My philosophy in life is to have 99 good days out of 100, then blog about the bad one.
So here goes.
The first couple hours went pretty well. I got up early, went to the gym, played basketball for the first time in ages and totally dominated (there are no living witnesses to disprove this statement). I then showered, picked up a shake and a few protein bars, and headed to the world-class Lucky Star Casino in Concho, Oklahoma to play some poker.
I was feeling good, re-living in my head all the amazing basketball shots I made, when about a mile from the casino I saw the cop lights.
Eighteen years ago this would have been a source of panic, but by now I've been pulled over a couple dozen times and gotten maybe half that many tickets so it's really no biggie. The only thing that sucked is that, unlike all but about two of my pull-overs, I wasn't attempting to speed and didn't know I was speeding.
The following is the actual, unedited conversation I had with both the voice in my head and the Canadian County officer who pulled me over. I assume his primary job is as a secret service FBI Gestapo agent and he just works for Canadian County on the side.
Officer: You in a hurry, buddy?
Voice in my head: Good one, Barney Fife.
Me: No, I'm sure I was speeding but I really wasn't trying to. Just wasn't paying attention.
Officer: Where we are now is a 65 mph zone, but back by that bridge it's 45 and I clocked you at 63.
(I had forgotten about the classic speed trap back by the bridge, where it goes from 65 to 55 to 45 in a half-mile span for absolutely no reason on a four-lane highway in the middle of nowhere).
Me: Okay.
Officer: That's just too fast. You need to watch your speed.
Voice in my head: Sure thing, skippy.
Me: Okay.
Officer: Where you headed?
Voice in my head: None of your business.
Me: The casino
Voice in my head: Your mom's.
Officer: Do you always take a gym bag with you?
Voice in my head: No, only when I go to the gym.
Me: No, only when I go to the gym.
Voice in my head: Oops.
Officer: What's in that paper bag right there in the center console? Anything I need to know about?
Me: Just some protein bars. (I dumped them out.) Want one?
Officer: No, just making sure it wasn't liquor or drugs. Looked like it could have been. OK, well 63 is just too fast so I'm going to have to write you a ticket. You need to watch your speed. Just hang tight, I'll be right back.
Me: Okay.
(While he wrote my ticket, I never took my eyes off the speedometer, which was at zero. Already getting the hang of this Watch Your Speed thing!)
Officer: Like I said, 63 is just too fast, but I wrote the ticket for doing 55 in a 45. That'll save you a little money and won't go on your driving record. Just sign here.
Voice in my head: It's super generous for you to set up a blatant speed trap and only charge me $188.50 for driving 2 mph under what the speed limit should be.
Me (signing): Okay, thanks.
Officer: Just watch your speed for me, OK?
Me: Okay.
So I got to the casino down $188.50 and left eight hours later down a bunch more speeding tickets. Good times. Today I pleaded no contest (does anyone plead guilty on those things, and why do they even have two options where the result is exactly the same?) and mailed a check for $188.50 to the Canadian County Court Clerk.
Just to be clear, while I did find this particular Canadian County officer to be a tad hyper-vigilant, I do have a great deal of respect for all police officers. They're putting their lives on the line every day to make us safer while I'm playing a card game and occasionally spewing off blogs and sports stories for very little money.
P.S. Answer the poll question on the left!
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Friday, June 13, 2014
Joseph Lee Core, Jr. and Maddux Musser Franklin
Father's Day Weekend would seem like the perfect time to write about Maddux, our firstborn son who came into the world on Jan. 9.
But it's not the perfect time. It's the time I'm forcing myself to write something, because it's been five months and this is the hardest story I've ever written.
How do you write a story that mixes the greatest joy known to man with the strongest sorrow in the whole wide world? How do you write a story that in fact is two of the greatest joys and two of the strongest sorrows? And the hardest part -- Our greatest joy is a constant reminder of another family member's strongest sorrow. In fact, our greatest joy wouldn't be here without their strongest sorrow.
Back it up four years. We rented a condo in Vegas for the month of June 2010. It was an exciting adventure. Addie was 18 months old, she loved the pool and she loved life in general. Missy and I were excited at the news that she was pregnant. But two days before Father's Day, we found out that Missy had miscarried.
Over the next couple of years we tried and failed to get pregnant again, and Missy was convinced that she wouldn't be able to have any more children. So we got into foster care, and that's how we ended up with Myra.
That part was simple enough. Strongest Sorrow #1 followed by Greatest Joy #1.
The rest of the story just isn't fair.
Missy's sister Terri and her husband Joe were also having trouble getting pregnant. They had already adopted an awesome girl, Grace, but they wanted to expand their family with children of their own. Some tests revealed that the problem was with Terri's eggs.
Terri and Joe decided to ask Missy if she would be willing to donate her eggs to help them get pregnant. This wasn't a simple request -- it meant Missy would have to fly to Baltimore (where they lived) several times and then undergo a procedure to donate them, not to mention doing hormone treatments here in Oklahoma.
But it was obvious why they asked Missy. Despite not being blood relatives, Missy and Terri look a lot alike and have very similar personalities. I can say without hesitation that Terri is the most similar to Missy of anyone we know or are related to. And if you know Missy, you know she didn't hesitate to say yes.
We actually went through the whole process twice. The first time, when Missy flew out to Baltimore to undergo the procedure, a test the day before revealed that the timing had been just a little off, so they had to cancel the whole thing and start over.
It was a crushing blow to both Missy and Terri. Emotionally and financially, this couldn't happen over and over again. After a couple of months, they decided to give it one final shot.
The second time, everything came together wonderfully. The procedure resulted in Missy donating an unusually high number of good eggs, and a subsequent procedure resulted in Terri carrying a healthy baby boy.
Because of all the hormones Missy had taken, the chances of her getting pregnant went up drastically, and the day after we agreed to begin the adoption process with Myra, we found out Missy was pregnant too. Terri was about two months along, and the two were on the phone non-stop sharing their pregnancies with each other.
First, Terri found out they were having a boy. Then we found Missy was also having a boy. For a little while it looked like the cousins would get to live very close to each other. Terri and Joe visited and considered moving to the Dallas area before settling in Delaware instead. Regardless, the boys were going to be a part of each other's lives forever.
As the 2013 holiday season began, the sisters were on the phone even more as Terri's due date drew near and the doctors appointments became more frequent. Both babies and mommas looked perfectly healthy.
The day after Christmas is Addie's birthday. We always try to make that a special day for her and so we were having a small party with all of our family who was in Oklahoma City for Christmas. Missy and I were cleaning up the kitchen after the party when her phone rang. Terri had gone to the doctor in the morning and the baby's heart rate was fine. For some reason -- nobody knows why -- as the day progressed he wasn't fine. Terri had to go through labor knowing that her son was already gone.
Losing a child is the hardest thing in the world, and that pain was only intensified by the lengths and bounds Terri and Joe had gone to get this boy in the first place. It was also incredibly hard on Missy, who struggled with the sorrow but also with how to handle her relationship with Terri. Did she need to back off, knowing that she couldn't share her pregnancy news without reminding Terri of her tragedy? Or did Terri need her now more than ever?
Missy got permission from her doctor to fly to the east coast for the funeral services despite being almost eight months pregnant, and the services for Joseph Lee Core, Jr. were beautiful and heart-wrenching.
Barely 24 hours after she returned, her water broke. Maddux was a month early and between the holidays and this tragic event, we were totally unprepared. Missy's labor was long and hard, but after almost 24 hours he came out just fine at 8 lbs, 1 oz., 21 inches long. He had a few minor issues that resulted in us being in the hospital for five days, and that was a really hard time for us, especially Missy. Having just returned from grieving with her sister, she was emotionally and physically exhausted and experiencing the entire range of emotions. It was the best and purest joy to hold our first son, but it was worst kind of sorrow to think about the fact that Terri had been deprived of this very joy for no reason at all.
You question everything. You question God. You cry. You get mad.
We certainly haven't come up with any good answers, any sense of closure. Missy and Terri have done a great job of working through their individual emotional issues and maintaining a great relationship with each other, but that doesn't mean the road will ever end.
For Terri and Joe, one of the most important things is not letting Joseph be forgotten. I can say unequivocally that he will never be forgotten in the Franklin household. We thought the cousins would be two months apart, but it turns out that Maddux showed up less than two weeks after Joseph. We will never look at Maddux without seeing a small reflection of Joseph.
I don't have a pretty bow to put on the end of this thing. I'm not going to put one of those generic "cherish your kids" speeches in here and wrap it up.
Sometimes life sucks.
All I know is that I'm looking at Maddux at this very second, and I couldn't love him any more. So far, he has a pretty serious personality. Unlike Myra, who smiled every second of the day at his age, he likes to furrow his brows and give a menacing look. But he loves being held and being talked to, and he will crack a smile and a laugh when he gets in the mood.
Nothing is greater than the love of a parent for his or her child. That's how God looks at each and every one of us, and that's how the Core family looks at Joseph Lee Core, Jr.
We love you Joe, Terri, Grace and Joseph,
The Franklins
But it's not the perfect time. It's the time I'm forcing myself to write something, because it's been five months and this is the hardest story I've ever written.
How do you write a story that mixes the greatest joy known to man with the strongest sorrow in the whole wide world? How do you write a story that in fact is two of the greatest joys and two of the strongest sorrows? And the hardest part -- Our greatest joy is a constant reminder of another family member's strongest sorrow. In fact, our greatest joy wouldn't be here without their strongest sorrow.
Back it up four years. We rented a condo in Vegas for the month of June 2010. It was an exciting adventure. Addie was 18 months old, she loved the pool and she loved life in general. Missy and I were excited at the news that she was pregnant. But two days before Father's Day, we found out that Missy had miscarried.
Over the next couple of years we tried and failed to get pregnant again, and Missy was convinced that she wouldn't be able to have any more children. So we got into foster care, and that's how we ended up with Myra.
That part was simple enough. Strongest Sorrow #1 followed by Greatest Joy #1.
The rest of the story just isn't fair.
Missy's sister Terri and her husband Joe were also having trouble getting pregnant. They had already adopted an awesome girl, Grace, but they wanted to expand their family with children of their own. Some tests revealed that the problem was with Terri's eggs.
Terri and Joe decided to ask Missy if she would be willing to donate her eggs to help them get pregnant. This wasn't a simple request -- it meant Missy would have to fly to Baltimore (where they lived) several times and then undergo a procedure to donate them, not to mention doing hormone treatments here in Oklahoma.
But it was obvious why they asked Missy. Despite not being blood relatives, Missy and Terri look a lot alike and have very similar personalities. I can say without hesitation that Terri is the most similar to Missy of anyone we know or are related to. And if you know Missy, you know she didn't hesitate to say yes.
We actually went through the whole process twice. The first time, when Missy flew out to Baltimore to undergo the procedure, a test the day before revealed that the timing had been just a little off, so they had to cancel the whole thing and start over.
It was a crushing blow to both Missy and Terri. Emotionally and financially, this couldn't happen over and over again. After a couple of months, they decided to give it one final shot.
The second time, everything came together wonderfully. The procedure resulted in Missy donating an unusually high number of good eggs, and a subsequent procedure resulted in Terri carrying a healthy baby boy.
Because of all the hormones Missy had taken, the chances of her getting pregnant went up drastically, and the day after we agreed to begin the adoption process with Myra, we found out Missy was pregnant too. Terri was about two months along, and the two were on the phone non-stop sharing their pregnancies with each other.
First, Terri found out they were having a boy. Then we found Missy was also having a boy. For a little while it looked like the cousins would get to live very close to each other. Terri and Joe visited and considered moving to the Dallas area before settling in Delaware instead. Regardless, the boys were going to be a part of each other's lives forever.
As the 2013 holiday season began, the sisters were on the phone even more as Terri's due date drew near and the doctors appointments became more frequent. Both babies and mommas looked perfectly healthy.
The day after Christmas is Addie's birthday. We always try to make that a special day for her and so we were having a small party with all of our family who was in Oklahoma City for Christmas. Missy and I were cleaning up the kitchen after the party when her phone rang. Terri had gone to the doctor in the morning and the baby's heart rate was fine. For some reason -- nobody knows why -- as the day progressed he wasn't fine. Terri had to go through labor knowing that her son was already gone.
Losing a child is the hardest thing in the world, and that pain was only intensified by the lengths and bounds Terri and Joe had gone to get this boy in the first place. It was also incredibly hard on Missy, who struggled with the sorrow but also with how to handle her relationship with Terri. Did she need to back off, knowing that she couldn't share her pregnancy news without reminding Terri of her tragedy? Or did Terri need her now more than ever?
Missy got permission from her doctor to fly to the east coast for the funeral services despite being almost eight months pregnant, and the services for Joseph Lee Core, Jr. were beautiful and heart-wrenching.
Barely 24 hours after she returned, her water broke. Maddux was a month early and between the holidays and this tragic event, we were totally unprepared. Missy's labor was long and hard, but after almost 24 hours he came out just fine at 8 lbs, 1 oz., 21 inches long. He had a few minor issues that resulted in us being in the hospital for five days, and that was a really hard time for us, especially Missy. Having just returned from grieving with her sister, she was emotionally and physically exhausted and experiencing the entire range of emotions. It was the best and purest joy to hold our first son, but it was worst kind of sorrow to think about the fact that Terri had been deprived of this very joy for no reason at all.
You question everything. You question God. You cry. You get mad.
We certainly haven't come up with any good answers, any sense of closure. Missy and Terri have done a great job of working through their individual emotional issues and maintaining a great relationship with each other, but that doesn't mean the road will ever end.
For Terri and Joe, one of the most important things is not letting Joseph be forgotten. I can say unequivocally that he will never be forgotten in the Franklin household. We thought the cousins would be two months apart, but it turns out that Maddux showed up less than two weeks after Joseph. We will never look at Maddux without seeing a small reflection of Joseph.
I don't have a pretty bow to put on the end of this thing. I'm not going to put one of those generic "cherish your kids" speeches in here and wrap it up.
Sometimes life sucks.
All I know is that I'm looking at Maddux at this very second, and I couldn't love him any more. So far, he has a pretty serious personality. Unlike Myra, who smiled every second of the day at his age, he likes to furrow his brows and give a menacing look. But he loves being held and being talked to, and he will crack a smile and a laugh when he gets in the mood.
Nothing is greater than the love of a parent for his or her child. That's how God looks at each and every one of us, and that's how the Core family looks at Joseph Lee Core, Jr.
We love you Joe, Terri, Grace and Joseph,
The Franklins
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Land of the Cow
According to a recent informal survey, 90% of Americans we know say my wife and I are brave. The same percentage acknowledge that when they say "brave" to our faces, they are really thinking "stupid" in their heads.
"Brave" was by far the #1 answer/reaction when we told anyone we were taking our three kids and going to India for a couple of weeks to visit my sister and her family.
It ended up being a great trip, and I wanted to share a few of the more entertaining moments.
You know how it's funny to watch pharmaceutical commercials where the list of potential side effects is far longer and more terrifying than the symptoms the drug is intended to treat? It's not quite as funny when it happens to you.
I've always had a problem with motion sickness, particularly on long flights. I've never thrown up on a plane but I've been close a couple of times, so before this trip Missy wanted me to see a doctor about getting a prescription for it.
The doc ended up giving me some patches called Scopolamine, and I put one on a few hours before our 16-hour flight from Dallas to Dubai. (From there we had a 3-hour flight to Delhi and a 2-hour flight to Northeast India).
A few hours into the flight I started feeling quite weird. It wasn't motion sickness, but just a general uneasiness in my head and stomach. I got up to stretch my legs and quickly felt very dizzy and lightheaded. I stumbled in the general direction of my seat, evidently knocking over a flight attendant before collapsing into my seat. I lost feeling in my hands and feet and wasn't breathing well.
For some reason, the flight attendants thought I was having blood sugar issues (which I have never had) so they made me drink some sugar milk and eat a candy bar. I went along with that because it meant I got to drink sugar milk and eat a candy bar. They also hooked me up to an oxygen tank.
After a few minutes on the oxygen, the woman sitting next to me said, "Excuse me, but I notice that you have a patch under your ear. Is that a motion sickness patch?"
I said yes and told her the name but explained that I wasn't having my usual motion sickness issues. Then she asked if I had ever used this patch before. I said no.
She said she was a doctor and that she tells her patients never to take the Scopolamine patch for the first time on an airplane. She said the side effects I was experiencing were common and strong, so I should have taken the patch at home to test it first. Plus, the side effects are often diminished after multiple uses. Slightly too late for that at this point. Then she told me to go to sleep.
Lesson learned. I went to sleep for awhile before another, far less serious but nonetheless quite irritating side effect kicked in -- dry mouth. I couldn't get enough water. This lasted for a couple days after I took the patch off. I probably drank two gallons during the rest of our travels and peed about 57 times, but 45 minutes after one drink I'd feel like my mouth was a desert.
We made it to Delhi, where we were staying the night and began to get the full India experience. We had booked a Western-style hotel that advertised itself as being 15 minutes from the airport. Then we found out it was really 50 minutes from the airport. Then we got into a cab and it took almost two hours to get there.
I use the term "cab" loosely. This thing was more like a go-kart. My mom, wife and three kids were crammed in the small back seat, while I rode shotgun, literally sitting on top of the engine.
It didn't take long to realize that the cab driver had no idea where he was going, and he didn't speak English. It was hard to blame him for being lost, since there's no real addresses and most streets have no names. The "address" of the hotel (which ended up being really nice) was just a general area, "Precinct 21" or something like that. Once you got to Precinct 21, you just drove around until you found it.
Also, I was pretty sure we were all going to die that night in one of two ways. Way #1 was that Indian drivers are crazy!!! Each road is roughly the size of one-and-a-half U.S. lanes, but they drive at least three-wide. You have pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, vans, and semis going both ways in these tiny roads with no lane markings or procedure. People just honk all the time. That meant they are coming and you'd better get out of the way. There are a few traffic lights, which are entirely ignored by everyone.
After driving around for 15 minutes or so, our driver pulled over and asked me to get out. He then lifted up my seat and poured water on the engine, which my buns could have told him was running quite hot. Then he continued driving, seemingly in circles, until we were out of Delhi and into the countryside. This is Way #2 I figured we'd die. Since I knew the airport was in Delhi and our hotel was in Delhi and Delhi is one of the most populated cities in the world, it didn't make sense for us to be in the middle of nowhere at any point of this cab ride. Six Americans and all their luggage at 1 a.m. in Delhi seemed like a pretty easy target. I figured we'd pull off and get ambushed. Indeed, the cabbie pulled off again. This time, he walked around to my side but just stood there for a minute. Then he poured some water on his face. Then he poured a little on his index finger and brushed his teeth with it. Then he got back in and started driving.
Finally, after wandering around for another 30 or 45 minutes, he pulled over and asked someone for help. We were at the hotel in less than five minutes. (The drive back to the airport the next day took 50 minutes).
The Indian culture is fascinating. Everyone knows the cows are sacred, but there are all kinds of animals all over the place over there, just wandering around amid millions of people. We saw goats, pigs, chickens and donkeys just roaming around. They belong to nobody.
India is largely Hindu, so there are thousands of gods everywhere that people worship. The crazy thing is that in a third-world country with extreme poverty, the gods live in luxury. Near my sister's house there's a massive marble temple with two gods inside. It was probably three stories tall. Outside the door was a big bell you were supposed to ring to wake the gods up before you went in to worship them. Within yards of this idol mansion, hundreds of migrant workers lived in small huts with dirt floors and no electricity or air conditioning, eating almost nothing besides rice and vegetables.
Aside from spending great quality time with my sister and her husband and watching her three kids play with our three kids, this was the best part of the trip, just being immersed in the culture and getting an appreciation for their daily lives.
There is a fairly new Western-style shopping mall close to their house, and that provided quite a bit of entertainment.
The people there haven't quite gotten the hang of elevators and escalators yet. When we walked to the escalators for the first time, my brother-in-law Matt said "Watch, I guarantee we'll see some people who have never seen an escalator before."
Sure enough, we didn't even have to wait. The people right in front of us stood, staring at the escalator and then back at each other, trying to figure it out. Finally, one of them took the leap of faith and screamed in excitement when they started moving down.
A different time, we were going down in the elevator, and it stopped one floor above where we were headed. When it stopped, there was a man on the other side whose nose was basically pressed against the door. He couldn't have been any closer to the elevator without being in it. The doors opened, and he just kept standing there. We motioned for him to come on, but he just stared at us. Finally, the doors closed, almost trapping his nose in them, before it continued downward. I almost died laughing.
We went to the Subway at the mall, which was slightly different than an American Subway. Of course, there were no beef products (the meatball marinara is my favorite), so we had to try something different. I ordered a pepperoni melt, then was told it would cost extra to toast it, which would seem to be the only way to put the "melt" in pepperoni melt. Then when I asked for lettuce, tomatoes and veggies, I was told no. All I got was pepperoni and cheese. I asked if I could pay extra for veggies. The answer was no.
The first full day we were in India, I went to play basketball with Matt and some of his friends. I was extremely jet-lagged but figured it would help get me over that. So we start playing, and as usual I'm jacking up 3-pointers without really warming up at all.
My first three shots were airballs. Like, not even close. I know I'm no Ray Allen, but I usually don't embarrass myself on the basketball court. It's the only sport I consider myself halfway good at.
The next couple shots barely grazed the front of the rim. I was a little surprised but figured it was just the exhaustion. My head was still a little dizzy from the Scopolamine and jetlag. One of my teammates said, "You're going to have to shoot it harder." I said thank you, I realize that.
After the first game, which we lost thanks to my horrible shooting, the same guy says to me, "You know this is an NBA 3-point line right?" I did not know that, nor did it ever cross my mind while I continued bombing treys. I think I was able to get my overall 3-point percentage into double digits before the end of the day.
There were a lot more great memories, but I've written enough for now. If Allison or Missy remember something else that should be added I can just tack it onto the end. Like I said, we had a really great time and it was an experience to remember. I'm glad we were "brave"!
"Brave" was by far the #1 answer/reaction when we told anyone we were taking our three kids and going to India for a couple of weeks to visit my sister and her family.
It ended up being a great trip, and I wanted to share a few of the more entertaining moments.
You know how it's funny to watch pharmaceutical commercials where the list of potential side effects is far longer and more terrifying than the symptoms the drug is intended to treat? It's not quite as funny when it happens to you.
I've always had a problem with motion sickness, particularly on long flights. I've never thrown up on a plane but I've been close a couple of times, so before this trip Missy wanted me to see a doctor about getting a prescription for it.
The doc ended up giving me some patches called Scopolamine, and I put one on a few hours before our 16-hour flight from Dallas to Dubai. (From there we had a 3-hour flight to Delhi and a 2-hour flight to Northeast India).
A few hours into the flight I started feeling quite weird. It wasn't motion sickness, but just a general uneasiness in my head and stomach. I got up to stretch my legs and quickly felt very dizzy and lightheaded. I stumbled in the general direction of my seat, evidently knocking over a flight attendant before collapsing into my seat. I lost feeling in my hands and feet and wasn't breathing well.
For some reason, the flight attendants thought I was having blood sugar issues (which I have never had) so they made me drink some sugar milk and eat a candy bar. I went along with that because it meant I got to drink sugar milk and eat a candy bar. They also hooked me up to an oxygen tank.
After a few minutes on the oxygen, the woman sitting next to me said, "Excuse me, but I notice that you have a patch under your ear. Is that a motion sickness patch?"
I said yes and told her the name but explained that I wasn't having my usual motion sickness issues. Then she asked if I had ever used this patch before. I said no.
She said she was a doctor and that she tells her patients never to take the Scopolamine patch for the first time on an airplane. She said the side effects I was experiencing were common and strong, so I should have taken the patch at home to test it first. Plus, the side effects are often diminished after multiple uses. Slightly too late for that at this point. Then she told me to go to sleep.
Lesson learned. I went to sleep for awhile before another, far less serious but nonetheless quite irritating side effect kicked in -- dry mouth. I couldn't get enough water. This lasted for a couple days after I took the patch off. I probably drank two gallons during the rest of our travels and peed about 57 times, but 45 minutes after one drink I'd feel like my mouth was a desert.
We made it to Delhi, where we were staying the night and began to get the full India experience. We had booked a Western-style hotel that advertised itself as being 15 minutes from the airport. Then we found out it was really 50 minutes from the airport. Then we got into a cab and it took almost two hours to get there.
I use the term "cab" loosely. This thing was more like a go-kart. My mom, wife and three kids were crammed in the small back seat, while I rode shotgun, literally sitting on top of the engine.
It didn't take long to realize that the cab driver had no idea where he was going, and he didn't speak English. It was hard to blame him for being lost, since there's no real addresses and most streets have no names. The "address" of the hotel (which ended up being really nice) was just a general area, "Precinct 21" or something like that. Once you got to Precinct 21, you just drove around until you found it.
Also, I was pretty sure we were all going to die that night in one of two ways. Way #1 was that Indian drivers are crazy!!! Each road is roughly the size of one-and-a-half U.S. lanes, but they drive at least three-wide. You have pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, vans, and semis going both ways in these tiny roads with no lane markings or procedure. People just honk all the time. That meant they are coming and you'd better get out of the way. There are a few traffic lights, which are entirely ignored by everyone.
After driving around for 15 minutes or so, our driver pulled over and asked me to get out. He then lifted up my seat and poured water on the engine, which my buns could have told him was running quite hot. Then he continued driving, seemingly in circles, until we were out of Delhi and into the countryside. This is Way #2 I figured we'd die. Since I knew the airport was in Delhi and our hotel was in Delhi and Delhi is one of the most populated cities in the world, it didn't make sense for us to be in the middle of nowhere at any point of this cab ride. Six Americans and all their luggage at 1 a.m. in Delhi seemed like a pretty easy target. I figured we'd pull off and get ambushed. Indeed, the cabbie pulled off again. This time, he walked around to my side but just stood there for a minute. Then he poured some water on his face. Then he poured a little on his index finger and brushed his teeth with it. Then he got back in and started driving.
Finally, after wandering around for another 30 or 45 minutes, he pulled over and asked someone for help. We were at the hotel in less than five minutes. (The drive back to the airport the next day took 50 minutes).
The Indian culture is fascinating. Everyone knows the cows are sacred, but there are all kinds of animals all over the place over there, just wandering around amid millions of people. We saw goats, pigs, chickens and donkeys just roaming around. They belong to nobody.
India is largely Hindu, so there are thousands of gods everywhere that people worship. The crazy thing is that in a third-world country with extreme poverty, the gods live in luxury. Near my sister's house there's a massive marble temple with two gods inside. It was probably three stories tall. Outside the door was a big bell you were supposed to ring to wake the gods up before you went in to worship them. Within yards of this idol mansion, hundreds of migrant workers lived in small huts with dirt floors and no electricity or air conditioning, eating almost nothing besides rice and vegetables.
Aside from spending great quality time with my sister and her husband and watching her three kids play with our three kids, this was the best part of the trip, just being immersed in the culture and getting an appreciation for their daily lives.
There is a fairly new Western-style shopping mall close to their house, and that provided quite a bit of entertainment.
The people there haven't quite gotten the hang of elevators and escalators yet. When we walked to the escalators for the first time, my brother-in-law Matt said "Watch, I guarantee we'll see some people who have never seen an escalator before."
Sure enough, we didn't even have to wait. The people right in front of us stood, staring at the escalator and then back at each other, trying to figure it out. Finally, one of them took the leap of faith and screamed in excitement when they started moving down.
A different time, we were going down in the elevator, and it stopped one floor above where we were headed. When it stopped, there was a man on the other side whose nose was basically pressed against the door. He couldn't have been any closer to the elevator without being in it. The doors opened, and he just kept standing there. We motioned for him to come on, but he just stared at us. Finally, the doors closed, almost trapping his nose in them, before it continued downward. I almost died laughing.
We went to the Subway at the mall, which was slightly different than an American Subway. Of course, there were no beef products (the meatball marinara is my favorite), so we had to try something different. I ordered a pepperoni melt, then was told it would cost extra to toast it, which would seem to be the only way to put the "melt" in pepperoni melt. Then when I asked for lettuce, tomatoes and veggies, I was told no. All I got was pepperoni and cheese. I asked if I could pay extra for veggies. The answer was no.
The first full day we were in India, I went to play basketball with Matt and some of his friends. I was extremely jet-lagged but figured it would help get me over that. So we start playing, and as usual I'm jacking up 3-pointers without really warming up at all.
My first three shots were airballs. Like, not even close. I know I'm no Ray Allen, but I usually don't embarrass myself on the basketball court. It's the only sport I consider myself halfway good at.
The next couple shots barely grazed the front of the rim. I was a little surprised but figured it was just the exhaustion. My head was still a little dizzy from the Scopolamine and jetlag. One of my teammates said, "You're going to have to shoot it harder." I said thank you, I realize that.
After the first game, which we lost thanks to my horrible shooting, the same guy says to me, "You know this is an NBA 3-point line right?" I did not know that, nor did it ever cross my mind while I continued bombing treys. I think I was able to get my overall 3-point percentage into double digits before the end of the day.
There were a lot more great memories, but I've written enough for now. If Allison or Missy remember something else that should be added I can just tack it onto the end. Like I said, we had a really great time and it was an experience to remember. I'm glad we were "brave"!
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Myra
It's often the most unexpected things in life that end up providing the biggest blessings.
That's certainly the case in my life as it relates to foster care.
Foster care wasn't even on my radar until a few years ago. I spent the first 25 years of my life terrified at the thought of having my own kids, much less taking care of someone else's. Even after meeting and marrying a woman who grew up in a children's home, I still never considered the possibility that I'd end up doing it.
Fast forward to yesterday, when I woke up and groggily sauntered into the living room. The first thing I heard was Myra (the girl on the left in the above pic) saying "Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy." I looked and she was hanging upside down from her grandma's arms. When we made eye contact she burst out laughing. A couple hours later many of our closest friends and relatives came over for a party to celebrate the fact that we have officially adopted the precious sweetheart I now can't live without.
How did we get here? Like I said, my wife grew up in a children's home, where her parents modeled God's love by having about 10 foster kids under their roof at any given time at Cookson Hills, a Christian ministry located just on our side of Arkansas border in a town called Kansas, Oklahoma. My church growing up had supported Cookson Hills, but I had never visited until I started dating Missy in college. It was definitely cool and touching to see kids who in most cases had zero advantages or hope outside of Cookson thrive in the loving environment there. The mass-produced food they ate didn't taste good, their clothes were donated, and they had just one TV for the household of 12, but the support network there made all the difference in the world to those kids.
It took me five years to get around to marrying Missy, and another three for us to settle into our careers and move from Lawton to Oklahoma City, where we wanted to live permanently. When that happened and Missy brought up the idea of foster care again, my normal reaction would have been to say no. It doesn't take a lot to stress me out, and we already had a kid. But something inside gave me a peace about it, and it felt like the right thing.
So we went through 10 miles of red tape to get approved, which took almost a year, and then we dove right in. Way, way over our heads. It was only a few days before Christmas 2012 when we got a call about three children who had been in an extremely traumatic situation and needed a place to stay for the holidays.
We said yes and took them in for about 3 weeks, but in no way were we prepared to provide them what they truly needed. We had no experience with kids older than Addison, who was not yet 4, and no time to prepare a house that needed to expand from three to six occupants. More important, we were not equipped to help them emotionally deal with the traumatic event that had shaken their lives, and since it was the holidays it was hard to find professional help.
Nevertheless, God is good. Our church, Draper Park Christian, had so many families willing and able to provide Christmas presents, food, clothes, diapers, etc. (The kids arrived with nothing more than the clothes on their backs). I know the kids could feel that we loved them and were trying the best that we could. And of course, Addie was a sweetheart who made fast friends with all of them.
It quickly became apparent that this would not be a good fit for our family long-term, and in mid-January 2013 they were placed with a relative. I believe we were the right family for those kids for that amount of time, even if it was an extremely stressful three weeks.
At the end of January, we got a call asking if we would be interested in taking a 3-month-old girl. This seemed like a much better situation for our family with one problem -- we were set to move into a new house on Jan. 31. We asked if it was possible for the girl to be temporarily placed somewhere else for a few days. They asked if we could take her on Feb. 5. So we moved in and took Myra five days later.
All she ever did was smile. She only cried when she was extremely tired or extremely hungry. The rest of the time she just kept a huge smile on her face, with an occasional chuckle. Everyone who met her commented on her joyful demeanor.
We -- especially Addie -- fell in love with her from the first day. I tried to guard my heart a little, knowing that the state had a right to remove her from us any day. In fact, that's the goal of foster care, to reunite the child with a parent or relative. But in this case (and in about 50% of all foster care cases), that wasn't able to happen. Soon, we received the great news that we would be allowed to adopt her.
When she came to us, she had five names (one first name, two middle names and two last names). Four of them were spelled differently in different documents the state gave us. We decided to keep her first name, give her our last name, and for the middle name we combined the middle names of both of her grandmas. Myra Alisue Franklin. Although the adoption process took far longer than we would have liked, all Myra did was smile, and on March 25, 2014, it became official.
Two weeks after that, we loaded Myra on a plane to India to spend a couple weeks with her aunt, uncle and cousins, the first of many great adventures we will share with her as our beloved daughter.
Today, Myra is almost 19 months old. She is walking all over the place (especially wherever she's NOT supposed to be) but still has that perpetual smile on her face. She loves to point, give kisses, say "aww man" and play peek-a-boo.
I've tried my best to describe the huge blessing Myra has been. Even though we had another child of our own since getting her, our family would have a huge hole if she weren't a part of it. She brings so much already, and I can't wait to see what God has in store for her future.
I know foster care isn't for everyone, but I would strongly encourage you to pray and think about whether it's right for you. There are so many kids out there who have done absolutely nothing wrong, living in a state shelter and waiting for someone to take them in.
Our lives were forever changed by one of them.
That's certainly the case in my life as it relates to foster care.
Foster care wasn't even on my radar until a few years ago. I spent the first 25 years of my life terrified at the thought of having my own kids, much less taking care of someone else's. Even after meeting and marrying a woman who grew up in a children's home, I still never considered the possibility that I'd end up doing it.
Fast forward to yesterday, when I woke up and groggily sauntered into the living room. The first thing I heard was Myra (the girl on the left in the above pic) saying "Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy." I looked and she was hanging upside down from her grandma's arms. When we made eye contact she burst out laughing. A couple hours later many of our closest friends and relatives came over for a party to celebrate the fact that we have officially adopted the precious sweetheart I now can't live without.
How did we get here? Like I said, my wife grew up in a children's home, where her parents modeled God's love by having about 10 foster kids under their roof at any given time at Cookson Hills, a Christian ministry located just on our side of Arkansas border in a town called Kansas, Oklahoma. My church growing up had supported Cookson Hills, but I had never visited until I started dating Missy in college. It was definitely cool and touching to see kids who in most cases had zero advantages or hope outside of Cookson thrive in the loving environment there. The mass-produced food they ate didn't taste good, their clothes were donated, and they had just one TV for the household of 12, but the support network there made all the difference in the world to those kids.
It took me five years to get around to marrying Missy, and another three for us to settle into our careers and move from Lawton to Oklahoma City, where we wanted to live permanently. When that happened and Missy brought up the idea of foster care again, my normal reaction would have been to say no. It doesn't take a lot to stress me out, and we already had a kid. But something inside gave me a peace about it, and it felt like the right thing.
So we went through 10 miles of red tape to get approved, which took almost a year, and then we dove right in. Way, way over our heads. It was only a few days before Christmas 2012 when we got a call about three children who had been in an extremely traumatic situation and needed a place to stay for the holidays.
We said yes and took them in for about 3 weeks, but in no way were we prepared to provide them what they truly needed. We had no experience with kids older than Addison, who was not yet 4, and no time to prepare a house that needed to expand from three to six occupants. More important, we were not equipped to help them emotionally deal with the traumatic event that had shaken their lives, and since it was the holidays it was hard to find professional help.
Nevertheless, God is good. Our church, Draper Park Christian, had so many families willing and able to provide Christmas presents, food, clothes, diapers, etc. (The kids arrived with nothing more than the clothes on their backs). I know the kids could feel that we loved them and were trying the best that we could. And of course, Addie was a sweetheart who made fast friends with all of them.
It quickly became apparent that this would not be a good fit for our family long-term, and in mid-January 2013 they were placed with a relative. I believe we were the right family for those kids for that amount of time, even if it was an extremely stressful three weeks.
At the end of January, we got a call asking if we would be interested in taking a 3-month-old girl. This seemed like a much better situation for our family with one problem -- we were set to move into a new house on Jan. 31. We asked if it was possible for the girl to be temporarily placed somewhere else for a few days. They asked if we could take her on Feb. 5. So we moved in and took Myra five days later.
All she ever did was smile. She only cried when she was extremely tired or extremely hungry. The rest of the time she just kept a huge smile on her face, with an occasional chuckle. Everyone who met her commented on her joyful demeanor.
We -- especially Addie -- fell in love with her from the first day. I tried to guard my heart a little, knowing that the state had a right to remove her from us any day. In fact, that's the goal of foster care, to reunite the child with a parent or relative. But in this case (and in about 50% of all foster care cases), that wasn't able to happen. Soon, we received the great news that we would be allowed to adopt her.
When she came to us, she had five names (one first name, two middle names and two last names). Four of them were spelled differently in different documents the state gave us. We decided to keep her first name, give her our last name, and for the middle name we combined the middle names of both of her grandmas. Myra Alisue Franklin. Although the adoption process took far longer than we would have liked, all Myra did was smile, and on March 25, 2014, it became official.
Two weeks after that, we loaded Myra on a plane to India to spend a couple weeks with her aunt, uncle and cousins, the first of many great adventures we will share with her as our beloved daughter.
Today, Myra is almost 19 months old. She is walking all over the place (especially wherever she's NOT supposed to be) but still has that perpetual smile on her face. She loves to point, give kisses, say "aww man" and play peek-a-boo.
I've tried my best to describe the huge blessing Myra has been. Even though we had another child of our own since getting her, our family would have a huge hole if she weren't a part of it. She brings so much already, and I can't wait to see what God has in store for her future.
I know foster care isn't for everyone, but I would strongly encourage you to pray and think about whether it's right for you. There are so many kids out there who have done absolutely nothing wrong, living in a state shelter and waiting for someone to take them in.
Our lives were forever changed by one of them.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
No Soup For Me!
About six years ago, my car was broken into at Riverwind Casino. The perp snatched a few personal effects, the change I kept in the ashtray, and a company laptop belonging to the Lawton Constitution (sorry boss!).
Two years ago, I had some Beats headphones stolen from the food court at Riverwind Casino.
I had accidentally left them there for about 5 minutes after eating and someone grabbed them before I could return. I figured it was mostly my fault and bought some smaller, more easily transportable and cheaper headphones. Life goes on.
These events, while mildly disturbing, were not surprising. A casino full of degenerate gamblers is probably not the safest place to keep things you don't want stolen. And when you go to said casino multiple times per week for seven years, you're bound to have something stolen from time to time.
More perplexing, however, is that I've now had my stuff thrown in the trash can by casino employees the same amount of times I've had my stuff stolen.
I got a small bag as a giveaway at a Thunder game a couple years ago. It looks like a small Thunder jersey but the shoulder straps are the handles. Basically, it's a purse. I carry snacks, gum, headphones, a phone charger and the occasional miscellaneous item in there. I usually keep it under my seat or on the bottom of one of the food trays.
Shortly after the Beats theft, I was playing at Riverwind and decided that a stick of Winterfresh gum would surely hit the spot. But when I looked down to grab my bag, it was gone. I looked all over the surrounding floor area, to no avail. I was quite stymied.
The only person I remembered even being in the area was one of the dealers. So I saw him walking by a second later and asked if he had seen my bag.
"Yes," he said. "I threw it in the trash."
"Why would you do that?"
"Looked like trash to me, just sitting on the bottom of the food tray." This message was conveyed with less than zero percent remorse. Not that I was expecting a teary-eyed apology, but...
"I have quite a bit of stuff in there. It weighs a lot more than a couple of Burger King wrappers. Could you please remove it from the trash can and give it back to me?"
It was right on the top of the trash, much like the eclair that George Costanza ate out of the trash on Seinfeld. The dealer probably wasn't happy about retrieving it from the trash, but then again I also wasn't happy about him retrieving it from the trash. Fortunately the bag saved any of the items within from touching other garbage.
On Tuesday I was playing at Riverwind, losing pot after pot while Rychy made fun of me as usual while he stacked his chips up to the ceiling. I had hoped that a chicken tortilla soup from Taco Bueno would cure my hunger pangs and fuel me on to a comeback. As I ordered the soup, I felt an equally primal urge, an urge to urinate. However, there were already a couple of guys up from the table so I decided I could hold it til they came back.
They were gone for about 15 minutes, and then my food arrived. I was pretty hungry so I went ahead and ate half the soup, but when the other players returned I decided to make a quick trip to the can. I might have been gone for a total of 90 seconds, returning to find the food table completely empty. I assumed this was some sort of hilarious prank so I asked where my soup was and everyone burst out laughing. I didn't understand the fifth-grade humor (plus when you're losing even things that are kind of funny become un-funny), so I asked again.
Obviously, it was in the trash can.
Turns out, legendary poker professional Tony Lay had ordered two beverages. Although these beverages had not yet arrived, he wanted to secure room on the food table sitting between us. This food table would probably hold 20 such beverages, and my bowl of soup was occupying roughly three beverages worth of space. He assumed that since I got up from the table I must be done eating so he asked one of the dealers to throw it away, which the dealer did. The fact that it was half full, still hot, and that I had taken a bite five seconds earlier and made no mention that I was done was evidently of no concern.
It really wasn't a big deal, but it was funny that when Tony got his drinks, he had both of them in the very corner of the tray, nowhere near where my soup was, while the rest of the tray was completely empty and my soup was in the trash.
A couple hours later, I took a break and talked to Missy. Before I could start complaining, she told me that while the two girls were playing outside, Addison decided to dump dirt all over herself and our foster child. So Missy has to drag them into the bath. While in the bath, our foster child decided to poop, and Addie decides to pick up the poop with her hand and show it to Missy.
Kinda made me glad to be at a poker table getting half a bowl of Taco Bueno soup thrown in the trash,
Two years ago, I had some Beats headphones stolen from the food court at Riverwind Casino.
I had accidentally left them there for about 5 minutes after eating and someone grabbed them before I could return. I figured it was mostly my fault and bought some smaller, more easily transportable and cheaper headphones. Life goes on.
These events, while mildly disturbing, were not surprising. A casino full of degenerate gamblers is probably not the safest place to keep things you don't want stolen. And when you go to said casino multiple times per week for seven years, you're bound to have something stolen from time to time.
More perplexing, however, is that I've now had my stuff thrown in the trash can by casino employees the same amount of times I've had my stuff stolen.
I got a small bag as a giveaway at a Thunder game a couple years ago. It looks like a small Thunder jersey but the shoulder straps are the handles. Basically, it's a purse. I carry snacks, gum, headphones, a phone charger and the occasional miscellaneous item in there. I usually keep it under my seat or on the bottom of one of the food trays.
Shortly after the Beats theft, I was playing at Riverwind and decided that a stick of Winterfresh gum would surely hit the spot. But when I looked down to grab my bag, it was gone. I looked all over the surrounding floor area, to no avail. I was quite stymied.
The only person I remembered even being in the area was one of the dealers. So I saw him walking by a second later and asked if he had seen my bag.
"Yes," he said. "I threw it in the trash."
"Why would you do that?"
"Looked like trash to me, just sitting on the bottom of the food tray." This message was conveyed with less than zero percent remorse. Not that I was expecting a teary-eyed apology, but...
"I have quite a bit of stuff in there. It weighs a lot more than a couple of Burger King wrappers. Could you please remove it from the trash can and give it back to me?"
It was right on the top of the trash, much like the eclair that George Costanza ate out of the trash on Seinfeld. The dealer probably wasn't happy about retrieving it from the trash, but then again I also wasn't happy about him retrieving it from the trash. Fortunately the bag saved any of the items within from touching other garbage.
On Tuesday I was playing at Riverwind, losing pot after pot while Rychy made fun of me as usual while he stacked his chips up to the ceiling. I had hoped that a chicken tortilla soup from Taco Bueno would cure my hunger pangs and fuel me on to a comeback. As I ordered the soup, I felt an equally primal urge, an urge to urinate. However, there were already a couple of guys up from the table so I decided I could hold it til they came back.
They were gone for about 15 minutes, and then my food arrived. I was pretty hungry so I went ahead and ate half the soup, but when the other players returned I decided to make a quick trip to the can. I might have been gone for a total of 90 seconds, returning to find the food table completely empty. I assumed this was some sort of hilarious prank so I asked where my soup was and everyone burst out laughing. I didn't understand the fifth-grade humor (plus when you're losing even things that are kind of funny become un-funny), so I asked again.
Obviously, it was in the trash can.
Turns out, legendary poker professional Tony Lay had ordered two beverages. Although these beverages had not yet arrived, he wanted to secure room on the food table sitting between us. This food table would probably hold 20 such beverages, and my bowl of soup was occupying roughly three beverages worth of space. He assumed that since I got up from the table I must be done eating so he asked one of the dealers to throw it away, which the dealer did. The fact that it was half full, still hot, and that I had taken a bite five seconds earlier and made no mention that I was done was evidently of no concern.
It really wasn't a big deal, but it was funny that when Tony got his drinks, he had both of them in the very corner of the tray, nowhere near where my soup was, while the rest of the tray was completely empty and my soup was in the trash.
A couple hours later, I took a break and talked to Missy. Before I could start complaining, she told me that while the two girls were playing outside, Addison decided to dump dirt all over herself and our foster child. So Missy has to drag them into the bath. While in the bath, our foster child decided to poop, and Addie decides to pick up the poop with her hand and show it to Missy.
Kinda made me glad to be at a poker table getting half a bowl of Taco Bueno soup thrown in the trash,
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Buddy
Today, I watched Buddy Williams' fourth-place finish in the 2003 WPT World Poker Open . In it, there's a nice feature (starting at about 37:30) on Buddy where he talks about getting his start in the game.
He said he went to a private poker game as a young man and noticed that a particular player won every time, so he sat next to that player and watched what he did. Soon enough, he was becoming a winner in the game.
A year after Buddy gave that interview, a different young man walked into a different private poker game, hoping to learn as much as he could from the best poker player in the room. Luckily, Buddy let me sit next to him, and his graciousness and knowledge has without a doubt changed my life.
It sucks that the world lost Buddy Williams on Tuesday. But there's no doubt that he left a legacy (as well as a lot of fond memories) that will last a long, long time.
I got swept up in the poker boom of 2003 just like a lot of people did. I was barely out of college, living in a new city (Lawton) with a lot of free time and not much else. I started playing micro-stakes poker with my friends and immediately fell in love with it. I had a pretty good card sense and started winning a little bit, but I didn't really know what I was doing. After a year my entire poker bankroll might have totaled $800.
One of the guys I played with, John McGavic, said I should go to Buddy's game. Buddy was already a poker legend in Lawton (you get automatic poker legend status when Phil Ivey stacks your chips for you), and I was brimming with excitement at the prospect of playing with him. I asked John what the buy-in was and he said $200. So I showed up at Buddy's game with exactly $200 in my pocket and soon realized that $200 was the absolute minimum buy-in. In fact, it was common for people to win or lose a couple thousand dollars in the game. Common sense would dictate that it's unwise to buy into a game for 25% of your entire poker budget with no backup money, but at that time in my life I listened to common sense about as often as I obeyed the speed limit.
I can still clearly remember having my entire $200 at risk about 30 minutes into the night. I was all in on the flop with top pair, trying to dodge Jim Shaw's flush draw. My heart was beating through my chest. Had I lost that pot, I have no idea what I would be doing today, but it very well might not involve poker.
Not only did I win that pot, I got several other really good hands and wound up winning about $800 -- basically doubling my entire bankroll. I still remember calling my future wife Missy the very second I hit the parking lot to share my excitement.
That night, I had gotten the last seat at the table, which just happened to be right next to Buddy. I was thrilled to be next to him and had hoped that my play was impressing him. I absolutely couldn't get enough of his old-time poker stories involving Stu Ungar, Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim and all their crazy antics. I kept prodding him with questions, and he never seemed to grow tired of answering them.
The thing that surprised me, however, was that Buddy loved to talk strategy at the table. Not in the way that most of today's pros talk strategy, where they ridicule the bad players and hurt the game. Buddy had a way -- which is hard to describe -- of making everyone at the table feel like equals. If someone put in a lot of money on a weak draw, Buddy might say, "We'd be having a totally different conversation right now if he'd hit it. Besides, Jimmy's got so much money it don't matter to him anyway."
I decided that from then on, I was going to be the first one at the game, so that I could choose the seat right next to Buddy and learn from him, just like he did all those years back.
Buddy immediately recognized that I was someone who had a passion for the game, and maybe some potential too. He would talk differently to me than he would to the rich guys constantly chasing bad draws. He'd ask me for my thought process during a hand, then share his. When two other players were in a big pot, he'd ask me what I thought they had, or he'd ask how strong a hand I would need to call in that particular spot. He would lean over and whisper to me, so that the guys who were actually in the hand wouldn't hear us and it wouldn't affect the outcome. I could have read every poker book ever printed up to that point in history, and it wouldn't have been as educational as sitting next to Buddy once a week for two years.
Think about this from Buddy's point of view. He had absolutely nothing to gain by helping me. I was a young nobody showing up at his poker game once a week. I didn't have any money. I wasn't a customer at his full-time business, like most of the other players were. I could either lose a little money in his game and be gone forever, or I could win a fairly significant amount of money from his business patrons. Not to mention the fact that he was playing against me with his own money.
And all I did for him was stack his chips when he won a pot.
I traveled north to Newcastle and south to Randlett just to play with Buddy and learn more. When I started branching out to a different form of poker (pot limit Omaha), Buddy was the guy I called after a session to ask about a tough hand. When I started considering quitting my job at the paper and playing full-time, he told me how difficult it would be and laid out many of the challenges. But he also told me he knew I was good enough to do it. As someone with an extremely conservative personality when it comes to money, I was at first easily flustered by the losing streaks that go along with playing poker. Many times, it was Buddy's encouragement and confidence that allowed me to keep my head.
Our friendship wasn't just about poker. When I bought Missy's engagement ring, he was the second person I showed it to. (His brother Ronnie told me I was stupid for buying it at a jewelry store instead of a pawn shop). I introduced Missy to him and they immediately hit it off. When Addison was born, I showed him new pictures on my phone every week.
After I moved to Oklahoma City, I used to love Tuesdays, when he would come up to Riverwind and I would get to play with him again. I still tried to snag the seat next to him and stack his chips. But soon, his health started taking a turn for the worse. I would call sometimes, not nearly as often as I should have.
I'm far from the only person Buddy impacted in a positive way. Several fellow poker pros have told me how Buddy helped them, and I can't think of one person who didn't enjoy being around him, whether at the poker table or away from it.
Rest in peace, Buddy. I owe you more than I could ever repay.
P.S. -- Random thoughts and memories
He said he went to a private poker game as a young man and noticed that a particular player won every time, so he sat next to that player and watched what he did. Soon enough, he was becoming a winner in the game.
A year after Buddy gave that interview, a different young man walked into a different private poker game, hoping to learn as much as he could from the best poker player in the room. Luckily, Buddy let me sit next to him, and his graciousness and knowledge has without a doubt changed my life.
It sucks that the world lost Buddy Williams on Tuesday. But there's no doubt that he left a legacy (as well as a lot of fond memories) that will last a long, long time.
I got swept up in the poker boom of 2003 just like a lot of people did. I was barely out of college, living in a new city (Lawton) with a lot of free time and not much else. I started playing micro-stakes poker with my friends and immediately fell in love with it. I had a pretty good card sense and started winning a little bit, but I didn't really know what I was doing. After a year my entire poker bankroll might have totaled $800.
One of the guys I played with, John McGavic, said I should go to Buddy's game. Buddy was already a poker legend in Lawton (you get automatic poker legend status when Phil Ivey stacks your chips for you), and I was brimming with excitement at the prospect of playing with him. I asked John what the buy-in was and he said $200. So I showed up at Buddy's game with exactly $200 in my pocket and soon realized that $200 was the absolute minimum buy-in. In fact, it was common for people to win or lose a couple thousand dollars in the game. Common sense would dictate that it's unwise to buy into a game for 25% of your entire poker budget with no backup money, but at that time in my life I listened to common sense about as often as I obeyed the speed limit.
I can still clearly remember having my entire $200 at risk about 30 minutes into the night. I was all in on the flop with top pair, trying to dodge Jim Shaw's flush draw. My heart was beating through my chest. Had I lost that pot, I have no idea what I would be doing today, but it very well might not involve poker.
Not only did I win that pot, I got several other really good hands and wound up winning about $800 -- basically doubling my entire bankroll. I still remember calling my future wife Missy the very second I hit the parking lot to share my excitement.
That night, I had gotten the last seat at the table, which just happened to be right next to Buddy. I was thrilled to be next to him and had hoped that my play was impressing him. I absolutely couldn't get enough of his old-time poker stories involving Stu Ungar, Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim and all their crazy antics. I kept prodding him with questions, and he never seemed to grow tired of answering them.
The thing that surprised me, however, was that Buddy loved to talk strategy at the table. Not in the way that most of today's pros talk strategy, where they ridicule the bad players and hurt the game. Buddy had a way -- which is hard to describe -- of making everyone at the table feel like equals. If someone put in a lot of money on a weak draw, Buddy might say, "We'd be having a totally different conversation right now if he'd hit it. Besides, Jimmy's got so much money it don't matter to him anyway."
I decided that from then on, I was going to be the first one at the game, so that I could choose the seat right next to Buddy and learn from him, just like he did all those years back.
Buddy immediately recognized that I was someone who had a passion for the game, and maybe some potential too. He would talk differently to me than he would to the rich guys constantly chasing bad draws. He'd ask me for my thought process during a hand, then share his. When two other players were in a big pot, he'd ask me what I thought they had, or he'd ask how strong a hand I would need to call in that particular spot. He would lean over and whisper to me, so that the guys who were actually in the hand wouldn't hear us and it wouldn't affect the outcome. I could have read every poker book ever printed up to that point in history, and it wouldn't have been as educational as sitting next to Buddy once a week for two years.
Think about this from Buddy's point of view. He had absolutely nothing to gain by helping me. I was a young nobody showing up at his poker game once a week. I didn't have any money. I wasn't a customer at his full-time business, like most of the other players were. I could either lose a little money in his game and be gone forever, or I could win a fairly significant amount of money from his business patrons. Not to mention the fact that he was playing against me with his own money.
And all I did for him was stack his chips when he won a pot.
I traveled north to Newcastle and south to Randlett just to play with Buddy and learn more. When I started branching out to a different form of poker (pot limit Omaha), Buddy was the guy I called after a session to ask about a tough hand. When I started considering quitting my job at the paper and playing full-time, he told me how difficult it would be and laid out many of the challenges. But he also told me he knew I was good enough to do it. As someone with an extremely conservative personality when it comes to money, I was at first easily flustered by the losing streaks that go along with playing poker. Many times, it was Buddy's encouragement and confidence that allowed me to keep my head.
Our friendship wasn't just about poker. When I bought Missy's engagement ring, he was the second person I showed it to. (His brother Ronnie told me I was stupid for buying it at a jewelry store instead of a pawn shop). I introduced Missy to him and they immediately hit it off. When Addison was born, I showed him new pictures on my phone every week.
After I moved to Oklahoma City, I used to love Tuesdays, when he would come up to Riverwind and I would get to play with him again. I still tried to snag the seat next to him and stack his chips. But soon, his health started taking a turn for the worse. I would call sometimes, not nearly as often as I should have.
I'm far from the only person Buddy impacted in a positive way. Several fellow poker pros have told me how Buddy helped them, and I can't think of one person who didn't enjoy being around him, whether at the poker table or away from it.
Rest in peace, Buddy. I owe you more than I could ever repay.
P.S. -- Random thoughts and memories
- That first night I played over there, I was worried about etiquette since I had never played in a private game before. When Buddy's helper brought me a bottled water and a cup of soup, I tipped him $10. Buddy threw up his arms and said, "You trying to make me find someone new? Robert's gonna quit me and go work for you if you keep giving him those red chips!"
- Ronnie was always telling Buddy he needed to get a newer and nicer wheelchair. The thing was definitely old and ricketty, but I guess Buddy liked it.
- The dynamic between Buddy and Ronnie was amazing. They had polar opposite personalities and poker styles, and if you heard them talk you might think they hated each other sometimes. But it was quickly apparent that either one would die fighting for the other one without batting an eye. I love Ronnie too.
- When I first started playing, I would never bluff. One time I won a pot with a bet and someone at the table said they thought I had bluffed. Buddy said, "You could take every penny Matt's ever won on a bluff and put it in your eye, and you wouldn't even feel it." He had a boatload of great phrases like that for everything and everyone.
- There was a cocky teenager constantly hanging out around Buddy's game, watching the action and telling everyone how bad they played. He wasn't old enough to play himself but was convinced he was better than all of us. Finally one night, Buddy says he's sick of hearing this kid squawk and tells him he can sit in the game. I figured the kid didn't want to go broke the first hand he played, and the kid was constantly talking about how I never bluff. So I bluffed him right off the bat. He showed his pair of kings and made a comment about how unlucky he is and how I obviously made my flush on the river. I complimented him on his fold and showed him a pair of 4s, which cracked Buddy up. Ten years later, Jesse McVicker is still the guy who thinks everyone else stinks at poker. But he was smart enough to learn a lot from Buddy too and I'm glad to call him a friend.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
The Night the Car Started Making Strange Smells and Ended up in a Ditch
The concept was simple enough.
I had a free room at Winstar Casino, about a two hour drive down I-35 from my house. The plan was to meet my friend Brian Ray (aka Lil Kat, B-Ray) at Riverwind Casino at 2 p.m. We'd make the drive, play poker for two days, and drive back. Easy enough.
At 2:10 I receive a text message from B-Ray. "Just woke up from nap. Will be late."
Really? The single guy with zero responsibilities needed a nap to freshen up for an evening of sitting on his butt playing cards? That's cool, I was hoping to sit in the Riverwind parking lot for an hour.
At about 2:50 I get another text. "I'm here." I text back, "I'm in the east parking lot, next to the hotel. Third row." He responds, "I'm out front."
At this point I'm just ready to go so I grab my bag, lock my car and start walking to the front. The casino faces Highway 9, which is right by I-35, so it would be convenient for him to be there so we could just hop on the road. But I get there and he's not there, so I call and ask where he is. "I told you I'm out front." I say, "I'm out front and you aren't here." He then clarifies that he is outside the poker room, which is at the back of the casino. So when he said he was "out front" he really meant that he was "out back." He also informed me that he couldn't find my car because he didn't know which direction east was. This is what an engineering degree from OU gets you these days.
I had asked him to drive because my car, an old Honda Accord, had its check engine light on a few days prior. It was driving fine and the light hadn't been on (in fact I had canceled an appointment to the car shop), but I didn't want to get stranded two hours from home. This would prove to be quite ironic.
About 10 miles down the road, Lil Kat's temperature warning lit up. The gauge was past the H and the car was obviously overheating.
At this point Brian thought it was a good time to let me know this his car had been also been acting funny of late. He told a tale of a drive-though encounter at Taco Bell, whereupon the cashier notified him that he was leaking a huge amount of anti-freeze. He figured the guy was an idiot since he worked at Taco Bell so the warning was ignored. Good thinking, let's just let the car blow up in Thackerville, Oklahoma.
We did, however, make it down to Winstar, where I lost the biggest pot I played. To Lil Kat. Good times.
The next day went better for me and I ended up having a profitable trip (alas, Lil Kat cannot say the same). At about 11 p.m., we decided to head back home.
Less than 10 miles into the 110-mile return trip, however, the temperature gauge lit up again. Not a surprising result since nothing had been done to fix it. But this time several other warnings lit up. Actually, just about every warning function on his piece of crap 2007-ish Chevy Malibu.
First, allow me to describe the current driving conditions. It was about 30 degrees outside with a rather dense fog. And we are the only car on I-35.
The check engine light came on. Then a warning that said, "Oil is at zero percent." Then something that said, "Energy saver mode activated." Brian couldn't get the car to go more than 50 mph and the heater wasn't working. More alarmingly, the car was making an awful clanking sound and smelled like burnt sausage.
Lil Kat asked what the chances of us making it home were. I estimated 40 percent.
Somehow, we plodded for over two hours at 50 mph but made it to the Highway 9 exit where Riverwind is located. We would have made it to the casino but, to quote our friend Tim Widowski, "Lil Kat is the worst driver I know."
First, he almost missed the exit. More amazing than that, he chose the wrong direction to turn after exiting the highway.
Riverwind Casino, where B-Ray spends roughly 70 hours per week, is a huge, bright building just West of I-35. The Highway 9 exit puts you on the east side of I-35. To get to the casino you have to cross over the highway. Or you can drive the opposite direction of the casino.
So after making a last-second swerve to exit the highway, Lil Kat then veers right at the fork in the road, taking us away from the casino and straight toward absolutely nothing.
I point out that we should be going the other way. To be fair to B-Ray, it was quite foggy and you couldn't see much. It did appear as if there was nothing but pavement in front of us, and there wasn't a clear designated area to turn around.
So B-Ray gets the car in position to turn around and then -- thump! splash! -- we drive over a small ledge into a puddle of mud. His back tires weren't totally off the ground, but we were stuck pretty good. After Googling "car in a ditch" I chose the image above to most closely correlate to the crappyness of B-Ray's car and the ditch we were stuck in.
When it became obvious that we weren't going to get out of the ditch, Brian called AAA. While he was on the phone, a McClain County Sheriff's car came by. The cop was really nice, asked if we needed any help, and even remarked about how easily someone could drive into the ditch because of the fog. When I told him we were calling AAA, he said he was going to leave but that we should call 911 if we need anything else.
AAA said the tow would be there in an hour, and Brian had to wait for them to get there. I decided to walk the quarter mile over the highway to Riverwind and head home. But as I was leaving, another McClain County Sheriff's car pulled up. This cop was not as cool.
"How in the hell did you get in there???" he yelled after jumping out of his car. He made it sound like we had damaged his personal property or that he would in some way be helping us out of the situation.
Brian explained the wrong turn and the fog, but this guy wasn't interested.
"All I care about is whether you guys have been drinking," he said. "Have you been drinking?"
"No," Brian said. "Not one drop actually."
"Okay, well I still don't see how you ended up in that thing but all I really care about is whether you've been drinking."
As he walked back to his car, I tried to seize upon the opportunity for a free ride back to my car.
"Any way I can get a lift back to Riverwind?" I asked.
"I'm not going that way," he said, driving off.
As I walked across the highway in 30 degree fog, I thought about how much money my family could get from McClain County if I got ran over because this jerk wouldn't go one minute out of his way to drop me off at Riverwind.
It all just goes to show you that Brian Ray is a terrible driver.
P.S. The tow truck Brian called drove into the same ditch, which is pretty funny. But it got out and got B-Ray's car back to his place. He took it to a shop, where it got some much-needed anti-freeze. According to Lil Kat, that was all that was wrong with the car. But coming from someone who knows less about cars than a Taco Bell cashier, I don't think I'll be rolling the dice in that thing for quite some time.
I had a free room at Winstar Casino, about a two hour drive down I-35 from my house. The plan was to meet my friend Brian Ray (aka Lil Kat, B-Ray) at Riverwind Casino at 2 p.m. We'd make the drive, play poker for two days, and drive back. Easy enough.
At 2:10 I receive a text message from B-Ray. "Just woke up from nap. Will be late."
Really? The single guy with zero responsibilities needed a nap to freshen up for an evening of sitting on his butt playing cards? That's cool, I was hoping to sit in the Riverwind parking lot for an hour.
At about 2:50 I get another text. "I'm here." I text back, "I'm in the east parking lot, next to the hotel. Third row." He responds, "I'm out front."
At this point I'm just ready to go so I grab my bag, lock my car and start walking to the front. The casino faces Highway 9, which is right by I-35, so it would be convenient for him to be there so we could just hop on the road. But I get there and he's not there, so I call and ask where he is. "I told you I'm out front." I say, "I'm out front and you aren't here." He then clarifies that he is outside the poker room, which is at the back of the casino. So when he said he was "out front" he really meant that he was "out back." He also informed me that he couldn't find my car because he didn't know which direction east was. This is what an engineering degree from OU gets you these days.
I had asked him to drive because my car, an old Honda Accord, had its check engine light on a few days prior. It was driving fine and the light hadn't been on (in fact I had canceled an appointment to the car shop), but I didn't want to get stranded two hours from home. This would prove to be quite ironic.
About 10 miles down the road, Lil Kat's temperature warning lit up. The gauge was past the H and the car was obviously overheating.
At this point Brian thought it was a good time to let me know this his car had been also been acting funny of late. He told a tale of a drive-though encounter at Taco Bell, whereupon the cashier notified him that he was leaking a huge amount of anti-freeze. He figured the guy was an idiot since he worked at Taco Bell so the warning was ignored. Good thinking, let's just let the car blow up in Thackerville, Oklahoma.
We did, however, make it down to Winstar, where I lost the biggest pot I played. To Lil Kat. Good times.
The next day went better for me and I ended up having a profitable trip (alas, Lil Kat cannot say the same). At about 11 p.m., we decided to head back home.
Less than 10 miles into the 110-mile return trip, however, the temperature gauge lit up again. Not a surprising result since nothing had been done to fix it. But this time several other warnings lit up. Actually, just about every warning function on his piece of crap 2007-ish Chevy Malibu.
First, allow me to describe the current driving conditions. It was about 30 degrees outside with a rather dense fog. And we are the only car on I-35.
The check engine light came on. Then a warning that said, "Oil is at zero percent." Then something that said, "Energy saver mode activated." Brian couldn't get the car to go more than 50 mph and the heater wasn't working. More alarmingly, the car was making an awful clanking sound and smelled like burnt sausage.
Lil Kat asked what the chances of us making it home were. I estimated 40 percent.
Somehow, we plodded for over two hours at 50 mph but made it to the Highway 9 exit where Riverwind is located. We would have made it to the casino but, to quote our friend Tim Widowski, "Lil Kat is the worst driver I know."
First, he almost missed the exit. More amazing than that, he chose the wrong direction to turn after exiting the highway.
Riverwind Casino, where B-Ray spends roughly 70 hours per week, is a huge, bright building just West of I-35. The Highway 9 exit puts you on the east side of I-35. To get to the casino you have to cross over the highway. Or you can drive the opposite direction of the casino.
So after making a last-second swerve to exit the highway, Lil Kat then veers right at the fork in the road, taking us away from the casino and straight toward absolutely nothing.
I point out that we should be going the other way. To be fair to B-Ray, it was quite foggy and you couldn't see much. It did appear as if there was nothing but pavement in front of us, and there wasn't a clear designated area to turn around.
So B-Ray gets the car in position to turn around and then -- thump! splash! -- we drive over a small ledge into a puddle of mud. His back tires weren't totally off the ground, but we were stuck pretty good. After Googling "car in a ditch" I chose the image above to most closely correlate to the crappyness of B-Ray's car and the ditch we were stuck in.
When it became obvious that we weren't going to get out of the ditch, Brian called AAA. While he was on the phone, a McClain County Sheriff's car came by. The cop was really nice, asked if we needed any help, and even remarked about how easily someone could drive into the ditch because of the fog. When I told him we were calling AAA, he said he was going to leave but that we should call 911 if we need anything else.
AAA said the tow would be there in an hour, and Brian had to wait for them to get there. I decided to walk the quarter mile over the highway to Riverwind and head home. But as I was leaving, another McClain County Sheriff's car pulled up. This cop was not as cool.
"How in the hell did you get in there???" he yelled after jumping out of his car. He made it sound like we had damaged his personal property or that he would in some way be helping us out of the situation.
Brian explained the wrong turn and the fog, but this guy wasn't interested.
"All I care about is whether you guys have been drinking," he said. "Have you been drinking?"
"No," Brian said. "Not one drop actually."
"Okay, well I still don't see how you ended up in that thing but all I really care about is whether you've been drinking."
As he walked back to his car, I tried to seize upon the opportunity for a free ride back to my car.
"Any way I can get a lift back to Riverwind?" I asked.
"I'm not going that way," he said, driving off.
As I walked across the highway in 30 degree fog, I thought about how much money my family could get from McClain County if I got ran over because this jerk wouldn't go one minute out of his way to drop me off at Riverwind.
It all just goes to show you that Brian Ray is a terrible driver.
P.S. The tow truck Brian called drove into the same ditch, which is pretty funny. But it got out and got B-Ray's car back to his place. He took it to a shop, where it got some much-needed anti-freeze. According to Lil Kat, that was all that was wrong with the car. But coming from someone who knows less about cars than a Taco Bell cashier, I don't think I'll be rolling the dice in that thing for quite some time.
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