You May Call Me Lord Fat-Ah-Goo

Along the Oodnadatta Track, Australia- Picture taken by Jamie Brelsford

I staggered into the house on trembling legs with sweat dripping from my beard and a smile upon my face. We beat those guys four games out of five.

My son looked up at me and said he had a suggestion.

“Dad, I think  you ought to shower and go to sleep. You look like you are fat-ah-goo.”

He saw the look on my face and went on, “I didn’t insult you. Fat-ah-goo is one of my vocabulary words.”

I laughed and said, “you mean fatigue, as in f-a-t-i-g-u-e, right.”

“Oh, is that how are supposed to pronounce it? That makes more sense.

And there you have a prime example of my son, the phonetic speller. I love that guy.

Remind me to tell you the story of Hey Zeus.

“The wreckage of my past keeps haunting me
It just won’t leave me alone
I still find it all a mystery
Could it be a dream?
The road to nowhere leads to me
Through all the happiness and sorrow
I guess I’d do it all again
Live for today and not tomorrow
It’s still the road that never ends”
Road To Nowhere– Ozzy Osbourne

This blog used to be filled with posts about politics and religion. Some of them turned into flame wars in which we waged war upon each other.

It is not an exaggeration. I received more than a few death threats and was called every name you can think of. I don’t write about these things very often any more but not because I fear confrontation.

I don’t. I haven’t any problem with having a different opinion than others. I rarely care if people call me names. Life is too short for me to worry about such things.

The reason I don’t write those very often could be attributed to the evolution of the blog. I shared what I wanted, said what I wanted to say and figured a lot of things out.

One of them was that it wasn’t worth my time to fight with people, especially the moronic trolls who never bothered to educate themselves and argued based upon emotion and misinformation.

War

I am thinking about war. I am thinking about family and friends in Israel. I am thinking about rockets fired upon innocent people and children who wet their bed long after they’re of an age where that is acceptable.

Israel took out a terrorist today and I haven’t any problem with that. If you throw rocks at the bear you can’t complain if it turns to eat you. You may not agree with targeted assassinations. You might think there are reasons why people act out of desperation and that is ok.

You are entitled to think that way. I don’t. I consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization that uses mob tactics to rule its people and do not believe there is room to negotiate for peace with them.

If I have to choose between us and them, I choose us.

It is personal to me for lots of reasons, not the least of which is people I love and care about have been at risk and probably will be again. Iran is behind this. Not asking for your comments about this situation, just thinking out loud.

Lord Fat-Ah-Goo

My son didn’t give me the title of  “Lord.” I took that one for myself. I thought it sounded better than Duke, Earl, King, Prince or Emperor.

It was a sort of silly thing, but I wanted my son to understand I wasn’t making fun of his phonetic spelling. It is how he does it and if it works for him I am good with it. He knows he needs to double check these things.

Sometimes Parenting is Hard

It is not easy being a parent for a million different  reasons but the shades of gray are the worst. I teach my children to judge others based upon their actions and nothing else.

I am pleased to say for the most part it has worked. They still don’t understand why anyone cares what color skin President Obama has and asked why people said anything about Governor Romney being Mormon.

And then I think about different things that have happened to people. Some of them are things that didn’t happen to anyone I am connected to, just people. And then I think about how I am connected in different ways.

Several of my cousins were in Mumbai the week before the terrorist attack. They stayed at the Chabad House where terrorists brutally slaughtered those who were there.

They left before the incident, but had they been there…

I could tell you about speaking with my baby cousin after he was called up. It was a different incident, different time, but I still worried.

There are other stories that I could share about relatives murdered by the Nazis and those who fled the Cossacks.

Us and them. There is a lot of us and them, enough for me to pick us because that is what I have to do.

Happier Things

The thing that makes me happy and makes all of this work is that I know the overwhelming majority of time we don’t have stories about us and them. They are just tales about us, a group that includes everyone.

When my relatives came to the U.S. searching for their version of the American dream they hoped one day there would be people like me to live it. It is too bad they aren’t here to share it.

It would be nice to let them know their hard work paid off and that we appreciate the sacrifices they made for us.

• Saved: Life