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Events, Marriage

The Newlywed Game

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When Kathy and I were first married, we joined a Sunday School class for young married couples at the church we attended. The church was in the southwest corner of Connecticut, and many of the couples were as feisty and outspoken as you might expect, in the shadow of New York City.

I remember one of our gatherings in which we decided to play a homemade version of the Newlywed Game. “This will be fun,” we said, “what a great way to get to know everyone and poke a little fun at ourselves at the same time.”

Har, har, har.

Unfortunately, the game proved a little too volatile for our competitive group, and some of the players actually became angry with their spouses over answers. “I still can’t believe you didn’t know the name of my third grade teacher,” I might have snarled at Kathy.

After months of practice with cue cards (and still getting the answers wrong), Kathy and I decided that starting this game had been a serious mistake. “It’s just playing with fire,” we agreed, soberly. To this day we warn other young couples to stay far away from the Newlywed Game, “If you value your marriage,” we tell them in hushed tones.

Therefore, you can imagine our “delight” when we were selected to play the Newlywed Game this evening at the Church Staff/Elder Retreat we’re attending. We were the ‘middle’ couple, competing with a husband/wife pair who were married about a month ago, and with another couple who have been married 49 years. No doubt we looked like easy targets, or at least good for a few laughs.

After all these years, who knew the Newlywed Game would return to haunt us.

Thankfully the questions were a good mix of easy and difficult, and we actually had a lot of fun playing. The audience got some good laughs, and we were only defeated by a single point, which I thought was a pretty good showing. We went out into the hallway after the game to muffle any recriminations: “My third grade teacher’s name was Ms. Pollack, for crying out loud!”

After the game ended, the pastor announced he was offering discounted marital counseling to all contestants, which I thought was extremely helpful. I wonder if the 2 to 2:30 pm block is still open.

Kathy left her camera download cable at home, so the blog will be picture-less for the time being (gasp). Nonetheless, it looks to be a fun couple of days. My folks graciously agreed to stay with the kids while we are gone, so I’m sure the house will be hopping in our absence.

Tim

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Work Party Slacker

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Today I had the privilege of attending a work day and board meeting for The Refuge, a Christian Retreat and Conference Center being constructed on the Olympic Peninsula, along the Hood Canal. For the last seven years or more, this project has been under development, and is finally coming to fruition, as the main lodge rises majestically from the ground.

The Main Lodge
My parents have waited a long time for this dream to become a reality.

When I was a boy, I perfected the knack of walking into the kitchen as the last dish was dried, or rounding the corner of the garage as the last leaves were stuffed into bags. Mastery of this work-avoidance skill took a lot of practice and stealth, but I was able to spare the time, having hoarded many hours by the clever expedient of not doing my homework.

In 1999, we moved to Western Washington, and almost immediately my parents began hosting ‘work parties’ as they attempted to transform the grounds of the Refuge from a swamp to an elk pasture (they thought they were building a retreat center, but the resident elk knew better). A crowd of hard-working folks would drive out from Fort Lewis at crack o’ dawn and be industriously clearing trails or hauling brush while I was still slouching around in my boxers, sipping on my first Diet Coke of the day. With our house less than 200 yards from the Refuge grounds, it was hard to pretend we had other pressing engagements. We would keep the blinds drawn, pretending to be out of town, but sooner or later one of the workers would count our cars or spot one of the kids, and the jig would be up. We felt vaguely guilty about our half-hearted support of The Refuge, and so I would emerge from the house and join the busy crowd, making a big show of looking for my work gloves.

Wiry Workers

Many of the volunteers that attend these gala events are retirees, so you might think that I could impress them all with my physical strength and endurance. Nothing could be further from the truth. These wiry, tireless folk apparently train for weeks before coming out for a work day, and they routinely work me to exhaustion without seeming to break a sweat. One hot morning, gasping for breath as I hauled a load of brush, my childhood skills came to mind, and saved the day.

I realized that a major challenge for many non-profit organizations is publicity, and I was in possession of a serviceable digital camera. I promptly decided that the Refuge would be better served (and my skills better utilized) if I appointed myself official photographer and Media Relations Officer. Grabbing my camera, I now drifted slowly from work site to work site, snapping happily away while others slaved. If challenged by a sweating worker, I need only show my camera and shrug, made exempt from all actual work by this magical talisman in silver and black. I imagine there was probably a guy like me standing by, when they built the pyramids, sketching happily in a shady spot, sipping on a cucumber smoothie, while slaves hauled ten-ton stone blocks to the crack of a whip.

Boat Races
Even the grown-ups got to participate in the boat races. I carefully didn’t snap a picture of the lady who fell in the creek, while trying to retrieve an escaping boat.

Today, I decided to try some actual work, if only for the novelty of it … but I found I built my work-exempt role too well. No sooner was I loading some wood into a truck, than my Dad was asking me to take a few ‘candid’ shots of the other workers. When I tried to help move some picnic tables, I was again pressed into service as photographer. Slipping away to rake a few leaves, I was summoned by my Mom to shoot the boat races down at the creek.

Rake Thief
She looks innocent, but that’s my rake she’s holding.

We did eventually hold the board meeting, and I collapsed into a comfy couch, nursing the blister on my right index finger. You’d think they would make those shutter release buttons easier to push! I suffered through the meeting and managed to choke down three helpings of baked salmon and a piece of pecan pie — I’m just a martyr among men.

Turning the Tables
We decided to table this issue.

Arriving home, I walked into the kitchen as the last dish from dinner was put into the dishwasher … it is nice to see I haven’t lost my touch.

Tim, Project 365, Day 293

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14 Things I Love About My Boy

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  1. He loves Jesus. My son is serious about being a fully-devoted disciple of Jesus and he orders his life in obedience to the scripture. He studies his Bible and goes with me to prayer meetings from time to time.
  2. Joshua is kind. He sword-fights with David, reads books to Sarah, plays with Rachel and Daniel and helps them with their schoolwork.
  3. He likes to laugh. Even the dumbest jokes that I tell, often get at least a chuckle. He has a hearty, un-self-conscious laugh that delights the listener’s soul. One of my favorite things to do is to watch him read one of my funny blogs.
  4. Joshua loves to read. Whether it is whipping through Ivanhoe or savoring Losing Joe’s Place, he has a keen appetite for good books.

    5. how do I choose what to read today?
    So many books, so little time.

  5. He is a faithful servant. Just try keeping him away from church, when tables or chairs need to be set up or taken down. And don’t get between him and the car when groceries need to be unloaded!
  6. Joshua loves games, the more complicated, the better. Whenever I want a good game of Puerto Rico, Citadels or Settlers of Catan, my son is all over it. Sometimes he lets me win, too.
  7. He is an excellent baker and cook, delighting the family with delicious meals and confections. Always one who likes to know where his next meal is coming from, his can be counted on for simple but hearty fare.
  8. Joshua is creative and inventive — his stories and drawings are sure to delight and amuse audiences young and old alike.
  9. He is an excellent actor, with a superb stage-presence and flair for the dramatic. I still get a chuckle whenever I think of his portrayal of Mr. Wunderman in Comic Book Artist a couple of years ago.

    10. The head honcho himself
    Joshua played an “old” man rather convincingly.

  10. Joshua has nearly perfect memory, and can be relied upon to have the correct details about almost any event (for which he was present). Coupled with good story-telling skills, he can always be relied upon as our resident historian.
  11. He is scrupulously honest, to the point that I am more likely to doubt myself than I am to doubt him.
  12. Joshua has a passion for history, particularly the Civil War, and can name all the U.S. Presidents, in order (something I never learned to do). He is probably the only person you know (if you know him) who can give you a detailed assessment of Millard Fillmore’s Presidency.
  13. He is gentle and careful with his strength, a quality I am coming to appreciate more, now that he is taller than me.
  14. Joshua listens carefully to what I say and seems genuinely interested in learning from me. He even pretends to like my Army stories.

joshua's tavern sign
Rachel and Tim designed this sign for Joshua’s room. Rachel did the painting.

I’m sure Joshua has his faults — he is, after all, descended from sinners whose only claim to fame is that they were loved and chosen by Jesus. But we’ll save the discussion of his shortcomings for his Anti-Birthday, to be held on the 18th of April.

Tim
Project 365 – Day 291

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Parenting, Parenting Tips, Project 365

Tuesday Tips for Parenting – Throw Out Your TV!

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new logo Apart from teaching us to love Jesus, one of the best things my parents did for me and my siblings was to fail to buy us a TV. Oh, we had a 9″ black & white TV for about 15 months while my grandmother lived with us — she was almost entirely blind and liked the noise for company. And my folks used to rent a TV and a VCR on a few long weekends during the winter for video-fests … so we weren’t completely TV-free.

The rest of the time, we didn’t have one at all. When others talked about “Who shot J.R.?” (I thought they were talking about Tolkien) or the latest escapades of Don Johnson in Miami Vice, my eyes would glaze over. I thought Moonlighting was working a second job, and wondered why it was so popular among high school students. Some people thought I was pretty weird: “You don’t have a TV?” they would gasp. Some assumed that our family was poverty-stricken, and would check to see if I was wearing shoes. Even in those days, not having a TV was unthinkable, for some.

Scootin' Along
Sometimes it is good to ride your scooter. This was one of those times.

Recent (2006) statistics from Nielsen, according to The Center for Screen Time Awareness indicate that the television has continued to become more and more important in the lives of American families. The average home in this country has more TVs than it has people, allowing each of us (on average) to watch 4 hours and 35 minutes of televised programming, day in and day out.

As a teenager, I began to appreciate the advantages of being TV-free. I was proud of the fact that our family was different, and I would look for opportunities to provoke astonishment:

Friend: So, my Science Report topic is on the Feeding Habits of Giant Squid.
Me: Say, that reminds me, did you know that our family doesn’t have a TV?

I was often very subtle about the way I would work it into the conversation, as you can see.

People used to ask me, “What do you do, without a TV?” Mostly, I read books, played games, rode my bike and played football or tennis. I used to mow lawns and do other yard work; later in high school I worked a job at a local hotel a few nights a week. When I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I did my homework.

When Kathy and I were first married, we decided not to have a TV in our house. Eventually we found a way to watch movies through our computers, and in 2003 we caved and bought a TV for use with our DVD and VCR players. Technically, then, I do have a TV, so I can’t occupy the moral high ground … but I will say that we have never watched any broadcast show on it. We limit what we watch to movies or shows that have been taped or recorded, and we are pretty discriminating about what we watch, and when we watch it. We generally only let our kids watch movies that we have pre-viewed, and we require the kids to pay a poker chip when they do watch a video. Neither Kathy nor I are particularly immune to the lure of TV — we’ve found it best to not allow it a foothold.

I think there are some huge advantages to eliminating broadcast (or cable) TV from your home:

  • Cost — many people pay $30-$100 per month for cable. What a huge savings, if you eliminated that drain on your resources!
  • Commercials — companies wouldn’t keep advertising their products on TV if commercials didn’t work. Who do you want to dictate your family’s spending, you or some company that doesn’t have your best interests at heart?
  • Protection against immorality — more and more, shows on broadcast TV and cable are ‘pushing the envelope’ of violence and sexual immorality. As children are exposed, they become acclimated to this filth that is so attractively packaged and humorously distributed, so that they come to believe it is ‘normal’ and appropriate. Even adults are susceptible to temptation and being deceived, last time I checked.
  • Time — it has been estimated that the average adult spends 40% of his or her free time watching TV. Getting rid of your TV might be a great way to reclaim a large bucket of time in these days when most people consider themselves stressed for time.

Worship at the Shrine
We keep ours in the garage, where nobody can see us making our offerings and burning our incense.

My largest objection to TV, especially the kind that you allow to be ‘pushed’ onto your family, is that it seems to serve as a concentrated avenue, inside the home, for worldly philosophies to attack you and your children. If you watch TV long enough, you can’t help but begin to subscribe to some of the ideas that are ‘preached’.

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
– I John 2:15-17

If you are a Christian parent, have you ever thought about what you are teaching your children by letting them watch TV for hours on end? Have you ever considered the effect it has on your love for God, to allow yourself to be bombarded with a world-view that is inherently hostile to Him? Oh, I suppose there might be a handful of relatively harmless shows on TV; but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule, and few can stand up to any serious moral scrutiny.

Ride a bike!
I’ll be the first to admit that we are still a family of couch potatoes, even without a TV. How much bike riding would we do, if we allowed ourselves to watch television?

I could go on and on, but I don’t really need to. And I’m not trying to be all “holier-than-thou” — our family does not forgo entertainment. I’m just trying to bring the idea of living without a TV into the realm of the possible, for your consideration. There are lots of studies and resources available that catalog the evils of television — either you believe ‘em or you don’t. I’ve listed a few that I came across below:

Television and Health, California State University
How Television Viewing Affects Children, University of Maine
ParentsTV.org — Facts and TV Statistics
TV Turnoff Network

Last, but not least, here is an excerpt from Dee Duke’s excellent parenting seminar, in which he addresses this issue:
Dee Duke on TV (Warning, 6MB file, not safe for dialup.)

While some may tout the educational benefits of television, it is interesting to note this finding from a Zogby poll:

While 59 percent of Americans can name The Three Stooges, only 17 percent can name three Supreme Court Justices.

Tim, Project 365, Day 288

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I Am a Winner!

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As a result of poor timing on the part of my parents, I missed the brief era in American education when it was fashionable to emphasize self esteem at the expense of excellence. My public-school teachers, in callous disregard of my tender little heart, stubbornly insisted that my grades correlate with my performance, so that I graduated from high school with more B’s than A’s. In college, this worrying trend persisted, and I was forced into a much closer acquaintance with my deficiencies than I would have wished. Sadly, being a grown-up isn’t all it is cracked up to be, and opportunities to rise above the mundane are infrequent.

Every once in a while, however, life offers an opportunity to reverse the negative flow; last week I found just such a chance.

I'm a real Winner!
Wouldn’t you award this man a prize?

I don’t read many blogs, but I do sporadically follow the adventures of Scott, a clever and quirky Dad, husband and pastor in the wilds of Indiana. One day I happened across a post in which Scott apologized for a recent blogging hiatus. (His blog is pretty new, and I’m sure his wife encouraged him to post more regularly, if he wanted to attract a readership.) Scott said he had a bunch of prizes from his desk drawer and asked for people to comment with regard to how they used the time they saved from not reading his blog. I was compelled to speak from the heart, hoping to encourage him to keep blogging. Little did I know that he was serious about sending the ‘valuable’ prizes.

Today I received in the mail a mysterious package, with not one, but five valuable prizes:

  • 2 packets of hot cocoa mix
  • A DVD of Holy Moses!, a children’s musical from Scott’s church
  • a mostly-eaten package of tic-tacs
  • a sheaf of play money
  • and the Pièce de résistance, a ‘B’ scrabble letter (worth 3 points)

Enclosed was a short note, which I provide for your edification:

Tim,
Congratulations on winning this wonderful set of prizes in the contest you entered on my blog.

If this is the wrong Tim, I apologize, but you may still enjoy these random prizes scrounged from the back of my pencil drawer. Or throw them out. I’m not particularly an advocate for accepting used containers of breath fresheners from complete strangers.

And to be absolutely clear, the money enclosed is FAKE. The “Milton Bradley” imprint should be a dead give-away. If you try to spend it anywhere, about 60% of retailers have specific training for employees for how to spot counterfeits, so don’t be surprised if you end up in the slammer. I think it’s actually from a game of “Operation” so you might be able to use it at your child’s next doctor visit.

Happy Birthday and best wishes,

Scott

I learned a number of things about Scott from this letter, some positive, some worrying. He is apparently a very generous man, and a man who loves to celebrate, sending me five prizes where only one had been promised. The note was signed in pencil, which suggests a lack of commitment to our relationship. (In fairness, since we’ve never met, it might be best if we start out as ‘Pencil Pals’, in the finest traditions of Charlie Brown.) On the other hand, it tells me that he is a man of his word (in that he really does have a pencil drawer). Frankly, the precision of his estimate with regard to retailers who train against counterfeiters, made me wonder if he’d already tried (and failed) to spend the Milton Bradley money. Noting his apparent need to emphasize that the money was fake, I discovered that Scott doesn’t see me as the sharpest knife in the drawer. I suppose this is to be expected, since he comments on (and presumably reads) my blog entries from time to time.

I was delighted (to state the obvious) to receive this valuable package, especially so close to my birthday. The hot cocoa will probably be slurped up by my children, but I can hardly wait to view the DVD musical, in all its glory. The mints (all five of them) will come in very handy, and I need hardly mention the utility of an extra ‘B’ tile for our Scrabble game (9 points if I can finesse a triple-letter-score square). We’re in the market for a new fridge; it may be that Scott’s failure with the Milton Bradley money was due to a lack of confidence on his part — it might be amusing to succeed where he failed so woefully.

prizes galore
Hard to believe Scott sent this package without insuring it!

It is at times like this when you are on top of the world, and you want to go out on your driveway and shout to the world, “I Am a Winner!” And so I did.

The neighbors already think I’m weird, what did I have to lose?

Tim
Project 365, Day 285

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