Circus peanuts and redneck Coke

Changing direction a little I wanted to recount a memory I have from my childhood that is good rather than funny, and since this is my blog and there is no censorship on the Internet I can do whatever I want. So away we go.

One of the most vivid memories I have as a kid is my Saturday. I don’t know how many of them I had, just that I had them. I essentially remember them all as one, it may very well be that is was only one, but since I cannot be certain we will assume it was more regular. My Saturday was not an official title, just what I am deeming it for this conversation. This was the time that I got to go spend with my dad. These were few and far between in a family of six kids, but my dad saw the importance of investing in his children and took time out to be with just me.

The main memory I have of this time is that we would go “fishing.” I never remember catching a fish, just that we would throw a line and a cork in the water and hope something bit. I guess I should say we went “throwing a line in the watering” because that is all I ever remember accomplishing. I don’t know what we talked about and I can’t tell you a deep life truth I learned in this time. What I do remember is Circus peanuts and redneck coke.

To this day I love circus peanuts. The orange marshmallow peanut shaped candy. Yeah, I know most people think they are gross, but I love them. And if I had to guess it is this very event that made me like them. I ate them on my Saturday with my dad. It was our thing. We would stop at the store and get circus peanuts, peanuts and glass bottle coke. IF you haven’t figured out a redneck coke is where you put your peanuts in your coke. I know that sounds gross too, but I grew up on it and I love it. These were great times that I still remember and feel like have influenced me in the type of parent I want to be.

My kids may never remember what I say and they might hate circus peanuts, but I hope they will always remember the time I spend with them.

Scuba Steve told me to

The phrase “low hanging fruit” is often used to describe temptations that are easily attainable.  I assume it takes it origins from the whole Adam and Eve thing, but that is pure specultaion. I guess I could wikipedia the phrase but who has that kind of time. On one of my incredible adventures I encountered this delctable treat and fell in a little too deep into my temptation.

As a kid I loved quaters. I have no idea of where this affinity came from, but silver change was the greatest thing I could ever imagine. I loved all silver change but quarters were the best. Why, becasue quartes could buy things. Video Games, Bubble gum, baseball cards, sweet tart suckers at the ballpark, juices at school (come to think of it I stole one of those one time in ementary school) and the like were rare treats in my days as a child so each quater was almost “priceless”.

So what does this have to do with low hanging fruit? Everything, you see my love for quaters mixed with the fountains placed in the malls in Alabama proved to be an almost deadly combination. I mean seriously who decided to put a deep fountain…ok let’s just call it a well so I feel better. Who puts a “well” in a public place and then has people throw money in it where little kids can see it, but not reach it so that quarters lying on the bottom look up and taunt all who stare into the precious gaze of whatever dead president is on the quarter. I felt like Golum staring into the pool at “my precious” trying to decide if my arm was long enough to reach it.

Where were my parents is all of this? I have no idea. If they were anything like me they were watching me waiting to see what I would do, not every really expecting anything to happen. But it did happen…and with a splash…a big one.

My arm was not as long as my desire for that quarter. I fell head first into the “well” and became completly immersed in the water. It was like I was baptised at an old Southern Baptist Church with the preacher who liked to hold kids under just to make sure they stayed quiet in church. He was never really going to drown them, but if they think he is they are scared enough to keep quiet during his sermon.

So I was drenched….in the mall…in blue jeans….in the summer….in Alabama. In all my glory my mom made me walk around the mall chaffing until she finished doing whatever it was we were doing there. I was humiliated as I should have been and decided that I would NEVER try to get a quarter out of fountain again…..until my arm was longer or I had some kind of scoop.

Superman minus the super

For some reason my mind is always capable of things that are seemingly impossible. You know, you look at something someone is doing and you are like, I could do that. Unfortunately for me, I looked at things kids did in movies and thought, if that kid can do it then I can do it. This was during that age period before I learned about trick photography…so yeah everything I saw in a movie was totally possible. But sometimes all you need to try a death defying act is a little belief…

Again I am not sure about how old I was all I know is was somewhere between ignorant and stupid. My brother and sister and I had out bikes at the city park. I am still not real sure why, but we did none the less. Now one of the key features of this park was a creek that ran along side it. It was cool for walking in during the summer and trowing rocks into and stuff like that. On this particular occasion I was convinced I could jump the creek with my bike….with no ramp…..and no talent….all 20 feet of it. So needless to say my older siblings challenged me to do it. (I would think less of them if they hadn’t)

Armed with my unsubstantiated belief, I ride back at least 100 feet because that is all I need to be able to build up the required speed to make this jump. I am visualizing the looks of my brother’s and sister’s face as I clear this jump complete with slow motion thumbs up in mid flight. I calculate the wind to make sure I don’t get blown off course and begin to peddle. As I peddle all the ways in which my siblings declare my awesomeness  dance in my head. I am approaching the bank totally believing in my ability to jump this creek.

The moment arrives that I reach the bank. I pull my front tire into the air and begin my flight that takes me…..about 3 feet into a 20 foot jump. I nose dive into the creek and leave a face imprint on the creek bed that I am certain is still there today. As I pulled myself and my bike from the creek I tried to calculate my error and why I did not make it. I could not believe that I did not carry all the creek. So I rode home soggy and defeated and my siblings had a great laugh (again I would think less of them if they didn’t) at my feat.

But at least I tried..

I’ll take a floaty with a side of drama

I have never been a very serious person. Not to say that I am funny, probably more that obnoxious guy that taps you on the shoulder to get you to spin around and find that no one is there. You roll your eyes and return to the conversation you were interrupted from by some lamo who things that it is fun to interrupt serious moments with a fifth grade prank. I am that guy.

So with that bit of knowledge it is no surprise that my family almost let me drown. Yes, I am going to explain that. When I was growing up my dad was a youth director at a small baptist church. This might be the place I get my love for students, but if not it certainly accounted for jammed fingers, knots on my heads and other injuries at the hand of his teenagers. On a particular outing we went to a pond at one of the students houses. We had been swimming and jumping into the pond and everyone was finishing up as I made my last pass away from the bank.

I guess I need to tell you that I often push the limits a little more then I should some times too. And this was one of those times. Being a small kid, I wanted to go where the big kids were and realized a little too late that I am shorter than them. Short kid…deep water….not a good combo. So I stared bobbing up and down like a cork screaming for some help. My family thought I was kidding so everyone started to laugh and point and think this was a gag.

I vividly remeber looking to the shore bobbing in and out of the water thinking that I was about to die. It felt like an eternity, though it was probably only a minute, until one of the HS kids realized I wasn’t joking. Brad Glass dove in an drug me to shore and saved my life. It was crazy and I was of course scared, mad and all those emotions that go with an overdramatic almost bad situation.

But I lived to goof off another day.

Can you staple an ant???

I don’t have a ton on memories from when I was a small child. My wife often recalls things from when she was 2, but I cannot even begin to pull together a coherent thought from that time in my life. I assume that to mean one of two things. One possibility is that I had a very uneventful childhood and nothing of consequence happened. The other option, which I might lean toward, is that my older brother and sister were so cruel to me that I blocked out the pain of that period of life. I will allow you to draw you own conclusions based on if you know my siblings or not.

What memories I do have are a little random and so I will not try to assign ages or time to them just recount them as best as I can.  The first one that jumps into my head was when my Dad was math teacher at a Christian school and he came home one day and asked me if I wanted to go to school. I was so fired up to finally be going to school. It is fun to relive this through my oldest son who is in pre-k and is preparing to go to “all day school” next fall. So I began my “school” at New Life Christian Academy. I think now it was probably more a day care because I don’t remember a single thing I learned, but while I was there I had two experiences that stick out in my mind.

First I remember being done with school and waiting on my dad to finish teaching. I was in his classroom and playing around his desk when I spied something rather interesting. It was this black and silver thing that looked like a lever that would push and pop back up. So like any small child I began to play with this. The seniors in the front row thought they would help me out and told me to stick my finger in it and press it down. I was like, dude it is a stamp thing for some totally awesome stamps and I can be the coolest kid in school by doing this. Well as I am sure you can imagine it wasn’t a stamp…..it was a stapler! I stapled my index finger and cries like a baby. The students thought this was hilarious and I of course was the dumbest kid in the world.

Second I remeber being with my class and going outside on another occasion to look at the horses in the field. It was rural Alabama so it was in a pasture, I know Alabama is redneck ha ha ha, nobody ever heard that one before, I’d like to see where you grew up and see if it was any better. Anyway, we were looking at the horses and I started to feel a little tingle in my legs….then I felt a lot of tingle….then some pain….then a lot of pain and I look down to find that I am standing in a fire ant bed. My teachers rush me into the building, take me into the girls bathroom, take off my pants and begin running water all over me to get the ants off…….. Good Times.

So that is the beginning of what I remember as a child. I will have some more random memories soon.

And then there were three

Lucky number 3…that is where I fell in the Isbell Family birth order. On a cold January day I came forth from my mothers womb, but like many things in my life it was not without some effort. My mother who had previously delivered two children tried to get me out, my fat head prevented my exit. Now for those of you who know me, you know that I have a pretty good size melon, but what you may not know is that I also have a conical shaped lump on the right side of my head where I was pulled out with forcepts. By some freak accident the doctor pulled me out and shaped my head in such a way that it all gathered at my soft spot and never went away.

I was born in Ft Worth, TX where my dad was in seminary to be a pastor. He never completed the work and felt like he wanted to move out of ministry before he finished. I can relate to this as I too have “some” seminary training and have in fact been a pastor, but felt like I needed to move away from that vocation.

As it turns out I would not be the last fruit to fall from my father’s loins so I would eventually be the 3rd of 6 children. Often while we were growing up my parents were asked if they knew what kept causing that. They were mistaken for Mormons, recruited to churches on high attendance Sunday, told they were trying to fill a basketball team and so on. The reality of it is that my mom loved babies and she spaced them out far enough to forget that babies turned into children.

But at the age of 18 months my family had all it could take of the the lone star state and packed back up for the great state of Alabama where I was spend the next 21 years to grow up and learn the ways of the NINJA…..ok not really, Alabama isn’t known for its production of Ninja’s…but I did try to chop a board once.

It all starts here….(Name that movie)

I guess starting in the beginning most would assume I would start with the day I was born, but you would be wrong. My story actually began with my parents. I know that there is someone reading this who says that I can’t start there and have to trace all the way back to my great blah blah blah….all the way to Adam. I am however too lazy to do this so for all intensive purposes my story began with my parents.

My parents met at a cheerleader camp/workshop/something. My dad was a cheerleader at Troy and my mom was a cheerleader at Charles Henderson High in Troy. Ironically since my life began here you would think I know more about the first meeting, but I don’t. I am not sure how they met, what it was like or if my dad was cool enough to even get my mom to notice him. I am not saying my parents haven’t told me, I am saying I don’t know.

As a matter of fact I know very little about my parents. I couldn’t tell you their favorite ice cream, color or movie. I don’t think I have ever had a conversation with my parents about what they planned to do with their lives. I am sure before the soul crushing weight of children my parents wanted to do something with their lives other than raise 6 (yes that is not a typo) kids.

As I drove and thought of this fact this morning I created an elaborate scenario of what my parents lives would have looked like without kids. I quite amused myself in traffic with the plans and attempts of their lives without kids. It was fun….but I digress

Along with my impending entrance into the world, I thought about the fact that Chris and Shea had a whole life going before I burst onto the scene. Chris was 4 and Shea was 18 month and I bet they were a little less than thrilled when mom and dad did the whole, we are going to have another kid speech. You will find that I do thins often, burst into a place not really knowing or caring what was going on before I got there. Al I know is that we better get to the fun quick or I get cranky.

So my parents, that I know very little about, and my older brother and sister, who I had little consideration for, were poised and ready for my arrival…

A new era… but it still smells the same

I can already see the comments about how long it has been since I have posted, I could atribute it to writers block, but since I am not a writer, that won’t fly. Anyway, life has changed and I am on a different journey and I wanted to begin to capture that journey here.  So enjoy as I recap, process and look into my life. For the sake of perspective I think the only place to start is at the begining….