God spelled backwards is dog

I wish I could take the concern of a large portion of humanity seriously enough to try and reflect their seriousness in a serious way. But no matter how much I try, I just can't. Maybe that's because I was overlooked as a formative child--except for my Aunt and Uncle in Kansas who briefly cared for me and my sister in 1944 when they tried to introduce me to the rigors of the Janssen-clan commitment to the old-fashioned, old-country Baptist Faith and a brief taste of being a choirboy in a Presbyterian Church in a small town in Colorado sometime in 1945-46, no one has really tried to indoctrinate me.

I might have been scared off the whole religion thing when, as a new Cub Scout bent on earning the requisite number of badges in order to advance to the next level (was it "Webelo" or something like that?), I undertook to acquire the "religion badge." That badge required that I survey at least five people in my community by telephone or in person, whichever was most practical. Good thing I lived outside the city limits of Rocky Ford, Colorado (and probably was also a bit lazy) and didn't go knocking on doors as an innocent 10-year old might. It was bad enough that on my first or second calls, I got a Jewish lady on the the phone.

Using my Cub Scout handbook script, I introduced myself and my purpose. Since there was silence on the other end, I assumed I had her go-ahead and proceeded with my 5-point checklist. If I recall correctly, the first question was, "Do you consider yourself a religious person?" Answer (stretching out the word hesitantly): "Y-e-s." So far, so good. I plowed on--I was within striking distance of knocking off this badge with no sweat. Next question: "Do you attend church regularly?" Answer: Silence, then "What's your name?" Thinking I had made an ally of this lady, I proudly and dutifully gave her my name and then vaulted to the fatal question: "Are you a Christian or Jew?"

Well, that ended my pursuit of this badge: she hung up. Even at a tender, innocent age, I was unnerved enough to lay aside my survey for another day. You see, I wasn't aware of the Holocaust that was just being revealed to the world at the end of World War II, nor was I aware that many communities, including Rocky Ford (population maybe about 5,000 in its heyday) more or less harbored anti-Semitic sentiments. In fact, I didn't know the difference between a Jew and a Christian--for that matter, I'm confident I didn't know what either word meant at all! But I sure as hell began to learn that evening.

My mother, working with my stepfather who owned the Rocky Ford Enterprise, a weekly newspaper, got a call sometime during the day. That evening, allowing that she was probably dog tired after a long day of prepping the galleys (and a hundred other tasks) to publish the following day, she valiantly tried to be patient in explaining the depth of the gaffe I had pulled. It seemed the Jewish lady had called on her at the paper's store front and raised all Billy's Hell about my lack of upbringing in such sensitive mattes. My mother, sensing that this was considerably beyond my tender age to appreciate, simply ended the discussion by generously allowing that I hadn't done anything wrong, but that I should put the "religion badge" aside and choose something less controversial in my quest toward conquering favor with the Cub Scouts. However, it may have been no coincidence that I found myself a choirboy in the town's Presbyterian Church shortly after this incident!

A couple years later, my father, a confirmed atheist, but nonetheless a fervent searcher for the meaning of life (his explorations took him into a "science-oriented" cult still extant in the mountains outside Ely, Nevada today as the School of Natural Order), tried his best until I graduated from high school in 1954, to interest me in his 30-year inquiries into the meaning of life and its mysteries. I must have been hopelessly insensitive in his eyes, because his final act was to "enroll" me in a Buddhist religious school in Nepal--it seems during his wartime assignment in China and India, he had made tentative contacts with some Buddhist monks who served him in locating a cold, hard rock for me to sit on and contemplate the mysteries for a year. In fact, he surprised me with this plan a few days after I had returned from my military academy in Roswell, New Mexico and, predictably, this became the pivot on which our relationship ended that very evening. I may have been a pliable, obedient son, but I absolutely was unable to envision myself sitting on a cold rock at 20,000 feet, eating rice and chanting Buddhist cantations for a year.

Many years later, my younger son, now married with a growing family of his own, mildly berated me for my lack of indoctrination in religious matters--it seems his Peruvian wife, naturally a deeply devout Catholic of the Latin variety had exerted considerable influence over him, particularly with respect to how they would educate their children. I tried to convince him, gently, that my approach, in contravention to most American families as well as my own father, was to leave the matter entirely up to him, when he arrived at a point in his life that the question would become pertinent. I believe he understood and maybe appreciated that explanation, although I know his Catholic wife would have been outraged--as was surely the case when, sometime in 1998 - 2004, she gave up on me and became the effective wedge and motive that finally separated me from my son.

But that's another subject for another personal post someday (when I get over my having been recently summoned to court to respond to her judicial petition that I be severed from her, my son, and my grandchildren--using the false charge that I had demonstrated a penchant for domestic violence). Oh, by the way, she won her petition--it was the politically correct finding for Judge Henry Morales, even though I haven't seen or been near my son and her family since Christmas Eve 2004!

Marriage and Progeny

Well, now, after all this "bloviating" on my main blog "Grant's Portfolio," I've been ruminating whether I should record a bit about marriage and child raising--favorite subjects, if a failed, of social critics. I'm still debating whether, (1) I have any credentials, aside from my two kids and my own two marriages and (2) it'd produce anything positive.

I seriously doubt that anything "positive" would come of it, since "positive" implies that something "good" could come of the essay. "Good" is such a vague, malleable, and ill-defined concept, that I'm repulsed from the git-go in pondering the task.

[Since posting the above quandary, I decided I must make some comment or other--it's the only personal matter left out of my collection on "Grant's Portfolio." So come back some day to read some thoughts--probably bittersweet, since that adjective best describes my experience. You may be sure I won't be "preaching"--because that stance assumes a certain level of superiority that I do not possess regarding marriage and raising kids. If there is any purpose to my recording, it would be, intuitively, what not to do!]