A homophobic prank

Last night at 1:41 am I received a prank phone call on our land line. It was a young girl speaking, in a room with other giggling young girls. I was startled awake by the call and it took me a few moments to realize this was no ordinary prank. The call was brief and went as follows:

me- hello?

girl- is you Treaver [sic] Jayne?

me- yes I am

girl- you don’t have to say it so rude like that, I was just asking. Is you gay? You sound gay? Is you a woman trapped in a man’s body? You sound gay? (with much giggling in the background)

me- who is this, why are you calling my home . . .

The caller hung up and I quickly disconnected our phone. A few things really upset me about this call. The first is that the caller knew my name but she did not know me. I could tell because she pronounced my first and last names incorrectly. She spoke very fast and affected an urban accent. I do not mean to sound racist but her style of speech was an attempt to sound like a sassy black woman. I’m not saying she was black, only that she was mimicking a speech pattern. The second thing that upset me was the giggling in the background because I believe I have heard that laugh before. I am almost certain it belongs to a teenage girl in our neighborhood who has a reputation for enjoying cruelty. She is a mean kid and she really loves to make other kids suffer. If it was this girl, this would not be the first time that she has made offensive comments, in fact, if you listen to her words she’s clearly racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic. I always tell my kids not to spend time with her and to give her a wide berth.

So I sat awake after the call for quite a while trying to decide what to do. Our home phone is an old rotary phone; we only have it for emergencies. I don’t have caller id or any way to use last call return or anything. I spent most of the night trying to dismiss this as a prank by some teens having a laugh. After all I made a few prank calls as a young kid. Except homophobia and bullying isn’t a prank, and it isn’t funny. Even if this call did not come from my neighborhood it still came from my town. The caller, or her friends, either knew me, or my kids, and these girls must go to school with my kids. How do you combat bullies and homophobia when you can’t even be sure where it is coming from?

So here I sit, imagine various revenge scenarios and then telling myself to just let it go. Frankly, neither option seems very appealing to me. So I sit, and I write, and I pray. I pray for the strength to forgive, I pray for the ability to trust that all will be well, I pray that hearts and minds will be opened, that my children will be safe, and that love and tolerance, not anger and hatred, will triumph. 

Give me one moment in time

I had a moment yesterday, a beautiful, emotional, moment, where I almost burst into tears in class. Normally I would attribute such a moment to my normal hyper-sensitive sensibilities, or my latent bi-polar tendencies, but this moment was one of pure gratitude. I have really been looking forward to a literature class I am taking this semester. I have also been secretly praying that this class would be similar to another class I took with this professor. One of my favorite things is to read novels, poems, short stories, etc and then discuss them. I live for this kind of stuff. I really enjoy it in a small class with an intelligent Professor and a great group of classmates. These qualities define the perfect class for me, and although many classes come close, few achieve these  expectations. Yesterday, the stars aligned, the heavens opened, and the perfect class was begun. I was sitting in class pretending to listen to my professor while surreptitiously reading the parts of the syllabus that were not being discussed. When I realized that all of my favorite components had actually happened, at least on paper, and then looked around the room to see the potential, I actually got teary. Misty-eyed, shuddering and blinking as I try to hold them back, teary. My sense of gratitude was very nearly overwhelming. Not only am I so very blessed to be able to go to school full time and study something I am passionate about, I get to do it in the most stimulatingly- amazing, mind-blowingly-nerdtastic ways. 

And I bought myself an Ipad.

Life is so good. 

Feels like i'm 17 again

Well I have started the first week of my 200th semester of college. This is my second year at Grand View and I really enjoy it. I was really anxious to start classes again and I am pretty happy with my classes this semester. Here's my best story so far:

I was walking into a building on campus today when I spotted a very cute boy. He was so super in-that-college-schleppy/preppy-way cute (only later did it occur to me that I am about a million years older than this boy) and he smiled at me.  I very smoothly tried to smile back at him as I was changing songs on my i-phone and walking up a flight of stairs. It did not end well. I was so flustered that I sort of tripped/fell up the stairs like the 100 year old idiot that I am. It was so stupid that I just laughed, and thankfully, this boy that will never notice me again, did too.

Ah College.

English pronunciation is a nightmare.

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

God bless you and send you a happy new year

2011 is nearly over and 2012 is set to begin. Today is my oldest son's 15th birthday and he's off playing in a basketball scrimmage. My other boys are lounging around while I sit here and contemplate doing laundry and baking a cake. I was reviewing my Goodreads page and I am shocked to discover that I only read 51 books in 2011, which I find hard to believe. In 2010 I read over 80 books, and I think I read more than I tracked and rated in Goodreads but who knows? I think the best book I read in 2011 was (and I feel super pretentious writing this) Bleak House by Charles Dickens. It was a lovely and fascinating novel and I truly enjoyed reading it. The most fun I had reading was working through the Brother Cadfael mysteries, I have read 13 of the 21 books and I still get a kick out of them. I also read a lot of Shakespeare this year (for a class) and that was, if not fun, certainly entertaining. For 2012 I will try to do 2 things: 1- do a better job of recording what I read, 2- read at least 75 books. I already have 72 books waiting on my to-be-read shelf (including 13 for next semester). Wish me luck, thanks for reading, and happy new year!

Good old catholic guilt

I am so tired today. Lest anyone think after my last post that I am some kind of saint; it took roughly 5 hours from the time I wrote that post to the time I was contemplating how much the materials to make cages for my children might cost at Menards. I love them, but man do they really honk me off some times. They can fight about fighting, and on Christmas! Finally today all is quiet, because Nate is gone to basketball practice and I took Liam to daycare. Here is where the catholic guilt comes in; I am sitting at home, in my pajamas, doing nothing, and I still took my youngest son to daycare. I feel terrible about it but I have what i hope are a few good reasons:

1) he really wanted to go
2) I feel like crap- I have a chest cold (Thanks Rhonda)
3) the dog needed a break from him
4) I'm a selfish man and I need a break

So there it is, all that warm lovey-dovey stuff I wrote on Christmas Eve is now properly counter-balanced by my selfishness and poor parenting. I suck, but at least I suck in peace and quiet.

Blessed to be a blessing to others

What a year it has been. I am writing this note to list all of the many things I am grateful for, because I have been so very blessed this year. 

I am grateful for my four crazy children, you force me, kicking and screaming, to be a better person and I love you for it, even if I am losing all of my hair in the process. You have changed my life in so many wonderful ways and, when I am not yelling at you to pick up your crap and stop fighting with your brothers, I am constantly amazed by how amazing you all are.

I am grateful for my Mom and Step-Dad, and my sister and brother-in-law. In the last year I have called home and cried to both of my parents and they both handled having their 34 year old son having a minor breakdown over-the-phone with calm, humor, love, and support. I am so blessed to have you as parents. Tara and Shane are the best people I know, and I am so lucky to count them as family and friends. They are such smart, talented, loving people who never fight (I will never understand that) and always make time for me and my clan. I love you guys!

I am also grateful for the crazy Jayne family, my four wild and sassy aunts, their ever-patient husbands, and my amazing Grandmother. These people have shaped me and loved me my entire life, and they have done it with lots of humor and attitude. I also want to give a special shout-out to my cousins, you are all such wonderful, giving, people and I am proud to call you family and friends. Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum!

I am grateful for all of my family, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, all across the US. Our times together may be few and far between, but I am blessed to share a few genes with you.

I am grateful to my friends, especially my closest friends Jolene, Michelle, Aaron, Tammy, Staci and April. Thank you for the years-and-years of fun and wine. My life would not be the same without you. Your each enrich and bless my life in many fun and wild ways.

I am grateful for all of my friends past-present-and future, you are all such a blessing to me and I truly enjoy stalking you through facebook!

I am grateful for the ability to go to school and study Literature. I never expected to find such mirth and joy in reading and writing. I am so happy every day to go to Grandview and surround myself with so much passion and knowledge. Thank you to my professors and friends at school who make my days challenging and fun.

Last but never least I am grateful to God. For the love and mercy I feel every day. For the many ways I am blessed and filled with your Grace. I know  am so very blessed, and I pray that I may in turn be a blessing to others.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

Peace and Blessings.

Trever