A Smidgen of Self-Pride

About 1 o’clock this afternoon I was overtaken by this sudden desire to have a Subway Italian sub. There is a subway not all that far from me on Higgins Avenue. So I drove to the restaurant, picked up the sub, and I had just gotten back to my apartment when my cellphone suddenly sang-out. It was Chris, the guy I had gone out with for a pizza on Wednesday. I must admit that my heart leaped just a little when I heard his voice. I know enough to know that I can never be sure if a guy is going to call back after that first date, no matter how much fun we seemed to have.

Chris asked me if I could chat awhile and I told him I could. With the bagged sub under my arm, I climbed out of my car, locked the door and journeyed into my apartment. All the while Chris and I were carrying on a conversation.

I sat at my little kitchen table and we began talking about all sorts of stuff. We discussed how hard it is to Christmas shop for certain people. Chris asked me if I had any childhood Christmas memories and I told him about the time when I was a little girl lying in bed Christmas Eve and I could have sworn I heard footsteps on the roof. I laughed and told Chris that it was apparently inconsequential to me at that time that we did not have a chimney or a fireplace.

Sometime during the conversation Chris changed subjects. He pointed out that I seemed to be unbothered that he did not, and perhaps never would make a lot of money. I told him that I knew he wasn’t lazy because he got up every morning and went to work. Chris then specifically pointed out that he was not a “big money guy”, and even though we had not known each other long, and had only actually gone out once, that I seemed to be amazingly okay with that. I again told him that he was obviously not lazy. I then stated that when I’m going out with a guy my concern is directed at the guy himself, and not how much money he makes. I went on to say that I'm probably crazy but if I like a guy, and even if I get serious about him, I still do not care one iota how much money he makes. There was a brief pause and then with a self-conscious giggle, I asked, “Does that answer your question?”

Chris kind of stammered out something like, "Yes Heather, it does. Thank you."

I think I put Chris’s mind at easy, and in the process I felt a little burst of self-pride.

Date #2 is tomorrow night.       

Chris

I decided I would try my luck with a blind date named Chris. I gave Chris’s father my cellphone number. Chris’s father is a salesman at the car dealership where I work and he had asked me if I wanted to meet his son. Chris called me the next night. He was very nice. In fact, I was more than a little surprised. He was funny and self-effacing, which I really like out of a guy just as long as underneath it all he has some self-confidence. Usually when I guy is self-effacing, he also has some self-confidence. I guess it takes some self-confidence to poke fun at yourself.

Chris is 28 years-old and he works for a company that supplies those heavy floor mats to professional buildings. A lot of buildings have them around their entranceways, so I was told. Chris drives one of the delivery trucks. He doesn’t make a lot of money but he said that he likes to be out on his own and away from supervisors. He never said or even implied that the job was somehow below him. I thought he would, but he didn’t, and I was glad. It’s good that not every guy feels he has to be a star just to be worthwhile. He finally asked if I would like to go out sometime and get a pizza. I said that I would.

Last night he picked me up at 7 o’clock and we went out for pizza. To drink, I had a glass of red wine, Chris had a beer. I noticed shortly after we sat down that Chris’s left hand was kind of scuffed up and sort of gross-looking. He told me that he had lost his left glove during the day, and pulling the floor mats off the truck and laying them on concrete floors can be kind of tough on hands, especially bare hands. I could literally see how tough on hands it was. I decided I would not let it bother me. It wasn’t like his hand was dirty, just scrapped up.

Chris could be serious, but also funny. I asked him if he had any college education. He said, “No college would accept me since I graduated high school with a 3.85 GPA.” He then paused and said, “No, I meant that I graduated with a .385.”

The server asked Chris if he wanted another beer. He pointed to me, shook his head no, and said that he’d better not since he was my designated driver.

Chris could be serious too. But nothing I revealed to him seemed to ruffle him. In fact, Chris seemed to understand where I was coming from. I told him that I had been in a relationship with an older guy for about a year and a half. Chris listened and then nodded knowingly. I confessed that almost every evening I went out into the night just to look up at the stars, and enjoy the darkness. He didn’t think it was at all nutty. He asked me about the constellations. When I told him I am an atheist, Chris smiled and jokingly said that I am “proof that atheists can be cute and sweet.”

We left the pizzeria about 9 or so and he asked me if I would like to go to his place and decorate his artificial Christmas tree. I told him that I would love to, but before we left the pizzeria I wanted a picture of us together. Without even thinking about it I put my arms around him, and he wrapped an arm around me. It just seemed like a natural thing to do. I think it felt that way for both of us.

It took us two hours to untangle the lights and get the tree completely decorated. Chris didn’t get me back to my apartment until after midnight. To tell you the truth, it wouldn’t have bothered me one bit had he not gotten back me back to my apartment until the next morning… if you know what I mean. I liked Chris that much. :)

A Return To the Blog

I have not been attentive to my blog lately for several reasons. One reason is that I received my recently deceased grandfather’s photo albums and I have been going through them. I have written about Grandpa in my blog. The effort to study his photos and place them in proper order has been a bit time consuming, and just looking at the pictures has kind of sidetracked my thinking away from blog writing. I guess that I have simply not been in the mood to write a recent entry into my blog.

Grandpa in Korea about 1952

I quit dating Luke several weeks ago. We went out about eight or ten times. He is a devout Catholic and I am an atheist. He felt that it just wasn’t going to work out for him long-term, so he decided to end it. I was disappointed but not surprised. Since he works for FedEx and still delivers to my workplace, l see him most workdays. He remains very pleasant, as do I. I guess if things are not going to work-out between two people, it is good to remain friendly.  

One of the salesmen where I work knows that I am single and so he wants to set me up on a blind date with his son. The son’s name is Chris. I have seen one really blurry photo (I call them "earthquake photos") of him, and in the picture he looks a little overweight, but otherwise okay. At least he wasn’t wearing a scowl. I have nothing against blind dates, just so long as I have some slight idea of what I’m getting into. I guess when it comes to this Chris; a “slight idea” is pretty much what I’ve got. I'm not being pressured in any way and so I am going to have to think about it for a while. On one hand I feel like taking a break from the world of romance (or whatever it is I’m doing), on the other hand, I’d like to share the holidays with a nice guy. A girl just cannot turn off her romantic inclinations with the snap of her fingers, at least I can’t.  

A Farewell To My Grandfather

My grandfather died last weekend. He had a stroke the previous Friday and died on Sunday. Last week our family traveled back to Ohio to attend his funeral. After the funeral we went to my uncle’s house and reminisced as we looked through my grandfather’s photo albums. I very much loved my grandfather. I have not seen him very many times since we moved to Chicago, but I have made it a point to call him at least once a month, just to say hello and tell him that I am thinking of him. When I was a kid I would see him all the time. He would give me piggyback rides and take me for ice cream. My father says that when I was very young, he would read to me.  

I remember a year or two ago my grandfather talked with me about how a person’s life has a lot of different chapters, and he was living his final chapter. He said that I would remember him as this old man, but that he was not always old. I think he had waiting to tell me those things then because they were things that he wanted me to know, and he figured I might finally be old enough to understand.

Looking at my grandfather’s old photo albums was truly fascinating. Many of the pictures I had seen before at some time. There was one picture I saw last week that my grandfather first showed me four or five years ago. The picture has him as a boy standing on a sidewalk next to his bike. There was another boy in the photo too. It was obvious that they were friends. The two were looking at the camera and smiling, but I had this weird feeling that they were trying not to make funny faces. I remember that my grandfather not only remembered the name of the other boy, but he even told me a couple of the stories involving him and the other boy, stories that took place 70 years ago. I remember thinking that it was pretty cool; some old guy remembering so vividly both his childhood, and his childhood friend.   

There were other photos I saw last week that I had previously seen. A couple of these photos were of my grandfather when he was about 18 or 19. The quality of the black and white pictures was not very good but my grandfather looked very handsome. He could have been some college student of today except for the fact that he was pretty dirty, and he was in an army uniform in the Korean War. My grandfather would talk freely about his childhood, but he would barely mention the Korean War. I never asked him about that period, but my father did. I guess my grandfather just did not want to talk about it.

Last week I saw my grandfather’s wedding photos for the very first time. They were married in 1956. There was a photo of my grandparents haphazardly feeding each other crumbling wedding cake. There’s a picture of them laughing and getting into some 1950s car with “JUST MARRIED” half visible on the back window. They were so young, so happy. It’s hard to believe that they are both gone now.

Perhaps my favorite photo in the albums is a photo of my 11 year-old father posing for the picture while perched on his bike. In the background is my grandfather sitting on some porch steps, smiling, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. I think the photo was from 1969. It looked so much like the photo of my grandfather with his bicycle, it was a little bit disturbing, and a kind of cool too; two generations yet nearly the identical picture.

A few years before my grandfather died he told me that a person’s life has a number of chapters, and I will remember only the final chapter of his life, the chapter when he was an old man. He was wrong about that. I will remember all of his life’s chapters. To me, my grandfather was that special.     

Heather the Heathen

I grew up a Methodist. I went to one Methodist church or another all the way through childhood and into early adulthood. When I was a senior in high school one of my casual friends mentioned that she was an atheist. To that point in my life I had never known an atheist, at least as far as I know. I was just a little bit offended by her beliefs, and I asked her how she could reject god. She very calmly, very patiently explained it to me.

The talk did not turn me to atheism. What our talk did was initiate within me some critical thinking concerning god, religion, and the possibility that there was no god out there in space. Before, I had never thought about it. I had simply assumed that what I had been told was the truth. I was not unindoctrinated away from Methodism and re-indoctrinated into atheism. My own critical, rational thinking turned me to atheism. Unless there is significant information uncovered demonstrating that a god does exist, I will almost assuredly never go back to practicing religion.

I am different from many atheists in that I want there to be a god. I want to go somewhere when my mortal being dies. I don’t like the idea of an eternity of nothingness. The notion bothers me. There never was a time when I knew that a god existed, but there was a time when I believed a god existed. I can no longer believe such a thing, but I can still hope there is a god. So that’s what I do; I hope that there is a god.

As an ex-Methodist, I know a little about the Bible. Also, I know that there are, in effect, thousands of religious beliefs around the world. I do not particularly like the god as he is generally depicted in the Bible. He is jealous and has moments of cruelty [Hosea 3:16; Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.]. But there are literally thousands of religions in the world and there is no logical reason why one religion should be any more valid than the next, therefore I am free to make-up my own religion, if not to believe in, at least to hope for.

First, the god of my hopes is a friendly god. He is amicable and easy to talk to. He is a self-confident god and therefore he does not demand prayer or worship. My god doesn't dictate what a person can eat, or how a person can dress. He likes a good joke. My version of god smiles when he witnesses a person telling a silly white lie. And he shakes his head and rolls his eyes when he sees a motorist denying speeding to the policeman who pulled him over. However, the god I am hoping for will become angry with a murderer or a rapist. Such loathsome individuals receive punishment from my god, harsh punishment, but these transgressors are not subjected to cruelty. That’s where my god is different. The god I long for allows for repentance, even after death. An eternity in hell? My god is not that sadistic.

I certainly do not know if my god exists. In truth, I do not actually believe that he exists. But I most assuredly hope that he exists. What’s more, I hope that he reads this post, smiles and nods in agreement. I think that would be a really great god.