It's my gift... It's my curse

Paul Moore: It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room.

Jane Craig: No. It's awful. ~ Broadcast News

I have been blessed with what is called (in the Christian circles) the gift of "discernment" or "prophecy." Does this mean I am tearing my robes in the streets or seeing burning bushes? Absolutely not. Those wonderfully mystic sounding words, just mean I have a heightened sense of people. This is a strange gift to give a man who think most people are really ridiculous. Or maybe it's the cause...

Anyway, I just find it frustrating when you know people or meet people who are so transparent and so obviously... what's the phrase I'm looking for... in need of "help." Call it profiling, stereotyping, call it anything you want. Usually, I can meet a person for about an hour and tell them things about themselves that are very true and sometimes too true. Most of the time I try to give them the benefit of the doubt and just file away my assumptions under the "be careful" heading. But other times I just wish I could help them by telling them the truth!

Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you know these people? There are a group of girls at our church in 5th grade. You see them coming and you know they are trouble. They are the girls that someone should pull them aside before they ever hit Jr. High and tell them, "Look honey, it's your choice. You have the potential to be a strong, beautiful, smart leader that people will respect... or a very very popular slut. Choose wisely."

Or the people user. The guy you want to pull aside and say, "Look man, you could be a cool friend, but no one wants to hang out with you because you suck people dry emotionally and you never pick up the tab at lunch. Take control of your life and invest in other people."

Or that poor high school boy. "Hey, I know she's cute. You know she's cute. SHE knows she's cute. Try not throw your entire heart away on a girl that's using you. We are all routing for you to not get her pregnant. Choose wisely."

And of coarse, my personal favorite. The girl that thinks she needs a man she can fix. It's the same thing every time. "Yeah, it was a little scary, but he'd never hit me. I know that no one else in my life thinks he is a nice guy, but they just don't know him like I do. No, I don't think he is controlling, but I can't hang out tonight, he doesn't like it when I'm out with my friends and he's not there." Oh my Gosh! Here we go, "Honey, you are four months away from becoming a battered wife. Sure he is good looking. Yes, you probably went to far physically and you don't want to waste that on a man who won't be your husband. But you deserve better than that. You are beautiful, don't settle for a man who tries to convince you that you are lucky to be with him. Do you really want to spend the next ten years of your life saying, 'oh baby, daddy really does love mommy, so times daddy just drinks too much and is upset at mommy. So please don't tell your teacher at school what daddy does to mommy.' Choose wisely."

Things I'd Rather Not Know From Animal Planet

Just to disturb you.

The Lion King was a box office hit and personally, one of my favorite animated feature films. It is brilliant. A pig and a mir cat are friends... who comes up with this stuff? Of coarse, Disney spared no expense in making this movie. They actually brought live lions into the cartoonist's studio so they could make the movements and look of the animals as realistic as possible. And as for the characters... they consulted with zoologist to determine animal behavior.

Now, I learned from Animal Planet what Disney didn't tell us. For instance, in a pride (group) of lions, there is always only one full grown male. The strongest survives and claims the females. Each pride has mulitple females. They do all the hunting. This, of coarse, explains the plot of the movie. Mufasa (Dad Lion) fights with Scar (brother) for control of the pride at first. And at the end Simba (son) must fight Scar for control of the pride. But this also reveals some very disturbing things.

1. Simba's love interest (Nala) is the daughter of one of the female lions of the pride. But there is only one male. So Mufasa is the father of all children in the pride. Simba likes his sister. Gross.
2. It doesn't matter if Simba likes his sister Nala, because the Alpha Male of the Pride mates with all members of the pride. So Simba will not only mate with his love interest, but fights Scar to mate with his own mother and Nala's mother.
3. This also brings to light that while Simba is away singing with the pig and the cat, Scar is mating with the females.
4. The females of the pack hunt so it explains why Mufasa has so much time on his hands to teach Simba Buddhism and why Simba, Mufasa, and Scar are all Deadbeat Dads.
5. And finally, the principle remains that "there can be only one male." So if Mufasa hadn't been killed and had raised Simba. He would eventually have to kill Simba, have Simba kill him, or banish him from the pride anyway.

Ah, the Circle of Life!

I just want to spank them... is that wrong?

I know now that I'm not ready for a family yet. I'm sitting in Panera, and literally have chills running down my spine when the two year old boy next to me shrieks when he doesn't get his way. The two mothers having lunch are used to traveling with the seven children present and ignore the screeching child and his older brother who is tormenting him. I however cannot ignore the sound that is so piercing that it sends chills down my spine.

Who brings seven children to Parera Bread Co? You take kids to McDonalds, get them happy meals, and let them play outside (in the street in some cases). You don't bring them to a restaurant that is $6 or $7 dollars a person, doesn't have anything for them to do, and there isn't even a kids menu. If any place wants to send the message Kids Not Encouraged, it would be to not even have a kids menu.

It's not that I don't like children. I don't like children that I can't spank. Granted my parents only had two children and this women had at least 3 or 4 of her own, but if I behaved half as badly as the kids sitting next to me I would have been pulled into the bathroom and spanked. There was no shrieking, there was no tormenting each other, and we had a whole different set of manners we had to use in a restaurant. I used to have to approach my parents and wait silently till they were done talking, say,"Excuse me. May I speak?" Then I could ask a question. Depending on the question, I may have peed my pants by the time I got their attention. That was at Pizza Hut.

I don't want to be one of those people that claims, "My kids would never do that..." Because my kids will misbehave. But I will say this. My kid would only shriek like that once... ONCE!