take my license, all that jive, or didn't even see a berry flashin' those high beams. your choice

the fact of the matter is that i like to drive faster than the speed limit (generally) allows. it has almost always been this way. school zones, congested urban areas, and mountain passes are the noted exceptions to the rule.

i do not mean to imply that i am a reckless driver. i never tail-gait. i do not weave in and out of traffic. i like to use blinkers when others are around, and i accelerate and decelerate in graduation. i am always assuming someone else is going to drive lackadaisically, so i am quite defensive and anticipatory while on the road. i have not been in a collision of my own doing since i was 16 years old. i have avoided many impending collisions due to my road-awareness; and the few collisions i have been in (myself remaining blameless) came in places wherein i had no way of avoiding a driver who was not paying attention.

now that i have attempted my lame excuses, may i repeat that, "i like to drive fast."

for this reason, i have usually owned a car that is close to the ground. the lower one's car, the greater the illusion of speed. even the 'rolla does quite nicely.

owing to my propensity for unlawful speed, i have had the good fortunate to take defensive driving courses on many occasions. currently the verbiage is "driver's safety course." regardless of the wording, the end result is a money grab for the municipal authority and 6 hours of my day wasted. it infuriates me when i am compelled to attend these vacuous attempts at rehabilitation. the general idea behind these courses is to scare and guilt me into driving ONLY when sober, and attempt to change my attitudes toward road rage (so-called) and speeding. of course the end to all drunk driving would be a glorious result; but, my attitudes toward speeding are not going to change. having to attend these courses is one of the risks i take by refusing to obey the speed limit. oh, well.

recently i completed an online dsc. it was wonderful. yes, it still took six hours of my life; but, i was able to watch football while taking the class. it was also the least expensive course available. the law requires a minimum cost of 25 dollars and a minimum time frame of 6 hours. the 6 hours i can understand;but, a LAW stating the minimum required cost of a course. explain to me how that has any effect on my behavior.

i have no idea how many speeding tickets i have received over the 21 years since i have been a registered driver. that may sound as if it is an incalculable number, but this is not true. i have never received enough tickets to jeopardize my license. it merely has been enough to not be able to remember them all as other people are able to do. here are a few i can remember:

the first citation i ever received occurred a few months prior to my 16th birthday. i had driven neil and myself to san marcos and i was - wait for it- speeding. that this happened when i was in the possession of a permit only did not help the situation. the dps officer was an acquaintance of my dad, so i got a little help there; but, i still got the ticket, and it was still a problem.

i got a ticket once in buda. i was in high school, and since i didn't have any money for the ticket i ignored it. this is not a good method for resolving problems. eventually a hays county deputy pulled me out of mrs. moeller's english class and told me that if i didn't initiate resolution before the following week, he would be back in order to arrest me. i made the necessary arrangements.

last christmas, charlotte, jackson, david and i drove to orlando. on the way out of town, i got a speeding ticket in martindale. this is just ridiculous. everyone knows that martindale is a notorious "speed trap." i expect that people who have never been to texas have heard of martindale and selma, texas as places to watch the speedometer. we spent the night in hammond, louisiana, and continued on the next morning. just before entering gainesville, florida, i got pulled over. charlotte was not pleased. while i didn't receive two tickets in one day, this is as close as i've ever come.

when i was about 23, i got pulled over for speeding through shady hollow. the speed limit on brodie is something like 30 miles an hour, which is absolutely ridiculous. the officer that wrote the citation was an idiot. he took my license back to his car to check my driving record. when he finally returned, he gave me a lecture about my driving history, as i had then received 7 tickets for speeding since being awarded a license. he asked, "don't you think 7 tickets for speeding is a little reckless for someone who has only had a license for 7 years?" what i said was, "yes sir, i don't know what i have been thinking." what i really was thinking though, was, "one a year? for as much as i speed? that is awesome!"

sadly enough, my recent experience with a driver's safety course still hasn't changed my point of view.

an auspicious beginning

a couple of nights ago i got a call from a newly married guy on my basketball team - tommy. he was going to be unable to make it to our game scheduled for the following night. it seems that his wife had made dinner plans with another couple prior to their receipt of the league schedule. he said there was no way he could get out of that in order to come to this.

i had a different experience and outlook shortly after i got married.

joey melgoza had asked me to play in a softball tournament with him one weekend. he and i have been friends for a long time and we have played in a lot of basketball and softball leagues and tournaments together. this particular tournament was in east austin, off of govalle and rosewood.

we lost our first game on saturday, and got stuck in the loser's bracket of a double-elimination tournament. the loser's bracket is undesirable because one's team will have to play alot more games to get back to the championship (in one way this makes it quite desirable.) we played several more games on saturday and won them all.

sunday morning, i decided to skip church to go to the tournament. it was not -probably- the best decision; but, it was the one i made that day. additionally, later that night, there was a married-couples relationship workshop at the stake center. in these pre-cell-phone-days, charlotte and i had made the arrangement that i would just take a change of clothes and meet her at the church later that evening.

the games began, and we kept on winning. i think we played about 5 games that day before we got to the championship game. we were going to play the team that beat us in that first game of the tournament; and, i figured they would beat us again and leave me just enough time to get to the church. the problem was that we killed the other team in the first game of the championship. when it was apparent that we were going to win, i started trying to decide what to do. i knew there would be consequences and repercussions for leaving charlotte at the marriage workshop by herself; but, i also knew that after two days of playing, i sure wanted to stick around to see if we could double-dip this team. besides, i was the left fielder and (to quote my father) they needed me.

i don't need to tell you that i decided to stay for the final. as it turns out; charlotte forgave me, and i have a trophy around here somewhere.

i still don't understand tommy's way of thinking; but, i can understand why he might think he must think that way.

pop it to me

i just discovered something i had forgotten about. i'm all excited.

when i was a full-time missionary, i had a companion named scott taylor. he was from sacramento, california, and we became really good friends. being missionaries, we had very little discretionary money, and were always looking for inexpensive things to buy that would bring us a little bit of joy. ice cream was too expensive. arizona didn't have blue bell, and we couldn't afford ben and jerry's or godiva. there really is no other acceptable ice cream to be found in a grocery store. we started buying otter pops.

we ate otter pops by the score. they were cheap, low fat (as if we cared), and good. best of all, in phoenix -home of the 122* summer day- they were cold. i couldn't even begin to guess how many i went through in that last year of my mission.

there are six otter popstars. each popstar represents a different flavor:

li'l orphan orange


poncho punch

alexander the grape

louie-bloo raspberry


strawberry short kook

sir isaac lime

sadly, when i got home from my mission, i found that no one in the area carried otter pops. local grocers had decided to carry flavor ice or the company brand. company brand is usually horrible just from the fact that they produce their wares with a low price point being their primary focus. quality is definitely not job one. somehow, flavor ice is a product made of frozen liquid; but, it is a dry popsicle. how is this possible? i feel like i have to drink some water after. i think they infuse saw dust into the recipe.

i recently discovered that heb in san marcos has begun carrying otter pops. i bought some last week, put them in the freezer, and forgot all about them. tonight, i remembered them. jackson and i each had three. he loves them, which makes me feel happy.

some things never change. louie-bloo is still my favorite.

sports clip

jman has become obsessed with sports. right now the sport of choice is football. it started last year when vince young was running the offense for the texas longhorns. he really was fun to watch and able to amaze with his abilities and unwillingness to lose. winning the national championship by creating one of the greatest individual performances ever, in one of the greatest games ever; turned vince young into a hero for thousands of young boys around the state. jackson is no exception. he has carried his love of vince young into vy's career in the nfl. all he wanted for christmas this year was tennessee titans football gear. santa brought him a couple of jerseys, a helmet, a uniform, and a huge box of trading cards.

the card collecting comes courtesy of davin and dalen masur. davin is a couple of years older and has been collecting for a while. jackson and the boys are constantly comparing players, debating who is better - so and so , or so and so. this carries over to the parents as jackson will come home and say," r j said the cowboys are better than the titans." i'll have to give him my opinion as the only way to assuage him. today he asked me who my favorite players were when i was a boy his age. he asked me by sport, and here are my responses:

football: oj simpson and tony dorsett
basketball: pistol pete and dr. j
baseball: reggie jackson and mark fidrych
tennis: john mcenroe and bjorn borg
soccer: pele and did anyone else play?

those are the sports he could think of. obviously muhammad ali was my favorite fighter.

our talk today reminded me of the fact that i only remember having three posters of athletes on my walls in the pre-michael jordan era. here they are:





no one will ever be able to convince me of the opinion that sports are an unworthy pursuit for the socially conscious. it is the non-religious tie that binds together families and generations. well, at least in my family.