peopleofwalmart.com

Last night I had the distinguished honor of standing in line at the Customer Service desk at Wal Mart.  Now first, I freaking hate Wal Mart.  I hate going to that place because it’s a veritable wonderland for people to stroll around at a snail’s pace.  Sometimes I wonder if a trip to Wal Mart is these people’s only form of entertainment…because they certainly don’t seem to have any intention of getting out of there anytime soon.  And there’s no way to get around them.  You’re stuck staring at these people from behind because the freaking aisle is too narrow.  You ever get behind these people?  It’s usually some lady pushing her over sized cart down an undersized aisle while talking on her cell phone and looking for the right conditioner.  You’d think they were strolling through the newest wing of the Guggenheim for the first time in their life, but no…it’s just toilet paper aisle.  “That Charmin Quilted got you mesmerized, sweetheart?”

But the Customer Service line is a whole new level of awful.

After purchasing the wrong light bulbs…because I’m such a dolt  and I’m so bad at D.I.Y projects that changing a light bulb can baffle me, I got to go BACK to Wally World and see about a refund.  I took my place in between the two nylon cordons that indicated the area to form a line.  I ended up behind a woman and her teenage daughter.  In front of them was “workout lady.”  You know this lady?  She was in her mid-to-late 40’s and she was TRICKED OUT with the workout garb.  She rocked the do-rag, the matching outfit with optional jacket tied around her waste and her headphones cord rose out of the pocket of the jacked toward her ears.  The woman was holding a  bright orange yoga mat, still in the packaging.  My guess is that she was returning the mat, hoping to find one that matched her exercise outfit.  She had her music turned up pretty loud too…probably because she wanted to avoid interaction with other humanoids.   PS…she didn’t ever bother turning down the music or removing the ear buds while doing her return transaction.  Society and human interaction can a real bother sometimes, you know?

Meanwhile, the teenage daughter in front of me is giving me the stink-eye.  I’d look at the young lady, trying to figure out the reason for her incessant glare and she’d snap her eyes in another direction.  I’d look away and I could feel her eyes drift back over toward me.  This happened multiple times while I waited to be helped.  All I could think of was that Drew Hicks is right.  She’s staring at me because I look like a drunk Muppet.  I’m a circus freak to this chick.  If I were a carney, I could probably make massive amounts of money by just letting people stare at my pale skin and red head.  But this chick got to look at the ginger freak for free.

So after about fifteen minutes it was finally my turn.  I was helped by the prison tattoo laden  man named Richard.  It took him a sum total of 45 seconds to get my money back for the light bulbs.  I thanked him and told him to have a nice day.  He replied by shouting “NEXT IN LINE!!!” in my face.

This day in history:

1965:  As civil rights marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their march toward Montgomery, they were met by Alabama state troopers and local police.  The marchers asked to speak with the police, hoping that they would bet allowed passage, but instead the troopers began attacking the group.  Tear gas was deployed and many people were beaten with billy clubs and nightsticks.  The March 7 incident became known as Bloody Sunday and it was a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement in the South.

In other news:

If you heard a story of 1.5 million people being murdered, what would you call it?  What if the story also included details of an entire ethnic group being arrested and sent on forced marches, resulting in the deportation of some and the death of others…what would you call that?

I would call it genocide.

In 1915, that’s exactly what happened to Armenians at the hands of the Turks.  Twenty countries, scholars and historians of all walks of life have defined what happened to the Armenians as genocide as well but the United States, the bastion of freedom, justice and equality for all, has had a hard time calling it that.  The house and senate have tried to vote, on more than one ocassion, to adopt a bill officially referring to and detailing the events of 1915 as genocide. This past week, the Obama administration decided to do everything it could to block the vote from happening again.

Before you get all “SEE!  This Obama guy is as evil and bad as I told you.,” you should know that the Bush administration did the exact same thing.  Why?  Well because Turkey is an ally.  Turkey has troops committed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Turkey has also threatened that by passing such a bill, it is less likely to work with Armenia in reconciliation efforts.  Turkish officials also say that they cannot be held responsible for the fallout if such a bill is passed in the U.S.

And we caved.  We caved because our invested interest is more important than setting the historical record straight.

Pathetic.

This day in history:

February 18, 1878:   New Mexico cattleman John Tunstall was assassinated by members of the Murphy-Dolan gang near Lincoln.  This sparked the Lincoln County War.  Tunstall’s ranch hands, along with a group of other rough-&-tumble locals, formed a posse to hunt down the assassins.  They called themselves the Regulators.  The Regulators were supposed to serve warrants to bring the men to justice but  for some odd reason, they were rarely able to bring any of the wanted me back alive.

Out of the series of gun battles of the Lincoln County war came the legendary tales of the bandito everyone loved to hate and hated to love,  Billy The Kid. To some, Billy was just a thug bandit who killed for no reason, but for others he was a modern day Robin Hood. One thing is for sure…The story of the Lincoln County War is the stuff legends are made of.  Look into it.

In other news:

I once heard a guy say that the older he got, the more conservative he became.  He said something about growing more and more tired of the government intervening in his life, asking for more money, etc. Then, one time I was reading another article and the author said something about becoming more liberal the older he got.  He said that as he aged, he realized that life wasn’t as simple as conservatives make it out to be and that he couldn’t continue to live in a bubble of simplistic cliche.

I gotta tell you, as I get older, I identify with neither of these two people.  I certainly understand where each is coming from, and I even sympathize with each,  but the older I get the more apolitical I become.

I do most of my news gathering by reading.  I used to read a lot about what was going on in local, state and national level government,  but now when I see headlines involving government, I quickly look for something else to read.

Here are a few reasons why I think that I am becoming more apolitical in my adult life:

1.  I refuse to live my life making choices based on fear or anger.  It seems to me that a our government and the people who want us to care about the government prey on our senses of fear and anger first…and all other emotions second.  The formula for getting people to engage an issue goes something like this:  “This is what’s happening in our country.  Can you believe that?  That makes me mad/scared….You should be mad/scared too.”   I refuse to be fearful or angry because I’m told to be.  I also refuse to engage anything in life based solely on fear or anger.  Those are terrible, fleeting motivations to do anything.

2.  I refuse to encourage disrespectful, snarky attitudes.  I turn on the TV and all I see are people taking pot shots at each other.  If it’s not a liberal yelling that Bush isn’t their president, then it’s a conservative saying “How’s that hope-y change-y thing workin for ya?”  Our elected officials and the people who tell us to care about what’s happening in our government don’t act like the kind of person I want to be.  They don’t act like the kind of people my parents raised me to be and they don’t act like the kind of person I’d hope my own child would come to be like.  Simple respect, common courtesy and civility has given way to a bunch of people acting like they are the stars of “Real World Capitol Hill.”  They bash and belittle each other…they purposefully drive discussions away from the real topic at hand and then they turn around shrug their shoulders when asked why our country is polarized and people can’t get along.  They act shocked at the lack of civility in public places, meanwhile they show little-to-no respect for their own coworkers.

…And I gotta tell you…the more apolitical I become, the more satisfied with life I get.

In the past two weeks, two men have walked into the lobby of my work and I’ve ended up talking to them for a while.  Last week it was a drunk guy named Joe.  His world was falling apart and a few other guys and I ended up talking to him for a while, trying to find a way to help.  It was a very sad interaction and in the end, I felt like we didn’t accomplish much in helping Joe.

Today, when I got to work, a homeless man was standing in the lobby talking to the receptionists.  I could tell he was making them nervous, so I stuck around to keep an eye on the situation.  I ended up talking to the guy for a long time when he tried to go into the shower stall of the men’s bathroom.  He seemed relatively sane, quite articulate about his faith and focused on what he wanted to accomplish as a “homeless evangelist”.  By the time he left, I felt like all I did was make the man angry and feel like he was unwanted in our building.

Once he left, I made my way back to my office to get to work.  I checked my email first and had a letter from a dear friend of mine who is going through a hard time in life.  Their world recently got turned upside down and my heart broke for my friend.  I sat at my computer for a long…long time trying to come up with the words to comfort this person and let them know they had someone who loved them and cared about them.  I hit send and immediately felt like I had completely failed in saying anything right.

The first thing I needed to do for work was run a DVD of some interviews we just recorded this week for a series we’ll be airing on the book of Job.  I cued up the footage and routed the DVD recorder and hit play.  The first interview was of a man who lost his 16 year old son last year in a 4-wheeling accident…followed by other interviews of equally tragic magnitude.

This was the start of my day…as I sat there in my office practically in tears, I felt almost guilty for how fortunate I am.  I quickly realized that guilt was not the appropriate emotion, but rather I should feel gratitude and humility for the life I have.  But I felt guilty…that’s just the fact.

I sat there for a long time thinking about all of those people–how Jesus might react to all of them.  Each one of them certainly falls under the category of “the least of these”…so I’m pretty sure I know where Jesus stands on how to react with those people.   I don’t know if I managed to be Jesus to any of those people but I do think that, if nothing else, next time I’ll see the opportunity a lot sooner and might be able to do more.

I think I need to listen to some Pedro the Lion for a few days.  This has been one hell of a week.

There’s a place in South Anchorage called Potter’s Marsh.  It’s off the side of the road just as you’re leaving town on the Seward Highway toward Beluga Point.  It’s a bird refuge or something like that.  Whatever it is, the parks department built  a long boardwalk that spans out over the swampy bog that allows people to stroll through the preserve, admiring wildlife of land, air and water along the way.

Potter’s Marsh lies just off the shore of Turnagain Arm, so as you stroll along the boardwalk, the smell of the ocean blows through.  Seagulls call out to each other in the distance and the breeze rushes over making the trees whistle as it climbs the hill toward Rabbit Creek.

When I lived in Anchorage, I used to go sit on the wood railing of the boardwalk and let the cool foggy mist of a summer night wash over me.  I’d shuffle my feet on the wooden planks because I loved how it sounded.  I’d stay there for a long time, creating songs from from the sounds around me.  My footsteps were the percussion, the gulls were brass horns, the wind was my string section.   No need for words, no use for voices.