A Hint of Crazy

I saw this today.

For a split second I thought to myself, “Oh boy. It looks like the world has turned up-side-down.” I was using the stop sign as a reference to the rest of the world. Has this ever happened to you? You use the wrong point to reference the rest of the world?

I’d love to hear about it.

Low Standards = High Success

The last time I drove away from the drive-thru at Carl’s Jr., I felt pretty proud of myself. It’s odd, I know. I never feel that way when I finish at Arby’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, or any local place. There is just something about Carl’s Jr. that makes me feel so good about myself.

I think the good feeling is probably the result of dramatically lowering my food standards. Most people seem to have a standard that doesn’t allow for self-agrandizing meals. I’m not talking about increasing spatial mass here, I mean actual feelings of self-worth that come from food choices.

Just put yourself in my shoes: Imagine you are suddenly okay with using chocolate as a staple for a meal, using peanuts as garnishing features. I’m not talking about really enjoying chocolate as a weekend treat. No. I mean buying a bag of peanut M&M’s, a bag of Reese’s Pieces, and a bag of Hershey’s Mini’s, and using these as the ingredients for your next three meals. Are you starting to get an idea about how low my standards are?

Now imagine me at Carl’s Jr. I get a really good feeling when I ask them to “hold the bacon” on the breakfast burger. I grin with self-adulation when I take the O.J. instead of the coffee. I confuse the woman who is way too old to be working at a drive thru, when I tell her to keep the straw. It’s better for the environment to drink the reconstituted orange product directly out of the disposable carton. But most of all, when this super-impressed middle aged woman asked me if I would like to donate a dollar to fight breast cancer, I sat up straight from the front seat of my automobile and said, “Yes. Yes, I would.” I love my mother who survived breast cancer, and I love my sisters who will eventually fight breast cancer. But most of all, I am impressed that I didn’t take the credit for my philanthropic gesture. No, the good karma will rest with me, but the praise of man will go to Miguel Sanchez.

That is, until someone reads this post.

Everything I Need To Know…

This post could be titled “Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Counting Crows” or “101 Things I Learned From Counting Crows.” Either way, all of these messages come from Counting Crows songs. I wrote this quite a while ago, but I think it is a good Counting Crows fan post anyway. Maybe I’ll update it someday. Maybe.

1. We all want something beautiful.
2. All of the beautiful colors are very meaningful.
3. When everybody loves you, you could never be lonely.
4. Everybody wants to pass as cats.
5. We all want to be big, big stars, but we got different reasons for that.
6. When everybody loves you, that’s just about as funky as you can be.
7. The angels get a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right.
8. Sleeping children better run like the wind, out of the lightning dream.
9. Everybody’s tired of something.
10. Good things come to me when I think of heaven.
11. You want to turn your back on all your soulless days.
12. If you’ve been feeling weary, maybe you’ve been underground too long.
13. Maybe you’ve been suffering from a few too many dreams that have gone wrong.
14. This change I’ve been feeling doesn’t make the rain fall.
15. It’s good for everybody to hurt somebody once in a while, but the things I do to people I love shouldn’t be allowed.
16. We’re always changing.
17. You try to tell yourself the things you try to tell yourself to make yourself forget.
18. Seconds when I’m shaking leave me shuttering for days.
19. Every word is nonsense, but I understand.
20. Love is a ghost train rumbling through the darkness.
21. We all want to be big stars, but we don’t know why, and we don’t know how.
22. Curiosity doesn’t have to mean you’re on your own.
23. We were perfect when we started, I’ve been wondering where we’ve gone.
24. There’s a perfectness inside you, sleeping underneath your skin.
25. Get right to the heart of matters; it’s the heart that matters most.
26. All monkeys do what they see.
27. There’s a skeleton in every man’s house.
28. Beneath the dust and love and sweat that hang on everybody is the dead man trying to get out.
29. Is it better to be better than to be anything?
30. What you fear in the night in the day comes to call anyway.
31. You can’t wash away the stain of the deceiving and the things that you cannot believe in.
32. Everything that hurts you is locked up inside you, like butterflies with wings and other perfect things.
33. I want to have a good time, just like everybody else.
34. The sky is a wheel, spinning these days into things that I’ve lost.
35. When you sleep you see your mother in the night, but she stays just out of sight, so there isn’t any sweetness in the dreaming.
36. When you wake, the morning covers you with light, and it makes you feel alright, but it’s just the same hard candy you’re remembering again.
37. All the regrets you can’t forget are somehow pressed upon a picture, in the face of such an ordinary girl.
38. If I could give all my love to you, I could justify myself, but I’m just not coming through.
39. Maybe I don’t need no angel at all.
40. Some girls last longer than others.
41. Some worlds last longer than others.
42. Everybody’s after love.
43. These lines of lightning mean we’re never alone.
44. Spin a little tighter and the world’s a little lighter.
45. Leaving the best years leave a lot to be desired, and then they pass you by.
46. Everybody tries to go back somewhere someday.
47. What’s the barrier between love and need?
48. You get one chance each life.
49. Diamonds and babies and cars don’t add up to anything.
50. I don’t think that this is a very sensible way to die.
51. The greening of America is progressing smoothly.
52. If you want a little of these peaches, come on and shake my tree.
53. Every waking hour, we break down in different combinations.
54. We spin around in smaller constellations.
55. Took a ride on a love wheel; scary, scary-go-round and around.
56. I think I need a little animal, honey; come on, and shake a little monkey with me.
57. It’s crazy, but often clear: we shimmer and disappear, in color, in black and white, we slowly fade out of sight.
58. These days, we’re lit by lightning; thin lines of sharp, white, ice hard, cold, white light.
59. We ride in silence out of fear.
60. We prefer the silence of the blind.
61. We’re crazy, but often kind: we rage and in violence blind.
62. Nobody’s the same; they want to paint the same me every single day.
63. God blesses the same things every single day.
64. If he’s un-American, a little bit, then you think that he’s no fool—no matter if he is.
65. Hey, hey Mr. Freedom, what are we supposed to think, ‘cause I’m a very tiny person, and it worries me.
66. We’re only love, at its best or worst.
67. Love, calling your name, I will live on.
68. All my innocence is wasted on the dead and dreaming.
69. Little angels hang above my head, read me like an open book.
70. I know the little things about me that would sing in the silence of so much rejection in every connection I make.
71. All the anger and the eloquence are bleeding into fear.
72. All the things I keep inside myself, they vanish in the air.
73. We couldn’t all be cowboys, some of us are clowns.
74. The moon is a satellite.
75. There’s reason to believe: maybe this year will be better than the last.
76. If you think that I could be forgiven, I wish you would.
77. The winter makes you laugh a little slower, makes you talk a little lower, about the things you could not show her.
78. I can’t remember all the times I try to tell myself to hold on to these moments as they pass.
79. She is a victim of her own responses, shackled to a heart that wants to settle—and then runs away.
80. It’s a sin to be fading endlessly.
81. Keep some sorrow in your heart and mind for the things that die before their time.
82. Miller’s angels are hovering, in between the earth and the sun, to shadow God’s unwavering love.
83. What’s life without an occasional surprise?
84. You’re mother recognizes all your desperate displays.
85. Do you see yourself in me?
86. I’m trying to find me a better way to get from the things I do to the things I should.
87. If I could make it rain today and wash away this sunny day down to the gutter, I would, just to get a change of pace.
88. Some of us sink like a stone, waiting for mothers to come.
89. Today was just a day fading into another, and that can’t be what a life is for.
90. We just look a lot better in the blue light.
91. All of last years blooms have gone and died; time doesn’t give a reason.
92. Ask yourself sometimes what you need to be forgiven.
93. The sun and the summer sea of flowers won’t bloom without the rain.
94. I wasn’t made for this scene, baby, but I was made in this scene.
95. For all the things you’re losing, you might as well resign yourself to try and make a change.
96. The same things you’re missing could get you into something else.
97. Better leave when the stay is nothing but being alone.
98. If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts.
99. If you’ve never stared off into the distance, then your life is a shame.
100. The price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings.
101. There is always one last light to turn off and one last bell to ring.

Maybe There is Hope After All

My class earned a celebration today.  This basically means that they earned the special treat of listening to a song and dancing to it for a few minutes.  After brainstorming all of the music that they could possible want, we took a vote.  Here’s how the points brokedown:

Beat Box – O Votes

Jazz – 0 Votes

“I’ve Got to Be Clean”, by Guster – 1 Vote

Lulluby – 0 Votes

Rap – 0 Votes

Fiddle – 1 Vote

Bach – 0 Votes

Rock – 3 Votes

Disney – 5 Votes

Hip Hop – 4 Votes

Tango – 6 Votes

And who says we need to have a two-party system to find the best solution?

A Prophetic Vision

While I was praying last night, I had a vision. I was visited by the resurrected David O. McKay. He gave a fantastic sermon about the importance of family and the short duration of my mortal probation. He commended me on how well I was doing at putting family first. Then he derided the world for putting their time, efforts, and talents into things that have no eternal value like employment and recreation. “Too many people are spending their time doing things that are good, but they should be doing things that are better. To magnify talents in the arts, sciences, history, or philosophy while neglecting the family is abominable in the sight of God.” He continued to talking about half a dozen other things that people use to make themselves feel like they are successful. Then he said, “You are one of the few in this world who has heeded my counsel that, ‘No other success can compensate for failure in the home.’ Ever since the day of your marriage, you have been faithful unto Laurel.”

“Just a moment,” I interrupted. “I think you’ve made a mistake.”

“Mistake!” President McKay wasn’t upset; he was just surprised. “What do you mean? You ARE Grant Bushman, are you not?”

“I am Grant R. Bushman, not Grant M. Bushman.” President McKay went through his robes and found an index card. “Oh. Do excuse me. But the card just said…”

“No problem. Even prophets make mistakes,” I said, hoping to cover up his celestial blushing. “But it was nice to meet you.”

“Hmmm.” President McKay rubbed his chin. “Well, so long as I am here, I might as well give you some advice, right?”

“That would be great.”

“Okay, where was I?” He put the index card away and looked at the ceiling, trying to recall his sermon. “Ah yes. ‘No other success can compensate for failure in the home.’” Then President McKay looked at my bed. My empty bed. Then he looked at my ring finger. My empty ring finger. President McKay spoke parenthetically, bending at the waist. “You’re still single, eh?” When I nodded, he stood erect again and his prophetic majesty returned: “No other success can compensate for failure in the home, but if you don’t have a home, just wing it. Spend your time doing good things like employment and recreation. Magnify your talents in the arts, sciences, history, or philosophy.” He continued talking about half a dozen other talents that I have done a great job at magnifying, then bade me farewell. “Hang in there, Brother Bushman. I testify that as you strive on, you will find many other successes in your life.” Then he left. I finished my prayer and got into bed.

Maybe I’ll learn Spanish.

How I Call in My Class

After a number of failed attempts, I finally found a unique and effective way of calling my students in from recess.

Oh, and please excuse the really, really crappy video.  It was taken on my cell phone, converted with a free internet site, and it is my first youtube post.  I’m bound to get better.

NowTime, Emerson, and Alma

Some years ago, I attended a lecture from Mark Johnson (from the University of Oregon) wherein he discussed the timeless nature of philosophical writing. The author de jour was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Johnson said that “the text is always now”. Generally speaking, any assertion given by an author is just as credible today as it was at the moment it was written. Johnson terms this ever-present narrative as “NowTime.”

At the same time, very little credence is given to the idea that writing can be subjective. In this way text transcends context. I don’t need to understand who Emerson was, when he was writing, or the contemporary political underpinnings. I can enjoy Emerson because of how he affects me. Period. And not just Emerson. An elegant way of explaining himself, Johnson noted that “I read Shakespeare through the Shakespeare in me.”

This all came to mind when I was reading Alma through the Alma in me. When Alma said “O that I were an angel…” and so on, I was suspended by belief of Alma’s character and pretended that the only thing I knew about Alma is what I read about him.

Alma started out as a rough kid, but through the intervention of an angel, he got on the strait and narrow. Nothing could get through to Alma except a literal shaking. Once the angel shook him up, Alma was forced to contemplate his existence. He realize the hell that he was creating for himself, and he changed. After finding the Source of joy, Alma went about trying to shake other people up.

How discouraging it must have been to have the ambitions and positions of Alma, but none of the pay-offs of his fellow converts. See, Alma wasn’t the only one to get shook up. He used to spend his days with his four buddies trying to kill the faith of others. They also changed and tried to make amends. All five of them did.

Alma was not only made the chief judge of his people, but also was made high priest. Talk about being in a key position. In his first year as chief judge, his nation was introduced to priestcrafts that proved the utter destruction of his people centuries later. A few years later, there was a political revolt that threatened his judgeship and led to the death of thousands. Alma resigned his throne so that he could focus on the souls of his people. That must have been discouraging.

So, he and his four buddies went out to minister. His buddies had great success. Entire kingdoms converted and changed their lives. But not Alma. He was rejected in his first attempt. And his second. On his third attempt he convinced a few people to change, but those people were then thrown into a fire and burned to death right in front of Alma. That must have been discouraging.

The five ministers got together to swap stories. What an awkward day that would have been. Ammon had converts that were so faithful that they wanted to be called the People of Ammon. Alma had a mass grave. Not a lot gets mentioned about Alma at this time. I can only imagine that he hung out at the back of the chapel and tried not to say much. He could delight in the success of his brethren. That was enough. At least his buddies were having a good time.

That is, until the Lamanites found out about the People of Ammon. Traitors. Traitors that needed a lesson. The Lamanites started slaughtering the People of Ammon. At first they stopped for mercies sake, but a second wave of Lamanites had no mercy at all. The People of Ammon were decimated (or more) until the chief judge put them in a place of protection. Then there was a huge war–tens of thousands of people were killed. It was a war the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the destruction of Jerusalem. That must have been awfully discouraging.

So at this point, the Alma in me starts thinking, “Why should I even bother? No matter what I do, no matter where I go, no matter how good I am, the destruction and pain just escalates. What a crock! O that I were an angel and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people! Yea, I would declare unto every soul, as with the voice of thunder, repentance and the plan of redemption, that they should repent and come unto God, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth. I couldn’t do it as a missionary, I couldn’t do it as a high priest, and I couldn’t do it as a chief judge, but maybe–just maybe–I could do it as an angel.”

Of course, I don’t think Alma–the real Alma–was thinking along these lines at all. Alma was a good person. He doesn’t think such defeatist thoughts. He isn’t as mired by self-reproach as I am. But it was fun to hear someone else say the things that I would say. For just a moment, I felt like I was Alma. I felt like he was just as discouraged I am can be. I lived the C.S. Lewis comment that “we read to know that we are not alone.” I felt understood, even if it was through a mirror, darkly.

Once I felt understood by the Alma in me, I was comforted to hear the verse that followed. “But behold, I am a man, and do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me.” Also, the consolation of Alma is found later. “And behold, when I see many of my brethren truly penitent, and coming to the Lord their God, then is my soul filled with joy; then I do remember what the Lord has done for me…”

I think that I have been spending too much time sighing, O that I were [something I ain't], and not enough time remembering what the Lord has done for me. There will be plenty of time to be an angel later. For now, I should just be content with what I’ve got.

What have I got? That’s the next journey.

A Puke Story

Since the first day of class, I have told my students that they only have one reason that they should run in class. “What do you do if you are going to throw up,” I ask them. “RUN to the garbage can,” they reply with added emphasis on the ‘run’. I review this rule every so often when I catch a student running in the classroom. “We don’t run in class, unless what?” The hands fire up into the air. “Unless we have to throw up.” They love this little dialogue. I mean, how many adult talk about throwing up with a hint of humor? (Regardless of what my sister says, I think bodily function humor is funny, and since I work with kids, I am exploiting this character weakness of mine.)

I had flu last week. I spent a solid week wondering if I was going to puke. Not a fun week. There was always a lingering feeling of nausea, so every time I sat down, my mental stewardess reminded me of the nearest exists. I told my students that “If Mr. Bushman suddenly runs out of the classroom, it is because he is not feeling well and has to RUN to the bathroom.” They all gave me the nod of understanding.

Upon getting back from a trip to the art room, many students were complaining about “Scotty” causing problems in line. When I asked “Scotty” about it, he told me that he threw up. Wow. That is stealthy. Not much passes under the radar of Second Graders, but somehow “Scotty” had the presence of mind to RUN to the garbage can that was in the hallway, lose his lunch, and return to line without anyone detecting him. I inspected the garbage can, and “Scotty” had indeed hit the mark with perfection. I took him to the office, called his parents, and Dad came to pick him up.

A few minutes later, “Scotty” showed up in class again and whispered to me. “I had to throw up again. I RAN to the bathroom, but I didn’t make it.” I gave a couple of high fives for courage under fire, and sent him on his way.

After school was over, I walked to the bathroom. I braced myself for a surprise. I took a few deep breaths and told myself that it was time to face the running joke like a man. It’s only vomit. I clutched my bag of clean up powder and walked through the door.

I knew immediately that I had the right room when the smell hit my nose. I took inventory of my body. Eyes: nothing yet. Nose: on the right track. Stomach: whew, still sleeping. Feet: still clean.

I rounded the corner and there it was. I didn’t know an eight-year-old could un-eat that much in a single shot. The eyes and nose double-teamed my stomach with a two-fisted punch. It was time for an encore performance. Days of drinking Sprite and cheese we suddenly nullified and the crawling began.

“No please!” I begged. “I need to be the responsible adult here.” I closed my eyes and allowed myself to make the vocal pukey sounds. I hoped that expressing my up-chucking verbally would make the actually projection unnecessary. Hooray for years of stoic living. In the words of Garth Algar, “Spew contained.” Looking forward to my trip into fresher climates, I dumped my little bag of chuck be gone of the mess. The mess that was about eight inches off target. Good job “Scotty”.

The lesson here: the most important direction need to be repeated more than once. If you are going to throw up, RUN to the garbage can. If you are on the edge of throwing up, make throw up sounds instead.

Emergency Fund

This post is written in the spirit of humor. While I am a Obama supporter, I hope that this comment will not be seen as mudslinging. It is just something that I thought Jon Stewart might say. If he does end up saying it, feel free to tell me how cool I am.

I was listening to John McCain’s address yesterday, and I must admit that I was moved. Good job, John. It made me reconsider my views on Iraq. What tripped me up a little was one of the proposals for how to improve Iraq’s economy. Senator McCain advised the Iraqi people to invest in their “Emergency Response Plan.” I must agree. Iraqi’s need to be ready for unforeseen emergencies like foreign troop invasion or civil war. Remember Iraq, you may not be in trouble right now, but you might want to put aside some money for a rainy day.

Emergency Fund

This post is written in the spirit of humor. While I am a Obama supporter, I hope that this comment will not be seen as mudslinging. It is just something that I thought Jon Stewart might say. If he does end up saying it, feel free to tell me how cool I am.

I was listening to John McCain’s address yesterday, and I must admit that I was moved. Good job, John. It made me reconsider my views on Iraq. What tripped me up a little was one of the proposals for how to improve Iraq’s economy. Senator McCain advised the Iraqi people to invest in their “Emergency Response Plan.” I must agree. Iraqi’s need to be ready for unforeseen emergencies like foreign troop invasion or civil war. Remember Iraq, you may not be in trouble right now, but you might want to put aside some money for a rainy day.