not here to help, only to observe and pass judgment

I spent most of today, being Reformation Day, trying to find someone to nail Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Thesis to and finally settled on nailing them to the door of the ELCA teacher who neither understood the joke nor recognized the Ninety-Five Thesis. I might be a moderate-to-liberal Lutheran but at least I know my church history. I am sure there are non-Lutherans who at least know of them, to wit.

However, I do have a few problems with the Ninety-Five Theses.

First, they were debating points. Who wants to watch – much less judge – a debate with ninety-five points? Can you imagine sitting through that discourse? It just sounds painful and if it terrifies me to know that the debaters from Western Kentucky University could get through all ninety-five in an eight minute constructive speech – with explanation. I can imagine myself merely deferring to my assistant, Andrew, and saying: “well, how would you vote?”

Second, I have problem with their being ninety-five of them. Alternately, I am bothered by how many there are and how few. I look at the Ninety-Five Theses I cannot help but ask myself, “Where was Kristy Waterman?” Kristy Waterman would have put them all into a spreadsheet and streamlined them into a more manageable number like eighty-seven or five. Only one person knows more about things like tuberculosis medicine or Lesotho than Kristy but only Kristy knows how to make something so random as to be construed as abusive and elucidate it as ‘real world’ and ‘a common knowledge topic.’

The other problem with there being ninety-five theses is that it seems as if, perhaps, there are too few. Ninety-five seems like he was too lazy to squeeze in a couple more and make it one hundred. I have a hard time believing that he could not have worked a little harder, a little longer and come up with five more grievances against the Roman Catholic Establishment. Maybe if he didn’t spend so much time winging ink-wells and feces at Satan and a little more on his job the monk that rocked the world could have put a little roll in too.

In the end we Lutherans celebrate Reformation Day, not in remembrance of our hard-fought independence from Roman Catholic Superstructure, but because we are not allowed to have Halloween parties with our classes in Lutheran School so we take this day out and remember it lest we forget or miss out on orange and black frosted cupcakes, sugar cookies that look like sparkling bats and chocolates wrapped to look like eyeballs.

Yesterday, we found the first scorpion in our new house. I was pretty positive that eventually we would find scorpions, snakes and other things that creep about and disperse venom but I was surprised about the scorpion itself and the reaction the scorpion got out of LR.

First, I have apparently never seen a scorpion because I was expecting something bigger and perhaps darker. This guy was pretty tiny – I would never have noticed him – and he was a light brown color, maybe even green. These dangerous animals are made out to be the samurai of arachnids, the most fearsome of all desert creatures and all it seemed like to me was a tiny bug – albeit one that could kill me.

Hitherto* I had great respect for LR’s fortitude and professionalism not to mention a great sense of security living with her more than formidable pit bulls. She found the offending scorpion and upon finding him screamed in such a way that I heard her across the house listening to music that was bad in the eighties much too loud with headphones on that I thought that something catastrophic had happened. I imagine that this is how people reacted when hearing Orson Welles’ famous radio drama of The War of the Worlds (today, in 1938).

What could happen that she was screaming in such a way with the pit bulls perpetually by her side? And, why was she soliciting my help? No one could be in that much need of a doorstop so bad that they would act in such an indecorous manner! I did, however, grab my phone and rush out there valiantly in my uselessness to save the day and have something to write about.

I have to admit my disappointment upon learning it was a scorpion that caused such a ruckus. This was a simple fix and something I could actually do. Of course my first inclination was to either call Jeremy to have him advise me how to do vanquish the beast or my attorney, Alex Vance, and have him come out and do it – because I am unsure about what it is exactly that he does for my anyway. The solution was simple, I needed to climb up close to where it was perched on the unreasonably high ceiling in her suite and suck it up using the vacuum.

This, of course, was a disaster because now I have blown my “I have no idea what a vacuum is or does” cover but it did cause the ultimate demise of the offending creature and because LR’s vacuum has one of those fantastic see-through cylinders I was able to see that the scorpion was dead or at least in three large pieces. This temporarily restored my sense of security knowing that while there may be other scorpions lurking about this one was taken care of without anyone being hurt.

I emailed Jeremy with a great feeling of accomplishment – not for killing the scorpion -for climbing up on the dresser and back down without breaking anything, hurting myself or falling off about what had happened. He replied: Killing a scorpion is weak juice. Wait until you have a snake. Now any strange noise in the house is now something come to take a bite out of me. When I told my mother about it she reminded me that she always had a can of oven cleaner near-by when she lived in Arizona for any such occasion and I think that I am going to keep one in a holster on my belt for any such occasion.


*I do use that word in conversations, it ranks right up there with the argyle sweaters on the Questions About My Sexuality index, and for those of you who were wondering, yes I am a color-blind English Teacher who still relies on his mother to pick out his clothing and lack an interesting personal life to back-up all the rumor mongering.

I am reporting to you, as nerd of nerds, at the Nebraska Double-Up Debate Tournament hosted by my alma mater and another Nebraska university in Omaha.

This is a surreal experience because I am judging at the tournament – passing judgment being a hobby of mine – and the people I debated with and against are here as well. Most of us look the same although for some of our hairlines have retreated and our waistlines have gained ground. The Battle of the Bulge is not going well for most – which is difficult in a situation where we are graciously provided with pizza, donuts, potato chips, soda, and juice – there is also a small selection of fruit but no bottled water. I actually planned ahead and packed low carb food only to leave it at her apartment.

In case you were not aware, if we do not change our current policy on everything from the way we use renewable energy to the way we farm chickens it will lead to mutually assured destruction between the United States and any number of foreign powers – whether or not they have nukes or not.

A long time ago, in an academic community far, far away we had two types of debate going on (more than that but only two in Nebraska) both focused on argumentation and the exchange of ideas while one was spontaneous and required a broad understanding of the world – the presumed bi-product of a liberal education – while the other was researched and stayed within the ‘bright line” of a determined topic that had a healthy element of debate theory in it to support the exercise. In this debate style called Lincoln/Douglas Debate, which I believe is a misnomer, because the Lincoln/Douglas Debates were Parliamentary and style and Parliamentary Debate is closer to what we call Lincoln/Douglas.

The only bit that I have been annoyed with is that the Parliamentary Debate has moved toward procedural debate and avoids discussing the issue – something that will well prepare them for any senatorial or presidential career but not necessarily provide the education needs of the students to hone the skill of discussion an issue. The skills I honed debating in college prepared me to have academic discussions as an adult, see things from a different perspective, and being prepared to talk about almost anything.

I never did really well in debate but I am a great conversationalist at a party and I am afraid of what will happen to these students in the future, they are going to be at a party and either run topicality during a discussion or permutate someone’s hors d’oeuvre and add a solvency block to it. Certainly, if they ever marry they will surely stymie a marital discussion by requiring an inherent barrier. My legal eagle of a mother has run topicality against me when we have disagreed about something and that speaks a lot to my own lack of social skills and serves as a good example of why we need to return to the bad old days of my youth.

Ultimately, this weekend was a success. Unlike an election where I cast ballots and have no idea what the outcome will be in this instance my ballots were insured to prevent nuclear war, the invasion or Iran, angering the Koreans, win the war on poverty and in general non specific ways make the world a better place. I enjoy passing judgment on others and it was fantastic to be paid to do this ‘back home’ in Nebraska.

As a teacher I have been preoccupied with the recent rash of violence in schools.

I have been moved and inspired by the Amish who have shown tremendous compassion in light of their own tragedy. Their capacity to forgive something so incredibly tragic and cruel has moved me to consider all the things in my life where I am bearing a grudge. Has anything that has ever been done to me been so terrible that I cannot forgive the person for it? I am ashamed of myself but moved to be a better, more Amish person.

Well, with better personal grooming and electrical stuff.