Category Archives: Beautiful Stuff

A Real Man at a Swimming Pool Store

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A little bit of background.

My mom’s parents moved to a house in Norman, OK over 10 years ago. One of the things that drew my granddad to the house was the fact that it had a swimming pool. He was a Navy veteran and had always had a bit of an amphibious side to him and so the idea of owning a pool was right up his alley.

My grandmother, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. Some might even say she has a phobia of water. The swimming pool in their backyard was very much my granddad’s.

And he took care of it like it was his baby. From April through early October each year, without fail, you could show up at my grandparent’s house at anytime and find a crystal clear pristine blue swimming pool (much like the one above) just waiting for you to dive into. For years my granddad took almost daily samples of the water to the local swimming pool supply store to have it tested and to find out what balance and type of chemicals it needed.

For those of you who don’t know, keeping the water in a swimming pool clear and swimmable is no small task. But swimmable and clear he kept it… day in and day out.

But then he went into the hospital for heart surgery last November. Expecting it to be just a “routine” heart surgery that would have him back home in a few days and because of an unusually pleasant Oklahoma fall, the swimming pool had not been winterized before he went in for surgery.

Following a successful heart surgery, he had a stroke that kept him in and out of the hospital and assisted living until he passed away this past spring.

Just the other day, I was eating lunch with my grandmother and the subject of the swimming pool came up. She told me how good the pool looked, and knowing how much work it had been for my granddad, I asked her how in the world she was managing to keep it looking like that.

And that’s when she told me this story.

Though I’m still a little fuzzy on the details, back in November or early December, right after my granddad’s stroke either the guy who owns the pool store called my grandmother or she went in to see him. Either way, the conversation of winterizing the pool came up and the man told her not to worry about it and that he’d take care of it.

She asked him how much she owed him for it and he told her that my granddad had been such a good customer that he would winterize it for free and the two of them could settle up once he was out of the hospital.

Come to find out that this man did more than just winterize their pool in November. Ever since then he’s been sending someone over at least once a week to check the water and add any chemicals necessary to balance the pH.

After my granddad passed away in the spring, the man sent one of his employees over to “open” the pool for the summer. As recent as just a week ago, he is still sending someone over each week to take care of the pool for my grandmother.

When she approached him a couple months ago about how much she owed him for what he’d been doing, he told her not to worry about it. He told her that if she decided to sell the house in the next year or two, the pool needed to be in as pristine condition as possible for potential buyers. He told her they could settle up if and after she sold the house. In the mean time, however, he told her he would continue taking care of it.

Honestly, I’d be surprised if they ever “settle up” if and when my grandmother sells the house. In fact, I’d be surprised if he’s even keeping any kind of record of how many times he or one of his employees has been out to her house.

I have no idea what his name or the name of his pool store is, but I plan to find out. Though I’ve never met the guy and I wouldn’t recognize him if we passed on the street, I know just from the way he’s been treating my grandmother that he is clearly a real man.

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Update: I found out today that the man’s name is Mike Thompson and he’s the owner of Thompson’s Pool… which is located just a few miles south of Lindsey off of 24th Ave in Norman. If you live in Oklahoma City and have a need for pool supplies, in this man’s opinion, it would be totally worth your time to drive down to Norman.

A Real Man’s Criteria for Masculintiy

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I couldn’t have said it better myself:

“Masculinity, first and foremost, ought to be defined in terms of relationships. It ought to be taught in terms of the capacity to love and to be loved. If you look over your life at the end of it… life wouldn’t be measured in terms of success based on what you’ve acquired or achieved or what you own. The only thing that’s really going to matter is the relationships that you had. It’s gonna come down to this: What kind of father were you? What kind of husband were you? What kind of coach or teammate were you? What kind of son were you? What kind of brother were you? What kind of friend were you? Success comes in terms of relationships.

And I think the second criterion – the only other criterion for masculinity – is that all of us ought to have some kind of cause, some kind of purpose in our lives that’s bigger than our own individual hopes, dreams, wants, and desires. At the end of our life, we ought to be able to look back over it from our deathbed and know that somehow the world was a better place because we lived, we loved, we were other-centered, other focused.”

-Joe Ehrmann (quoted from the book Season of Life by Jeffrey Marx)

Well said mountain of a man sir. Well said.

8 Years… Feels Like Yesterday

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As of right now, I’ve been married to the lovely and talented Annaleise exactly 4,207,682 minutes. My oh my does time fly by. Life is good.

The picture above is from our honeymoon in the Bahamas back in August of 2002. I can’t believe how young we look. Such a long time ago, yet it feels like it was only yesterday. I have more to say on real men and marriage later, but I’m saving that for another post.

Right now, I’ve got dinner plans.

I must have spyware…

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because whoever created this video has definitely been recording my Google search activity the last several months.

Thank you Ann, you guru of all things web awesome, for the heads up on this video.

And then there’s this one that made the lovely and talented wife and I both get a little choked up:

Well done Google. Well done.

Guys Don’t Read?

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Heather and I were having some milkshakes the other night at our local Steak ‘n Shake, where we ran into two of my former students. I chatted them both up (they’re a couple) about things I remembered their being interested in. For the girl, that meant the Twilight series. (For the record, I haven’t read a single word of the books nor seen a single second of the movies.)

At some point, the young man interjected that he’d recently read a book, too, about business. He couldn’t remember the title, though, and he’d finished reading it a few months earlier.

Like any good lady friend, his girlfriend came to his defense. Her blithe response to his forgetting the title?

“Well, you know, guys don’t read.”

I fought back the urge to take umbrage at this remark. OK, not really. I knew it was offhand and not exactly true. But it still frustrated me.

See, I’ve always been a reader, or at least since I learned how to read. I’d fake illness as a kid so I could stay home from school to read a book. I’d read a book under my desk while the teacher lectured. I’d check out the maximum number of books from the library.

Among my group of friends in I high school, I was known as “the reader.” I finished every book we were assigned in school, so my peers would ask me for summaries and explanations. When we rented or bought new video games, my friends would toss me the instruction book and issue the command “Read it. Tell us what we can’t figure out just by playing.” While my buddies skimmed Sports Illustrated focusing on the “illustrated” part, I would pore over every article.

I majored in English in college. I still go to the public library once a month. I recommend books, ask for them for Christmas and birthdays, and regularly receive gift cards to Barnes & Noble. I’m a reader.

So I know it’s not true that “Guys don’t read.” But I also know that reading is seen as a sort of “amasculine” activity, and this fact frustrates me a great deal. For one, because I read, and I consider myself a [burgeoning] man. For another, I know lots of Real Men who read–regularly.  Still, I have to acknowledge that guys have bought into this notion, too–we typically don’t start book clubs.

Here’s where I stand on masculinity and reading: I think everybody should be reading something meaningful all the time–not just men. So I think gender is kind of a weak excuse for not reading. Gender might be the reason we don’t cry, share our feelings, or wear pantyhose. But it’s not the reason we don’t read–that’s something else altogether.

My Papa, a Knife, and Forgiveness

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A little over a week ago, I wrote in defense of the pocket knife. Composing that piece prompted me to think about a story involving my grandfather–my mom’s dad, whom I call “Papa”, pronounced “Paw-Paw”–a gift from him to me, and something he taught me about forgiveness.

My grandpa has almost always carried a pocket knife. As a child, I mostly saw him clean his fingernails with it, though occasionally I’d see cut some rope or skin a raccoon with it. As a child, I also wanted to do exactly whatever my Papa was doing. So if he carried a pocket knife, I wanted to carry a pocket knife.

About 10 years old when I expressed this desire, I was just a bit young to get my own Buck or Case. However, my grandpa came up with a solution. He somehow came in the possession of a little one-blade pen knife probably no longer than your pinky. He gave it to me during a weekend visit to his house, and I immediately went to the front yard to start throwing it, blade out, into the dirt.

I threw it a few times near my feet, each throw ending with a satisfying little thump as the knife went blade-deep (about two inches) into the black, soft dirt of the front yard. But after a throw no more than two or three minutes into my session, I couldn’t find the knife. It was brightly colored–yellow or green, I can’t remember now–but I somehow couldn’t locate it among the grass in a two-feet radius around my feet. To this day, I still don’t know if I threw it too hard and buried it, or if it got lost in some standing water close by. Either way, I’d managed to lose this present from my Papa, and my childhood self already felt guilty about it.

After futilely looking for several minutes, I went back inside, hoping my grandpa wouldn’t mention the knife. He didn’t, not that day. But over my next several visits, he mentioned it a couple times, always asking me how I liked carrying it and what I’d been doing with it. I’m getting a little choked up even now thinking about how proud he was to have given me that token of his affection, his love. Still, every time he asked about it, I felt another longer, sharper knife of guilt go a bit deeper into my conscience.

Eventually, maybe a month or two later, I confessed to my mother what had happened. And I admitted I couldn’t bring myself to tell Papa what had happened, and worse yet that I’d lied to him about it–several times–since then. She suggested a solution: I should write him a letter. Knowing I had to assuage my conscience, I agreed. I composed it, she put a stamp on it, the postman delivered it.

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Now here’s the best part. My grandfather never again mentioned the knife, nor did he ever mention the letter. I think he knew my heart was too tender.

I also think he knew what forgiveness really is. Of course, he would say there was nothing to forgive, that I’d merely lost something and been ashamed to admit it, but I think otherwise. When a man forgives, it’s got to be absolute. Immediate. Total.

Like Michael, my grandpa taught me a lot about manhood. This was just one of many lessons and examples, one I’m so glad to share.

**********

I supposed I’ve fibbed a bit here, too. My grandfather did mention the knife and the letter, but only many years later, and out of a sense of sentimentality. He’d kept that letter for years, and showed it to my teenage self on another weekend visit. He smiled as he pulled it out and asked me to read it. We both laughed.

Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out another gift for me. This one a little bigger, with three blades and a bone handle. A pocket knife.