loves bridging the distance between himself and his foe with only a well-placed dart (shots to the behind illicit endless glee). He is careful to choose ground with a lot of shelter forcing his foe (me) to either wait until he comes out or to break the only cardinal rule of NO HEAD SHOTS. Of course if I break the rule, the whole thing comes to a screeching halt, so I have to wait until he reaches for a stray dart and take out his wrist. I know, it’s mean and painful, but what else does he give me?!

Alec, true to his character, cares little for his own life and limb. He prefers close combat (running and gunning) to ensure his target is neutralized and is willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. No matter how many rounds I empty in his gut as he runs directly at me, he shall never be destroyed. He prefers point blank shots to the face, but my desperate commands to “aim down, Alec, aim DOWN!” are eventually heeded and I take it in the chest. I see Alec as the cigar smoking, pragmatist superhero archetype (think Wolverine).

Emma was truly born with knowledge of her feminine powers of manipulation. Like the sirens who lull Odysseus’ sailors to crash into the jagged rocks, she will bring you near with the seemingly innocent request, “Daddy, how do you schock it?” Once you show her how to “cock it,” she turns the gun on you, and down you go. She repeats this process with each dart until the victim (me) declares a cease fire.

Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 535-475 BC) said "war is both father of all and king of all: it reveals the gods on the one hand and humans on the other, makes slaves on the one hand, the free on the other." Too true.