Story: The Christmas Ornaments Robin Hood

 SHORT INTRODUCTION: I ran across this story on Reddit. It's a different kind of Christmas story. I hope it touches you as deeply as it touched me. Written by u/selectivelycrazy, and reprinted here with her permission.

It is 2020, unfortunately. It’s the day after my two younger sisters and I flew out to Pennsylvania to see my dad, who lives there after getting divorced by my mom for fifteen years of not being a good husband or dad. He lives with his mom, Cranky Grandma, and her devil cat, as well as my amazing aunt and her angel kitten.

Dad gets home from work. “Where’s Emi?” he asks my Cranky Grandma.

“She’s in the basement,” Cranky Grandma says, probably throwing in a snide comment or two about the newly-dyed purple hair adorning my head or the leather fingerless gloves that have joined my black wardrobe. “Lookin’ for some Christmas ornaments.”

Dad goes down the basement stairs and finds me rummaging through cardboard boxes. “What are you looking for?” he says.

“Hi, Dad,” I say. “Well, I noticed that you decorated for Christmas, but you’re missing a few things! Where are The Mooses?”

The Mooses are a pair of stuffed mooses that have been put up every Christmas since I can remember. They’re brown, about two feet tall, and soft as a marshmallow. There’s Mama Moose, who is named Merry, holding Baby Moose, who is named Christmas and is in a red velvet sack reading “Merry Christmas” on it in gold embroidery. The Mooses always go on the couch to watch over the living room and all the decorations and presents in it while we’re asleep.

The problem with The Mooses is that when my mom divorced Dad, she was so scared of him that she let him have almost everything. This included The Mooses and quite a few more of her treasured ornaments. And since I’ve always been the one to set The Mooses on the couch, that first Christmas with a divorced dad just didn’t feel right without them.

Dad helps me look for The Mooses for awhile. “Sorry, sweetie, they must have gotten lost in the move,” he says.

I smile and don’t tell him that I hate being called sweetie. “It’s okay,” I say, and pull out a cardboard box. “Hey, look! It’s your What God Wants For Christmas box! I love that tradition!”

We go set up What God Wants For Christmas in the living room. I say, “I think I’m going to go take a nap.”

Dad says, “Okay.”

I go upstairs and into my room and shut the door. I walk over to the window seat/storage chest under the window. I open it.

“Hello, Mooses,” I say.

The Mooses lay on top of my stuffed animal collection, looking dusty. Several other ornaments I recognize as Mom’s are keeping them company. I grin and shut the chest.

It is the day we fly back to my home state. I have The Mooses packed away in my suitcase, and the other ornaments tucked beside them, wrapped in my fluffiest (but still black) hoodie to protect them.

I roll my suitcase out to the hallway. Dad is weighing Youngest Sister’s bag to make sure it’s under fifty pounds. “Okay, now I need to check it to make sure you’re not stealing any of my stuff!” he tells her.

My mind says, Oh no.

My brain gives me uncomfortable memories of how Dad raged when he thought one of us had stolen his coffee mug.

My voice says, “Privacy invaded in three...two…” in a joking tone. Dad and Youngest Sister laugh. Dad does not check anyone’s suitcase.

We are at the airport. Younger Sister’s suitcase is somehow three pounds over the weight limit.

Dad says, “Emi, grab one of the suitcases that already went through and open it up. We’ll put some of Younger Sister’s stuff in there.” He gestures to my suitcase.

My mind makes an earsplitting screeching noise that sounds like someone slammed their brakes to avoid hitting a pterodactyl and hit the pterodactyl anyway.

My brain imagines Dad opening the suitcase and going into a rage at the sight of The Mooses.

My voice says, “Sure, Dad.” My hands grab Youngest Sister’s suitcase instead of mine and pass it over. Dad opens it. Her suitcase contains no smuggled goods. We transfer the stuff and the very nice airport lady sends all the bags down the conveyor belt. Dad asks me why I wave to mine. I shrug. “Just being weird,” I say. Good luck, Mooses, my mind says.

We are back home. My family- my Older Sister, who didn’t go with us, Mom, my other grandma, who we call Maga, and my Boppa, or grandpa, are all sitting in the living room catching up.

I say, “I’m disappointed you took the tree down already.”

Older Sister laughs. “It’s past New Year’s!”

“I know,” I say, “but I brought some stuff to put on it.”

I open my suitcase. I show around the ornaments I smuggled back- three tiny stuffed snowmen, our cat’s catnip-stuffed cat ornament, a white clay angel, a wooden rocking horse, a wooden mouse king, a clay snowman, my older sister’s stuffed dog. When I unveil the rocking horse, Maga gasps. “I bought that for your mother when she was little!” she exclaims. “How did your dad get it?”

“That’s not everything,” I say. I unzip the flap hiding The Mooses from view.

I pull out The Mooses.

Older Sister and Boppa clap. “How did you get those back here right under Dad’s nose?” Older Sister asks. Maga laughs so hard she has tears in her eyes.

The tears in Mom’s eyes are not from laughter.

Slowly, she reaches out and takes The Mooses, hugging them to her chest. Over their antlers, she mouths “Thank you.”

And then, she gets up, and she sets The Mooses down. On the couch.

Right where they belong.

A gratuitous picture of a Christmas moose, from an online store

The Seven-Day Book Cover Challenge, Day Four: The Sneetches and Other Stories

My own children will tell you that this is one of my favorite read-aloud books.

Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave had twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave?

Well, she did. And that wasn't a smart thing to do. You see, ...

Pie

When I was very young, my mother brought out two different kinds of pie for dessert. There was only enough pie for each person in the family to have one piece. But both flavors looked so delicious, that I couldn't choose.

So when she asked me which one I wanted, I said, with all the innocent honesty of a young child, "Both."

She said, "Then you don't get any."

And she meant it.

How many times in our lives are we given a choice between A and B, and told that we can only have one of them? And how many times in our lives does our indecision leave us with neither one?

It was a harsh lesson to learn, at that young age, and the inhibitions that it built into me have burdened me all of my life.

When my kids were young, we brought out two different kinds of pie for dessert. Just like when I was a child, there was only enough pie for each person in the family to have one piece. One of my children looked longingly at both of them, silent tears forming in her eyes.

I said, "Why don't we give you half a piece of each? Somebody else can take the other halves."

And I meant it.

My children learned a different lesson from the one I learned. Not all of them learned that lesson, but the ones that did have gone on in life to sample and enjoy choices A and B, and also C, D and E. Their lives are richer because nobody put artificial limits on their freedom to choose during their formative years.

ADDED JUNE 8, 2024: AN UNEXPECTED THIRD CHAPTER

On June 8, 2024, our kids threw a retirement party for us. The party included at least seven different kinds of root beer, other assorted soft drinks, catered food, and six pies from Perkins. I was enjoying myself and visiting with some guests, when that same daughter, now 40 years old and very accomplished in life, asked me what kind of pie I wanted. I asked, "Can I have half a slice of apple and half a slice of lemon meringue, and someone else can take the other halves?"

She smiled, ran off, and came back with my two kinds of pie. It sounds corny to say, but the circle was complete.

My greatest impact

Question from a job interview: "Thinking back on your career, what's the one thing you've done that has had the greatest impact?"

Answer:
Well, I can't think of one. I'll have to give you three.

First, back in the 1980s, I did something that everybody said couldn't be done. I figured out how to gold-plate the inside of a copper tube. This tube was about 30 centimeters long and had an inside diameter of 7 millimeters. It had to be gold-plated on the inside, to a very exacting specification. I figured out a way to do it that was twice as exact as the specification. That might not seem like much, but these perfectly plated tubes were used to calibrate microwave test equipment, which was in turn used to calibrate and tune the radars in military helicopters and fighter jets. Our two biggest customers were Hughes Aircraft and the U.S. Marines. So, in summary, this is a story like "The House That Jack Built:" I invented a way to gold-plate the tubes, that calibrated the testers, that tested the radars, that went in the aircraft, that were flown by the Marines, that won the Cold War.

Second, I was one of the first 200 employees of Hewlett-Packard's Inkjet Components Operation. We made the printer cartridges that kicked off the inkjet revolution. My job was to turn the nozzle-plate manufacturing operation from a low volume R&D operation to a high volume, high quality, production operation. From 200 employees, our cartridge volume expanded to fill seven factories on three continents. If you open the HP printer on your desk and pull out the printhead cartridge and look at the business end of it, you will see a little gold square, smaller than a postage stamp, with hundreds of tiny holes where the ink comes shooting out. That little gold square is my baby. My work appears in every HP inkjet printer in the world.

But my greatest impact didn't come from my work as an engineer. It came from my work as a teacher. For two years, I taught 7th grade mathematics, and I had an impact on 200 young lives. Some of them came into my classroom hating or fearing mathematics, and unsure of their abilities. Almost every one of them left with an advanced understanding of math, and with increased self-confidence. I didn't just teach mathematics, I taught about math and reading and music and life skills and believing in yourself. Many of my students still keep in touch with me, and it's fun for me to see what they're becoming and what they're doing with their lives. Some of them will change the world, and I will take my share of credit for that. That is my greatest impact.

Note for my seminary students: I didn't mention you in the interview. But for the record, I was an early-morning seminary teacher for 12 years, off and on, over a period of 30 years. I taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ, through the scriptures, to hundreds of high-school students over those years, for an hour every morning before school started. But it wasn't just book learning. I taught you how to search for and find spiritual truth on your own, how to recognize it, how to test it, and how to apply it in your lives. The spiritual foundation that you young people built for yourselves in my classes has sustained you through the years, kept you morally strong, and guided you through your life experiences as individuals and in your own families. Many of the things that I taught you have been passed down to your own children. That is an impact equal to, or greater than, the impact I had on my mathematics students.

Note for my children and my adopted children: Forget "impact." You are the greatest things I ever did in my life. I didn't mention you in the interview either. I didn't need to.

Something about bullies

This may or may not help those of you who have problems with bullies, but let me give it a try. Here are four  vignettes from when my family was young, stories about bullies. There's a lesson to be derived from all four stories, taken together, but I'll leave the lesson for you to figure out.

First story:


When my oldest son was almost three years old, and my oldest daughter was about a year and a half, we moved to California. We lived on a cul-de-sac with three other houses. Sometime during our residency there, a young family from Texas moved into one of the other houses. This must have been a year and a half later. They had two boys, about the same age as our children. We thought they would play well together.

Well, one day my daughter came into the house crying. She'd been playing with the younger boy, and he had decided it was time to dump a bucketload of sand over her head. That same day or thereabouts, my son ran into the house, not crying, but obviously frightened, because the older boy had been threatening to hit him with something. After we made careful inquiries of our children, we found out that these boys had been displaying a increasing pattern of aggression and bullying.

Second story:


For various reasons, we did not want to approach the parents about it. It wasn't out of cowardice. We talked it over and simply decided that that wasn't the right thing to do.

I had grown up with an older sister who liked to bully me. As a child, I had been on the scrawny and uncoordinated side, so I got picked on at school, too. I don't know if I'd actually call it "bullying." If it was bullying, it was really lightweight bullying. But I had resolved that, when I grew up, my children would never have to submit to bullying.

I had just finished reading Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. The book had convinced me that, in matters of self-defense, a pre-emptive nuclear strike was much more effective than a graduated response, when it came to stopping a bully. So the next Monday night, for family activity night, I taught my four-year-old son and three-year-old daughter how to punch a bully in the nose. I showed them how to cock their fists, and how to throw a good punch. I had them practice on my arm until they could really make it hurt. I showed them where to aim, and taught them not to worry about any body part except the nose.

Third story:


One Saturday I heard a child's screaming from the direction of the cul-de-sac. Looking out the window, I saw the younger Texan running for home, screaming bloody murder, and my daughter sitting calmly on the curb, playing with her dolls.

I strolled out to the curb, sat down beside her, and casually asked her what had happened.

In a calm, matter-of-fact voice, she said, "Cody was being mean to me again."

I asked, "So what did you do?"

In that same calm, matter-of-fact voice, she replied, "I punched him in the nose."

I patted her on the head, said "Good for you," and went back into the house. She kept playing with her dolls. Never even looked up.

He never bullied her again. I'm not kidding. True story.

Fourth story:


Would you believe it? A day or two later, I again heard screaming from the cul-de-sac. This time I raced to the window in time to see my son chasing the older Texan back to his house, my son's right arm extended straight out in front of him, with his fist extended like a cavalry sword. (The screaming was coming from the Texan.)

Not exactly the technique I had taught him, but okay. It worked.

When my son eventually came back in the house, I asked him what the screaming was about.

"Travis was being mean to me."

"So did you punch him in the nose?"

"No, he ran away too fast."

You know how there are times in your parenting when you're not allowed to laugh, or make that little snorting noise, or even show a tiny smile? Yeah. This was one of those times. I think I managed a calm, "Oh. Okay."

And just like in my daughter's story, the boy never bullied my son again. No kidding.

On Giving Away Children in Marriage, Part Two

Chronologically, she is a grown-up.

From a distance, she looks like a grown woman. When she was 12 and 13, she was the tiniest of her friends, and I thought she would remain a little girl forever. Boy, did that change.

Close up, she usually looks like a grown woman. But occasionally the little girl peeks out.

Her accomplishments and achievements to date tag her as a grown woman. The trials and other experiences of her life are those that only a grown woman could deal with.

When she meticulously plans the menu for her wedding reception, and wants shishkebabs (with blue potatoes!), fancy rice pilaf, and green salad with all kinds of weird stuff in it, it's clear that she has grown up. But when she spends weeks mail-ordering her favorite candies, in bulk, for the candy bar at her reception, it's clear that she's still a little girl.

When she poses for pictures after the ceremony, she is definitely a grown woman — until she and friends (or her new husband) mug for the photographer — and then she turns back into a little girl.

When I hold her as we dance to "Dancing with Cinderella," and her white dress swirls around her ankles and gets caught in my shoes, and I look at her carefully done hair and her joyful smile and the sparkle in her eyes, there is no doubt in my mind that she is a grown woman. But when we stop to laugh at my missteps, and when she hugs me at the end of the song and says "I love you, Daddy," she is still my little girl.

She and her fiance/husband don't go on dates; they go on adventures. And when they return from their adventures, they write storybooks and comic books about them.

This college graduate goes on job interview trips by herself, and lands a professional job by herself, in a city 60 miles away. And squeals like a little girl. She frets about apartments, and deposits, and credit ratings, and commute distances. Like a grown-up.

She's 24 years old, a professional, and newly married. But she is still my baby girl, and I will always think of her like this:

Family matters most

Zyzmog Galactic Headquarters is an eclectic blog. There's a bit of everything in here. Here's something that hasn't shown up in this blog yet: an intensely personal note.

This is what matters most to me. (Click here for a bigger picture)

I treasure the knowledge I've acquired over the years. I like knowing stuff, not for its own sake, but to use it to do something. (My kids say I should use it to win at "Jeopardy.") Like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, I have two impressive diplomas, but most of the knowledge I've acquired comes from way beyond those diplomas. I'd like to think that somewhere in the middle of that knowledge, I also acquired some wisdom. I'd like to think that, but some days I'm not so sure.

More important to me than my knowledge, are all the experiences I've had over the years: where I've gone, what I've done, and what I've seen. I got to work for HP back when it was a good company. I've written video games. I've written a book. I've been on TV. I've written music, played music, and directed a choir. I've watched a ballet in La Scala, and an opera in the Bolshoi. I've stood on the top of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City, and the Duomo in Milan. I've gone water skiing on the South China Sea. I've climbed the Green Mountains, the Applachian Mountains, the Rocky Mountains and the Alps. I've stood on a top of a mountain illuminated by nothing but starlight, and looked at the Milky Way against the night sky. I've seen the Northern Lights dance across the Canadian night skies, and I've been to St. Petersburg during White Nights.

More important than my experiences and accomplishments, are all the great people I've gotten to meet in my life, and the hundreds — no, thousands — of people I count as my friends. These friendships stretch along a continuum from the mutual respect and camaraderie that springs from a single meeting, to the kind that take up a good chunk of a lifetime, deepened and enriched by the quiet, unspoken love that true friends share. My life is especially rich because of the friends I have known.

I'm especially fortunate because those friendships include hundreds of former students and at least a dozen sort-of-adopted children.

Most important of all, even more important than friends, is family. When it comes to family, I am a very lucky man. Define family however you want, and I'm still a lucky man.  [Edit Edit Edit Give up] I have rewritten this paragraph three times, trying to put it into words, and the words don't work. But when I think of the love that we share, the things we have done for each other, and the things that we would do for each other, my heart fills up to overflowing. In my religious tradition, we believe that families last forever. I look at my family, and it makes me excited about forever.

At the center of it all stands my sweet wife. I have been in love with this girl for almost 40 years. She is the real reason for everything I do. All I have ever wanted to do is make her happy and successful, and to see her smile and laugh, and to feel her love and approval in return. So far, I think I'm doing okay: she hasn't kicked me out of the house yet.

The two of us, at 18 years old (Click here for a bigger picture)

The two of us, today (Click here for a bigger picture)

There's a lot in this world that you can chose from, to define yourself and to give meaning to your life. But when you strip away all of the nonessential stuff, the one thing that remains is family. Family lasts forever. And family matters most.

On Giving Away Children in Marriage

I have five children. Three of them are now married.

The first marriage was that of my second child, my first daughter. She married rather young by today's standards. She married a great guy, and we had a reception in a large pavilion on his parents' acreage, in the foothills of the Rockies, and as the sun went down the pavilion glowed with the light of thousands of white Christmas lights. I am told that I danced with my daughter once during the night, but I don't remember that. I do remember that I ran around being a gracious host and enjoying the company of friends and family, and not eating or drinking much. At the end of the night, after the bride and groom had driven away and our helpers were starting to clean up, I sat down at a table all by myself in the semi-dark and quietly worked my way through one piece of chocolate cake.

People have told me that that was one of the saddest things they have ever seen. I believe them. She had been gone less than an hour, and my heart already hurt from missing her.

The second marriage was that of my oldest son, who had endured six miserable years and deserved some happiness. His bride had endured a miserable life and she deserved some happiness, too. Her family either couldn't afford or wouldn't pay for the reception, so we put it on ourselves and paid for the entire thing. I did the gracious host thing again, as did my sweet wife, my son and his bride. At the end of the night, after they left in a stretch limousine filled with pizza and root beer, and our helpers were starting to clean up, I took my sweet wife on the dance floor. The sound system was already packed up and put away. We slow-danced for a long time to the music in our minds, glad to have each other to cling to.

The third marriage, ironically, was once again that of my oldest son. The story is too long to tell here, but his first shot at "happily ever after" was neither "happily" nor "ever after," but after a couple of years he met another girl. He and she were both doing okay financially, so they put on their own party, on the shores of Pensacola Bay. We were their guests, for the most part, and they had a fun time hosting their families and their friends as we celebrated "happily ever after" again. I did my part by looking good in a tux and toasting the bride and groom with "scomps." I can't remember what we did after their party, but I think it involved more partying with family and relatives. We didn't have to clean up anything.

And that takes us to this weekend, when my third child, my middle daughter, married the love of her life, at age 28. As I watched her work the room on Saturday night, I admired the gracious and confident woman that she is. I broke down during the daddy-daughter dance, stopped dancing and just hugged her, whispering words of love in her ear and getting my tears in her hair. But we were surrounded with good friends and good family from Wednesday through Sunday. With the festivities came a distinct euphoria that I was not aware of until this morning, when I finally came down from it. I had been feeling great all weekend long, like everything was right in the world. This morning, on my way to work, I felt a heavy sadness. It was so bad that I had to stop at Dazbog Coffee to pick up a cup of comfort food: their amazing hot chocolate with a double shot of cinnamon, and cream on the top.

We have two more to go: one, our fourth child and youngest daughter in less than three months, and number five, our youngest son. He's off the market for two years, and I won't try to predict what happens after that.

(Parenthetical note: We have dozens of adopted children. One of them is a girl who became as close to us as one of our real daughters. In fact, she came this close to becoming a daughter-in-law. That got short-circuited, though, as she met the real love of her life. Her love for us, and our place in her life, were made clear when she invited us to participate in all of her wedding festivities alongside her real parents. I won't pretend to be equal to her real father, who is a close friend of mine, but I will admit to having felt the same strange emotions that I have felt as I have given my other children away.)

In Defense of Childish Things

Growing up is highly overrated.

One of the most irritating things I have ever heard is the phrase, "Oh, grow up."  It's usually delivered in a superior or condescending tone, by someone who disapproves of someone else's behavior or attitude.  If you want to get Biblical, it was the apostle Paul who said that when he was a man, he "put away childish things."  On the other hand, it was Jesus Christ himself who said that we must all become "as little children."  I have observed over the years, and have become convinced, that people who "grow up" and dispose of the last remnants of childhood lead sad and miserable lives.

You know, there's a difference between "childish," with its connotations of immaturity and naïvété, and "childlike," with its connotations of simplicity and lack of guile.  Here are five childlike attitudes that we all should retain throughout our lives, even after we "grow up."

1. A sense of wonder
This is what motivates the child, who picks up a red maple leaf in the fall.  He examines the shape of the leaf, the intricate vein pattern, the splashes of color in a leaf that used to be a solid green, and he remembers the way it floated down from the tree.  He wonders "how ...?" and "why ...?" and once in a while, without a question mark, he wonders "oh, wow."  He experiences the same wonder at the blue sky, dinosaurs, mountain heights and ocean depths.  Wonder and discovery drive people to become doctors and scientists.  Wonder is also the source of our natural appreciation of beautiful things.  It's what makes us gasp at a sunrise, stare at a pretty girl, and get choked up when listening to a particular piece of music.  Wonder is what keeps us learning for our entire lives, and, as my friend Kent Galloway once said, "The day I stop learning is the day it's time to die."

2. A sense of delight
This is where "fun" comes from.  It's what makes food taste good.  It's what makes us laugh.  It's why people still drive old Ford Mustangs.  Playing hard and working hard, doing things with your body, are a delight.  A healthy sense of humor stems from this sense of delight, as do pleasure, and enjoyment of the more refined things in life.  But children seem to find delight in the simplest, most mundane things – sometimes even in tedious things.  If you can't look back on what you did during the day, and think of one thing that makes you say "Whew! That was fun!" then you are living your life wrong.

3. The ability to love unconditionally
Unconditional love is what allows us to get along with our fellowmen. It makes it easier to negotiate heavy traffic. It is what binds together families and true friends. It is the deep, hidden, never-mentioned, root of all successful business transactions. It's also the true source of selfless service and charitable giving.  If we give to charity grudgingly, or out of a sense of obligation, it doesn't come from our heart and it doesn't count.  Real giving, giving from the heart, is what really matters.  It uplifts both the one giving the love and the one receiving it.  Conditional love, or love that comes with a price tag, is demeaning and insulting to both the giver and the receiver.

4. Imagination
Sometimes it seems like the goal of civilized society is to squelch our imagination.  It gets squelched by parents, modern public education, peer groups, television, bureaucracy and meaningless rules.  A rare few manage to survive this lifelong beatdown of their imagination. These are the ones we end up honoring for their vision and their creativity.  These are the great musicians, painters and sculptors, but they are not just found in the arts.  Walt Disney was one.  So was Steve Jobs.

5. A yearning for God
Too many of us lose this innate yearning, or have it philosophised out of us by others.  And yet it remains deep within us, constantly bubbling to the surface, where we have to work hard to choke it down again, because ignoring it only works for so long.  It's when we acknowledge this yearning, and nurture it, that we begin to develop and grow for real, in a way that transcends all the worldly knowledge we may have acquired over the years.  All that "adult" learning keeps us firmly grounded – planted on the earth – but when we give in to the yearning for the divine, when we begin to seek for a purpose or an existence beyond mortality, then we are no longer chained to the earth, and we leave those "oh, grow up" grown-ups far behind.  The people in our lives whom we admire the most, and whom we would do well to emulate, are those who have satisfied this yearning (well, to a degree beyond our own, anyway) and remain on earth to tell us about it.


Without these attitudes, these childlike attributes, life isn't worth living. The times in my life when I have felt sad or lost are the times when I have forgotten these qualities, set them aside, or had them forcibly taken from me.  The times when people have gotten frustrated or upset with me are often the times when I've had, um, an overabundance of these qualities, according to those who were passing judgment on me.  I think that true wisdom comes from knowing how to keep these attributes alive and relevant in your life, while keeping them a secret from those who would judge.


© 2011 Ray Depew. You read it here first. Feel free to copy it, but make sure you give proper credit. If you see it somewhere else without my name on it, please let me know.

Lee Ann Womack puts this whole thing into her beautiful song, "I Hope You Dance."

Teaching binary arithmetic to 12-year-olds

I used to teach my 7th graders how to count to 1023 on their fingers.  It's easy to do:

Your right thumb is 1.
Your right index finger is 2.
Your right middle finger is 4.
Your right ring finger is 8.
Your right pinky finger is 16.

Your left thumb is 32.
Your left index finger is 64.
Your left middle finger is 128.
Your left ring finger is 256.
Your left pinky finger is 512.

Representing a number between 0 and 1023 is simple.  You just hold up the fingers and thumbs whose values add up to the number you're looking for.  For example, 21 is 16 + 4 + 1, so you hold up your right pinky, your right middle finger, and your right thumb.

The kids caught on quickly.  Twelve-year-old minds are sharp.  In no time at all, we were waggling our fingers rapidly as we counted to 100 together.  Some kids went further on their own, finishing triumphantly at 1023.

One time, I told the kids that they had to be really careful when they counted 4 or 128, and that they might get me in trouble if they went around flashing 132 at people.  (Try it yourself; you'll catch on quickly.)  Then little Mickey Cramer got a mischievous grin on her face and said, practicing for when she got home, "Hey Mom, look what Mr. D taught us in math today!"


I miss Mickey.  She was great.  I hope she's having fun in her senior year.  Or college, maybe.

Arriba, middle child

Our middle child went out into the world today to seek her fortune.

My sweet wife and I were blessed with five children.

The first, a boy, is protected by the might of the US military. In fact, he is part of the might of the US military. In school, his squadron's motto was "First takes care of its own." The US military does indeed take care of its own, and so we trust that he is both safe and successful. His future is also well in hand, whether in or out of the military.

The second, a girl, is married with two children. She has the luxury in today's world of being a stay-at-home mother. She and her husband have had an adventurous life so far, and their future is secure with a government job and all the associated benefits. They have successfully sold their first house, and will soon move to a new location.

The fourth, also a girl, is in the middle of an 18-month mission, after which she will return to her university studies. God holds her in the hollow of His hand, and angels guard her footsteps until her mission is completed.

The last, a boy, is in his final year of high school. He is on track to fulfill his lifelong ambition of becoming a doctor, an ambition that he is pursuing with the same singlemindedness that has taken his older brother to success in the military.

But the middle child -- ah. Tradition holds that the middle child is the bellwether of the family, and that the success or failure of the family can be judged by the success or failure of the middle child. Our middle child left this morning, in the pre-dawn darkness, to seek her fortune in the world.

She has been preparing for this date, consciously or unconsciously, for 25 years. Her preparations have taken her to Europe, to South America, and all over the United States, have placed her in the spotlight on countless stages, and have made her a Joan of Arc to hundreds -- no, thousands -- of eager youth and young adults. Now, as her preparations come to an end and the Rest of Her Life begins, she goes to make her mark in the world as a middle school teacher.

That doesn't sound like much. In fact, at first, it sounds rather anticlimactic. Believe me, the world won't know what hit it.

She will be taking over and reviving the vocal music and drama programs at a middle school in Colorado Springs. That wasn't her plan: her plan was to teach at a high school in Boston, Seattle, Austin, or someplace else with energy and ambitions to match her own. But, like tardy suitors, Boston, Seattle and Austin made their moves too late. She couldn't wait around for them, and she had already made a commitment to Colorado Springs before the others came calling. Perhaps in the future they will have their turn.

We acknowledge the hand of God in our middle child's life. Everything that has happened to her has happened because of Him. She followed her dreams, and she made her own choices, but the choices and the opportunities were put there by God, as were the challenges and the obstacles.

The financial problems that are afflicting the nation have reached all the way down into our family. As we struggle with our own future, we look with hope and anticipation to our middle child, as we watch her taillights disappear down the road.

And the thought that keeps passing through my mind? It isn't "As the middle child goes, so goes the family." No, it's "Watch out, world. Here she comes."