Six months ago, a guy down the street was hitting golf balls in his yard on Memorial Day.  The next morning I drove to work with a golf ball sized hole where a passenger-side mirror used to be.  I found a dark place in my soul that smelled like burning and tasted like pennies.  My breathing was deeper and my jaw couldn’t unclench.  I got the rage.  I contemplated shooting golf balls at the guy’s house and car with a water balloon slingshot.  I thought about finding his dumb golf clubs in his garage and wrapping them around the tree in his front yard.  Instead I spent a week shaking my head when I’d see the broken mirror and glare at the guy’s house every time I’d drive by.

Tonight my wife came in the door asking if I’d left the glove box open in her car.  I hadn’t.  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in her car.  I couldn’t remember what color it was at the moment, let alone if I’d been in her glove box.  Well, somebody took something out of her glove box at some point within the past two days while her car was parked across the street.  I got the rage.  My first thought was to collect every teenager walking down my street and systematically punch them in the stomach until somebody fessed up.  I wanted to look out the window of my house and see someone breaking into the car.  I wanted to practice dentistry on the person leafing through my wife’s possessions.  Instead I slammed the front door.  I clenched my jaw.  I parked my dirty old van in the spot my wife’s car had been parked in.  I let the car alarm go off for about ten minutes, turned it off, then went inside and slammed the door again.

I know my anger isn’t coming from a good place.  It’s actually more than likely showing signs of much deeper issues that I’m ignoring.  But it also scratches an itch that I get sometimes.  It feels kind of good to let people see me flare up a little.  Does that make me crazy?  Maybe.  But really, I think this anger I get is probably just a sign of the fact that I’ve got a lot of growing to do.

But for now, I’d rather kick the teeth in of the kid that stole my wife’s stuff.  Not really, but I don’t know that I’d be able to contain myself if I did look out the window and see some varmint knee deep in my vehicle.

The thing is, though, sometimes living in a community is a great thing.  Jesus did it.  Must mean it’s cool.  I didn’t really set out to go to that place, so I’ll get to the point.  When I see start-up companies use terms like ‘community’ and ‘mutual responsibility’ it kind of touches a nerve that makes me uncomfortable.  BUT I found a cellular company today that really does have a very cool take on community.  See for yourself if you’d like.  Read their statements.  See their plans.  And after your 2 year cell contract is over, sell your iPhone 4s and sign with these people… unless their parents kick them out of the basement and sell their equipment.

1.  The first group (I estimate 1 of the 9 non-semi-trucks) of people that cut me off are freeway stock car drivers.  Though they’re driving the same models of car that everyone else on the road could be driving, they seem to be able to go 120 mph and swerve in and out of traffic without mechanical, legal or psychological issue.  Part of me thinks that’s awesome.  The other part knows that these people will be responsible for (though they would never take responsibility for) taking the lives of others.

2.  The second group (another 1/9) of non-semi-truck cutter-offers are the oblivious.  These people are probably very nice.  I’m assuming these are the people you and I work with or live near or go visit at the retirement home every Saturday.  Something inside these people says that they don’t need to watch their mirrors because mirrors are for beginners**.  They change lanes when they need to and assume others are watching because, after all, we need to share the road.  Most of these people are over the age of sixty, drive very large cars and haven’t always used the new “unleaded” gas.

3.  The remaining seven people that cut me off are texters.  I know it’s really, really “in” right now to be against texting and driving.  But it’s also ‘in’ (to a surprisingly lesser extent) to be alive right now.  The texters are worse than every other group.  I know they’re not driving gigantic, extremely flammable tanker semi-trucks.  I’m 99% sure they’re not AARP members.  And they’re probably not under any impressions that their Dodge Neons and Pontiac Sunfires are stock cars.  The only real danger texters cause that I can think of is the art of being oblivious.  Eyes on the road are better than eyes off the road, even with cataracts.  Texters drive the speed limit (or a little faster) with one hand on the wheel, both eyes on their phones and no brain in their head.  To me, the worst thing about the texter isn’t that their OMG and LOL and TTYL is more important than my life and the lives of countless others.  The worst thing, in my opinion, is that 99% of the time, they don’t have accidents.  Now, they cause more accidents than they’re in, statistically speaking.  But the fact that numbers tell them that they’re 99% safe REALLY sucks.  And I think I’ll have a hard time containing my rage*** if I ever do encounter a texter in an accident.  A REALLY hard time.****

*What ‘it’ is, I have no idea.  However… at the moment of being cut off, I always seem to come up with something good that these irresponsible drivers must be asking of me.  I also have questions for those drivers in the few moments after being cut off.

**People who don’t know what they’re doing.

***My plan of action is two-fold… First, ask to use their cell phone, then throw it into oncoming traffic.  And second, plaster their name, address and insurance info all over everything I can.  Because nothing says ‘I won’t text and drive again’ like identity theft, public shame and humiliation.

****Just as a brief explanation, I was run off the road this afternoon (in a construction zone, no less) by some dumb teenage girl that had extremely important things to say over text.  Probably telling her boyfriend that she couldn’t text because she was driving.  That’d be responsible, after all.  By the way, I was fine, my van was fine, and I eventually calmed down.  So life moves along.

So today at Panera, there was a really loud conversation going on at the next impossibly small round table.  One guy was old* and quiet.  The other guy was less old.  But he made up for his youth** in volume of voice and length of ponytail*.  I’m not exagerating when I say that his ponytail was three feet long.  A full meter of bad choices***.  The conversation was MUCH less then informational, but was VERY entertaining.  I learned about ‘Google plush’ and ‘Neeshy’ and the politics involved in ‘The Facebook.’  What I learned**** was the following list:

•   ‘Google Plush’ will be the next facebook, but will have all of the good parts of Myspace.
• ‘Neeshy’ was the first person to make sense of religion.
• ‘The Facebook’ was never meant for college students, but there are so many and they’re all so powerful that shareholders had no choice but to let college students on first.

So I feel fairly educated today.  I will most-likely take the rest of the day off just to think through all of that glorious knowledge.

Oh.  Also, the ponytail was also wearing a t-shirt that said “Reason is dead.”  Maybe reason dies when it gets too close to a ponytail that long.

*  The old guy was somewhere between  65 – 106.  I’ no good at guessing ages, especially at the high end.  I use those two ages because I’ve been surprised at the old looks of 65 year olds and have met a woman that was 106 and this guy looked similar.

**  The second guy was not young.  He was in his late forties.  I say youth because he was more-than-likely living in the basement of the old guy he was with.

***  A male with a ponytail is a bad choice.  A full-grown man with a ponytail is a really bad choice.  A three foot ponytail is probably making most of the decisions for a grown man.

****  What I REALLY learned was that men with ponytails and really weird T-shirts are usually full of “information” that they’d love to talk to pretty much everybody about.  Oh.  And need showers.

Woke up too early for human consumption.
Left alone for a week.
Roof cost an extra $1000.
Hansons trampled my plants.
The cat ran away.

I guess what I took away from yesterday was this… Fred Penner was right. The cat really DOES come back. Sometimes even before the very next day. See what I’m talking about here.

I picked up a few things from watching this couple. Here’s what I saw…

1. Luckily for me, the couple was too involved in their conversation to see a big scary guy watching them from across the restaurant.
2. The guy seemed to be putting himself out there, even though the girl was trying REALLY HARD to let him know her intentions through her nonverbal cues.
3. It didn’t seem to matter to either of the couple who was seated near them.
4. The girl really, really didn’t care (and probably enjoyed) that the guy could see her talking on her phone outside the restaurant.
5. I may have read way too much into what I was seeing. After all, I have been listening to Lionel Richie sings the love songs for the past two hours.

Rules for Defusing a Fight
1.  Say No – Don’t let the other person force you into an argument.
2.  Talk Low – Having a quiet voice helps calm the other person and also keeps you thinking rationally.
3.  Just Go – If things get in ‘a bad way,’ just walk away and resolve the issue at another time.

Try it and see what happens.  Or don’t try it and also see what happens.  All I know is that there should probably be more teaching on how to avoid raising voices and tempers.

Now that I’ve shared my list of issues with the group, let me put to words what I guess truly bugs me (over and above the rest).  I think when I look at a set list for a worship team, I try to get a feel for what kind of church it is by the songs they sing.  And lately I’ve noticed that this type/style/sect of church tends to stick to a very specific vein of worship songs.  In a 5 song setlist, there will be 3 Hillsong United songs.  I love that group.  They put out wonderful music.  But I’m pretty sure they’re not the only people that put out worship music.  And a lot of it is hard to sing along to.  But that band wears tight jeans, has beards and uses funny terms when describing themselves.  For the other two songs in the setlist, I’d be willing to bet that there’s a Chris Tomlin song, because everybody gets down with Chris Tomlin… and because he loves to rock the slow jams to Jesus (and how are you going to get people to come down to the altar without a Tomlin song?!?!)  The other song in the setlist is ALWAYS, WITHOUT A DOUBT a hymn.  It always starts with just a voice and maybe an acoustic guitar.  Then as the song hits the chorus (or just before), the whole band kicks in and people raise their hands.  Nothing wrong with instrumental dynamics or singing hymns or raising hands.  All of those things are wonderful.  But the setlist is 100 times out of 100 the same.  I don’t know what the deal is, but I think I’m gonna hold off for a few more years before using that equation.

Am I alone here?

*The post-seeker movement is the group of churches that typically label themselves ‘outside the box,’ spell words strangely in their church name, call their sanctuary something weird like Conversation Promenade, brew and drink coffee that comes from places only Willy Wonka has heard of, and all seem to look like they need a bath.

**  Everybody knows that the term, ‘I left it on the stage’ means that somebody farted on the stage.