Rite of Passage

My twelve-year-old son kicked my butt the other day. Not literally. No, he’s not quite there yet. But we were playing one-on-one in a Halo 3 Slayer match and he beat me. And not just by a little bit. I even think he might have let me get in a couple of kills just to make me feel better. Now, I don’t know how I should feel about this, but I can tell you how I do feel. I am ticked. I really want to beat him, but he is too good. He has surpassed me in this area. My wife points out that it is my own fault because I have raised them with video games, and that if I am going to feel anything besides shame for addicting them to brain-rotting, time-wasting, ultra-violent crap, (her opinion, not mine) that I should be proud that he has gotten so good. And I am proud. When it’s not me he’s shooting in the face with a shotgun.

I remember a while back watching an episode of “Home Improvement” where Tim Taylor is having problems with his oldest son, and Wilson tells him that his son is reaching a point in his life where a lot of cultures begin treating boys like men. They begin their training for adulthood with a rite of passage. In this particular episode, Tim let his son use the cutting torch for the first time, proclaiming him a man because he had cut metal with fire. I have often wondered about that sort of rite of passage. I have heard stories that the Maasai would send boys out on their own to kill a lion, and if they came back alive with a lion, then they were men. The Spartans took their sons from their homes at seven years old and began training them to become soldiers. In America, we consider children to be adults at eighteen, and yet a lot of those eighteen-year-olds act nothing like adults. Is that because we have not taught them how? Is it because we don’t expect them to fend for themselves and provide for them up until that age? We send them out into the world after eighteen years of dependence and then expect them to know how to live on their own, and then we wonder why there are so many young adults returning home to live with their parents. It’s not that hard, we think. We did it, why can’t they? They have seen how we lived our lives and how we went to work every day, why can’t they follow our example?

So what defines adulthood, then? We can’t send them out to kill lions. That’s cruel, and there aren’t very many lions left in the world. So how do we know that our children have made the transition? Self-sufficiency is a good sign. Living on their own and holding down a job. Grocery shopping by themselves. Making positive choices in their lives. Having a good marriage and/or a rewarding career. But most of all, I think it’s that moment when a child returns to their parents and says, “I’m sorry for all the crap I put you through, and thank you for everything” that makes a parent realize that they have done well by their children and they have completed their rite of passage. And then you laugh at them when their kids shoot them in the face with a shotgun!

A World of Communication

I remember in the fall of 1981 being 11 years old and having heard of an amazing technological advance. A friend of mine had come to school and told us about the "answering machine!" Apparently, when you were not at home to answer the phone, this fantastic futuristic device would answer it for you and take a message from whoever it was that called. After school that day, my friend Scott and I spent a few hours calling numbers out of the phone book, trying to get an answering machine, but we had no luck. But I remember thinking how cool that device was.

Then in about 1992, answering machines had become commonplace, but a new and more exciting device had come into being. A roommate of mine at the time, who was a real tech gear junkie, got one of the very first Motorola flip phones. I remember thinking how much it reminded me of the old Star Trek communicators. But man was it ever cool! There was hardly any coverage on it and the battery lasted for like two hours, but it was a phone that you could use anywhere. We were truly in the future.

Now it's 2007, and everyone has a cell phone. Even my mother in-law has a cell phone. And you can't call someone's home number, if they even have one, without getting the answering machine or the voice mail. I spend hours sometimes trying to get ahold of someone who has three phones (home, work, cell), and instant messenger on the computer. How can it be that with so many options for communication, we seem to be communicating less? I think the answer is that we are communicating more selectively. With more and more options for people to find us, we are finding it harder to be unreachable. Whenever I turn on my computer, people who I communicate with on instant messenger know that I am on. But then I have the option to "appear offline." I can refuse to answer my home phone and let the answering machine pick up. I can ignore my cell and let it go to voice mail. Then I can choose when I want to talk to all these people that are trying to talk to me. Of course they all have the same options that I do, so sometimes I end up having a conversation over voicemail. Have you ever been surprised, and even a little annoyed, when someone actually answers the phone when you were expecting to leave a message? I have. I like leaving messages for the same reasons I like instant messenger and email. You have that little buffer of time to organize your thoughts and to edit yourself that you don't have when you are talking to someone in "real time." Ever say something stupid and wish you could take it back? Guess what? With messenger you can! As long as you don't press enter...

I guess the point of this all is that we humans are constantly reinventing the way we communicate with each other, but in doing so I think it is important that we are careful that we don't isolate ourselves from each other. I have friends that I have only spoken to online, but I still have that desire to one day get together and meet them face to face. Sit down, have a pizza and talk to then in person. And that is good. I think once we start to lose that, we will lose some of what makes us human.

Assault!

Well it finally happened. After three years of working with inmates at the county jail I finally got attacked. On Wednesday I was working our maximum security unit and an inmate broke the rules. I then ordered him to go to his cell and lock down. Isn't it interesting how much these people act like, and then are treated like children? You did a bad thing. Go to your room! Anyway, he didn't want to go to his room, so then I had to put him there. Long story short, he punched me in the left eye, I then subdued him and he got a new felony charge for assaulting a peace officer. I heard yesterday that he received a $20,000 bond on that, so I don't think he'll be going anywhere any time soon. Now that all laid out as it is, I would like to comment on some feelings I had during the event.

People often ask me one question in particular when they find out I work at the jail. They want to know if I am afraid working around all those inmates, and the answer is no. Most of the time. I explained in a previous post that we have all sorts of inmates in the jail, ranging from jaywalkers to multiple murderers, and at times I will be in the same room with forty-four of any mixture of them. Most times I am not afraid, because I have worked there long enough to realize that most times even murderers are still just people. They are not monsters. I will say this, though, and I suggest that you never tell your children this. There are monsters out there. We like to tell our kids that monsters are just make believe, but I have met a few, so I know they are real. But they are exceptionally rare, so as I stated before, I am usually not afraid to be in a room with forty-four inmates. On the day I got assaulted, I was in a room with two inmates and another officer, and though I think I remained as rational as you can in this sort of situation, I was afraid. Unless you are in a sport fighting match and you expect to get hit, the moment someone hits you in the face, you are fighting for your life. Adrenalin levels go through the roof. Your heart rate skyrockets and your vision narrows. All you can think of is either neutralizing or escaping the threat. It's not a good feeling. But, at the same time it is. It's a primal kind of feeling rooted in the very beginnings of our beings, and even though it is scary, it feels almost right. Your body is doing what its core programming was meant to do. You're not sitting in front of a computer screen or shuffling papers from here to there. You are fighting for your very survival. It's something that has been going on for eons, and though we have lost touch with that most basic version of ourselves through all of our superficial modern society, I was shown proof that we are still animals, and if we are forced to, we will fight to survive.

This is not a boast, but I won that fight. The reason I don't consider it bragging is that when it comes down to us (detention officers) versus them (inmates), we always win. In order for us to lose, someone would have to die, or inmates would have to escape, and we do our very best every day to make sure that neither of those two things happen. We are looked down upon by our colleagues in street patrol as being "just jailers," but they drop their problems on us and then they leave. We are the ones that have to deal with these people on a daily basis. We have to manage the problem instead of dropping it on someone else to handle. In this kind of a situation, having to manage a population of people that already have a disregard for the rules, you find yourself building relationships with inmates. They must remain professional and never reach a personal level, but they are necessary for gathering information and accomplishing tasks. There are even several inmates that I personally like. I will never associate with them on the outside, but if I see them on the street I say hello and might even chat with them for a few minutes, but they will never be coming over for dinner on Sunday. I have also now developed a relationship with the inmate who decided to hit me. I feel almost like we've shared something now. We've gone through combat together and we have survived, and that connects us somehow. Of course we won't be able to discuss it since he probably going to prison for a long time, but that's all right, because I doubt he places the same kind of significance on the event. For me it becomes about finding meaning in a place where everything seems so pointless. Where lives are squandered and people a lot of times have lost hope. It's easy to be drawn into apathy in a place like that, and that is why it is important to examine events such as this and realize that they do have meaning. It allows you to maintain some sense of hope, and that is incredibly important in this type of environment.

Rewrite!

So as I may have mentioned before I love writing. Love it. The creative process, though at times frustrating, is most often cathartic, therapeutic, and in my case, recreational. Any of you who are writers know that the creative portion of the novel-writing process is the easy part, because after the initial flood of the first draft come the... rewrites. That's right, my pen wielding brothers-and-sisters-in-arms. I heard you all gasp. For those of you who don't know why we would gasp, let me explain.

There is a famous quote about writing that I hate, but is nonetheless true. 90% (and the percentage is debatable as well) of writing is RE-writing. Going in and hacking and slashing that manuscript that you laughed and cried and lavished attention over in the first draft into something lean and mean and tight. Editing is manuscript boot camp, only the manuscript doesn't do any of the work. Not fair. I already worked hard, and now I have to work harder? Not only do you have to work harder, but you have to work longer, because that first polish you rub onto your manuscript is called the second draft, not the final. Oh, no. There is much more to be done. Ask anyone who belongs to a critique group and they will tell you. Fix this and then this isn't quite right. Mend that and then this creaks a little. Oil that and then this seems dull. Polish that and then this is loose. Tighten that... Well, you get the picture. When you are writing a book, you are in for the long haul if you want it to be any good. Anyone who dashes off a first draft and thinks it is ready for print is fooling only themselves. I've known good writers who give up after a fifth draft and say, "If that's not good enough, it never will be."

Which brings me to another writing quote that I wish I could credit, and that is: A writer never finishes a book. He abandons it. That's the truth. There will never be a time when I am completely happy with an entire piece of work. There will always be improvements that could be made, but at some point you just have to let it go. You have to say, "This is good enough," and hope to God that you're right.

For the Love of Books

Over on Sharing the Brain, the blog of one of my Querytracker friend's crit group they are discussing book banning and challenged books, so I thought I would chime in here with my own comments on the subject. I have loved books for as long as I can remember, and though there are probably always going to be books that parents don't want their kids to read, I think it is a huge mistake to put up a big sign that says "THESE BOOKS ARE BANNED!!!" Everyone remembers being a kid, and if you think back you will remember that if you were to see such a sign, the first thing you would want to do is read those books. Rational, logical discussion with a child about what you as a parent consider to be age-appropriate reading material is the best course of action. They are going to get their hands on whatever they want. You should know that. However, if they know why we don't want them reading those sorts of things, and we give them the power to make the right decision, then maybe they will surprise us and actually make that decision.

I spoke a little bit about Richard Brautigan on Sharing the Brain, but I wanted to mention it here as well. "The Hawkline Monster" was one of the weirdest, most wonderful books I ever read when I was younger. It was full of vivid sexual imagery, and probably not appropriate for me at that age, but it's surreal settings and bizarre characters gave me an appreciation for what can be accomplished in the written word. If anyone goes out and reads this and decides that it is crap, that's your opinion, but for me it was very influential. I got detention for that book, too. My teacher saw me reading it one day and took it off my stack of books that I had piled on the sidewalk while I waited for the bus. She took it home and read it over the weekend, and then told the principal on Monday. My parents got a call, and I got in trouble, but, thankfully, I didn't stop reading. I was reading Stephen King when I was that age as well, and though some would say that his work is not appropriate for younger readers, I would say that I turned out well enough in spite of his influence.

What bothers me, and frankly scares me a little, is that people are no longer reading! This in unfathomable to me. In a National Endowment for the Arts report it was said that only 57% of Americans read a book in 2002. A book! One! That doesn't just make me sad, it makes me ill. For those of us that are avid readers and those that aspire to be writers, the thought that people aren't reading is appalling. Books are one of the simple joys that are fading, and if at some point in my lifetime the written word, printed on paper and bound between covers, dies out as a media, the I will know that we have lost our way. Many have pointed to immorality, the disintegrating family, and fading religious convictions as a reason for the decline in American culture, but I say it is the death of reading. If there is one thing that I am proud of in my writing endeavors, it is that it got my wife Laurie interested in reading. She is a bright, intelligent person who just never had time for books, but then I finished my first novel and she read it for me. Then she read the Harry Potter series, and has been reading non-stop since. And that gives me hope. Maybe if one person can find their way back to the joy of books, then maybe a whole lot of others can too.