Important

ByHal Hammons

A school shooting was foiled this week in the Chicago area.  A former student crashed a graduation practice and opened fire when a police officer confronted him.  The officer returned fire, and the incident was quelled.

“Nobody important was injured in the shooting.”  That’s a quote from the article I read, posted on an unapologetically pro-police website.

I could not sympathize more with the attitude behind that statement.  At the same time, though, I could not help but think it might have been a bit too much.  The precise adjective eludes me.  “Snarky”?  “Cynical”?  Maybe just good old fashioned “mean”?  I don’t know.

The truth is, we are all important.  Heroes and villains, geniuses and dummies, jocks and geeks, prom queens and wallflowers.  In fact, the story we get back in many of these tragedies is that the perpetrator felt unimportant.  He was excluded from polite company — sometimes for his own objectionable or antisocial behavior, but excluded nonetheless.  If someone had tried harder to make him feel valued, the theory goes, he might have chosen a different path.

None of this excuses bad behavior, of course.  But extreme actions taken by others does not give us a pass for our own bad behavior toward them.  “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) does not come with qualifications, as far as I can tell.

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Tea freezes at a temperature higher than 32 degrees Fahrenheit. At least, it seems to. I left a bottle of Snapple in my office refrigerator over the break. It was beneath the weird little “freezer compartment” but certainly not in it. It was at least an inch away from anything icy. And when I opened up the fridge, it was totally frozen. The lid had somehow detached itself to make room for the ice that had formed. (I wish I had video of that. Was it slow? Was it explosive? I digress.)

The Seven Blunders of the World

ByHal Hammons

On March 20, 1925, an Anglican priest named Frederick Lewis Donaldson preached a sermon centering around what he called the “7 Deadly Social Evils.”  Through the help of what he called a “fair friend,” Mohandas Gandhi had the opportunity to reprint the list in his weekly newspaper.  A few weeks before the Mahatma’s assassination, he gave a handwritten copy of the list to his grandson, Arun Gandhi.  It was Arun Gandhi that brought the list to the world, publishing it after his grandfather’s death under the heading “Seven Blunders of the World.”

Adulting

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Adulting is hard.  I see T-shirts and various other paraphernalia that make this assertion.  I don’t necessarily want to agree or disagree in this context.  Instead I would like to point out the whiny nature of a so-called adult who would make that claim — and worse, pay money to broadcast his or her incompetence.

Let my people grow

ByHal Hammons

One of the first things you notice at Walt Disney World is the preponderance of “Mickey-shaped” items.  From pencil tops to fireworks, everything seems to consist of two small circles sitting atop a larger circle.  Sometimes, as with shrubbery, the shape is forced upon the item; those in charge simply alter it until it achieves the proper proportions.  Sometimes, as with ice cream, the item is formed inside a mold.  The latter of these can get downright creepy at times.  Forcing a pumpkin to grow in a “Mickey” shape by placing it in a mold in its infancy is … weird.  The desired effect is achieved, yes.  But at some point a living organism has to be allowed to grow in its own direction.  I don’t know.  Maybe I’ve just seen one too many Mickeys over the last seven years.

Anyway, striking a balance between fostering growth and channeling that growth has been a bit of an obsession with me over the last 23 years. 

 

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My beloved Texas A&M University puts on an annual two-day barbecue seminar.  “Camp Brisket” shows a fortunate few dozen participants the finer points of trimming, preparing and serving the best barbecue in the world.  And here I am in Pensacola, Florida, drooling, surrounded by well-intentioned but sadly ignorant folks who think “good barbecue” used to oink.