Have you seen that movie, Where the Wild Things are yet?

That was my absolute favorite book when I was a kid, I made my Mom read that too me every night for what I seem was years. I loved it! This book, by Maurice Sendak became a classic long ago. It was the winner of the 1964 Caldecott Medal as the "Most Distinguished Picture Book of the Year," it was first published by HarperCollins in 1963. When the book was written, the theme of dealing with dark emotions was rare in children's literature, especially in picture book format for young children. For some reason I do not remember the book being dark or dealing with dark emotions, I remember it being about a great adventure story about redirecting anger to better pursuits. Some things I was desperately in need of as a young kid, as my Sister if you don’t believe me. It has been over 40 years and that book is still popular, why I ask.

I do not think it is the impact it had on the field of children’s literature but had more to do with the impact of the story and the illustrations on kids. The book was based on the consequences of one little boy's mischievousness and that was, and in some ways still is, ME. It all starts with Max dressing up in his wolf suit doing all kinds of things he shouldn't be doing. He is chasing the dog with a fork when his Mom scolds him and calls him a "WILD THING!" Max, in turn, gets so mad he shouts back, "I’ll eat you up!" This little outburst results in him being sent to his bedroom without any supper. I have been there, done that and wore out that damn tee shirt. I was a horrible kid and maybe I liked this book because it was the story of my life. No Dad present in Max’s life, no Dad present in my life. Max was a hellion who did whatever he wanted to do whenever he want to do it, hummmmm, that has a familiar ring to it. Well, once in his bedroom his imagination runs amok. He is able to transform his bedroom into an extraordinary place, with a forest and an ocean and a little boat. A boat he takes to a land full of Wild Things, just like him.

All of these monsters look and sound very fierce, but Max is able to tame them with a single glance. Even the monsters realize that Max is the most wild thing of all and when they do they make him their king. Max and the wild things have a great time creating a rumpus until Max wants to be where someone loves him. That days fantasy ends when he smells his dinner. Despite the wild things' protests, Max sails back to his own room where he finds his supper waiting for him. This part of the story is telling for me, Max is in conflict, conflict with his mother AND with his own anger. HE is still angry when he is sent to his room but he does not continue getting into mischievousness, instead he gives free rein to his anger through fantasy. He is then able to come to the decision that he will no longer let his anger separate him from the people he loves and that love him. Young Max is engaging character, his actions, from chasing the dog to talking back to his mother are very realistic and very similar to my childhood, poor Timmy the dog – sorry Karen. His and my emotions at that time are also very realistic. It seems it would have to be common for kids to get angry and fantasize about what they could do if they ruled the world and then calm down and consider the consequences. This character is someone that most kids can readily identify with.

I think this book is a GREAT lesson in the power of imagination, it can take you anywhere and it becomes even more important in adult life as well, at least in my opinion. Even though it may seem cloaked initially, there are strong themes of unconditional parental love – Max’s Mom never stopped loving him, no matter how bad a hellion he was. I feel Max was a great model of a boy being able to draw on his imagination. I still to this day think this is a fantastic trait to have, it allows us to just be by ourselves and be happy. We also learns some lessons as well, when he misbehaves around the house and is sent to his room without any supper he in turn sends the wild things to bed without their supper. It could be said that perhaps his behavior toward the monsters meant he understood why he was being punished, making it a touching gesture when his dinner is waiting for him in his room. There was a reason the book won the Caldecott Medal, the writer’s giant monster characters are iconic. While they are described as scary in the book, their faces and lumbering frames make them appear almost jovial. As you read along you can almost imagine the room shaking when you watch them playing (wild rumpusing) in the forest. Max and his new friends dance and play through some of the most whimsical, enchanting, and unique artwork in children's literature.

I can relate my ability to deal with the anger of my youth, and adulthood to some degree, to learning from Max and maybe my Mom learned a thing or two as well in how to deal with me. What an empowering, psychologically accurate parable about a child learning that his anger, while sometimes overwhelming and scary, can be safely expressed and eventually conquered. In a world where yelling and meanness and hooliganism is the norm, maybe, just maybe where the Where the Wild Things Are should be required reading for all adults. The message we should all take away from this book is, unconditional parental love is reassuring to kids and a perfect ending to a story does not hurt either. Even if the story does not have a perfect ending, one can learn to imagine a perfect ending. If one is unable to imagine the perfect ending to the story of our lives, how then are we to get to that perfect ending? The book is, in my opinion a subtle masterpiece, a masterpiece of story, writing, and art that will have kids asking for repeated readings, I sure did. The colorful language and a world of imagination make this wild adventure a fun learning experience about how to get through the days.

Well that brings me to the movie, WOW! The movie was WAY different than I remember the book to be. I am 45 and some of those characters scared me, not like the lovable characters that were illustrated in the book. When I first heard Carol, voiced by James Gandolfini, all I could think of was Tony Soprano strangling that guy in a Christmas tree lot while traveling with his daughter to visit some college. That was not what I wanted to see when I looked at the lovable Wild Things. There were a lot of great voices in the movie, Bride and I always try to guess the voices in cartoon movies or movies where you can not see the people and we did pretty good on this one. I thought the movie missed the point though – it was way more scary than I think the book was intended to be. If I had kids I would read the book to them but I do not think I would let them watch the movie. The two were NOT the same. I am not sure what kind of ratings the movie got but for me it was a dud, not worthy. I can’t imagine taking a 40 some odd page book and turning it into a full length feature movie – not enough material to stay true to the original story. But for me that is the point of it, the story of the book is fantastically concise and tells such a great story, with both words and pictures.

Love the book, did not like the movie, what did you think?

This is a crazy story about an acquaintance of mine who was helping a woman at a gas station

So I met this guy where I work, the company he works for was performing some work on the air conditioning system, his portion had to do with duct work. He worked in my areas of the building for a few months and we worked together a lot coordinating air outages and temporary feeds and other details that need dealt with when replacing ductwork. He was a good supervisor and a conscientious worker and I was impressed with his attention to detail. That was several months ago and when our job was complete he was onto the next job. Well, we have been saving to replace our air conditioning ductwork at the house, we replaced the unit a couple of years ago and they told me then the ducts were leaky and the wrong size and needed to be replaced. At that time we could not afford the new unit and the ductwork and since the unit was dying the decision was made for me. We did see a drop in our electric bill but I knew we were not seeing the true efficiency of the unit with the crappy and leaky 37 year old ductwork.

I started to get quotes, not thinking about my buddy maybe doing the work on the side. All of my ducts are in the attic and it is not a large attic, it was going to be crappy job for whoever was going to do the work. The first bidder showed up and spent about an hour crawling around the attic and a few days later emailed me a quote, $3,800 bucks and 4 days to complete the work. When he was here, he indicated that hard duct was the correct way to do this job and did not have one good thing to say about the flexible duct that is so common today. I suspect that is due to the price. Anyway, his stunning quote also indicated he would be using flex duct and that he would not be responsible for toting off the debris. Having run my own business I immediately realized that he did not want to do the job, I bid stupid high when I did not want the job and this was an obvious example of him not wanting the job. It seemed strange to me in this crappy economy, but I suppose he had enough work that he did not need my money. The second bidder was a similar story with some differences but basically it was the same story being told by another company. That was more than I had budgeted for the replacement so I was in a quandary.

So that is when I was reminded of the guy who was working at the station so I tracked his number down and called to see if he was interested. He was, as a side job, there is good and bad to that and I knew that going in. No company to back the work if there are issues and insurance and worker compensation issues but I knew without those I would be able to get a better price, and I did. I still do some side work so I understand how that works, risk mitigation is key and one must understand that going into a deal like that. He came out with his helper and crawled around the attic and told me he would give me a call to let me know on a price. A couple of days later he called me back with a price, $1,700 and he was going to be using all insulated galvanized steel ductwork. I was stoked, he said due to cash flow he would need some money for materials. How much I asked and he said a grand is a good start. I was stunned that he was going to do the work so cheap. When we met up to give him the money I asked for clarification. $1,700 for the work plus the materials right I asked. The $1,700 was labor and the materials would be in addition to that. I was bummed but that was still better than the other guys and they were all going to use flex duct. I was still happy.

So after I give him the grand for materials and we set up for the Saturday to get started I was syc’d about getting the work done before it got hot. Anyway, Saturday morning came and went and he is a no show. I call and get the machine. I was not worried at this point, maybe a miscommunication and I would call him during the week. Well he disappears for a few days and I could not get in touch with him at all. After a few days and many calls and many messages I was beginning to wonder if I was just duped and what actions I might take to get my money back. . Come to find out he had spent a bit of time in jail. This is not the first person I know that has spent some time in a jail cell, I include myself in that list from back in my younger days when I still drank. In my case, I deserved it, my own stupidity and at that time I vowed never to bail anyone out of jail because if they were there, they did some dumb assed thing that got them put there. This held true about 15 years ago when a friend of mine called, from jail, asking to be bailed out. He knew my stance on this before he called so I am not sure why he wasted his call on me. I did not bail him out and we are still great friends to this day. I do however have a bit of empathy for the guy in this case and it scares me that I think I would have been in his shoes had I been presented the same situation that landed him in jail.

So, here is the scenario, he pulls into the gas station in his company truck with his son to get gas. He is pumping his gas and the couple in the car in front of him is arguing, very loudly. He attempts to ignore them and their foul language, even though he was concerned because his son was being exposed to this ridiculousness. Well, this lead to that and then the man slapped the woman on the face, she struck him back and they were into it. My friend at this point starts hollering at them to stop, not involved yet and still pumping his gas. There was an exchange of words between the two and then the man turns his attention back to the women he was berating. The next thing was stunning by anyone’s sensibilities – the man pulled back and punched the woman in the face and she hits the ground like a sack of potato’s. At this point he can take no more and as she is getting up he gets in this woman beaters face and that escalates quickly into a fist fight. Well this dipshit gets his ass kicked by my friend and the woman he just punched gets up defending her man and almost immediately the cops show up, called by the station attendant earlier.

Well like so many domestics you see on the TV show cops it never ends well. Both the man and my AC man are hauled to jail, where he spent 7 days. Since they take your belongings he did not have my number that was in his cell phone so that is why I did not hear anything. So, the day he gets out he calls me to tell me this story and it really scares me because had I been presented with the same exact situation I would have responded in the same way. It makes me wonder if “getting involved” is just not worth it. That really makes me mad when I think about it! Just like we are not supposed to stop and help people who are broke down, they may be the boogey man. I still stop and help people who are sitting on the side of the road, I am very careful to survey my surroundings before I get out of my car but I still will help. I am mad about it because our society is almost ingraining into us NOT to help our fellow man. I am so diametrically opposed to that position that this example just simply infuriates me.

He explains to me that he will refund my money if I want but he would appreciate the work, especially now he has legal bills to pay. I still needed the work done so he spends a couple of weekends in my attic, 2 days one weekend and two more days the following weekend. As they were pulling the old ducts out I realized they were worse than I thought. There were numerous holes and nothing was screwed together and the crappy tape they used in 1976 was long deteriorated and I was losing a gob of air into my attic. I was conflicted, pissed at the crappy work all the those years ago but excited by the prospect of a quicker return on my investment by blowing more cold air into my house and not into my attic. I feel for my friend and I have been contemplating that situation. I still believe I would intervene given a similar situation, I just think that could be someone’s sister or daughter or friend and I would go ballistic if I saw such a thing happen to my wife or sister. I hope that a situation like that never presents itself to me because the idea of going to jail and having to deal with a situation like that scares the shit out of me.

Be careful out there friends, call 911 early and holler for others to help as well, but please do not turn the other cheek, picture your sister or your Mom and you will do the right thing, no matter the consequences.

What in the world is going on!

So this morning I was checking in on my Facebook, I did not look much over the weekend and found a CRAZY, SCARY and DISTURBING story posted by a friend about a situation her husband found himself in. It made my heart sad as I read it. Below is my friends post and after that are more thoughts from me, I have removed names as a courtesy.
A lesson learned, that I must share with my friends.


Hi Friends! I want to share with you what happened to my husband last week. I want to share with you so that you can learn from his experience, and in turn pass on the caution.

While in Chicago last week for business, my husband went to a bar with some colleagues after dinner. This Irish pub was in a good part of town, visited the night before by the men he was with, and had no warning signs that it was not a safe place to be. When he is out like this, he orders one drink that will take a while to finish so he is sure to not over drink. In this case, he ordered a draft Guinness.

While there, he and the two men he was with were slipped something in their drinks. We assume it was GHB ("the date rape drug"). None of the men have memory of leaving the bar, or getting home. Fortunately, for the other two men, they took forgotten cab rides and made it back to their hotels safely, my husband, however, did not.

With no memory, he does not know what steps he took that lead him from having a Guinness to being assaulted and robbed. What we do know is that the Lord protected him and got him back to his hotel safely in the end.

From the best we can figure he was about 20 miles from his hotel when the taxi found him (the Irish pub was less than two miles from his hotel). We do not know exactly how he got to that place, or how he was hurt. The doctor confirmed that the bruising on his leg and back are not from a fall as they are too deep. He advised that the sprained ankle and shin splints are from walking hard and fast, and far.

What he does remember is being alone and very scared on a dark street when a cab came by. He was barely able to say his hotel's name. The Lord sent that cab. If only the driver knew that he may well have saved his life that night.

Upon arriving at the hotel he was again sent an angel in the form of the security guard who paid the fare and protected him from an irate driver. The guard said that he was shaking and quite impaired in a different way than having just been drunk.

Whoever did this to my husband, took everything off of his person - wallet, card case, receipts, pen, note pad, etc. Everything that was in his suit pockets, with the exception of his room key was taken. In the early morning hours the thieves drained our bank account (and then some thanks to over-draft protection), and attempted to use our credit cards.

In the mean time, as his wife, I knew that something was wrong when I had no communication from him since dinner that night. We have a communication plan in place when he travels so we know each other are safe. And, clearly, by midnight that night, I knew something was wrong. I hope no wife has to experience the fear and worry I did that next morning. I could not find him and could see our bank account had been drained. While on hold with the Chicago PD, he called in. I could barely understand him and at that point he had no idea what had happened to him the night before.

In the end, he was able to fly home thanks to another angel at Delta and very kind TSA officers. The Lord got him back to Montgomery Friday night - shaken and injured, but alive.

We are now dealing with the clean up of all of this...no access to credit, and a limited bank account until the investigation on their end is complete. But...that' just stuff. Our family is still whole. We are struggling emotionally with it right now. Physically he is still very sore and bruised, but was able to walk with no pain today. I am having a tough time seeing him leave in the morning. I always ask the Lord to bring him home safely every day, but had a comfort that him coming home was a given. I now know that is not the case and that at anytime life as we live it can be gone.

I think the Lord was getting our attention to better appreciate Him and each other; and to not be so focused on "worldy" things.

So...here are a few lessons I hope you will take to heart when you travel, or if you are just out one night:


• Have a "buddy"; someone that will not leave you, and you will not leave
• Unless you are with a group, just go back to your hotel after dinner
• Do not accept a drink from a stranger, or leave your drink alone
• If you want an "open" drink, order it directly from the bar tender, watch it being made and have it handed   directly to you
• If you have a waitress, order an unopened beer (we are quite certain the drug was put into his Guinness draft)
• When traveling, keep a copy of your passport tucked safely in your luggage so you have a copy of your id (this with a police report will allow you to fly)
• Do not have an ATM/debit pin number that can be found on your id (his was his birth year)


I pray that none of you experience what we have. And, we pray for the thugs that did this to him. May the Lord's judgment on them be swift. May they not be allowed to do what they did to another. And, may the Lord speak to their hearts to come to Him and away from the devil's ways.

I was sitting there eating my oatmeal almost in tears, for myriad reasons. Mainly I was hurting for my friends and their situation, thank God in the end the Angels were sent and brought him back home. Then I started remembering my days in the military traveling the world, OUTSIDE the United States. We used to have the buddy system, we always went out in groups, we tried to have someone stay sober, we drank from unopened cans and bottles and we carried only our ID and some cash, some in each pocket and some in our socks keeping our ID company. This were in the days before ATM’s and before credit cards were common and even if you had them they mostly did not work overseas anyway. These simple procedures seemed like simple common sense at the time, because we were visiting places like Istanbul Turkey, Cartagena Columbia, Jamaica, Abu Dhabi, Egypt and any other number of places – places that we knew were dangerous and being young and dumb we were always going to the bad areas of town that were supposed to be off limits. It was a “goes without saying” in those places but I would never consider instituting such security policies in Chicago, and I have been to a number of bars in that town as well.

Then I got to wondering about what in the hell is going on now a days in our Great Country. I was talking to another friend about this today and she had heard of this before and that kinda indicates that it might be more common than we know, or want to admit. So, at this point I am just mad, and it makes me sad to hear this story, it makes me sad that I may have to change the way I live my life, it makes me sad for others who may change the way they live their lives. This is the United States of America, we should not have to worry about this type of attack. It used to be that in the bad areas of town you had to be cautious but in a perfectly normal part of town in a perfectly normal bar we did not have to worry about getting slipped a mickey and then rolled. It makes me wonder about how coordinated and obviously well orchestrated this madness was, hell that could have been my fountain drink of diet coke or a sweet tea. I for one refuse to live my life in fear, I am also not a naïve kid and will have a heightened awareness about what I am doing and where I am doing it from now on.  There is another blog coming soon about another crazy situation that is hard to believe.

My heart goes out to ya and Bride and I are raising up some prayers for you and your family and I want everyone to BE CAREFUL out there, it is obviously not as safe as we thought.

Not much to say lately, I guess

Seems it has been a long stretch since my last posting here, I have covered a lot of ground since I repaired my garage door and reported on the USA today article about everyone leaving the social networking sites. I was planning on writing an oratory about turning 45, which on did on Valentines Day, but I did not write. I was planning to write an oratory about passing one year of writing oratories, but I did not write. There have been a couple of other topics I wanted to write about as well, but did not write. Not sure, what is going on with me or maybe I am too engrossed in my Parks project and working on the jalopy. I realize I have been neglecting the Oatmeal Oratory so I am committing to producing more content for it. Yesterday I was not feeling so hot so I completed this today and here it is.

So, about turning 45 – seemed like any other day to me. I think that this is the age that the midlife crazies are supposed to set in right? Have not seen them arrive yet, kind of nervous thinking about what that period may look like for me. I do not want to relive any of my younger days, those oats have been sown and I see no sense in checking in on those fields of amber grain. I cannot afford a Corvette so I do not see me rushing out to buy to a new car. I quit drinking a very long time ago and quit smoking just 3 years ago so I do not see me resorting to either of those. I am more in love with my Bride than I was 22 years ago when I met her and I do not see that changing at all. I am not sure how the midlife crisis will manifest itself with me, that I suppose is why I am somewhat nervous by its approach. Who knows, maybe it will pass me by and I will be unaffected. I suspect that is what will happen and here is why.

Of the folks that I know who went off the deep end at mid life they all had a pretty common theme going on. Regrets spanned over their lives. Regrets about not getting the chance to do this, see that, or date her or the regret of marrying someone for the wrong reasons or even the wrong person. I have none of those issues. I found girls, alcohol and pot at a young age and went full tilt until I could take no more. Being in the Navy afforded me opportunities that my small hometown would not have allowed. Opportunities that proved great learning experiences and others that were somewhat self destructive, they were all there for me to choose from. I took gigantic helpings of both. I tried to go on every tour that was available to us Sailors when we were overseas. I wanted to see the culture of different places in the world. I wanted to sample the drink and the women in all these different places in the world as well, and did. I got to see things like the Sistine Chapel ceiling, I stared for what seemed like days. I got to stand in the valley of the kings and climb on the pyramids. I have been to Rio and I have been to Jamica, I have been all over the world.  Nope, I have not one regret in my life and am the most content I have ever been.

I am more in touch with who I am now than ever before and I like who I have become. I am not saying I liked, or disliked, who I was up until now but today is the best day of my life. That is until tomorrow and then that will be the best day of my life. I have found that this ride is so cool, if we just slow down and examine it. Not for what we want it to be but for what it is. What is actually going on is where we need to look, if we spend our time on coulda, shoulda or woulda’s we are missing the ride. None of that matters in the here and now, it only matters in that you can make changes in your life to make those into realities in your life. So many people get hung up on what they want their lives to be instead of living the lives we actually have – time wasted in my opinion. Today, right now, right this very second is life, it could be gone that quick. Bam a heart attack or cancer or some other litany of maladies that are life threatening and then what do you have – regret. Regret that you were waiting until things were right before you did this or did that – not me friends, I am living each day and each moment and suggest you do the same.

So I also wanted to talk about being at this blog thing for over a year now, 161 oratories down and who knows how many to go. I have been negligent lately but I am rededicating myself to write more, not for you but for me. I find these things very cathartic, a self healing mechanism if you will – and I might. I had no idea this would last this long when I started. I had no idea I would be writing about getting my first year under my belt. When I started I suspected I would run out of things to say after a few weeks. In the beginning I was pounding them out three a week, I do not think I will get back to that volume but I do want to do more of them. The topics will be as they always have been, all over the place and completely dependant on what I feel like talking about. I have talked about all manner of topics, I have even played with fire with a few political ones. Here is a link to that very first one http://mroatmealsoratories.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-i-saw-in-my-bowl-of-oatmeal-this.html

I have started another project that is bringing me A LOT of satisfaction and that is my Day in Park blog at http://www.jaxparx.com/. It has me visiting every park in the largest urban park system in the country – that is Jacksonville Florida. I am a bit over 70 visited out of nearly 400. I started off strong with a ton of visits in that first month but have slowed down considerably. I initially gave myself three years to get it done but have backed off that since then. I am not in a race so why do I need a deadline? I also initially thought that I would become this outspoken advocate for the parks system. I am not so sure that is what I want to be though. I find that every time I brush up against government I get pissed off, be it local, state or federal. In my opinion, all of the politicians (except my Sister who is Champaign County Auditor in Ohio) are crooked and up to something that is not in my best interest. I am so sick of hearing, well it is just not that simple. To which I respond – why not?

Anyway, I fear that if I become an advocate for the park system I will be brushing up against a bureaucracy that will no doubt piss me off. I did not start this project to get pissed off, I am doing it to honor my Mom and Dad. I am convinced now that my goal with this project is to blog about the conditions in the parks, as they are. Not how I think they ought to be or how I think they could be, but how they actually are the day I decide to visit. I am hopeful that someone else picks up the mantle and uses the information I provide on my blog and becomes the advocate, the champion of the cause. I will do the initial work of evaluating but I will have to let someone else lead the charge, someone who is better equipped and can deal city hall to make the system better. We have an outstanding Park system in Jacksonville and I have REALLY enjoyed seeing the ones I have visited so far. I am looking forward to seeing them all. Well that looks like enough for today, more to come my friends and remember – go outside and enjoy the day.