Praise Songs for Aunt Dorothy

 So a few days back my Aunt Ardy died.  

I read in her obituary that her full name was Eleanor Ardythe Elmerick Rankin - I never knew this.  I never actually wondered about the name Ardy until today in the shower.  What kind of name is Ardy?  Turns out, it's short for something even more amazing - the real questions should be 'what kind of name is Ardythe'?  And what sort of name should follow Ardythe?  Why Elmerick of course.  Here is her picture:

Aunt Ardy was the soft-spoken matriarch of a family called 'the Rankins'.  They were the largest family I knew growing up - my mom's brother Jack (crazy man who would say my name so loud whenever I would come into the kitchen through the carport door), his wife Ardy (quiet storm of her own who kept the family together with chore charts and night nursing) and 7 kids - 5 girls who stayed in one big upstairs room and 2 boys who stayed in another small room downstairs in a brick house on a hill in Aiken SC.  Every other family I knew growing up had two kids, three at the most.  They had 7, and compared to my childhood, they ran wild.

Their back yard was sandy, and I ate one of the only bologna sandwiches I would ever eat at a picnic table on their screened-in back porch.  When we visited, we would sleep spread out on the living room floor, just inside the front door and steps from the brick stairs that we would sit on to pose for family pictures under the pine trees in their front yard.

Aunt Ardy played the guitar.  Actually, I think I saw every Rankin play the guitar at one point or another, but she was always the leader.  We would be sitting around and when there was a lull she would reach down from her chair and pick up the guitar and start singing some old 70s praise song - In my mind it was "it only takes a spark" or "seek ye first" but more likely it was "they'll know we are Christians by our love" - and all the kids would sing along in perfect harmony.

Anyway, here's a story I wrote a while back about when my family all got together and scattered the ashes of another one of my aunts - Aunt Dorothy.  It's not really about Aunt Ardy, but she and her guitar are featured in this story.  Here is Praise Songs for Aunt Dorothy:

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Praise Songs for Aunt Dorothy

We got the call...Aunt Dorothy had died. 

She wasn't really my aunt.  She lived with my real great Aunt Ruth, who was my grandfather's sister. They had lived with each other forever.  They showed us pictures of Girl Scouts and canoe trips and world travel, and they were always together. For as long as I could remember, they shared a house somewhere in Florida with a ping pong table and an indoor pool out back that had some giant jet that would create a current that you could swim against and acted like a treadmill for breaststrokers and freestylers. This was weird because about Ruth and Aunt Dorothy were always old and I could never imagine them swimming, and definitely not into a giant water jet.

 Aunt Ruth was short and round and loud. She gave us kids a hard time when we wanted to put ketchup on our dinner.  She would sort of waddle around, and was always, definitely the driver of their Winnebago.  Aunt Ruth was red headed, in hair and in mouth.  I remember being a little scared of her, the ketchup hater.

 Aunt Dorothy, on the other hand was tall. Quiet. Gray haired. Nice.  The passenger in the Winnebago and the one in the front of the canoe in the old black and white pictures.  I had this feeling that she was beautiful a long time ago, and she would shuffle around in the kitchen behind Aunt Ruth, get the ketchup quietly from the fridge door and set it near me on the table. 

 But she was young once.  I saw a picture of her, black and white of course, in a sundress and a happy, content smile, not looking at the camera but just off--over her shoulder at something out of frame. 

Aunt Ruth and Dorothy would come visit us in South Carolina and park their Winnebago at the KOA in Anderson.  They rented a spot under the pines and mom and dad would drive us over from Clemson to see them. We'd play at the pool and wish for the Tombstone pizzas for sale at the little store there.  My brother and sister and I would dash in and out of the Winnebago, up and down the wobbly stairs and through the weirdly flimsy door to try and open the latched kitchen drawers and cabinets.  The giant captains driver seat was always so close to the steering wheel that even we couldn't squeeze in, but Aunt Dorothy's chair was plenty far enough from the dash for us to climb in and swivel around.  They had party lights on a string that they would hang from the awning outside, and they would sit with my parents for hours in lawn chairs and swat away at the gnats under the stars. 

 When we got the call, I wasn't surprised. Aunt Ruth had died a while back (just like her to go first), and Aunt Dorothy had been on her own for several years, health declining, becoming smaller and quieter.  She had left word that she wanted to be cremated, and her ashes sprinkled into the water somewhere.  My mom and dad were in France, so my Uncle Jack took care of the details.  Once they were ready, and my parents were back from their jet setting, they summoned all the kids to South Carolina for the memorial service. Most families would do this sort of thing in a church, but my Uncle Jack and his wife Ardy were this strange mix of leftover hippie, and charismatic Episcopalian, and so we had the service at a picnic shelter at the local lake.  

 It was a blazing hot South Carolina summer, and the day was filled with sweat and sun.  Lake Keowee was bright and sparkling as Jen and I walked from the parking lot; gravel crunching under our shoes, past the grills on poles to the picnic shelter. The shade of the shelter was slightly cooler than standing in the sun, and we all stood around while my Aunt Ardy sang and played praise songs on her guitar.  Some distant relatives were there from out of town, and we made small talk about Aunt Dorothy's life, and how hot it was.  A family picnicked in the shelter next to us, kids splashed and yelled in the water down the way.  There was more singing.  My sideways glances at the family next door were met with curious looks of anticipation and wonder.  Our group grew as more people arrived. We ate snacks.  Then it was time. 

 Uncle Jack said a few words.  My dad prayed.  My mom cried a little.  The kids in the water quieted down. 

 The shelter was a few steps from the water, and earlier my dad had pulled our family boat right up to a timber wall separating the grass from the water.  It was deep there and the boat knocked gently against the wall in rhythm with Aunt Ardy and the praise singers. 

 When we had first arrived, the boat looked fine, sparkling blue and white against the lake water.  But you see, my dad had forgotten to put the plug in the boat before he backed it into the water earlier at the ramp.  This boat plug is important; when you are done boating for the evening, you unscrew the plug and take it out just after you pull the boat from the water on the trailer.  All the bilge water that collects in the boat during the riding and skiing and jumping empties through this small hole behind you onto the road as you make your way back home, a long peeing stream of lake water along the asphalt. 

 But if you forget to put the plug back into the boat before you put it into the lake, the process is reversed, and the lake water slowly makes it's way into the bowels of the boat. There is always more lake than boat, and once Aunt Ardy had finished singing and we made our way over to the boat to scatter Aunt Dorothy, we realized it was well on its way to sinking. 

 No one seemed to panic because this was the sort of thing that wasn’t unusual with our family.  We all stood on the wall next to the water and looked at the boat; Mom laughed a bit quietly behind her tears.  Dad handed me the plug, and I pulled off my shirt and jumped in the water.  The hole for the plug was at the bottom of the back of the boat, well under the waterline.  It was tricky to screw it in underwater, but in very un-Grimes like fashion, I was able to get it in without dropping it into the murky depths.  Once we were plugged up, my dad climbed in the boat, water up to his knees and started bailing.  It only took a few minutes for the boat to regain buoyancy.      

 There were too many people gathered there that day to all fit in the boat, and we all knew that not everyone could go out on the water for the final send off, so my parents and Uncle Jack and Aunt Ardy, and my Uncle Al and his wife Kathy decided that they would go on behalf of the rest of us.  We watched the boat go out on the lake from the shore, smaller and smaller into the sparkling sun.  

 The rest of us made small talk while we waited.  The kids down the way went back to playing and shouting in the water.  The family at the next shelter went back to eating their lunch.  The trees swayed in the breeze and we sat in lawn chairs, swatting at the gnats.   

After a few minutes, we saw the boat again in the distance, growing larger as it brought its passengers back toward us.  They climbed out of the boat, back on dry land, giggling and...dusty. You see, it was windy on the lake that day.  Someone, maybe my dad or mom, or Uncle Jack, well they opened the box. And it was windy. And the ashes were scattered more in the boat and on the passengers than in the water. 

 Typical Grimes family funeral. 

Standing on the side of the road, holding stuff.

The first time I ever saw U2 was on the Time Magazine cover that was taped to the inside of Ed Huey's locker at Edwards Junior High School in Central South Carolina.  If it wasn't Ed Huey (I think he was more into RATT), it was David McKale.  Or maybe Chandler Harkey.  Somebody had it taped to their locker. 

Here's the only image of U2 on the cover of Time from around that time that I could find online:

For some reason, when I close my eyes and imagine that chance encounter, that brief flash of the inside of the locker before it was slammed shut to stop a trapper-keeper from falling to the floor, I remember that the image was of The Edge and Bono and Larry Mullins Jr. and Adam Clayton standing in front of a tree in the desert.  But I couldn't find that magazine cover online weather it existed or not, so I'll replace that picture with the image above and we can pretend that this one is what I really saw.  Lordy.  It was 30 or so years ago, for goodness sake.

That one image started me on a journey that has led to writing this middle aged cliche blog article where I sit and eat chips and salsa and drink beer alone in a Mexican restaurant while I wait for my daughter to get out from her musical rehearsal so we can drive home together.

The first time this story was published was in my friend Katie Mullins' music blog - Katie Darby Recommends.  She started her blog, I think, before she got married to my friend Andy Mullins, thus the Darby in the title, or maybe she kept her maiden name and used it as her stage name.  She graciously squeezed this story between her real writing about real bands, and probably only published it because Andy and I are friends and he asked her nicely to not hurt my feelings.  The blog is long gone, and can only be found on the Way Back Machine at this point, but it meant a great deal to me when she would humor me and hit the publish button - even if it was with a grimace.

Anyway, here's the story, first published on Katie Darby Recommends - June 29, 2013:

Tom Petty and a Semi Near St. Louis.

A long time ago when me and the Counting Crows were both young, a few of us would all get together on Tuesday nights in the basement of the school Salvation Army center and watch Rattle and Hum on the huge projection screen tv with couches arranged in front of it like an old drive in movie theater.  We would forget everything else, turn the lights off and watch Bono and the Edge work magic in the American desert.  We knew every line, every chord, every lyric...and when the red background came up and Bono and forty thousand people started singing Where The Streets Have No Name at Sun Devil stadium that night in Arizona, we knew that we needed to be a part of it somehow.

This is me, back in the day.  Long hair, replacement sunglasses.

I don't know who it was, maybe Mike, maybe Dink, but one of us came up with the idea to drive from our little liberal arts school in Kentucky all the way to Joshua Tree National Park in California and back over spring break.  It was months away and we were deep into winter, but Greg said we could take his car. We started hoarding cans of Mountain Dew from the bag lunches they made at the cafeteria for students who had class during the lunch hour.  Mike was dating Ronald McDonald's daughter at the time, and was able to sweet talk himself into stacks of free value meal coupons, and Dink found the stash of single serving potato chips when he cleaned the cafeteria floors at night, dancing with the mop to big band songs in  his head when nobody else was around.  We kept all this in the floor of our closets and behind our couches so nobody would find them.  We waited for spring. 

Greg and I were in a band that we named 16 Cloves.  We had arena sized dreams and a handful of songs that we played over and over late at night in the dorm.  Sox recorded a few for us on a rented 4 track in an upstairs chapel one night and mixed them down on a tape that I hid at the bottom of a sock drawer after I graduated.  I knew that one day I would play those songs somewhere--in a coffee shop maybe, or the school gym.  I had everything worked out in my head about what I would say between songs on the set list, how the audience would hang on every word, be amazed by the depth of every lyric, and notice the subtlety of every joke, their glasses and mugs clinking softly in the background. I also saw myself on stage, like Bono, the crowd like the crowd at Sun Devil, the night just perfect and my songs making their way through the rain into the heart of America.

Dink, Mike, Greg.

Spring arrived, and we set out. We had spent the night before packing the car, trunk full of chips and cans, front full of pillows, tapes and cd's.  We stopped at McDonald's and each got a double quarter pounder with cheese extra value meal (super sized, of course). We paid proudly with our free meal coupons and laughed as the cashier had to consult the manager on how to process the transaction. We decided that we would only get the double quarter pounder with cheese meal (super sized) for every meal. We stopped for gas. Greg was driving and we came up with some game about seeing how quickly we could pump, pay, and get the car back on the road. We timed the first gas stop and then roared back onto the highway towards St Louis. 

We had planned the route using a real map. Each stop corresponded with some long lost relative that we contacted and asked if they would be willing to put 4 guys up for the night.  Kentucky to Colorado to Oklahoma to Arizona to California. It was a crazy route, but it made total sense as we looked at the line we drew across the states.  

Somebody put on Tom Petty; it was probably Mike as he was sitting shotgun.  We had a Discman knockoff connected to a tape adapter in the stereo tape deck, and Free Falling was playing through the factory Camry speakers.  We had settled down from our initial high of leaving and were full in the lull of driving, looking out the window at the beginnings of the Midwest starting to form along side us.  I scribbled something on a yellow legal pad and Dink was quiet.  I had on Bono's sunglasses, and Tom Petty was making it all right in the world. 

Then suddenly Mike yells "Woah!  Greg!"  I look up to see the passenger mirror disappear into the rear left wheel of a semi truck.  We bounce off and start to spin, fast and flat, away from the truck. I calmly notice that we were now in the median, grass kicking up, and the world spinning by. Greg had a two handed, straight arm death grip on the steering wheel, jaw clenched and eyes wide, things starting to fly around the car.  The airbag deployed and burned the insides of his arms. Something catches and we stop spinning long enough to fly straight back into the rear wheels of the truck.  We hit the truck twice and then slowed, skidding sideways and smoking in the middle of the highway. Greg must have switched off the ignition because Free Falling stopped playing. A couple cars drove by, the rest pulled up in neat rows stretching off into the distance of midwest highway. 

All four of us got out and stood quietly on the shoulder. We realized that we were all holding something--I had a pen, Mike had a pillow, Greg had grabbed some trash and Dink had a stack of cd's.  Greg threw the trash down and pretended he hadn't grabbed it. My sunglasses were gone.  

The highway patrol that showed up told us that when he got the call over the radio about a Camry vs. Semi that had just happened, he knew we were all dead, that the truck typically throws the car under it and then rolls over it. He couldn't believe it when he saw us all on the side of the road, alive and totally unhurt.  I only remember patiently waiting for the car to stop spinning so we could all get out.

Car.

We stayed that night in a motel next to a truck stop, waiting for Greg's parents to come pick us up. We drove to Omaha, and his dad bought him another car--a Jeep Cherokee with a bike rack on the top. We watched Braveheart.  We drove to Mike's parents house in Oklahoma and ate orange cinnamon rolls.  

We made it back to school, attended the rest of our classes, and graduated. Dink worked for a successful dot com that got bought out, retired wealthy in his late 20's. Mike became a pastor. Greg went back home to work on the family farm.  I got married, started working for the man, and happily rocked the suburbs.  

Every once in a while, though, I find myself checking out the racks of gas station sunglasses. 

So...you wanna buy a skateboard?

For the first time ever, the 

OOF or DIE Skateboard Company 

is selling a skateboard.  

That's right, you could own your very own piece of history. 

This completely custom board is hand painted by OOF or DIE team member, Molly Quinn Grimes.

The deck is old school, 8.75" wide, 31.75" long.  Totally concave, totally rad.

The graphics are a creative masterpiece:  Hamsters.  Sunglasses.  Diamonds.    

The trucks are top shelf: Independent Stage 11 Trucks, size 169. 
Polished Aluminum, Chromoly Steel.  Pure sizzle.

The wheels are beautiful: Santa Cruz Vomit Splat Slimeballs: 60 mm Diameter, 97a Durometer. 
The Bearings are Bones Reds.  

Molly even signed the tail.

The bottom is covered with coat after coat of Polycrylic.  The top griptape is clear, so the hamster can watch you Shred that GNAR.  

How much is it, you ask?  This board can be yours for the very low price of $175.  

That's not a lot for an original piece of art.  It's a steal really.  I'll even throw in a handful of
Oof or Die stickers:

Interested?  DM me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/wgrimes/ 

The Oof or Die Skateboard Company accepts payment via Venmo --> @Wade-Grimes .   

Japandroids, Part 1

Last night while driving home from a healthy dinner at ShakeShake ($6 for a greasy fast food burger? really?) my daughter Molly was flipping through songs on one of her 3,205 Spotify playlists.  We passed by Weezer, Noah and the Whale, some song about a guillotine, a few waif singer songs, Angels and Airwaves, Norah Jones, some other bands I have no idea about, and settled on...Japandroids.

I think I've played Japandroids successfully in our house maybe twice.  It typically gets overruled in the first 7 seconds and changed to something like 21 Pilots, Andrew McMahon, Erasure, or the Hamilton soundtrack.  Tom Waits usually gets a better reception, although chances of making it all the way through a Tom Waits are better if I play early Tom Waits vs. late Tom Waits.

Some dads strive to encourage greatness in their kids.  Some start and finish the day with inspirational quotes by Steve Jobs or Jack Welch.  Some dads gage the success of their parenting by how their kids reflect morals or modesty or kindness or generosity or any of the other fruits of the spirit.  My dad would lead family devotions around the kitchen table when we would skip church and he successfully shepherded two slacker boys to eagle scout status.

All those things are good, and I'm sure those dads have good kids, but we all know that the real evidence of true parenting success is when your daughter skips through 57 songs on her playlist to land on "The Nights of Wine and Roses" from the Japandroids' Celebration Rock album.

But here's the real kicker.  Not only did she skip through 57 songs on her playlist to stop on "The Nights of Wine and Roses" from the Celebration Rock album, she reached over, turned the volume knob on that VW car stereo up as far as it would go, pressed the volume-up button on her iPhone as loud as it would go and proceeded to yell every lyric of that song perfectly from the start to finish.  That girl knew every word.

In honor of that parenting success, here's an article I wrote a hundred years ago for my friend's music blog called Katie Darby Recommends (RIP).  Katie generously overlooked many faults, poor thought process, grammar mistakes, and risked her professional reputation to publish two halfbaked Japandroid articles.  Here is the first:

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Making Up Junk About Japandroids

I am not cool.

I typically spend my days fixing computer problems, listening to crappy bands like Angels and Airwaves and perfecting my fauxhawk. I like blueberry coffee from the dunkin donuts in our local Wilco gas station. I drive a station wagon with black cloth seats.  So how in the world did I find Japandroids...


The truth is, they found me. They're on a mission to save the planet.  Ok, well maybe just the world, but still... And even though you wouldn't know it by their name, they're not robots.

They're aliens.

Aliens, posing as hipsters. Or slackers. Of something. I mean, they're cuddling in flannel in the cover of the record, for goodness sake.

Let's examine a bit closer.  This song, 'Young Hearts Spark Fire' --loaded with evidence that the Japandroids are aliens.

This song is a great Japandroids song... They're loud, they have great backing vocals and do this fuzzy thing with their voices.  They even find a way to make their instruments fuzzy sounding.  Only aliens would have technology so advanced to fuzz up their voices and their guitars and their drums at the same time.  So advanced, that alien technology.  Amazing really.

But forget about the music, the instruments and the fuzz….The lyrics to the song are where the hidden evidence lurks:
--->"You can keep tomorrow, after tonight we're not going to need it."  Who says that kind of stuff?  Aliens.
--->"Two hearts beating. Oh Yeah, Oh Yeah!!"  Who has two hearts?  Aliens
--->"I don't wanna worry about dying.  I just wanna worry about those sunshine girls."  What?!?  Sunshine Girls?  Girls that live on the sun?  Who could possibly know about girls that live on the sun?  Aliens.

(Just as an aside, I wish I had heard the song 'young hearts on fire' earlier in my life. I used to play loud, poppy punk records as loud as possible to help my twin girls to to sleep when they were babies. How much better would it have been to play songs about dreaming, death, young love, and  sunshine than any random Sum 41 song.)

'Young Hearts Spark Fire' is a perfect song. The guitar, the drums are keenly fuzzed, the vocals are strong and in time, the words are well thought out, and the backing vocals scream in proper dystopian harmonics.

Verdict: Aliens.

Next Song in question (from a different record with no cuddling on the cover): 'The House that Heaven Built'

Another great song.  More loud, more fuzzy-ness, a tad bit more produced sound (indicative of the entire record?  I don't know.  I only listened to this one song--isn't that what what everyone does?).

Let's examine the lyric:

Nevermind.  I have no idea what it means.  "tell them all they'll love in my shadow."  Just listen to the song again.  Feel your life changing?  Feel your world being saved?

Verdict: Aliens.

Next Song (from a different record, lots of smiling on the cover): 'Darkness on the Edge of Gastown'.  Homage to Springsteen?  Maybe.  Probably.  But still--See, trying to save the world.

Ok, so this song is not my favorite.  But then again, 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' is not my favorite Springsteen record either.  Coincidence?  I think not (phrase coined).

BUT….going back to examine the lyric….more Alien evidence:

--->"She has too much neon.  It's hanging off the bone."  Neon, hanging off the bone?  Alien for sure.
--->"Tell her that I can see the future.  Tell her that her future is bleak."  Seeing into the future?  Only aliens can do that.

Lastly…'Coma Complacency' (from same smiling cover record).

I absolutely love two chord songs.  There are so few of them, but all two chord songs seem to have life and freedom in the simplicity.  I tried to think of other two cord songs to reference here, but I can only think of ones that I wrote in college (I never had that certain guitar-talent necesary to write anything other than two chord songs...) and there's no way that we need to go near there.  Ok, so there are a few more chords in this song, but the vast majority of the song is sung to two strong, fuzzy chords.  And the lyric:

--->"Hey hey hey heyheyheyhey".  Well thought out.  Massively impacting.  Here to rescue the world.  Japandroids.  Listen to them.  They'll change you're life.

Final verdict:  Alien.  Japandroids.  They will find you.

wadelover

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Up next...Japandroids, Part 2.  Stay tuned.

...by the way, all of our real parenting wins can be attributed to Jen.  I let kids ride down stairs on mattresses and play with their friends on the roof.  She's really the one doing all the work in our family. 

She is the best one of the best ones, for sure.

Standing and Reading (and Threats from Jen)

On October 30, 2017 at 1:15 pm, I received this text from my nephew Nathan:

Sorry Stephen Furtick for spelling your name wrong.

I was standing in my kitchen at home on a lunch break from work, probably eating a frozen Trader Joe's burrito.  Jen and I were talking about something or other--kids or school, or work, or moving, or whatever-- when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket.  I pulled it out, read the text and promptly laughed so hard that burrito mush flew out of my nose.

Ok, this is all true except for the burrito/mush/nose part.

Apparently when put to a vote, Nathan, Payton, Sam, Julia, Adam, and the rest of the Arborbrook Christian Academy Graduating Class of 2018 unanimously decided that it would be a good idea to ask me to be the keynote speaker at the only high school graduation ceremony they would ever have.  Was this a good idea?

I formally accepted by texting back a few emoji and smart comments, and then went back to my burrito.  Jen almost immediately started making it clear that I was not aloud to think anything, or say anything, or write anything, or do anything that would embarrass her, Arborbrook, the Spears, the Grimes, or anybody else at any time, for any reason, under any circumstance.  This was her constant mantra for the next 7 months--I made the mistake early on of reading her a few perfectly harmless jokes that I had written.  Even as I walked out the door, dressed in my new clothes, shoes shined, hair artfully mussed, she begged me one last time not to do anything stupid.

I thought about this speech constantly.  I would write the perfect paragraph in my head while soaping up in the shower, and then later it would be all wrong when I tried to type it into Evernote.  It wouldn't make sense, or the jokes wouldn't land, or I'd offend someone somehow.  It was dumb, trite, surface, cheesy, lame, and unfunny for months.  I wrote and re-wrote, all the while Jen begging me not to say anything that I would regret.

Finally, a couple of weeks before graduation day, I got it right.  It felt right, the points lining up, the content clean, the jokes...well the jokes were still lame.  I set up a podium made of buckets and boxes in a storage unit and started practicing.  I'd read it out loud over and over again, making notes, changing words, fixing sentences.  I really hope that there are no cameras in that building.

So here's the text of the speech.  My brother in law Matt filmed it as well, so feel free to click the play button if you'd rather watch the video than read the wall of text below.  The quality of writing is no better than the quality of the (vertical) video.

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Thank you Lydia, thank you Mr. Zawacki, thank you Arborbrook students and parents and...oh gosh..

I forgot my mom was going to be here….

can’t say that, 

strike that, 

haha...nope not that either

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Ok well our time together just got a lot shorter.  And a lot more appropriate.   

Graduates. The class of 2018.  Congratulations to you all.  People, let’s have a round of applause for the Arborbrook Christian Academy graduating class of 2018. 

Alright. Look, we all know that you all already know pretty much everything. You’re on top of the world!  For the past 18 years of your life, You’ve been taught and guided and lectured and mentored. You’ve had early morning advice from your parents over a half full glass of orange juice, and late night lectures from those same parents when you stayed out past curfew without a call, text or explination—you’ve read the blogs, the tweets and the old people Facebook posts that your parents have tagged you in—ok maybe you skimmed those. You’ve had more pep talks than a losing girls basketball team at halftime. 

You know how to act, how to behave, what to do when, and how to do it because you’ve had it pounded into you day after day after day.

So if I were you, and it was 25 years ago and I was sitting where you are sitting, I’d be thinking to myself:

why in the world should I sit here and listen to one more old man stand in front of me and give me pithy thin advice based on outdated experiences that happened half a lifetime ago?

And you’d be right I guess. But you voted for me to be your graduation speaker, and I’m here, so for the next 2 hours and 45 minutes or so, you’re stuck. Settle in. 

I wrote so many jokes for this speech. I wrote lots of Arborbrook jokes--gluten free jokes, essential oil jokes, jokes about the school facility, the locker hallway, the lunch porch, the sports program, the drama program, the cottage, and the administration.  I wrote a joke about Arborbrook board member Matt Depp, where he and his vastly more famous brother Johnny started a rip-off ice-cream business called Deppin Dots.  I wrote a hilarious Nathan-Julia joke that Julia politely asked me to never, ever repeat out loud, ever, and an unprintable joke about Sam Kitchen hanging out in the kitchen of an old folks home with a bunch of swearing old folks—all they ever said was What in the Sam Kitchen!?!

But then I realized that these jokes are all about me. And today is not about me..it’s about you, the Arborbrook Graduating Class of 2018. 

I’m proud of every one of you—take a minute and look around. ALL of these people are proud of you—Every person here in one way or the other is proud of you and loves you…well at least to some extent.

And wow, look at the 9 of you.  I know that If I was part of your graduating class, at some point in the near future, i’m pretty sure I’d say this in the middle of an argument: “I don’t know why you think you’re so smart.  I mean, I bet you weren’t 9th in your graduating class... like I was.” or, "who has two thumbs, and graduated in the top 10 of their high school class?  This guy!”

Some of you I know pretty well, some of you I don’t know at all. But let me tell you this—you guys for the past 13 years have done some pretty spectacular things. You made it all the way from kindergarten to elementary school, through high school, and you finished with a passable GPA.  You played sports, built computers, worked jobs, sang in plays, created secret instagram accounts, grew stuff in gardens, launched potatoes, made lifelong friendships, and developed into decent human beings along the way.   And this is your day.  

To put this in perspective, here are some numbers: 

You spent 943 hours in Elementary School--per year  Thats 5658 hours just in grades 1-6.  In grades 7-12 you spent 1215 hours per year—that’s another 7290 hours.  The total hours of your life spent in school so far is right around 12,984 (if someone out there is adding these numbers up, please remember that I went to public school.  In South Carolina…).  Heck, if you were homeschooled at some point, it could either be twice that number, or half of it, depending on your parents.

Here’s a kicker for ya...If you spent all of that time here at Arborbrook, your parents coughed up a dollar total somewhere north of $104,038 for tuition…that number does not include lunches, field trip fees, apple computer purchases, sports registrations, dr. visits, clothes, shoes, and essential oils for your teachers, oh, and all the while they were also paying on a mortgage.  If you think that’s a huge number, you should also consider all the dioramas, and science fair projects, and Spanish papers, and historic english castle models made out of food? and math corrections, and crafty Christmas presents for the principal they did for you after you had given up and gone to bed.  How about right now we have a round of applause for the parents!

Ever since I got the text message from Nathan Spear asking me to be the graduation speaker (we do things formally here at the Brook…), I thought a lot about what to say.  I was also slightly intimidated in the task of following in Pastor Stephen Furtik’s footsteps as he was last year’s speaker.  To all the graduates, thank you for lowering your standards and asking me to speak today.  To all the parents here today who are saying to themselves “Wade Grimes?  Why Wade Grimes?”  I’m with you and I am sorry, and yes I have put on a few extra pounds and yes my hair is super gray these days, but you’re right, my beard iscoming in nicely.    

To prepare for the writing of this commencement address, I looked up some inspirational graduation quotes:

 Here’s one from Chris Rock:  

“Hey kids, check this out.  You can be anything you’re good at. As long as they’re hiring. And even then it helps to know somebody."  

But that doesn’t really work, and there’s not a lot there to hang a speech on.  

I thought this one might work: 

"Remember, just like Darth Vader, Strong people don’t put others down, they lift people up"

But I thought that might be too out of date at this point—and memes don’t really translate well to graduation speeches.  

I thought for a while about quoting George W. Bush when he said that if you go to college and if you get a 2.0 GPA, you too can be the President of the United States, but Jen thought that might not be a good idea.

I thought about quoting something really cheesy and trying to passit off as cool—like this:  

"In a world where you can be anything, just be nice.”  

As much as my Advanced Tech class knows that I feel very strongly about the value of kindness, it still didn’t seem to fit.  Plus, your mom’s been telling you to be nice since you were like 2 years old.  

So I settled on this:  Advice my dad gave me when I was in college.  

Now my dad, Dr. Larry Grimes, professor emeritus at Clemson University, didn’t send me a lot of letters when I was in college, he preferred to mail onions.  Many times over the 4 years that I was in college, I would open my college post office mailbox to find a yellow slip of paper.  Those yellow slips of paper were the best thing ever to find in your college mailbox, because they indicated that you had a package waiting for you behind the mail counter.  

You took that yellow slip of paper and walked tall to that mail counter, the envy of all your friends.  You handed that yellow slip of paper to one of the blue haired old ladies that had been working at that mail counter since 1937.  They would say “well what in the sam kitchen!?!  Looks like you got a package!”.  They’d turn around, root for a while in a pile of brown paper, and then trade you that yellow slip of paper... for a box.  

This was always awesome, until I saw my name and address on the outside of that box in my dad’s handwriting.  At that point, the image of the care package full of cookies and peanut butter, and candy, and coffee and encouragement from my high school youth group that I was imagining in my head...evaporated.  I knew immediately what it was—a vidalia onion.  I have no idea why.  What in the world was I supposed to do with a vidalia onion at age 19 at Asbury College?  I probably ended up climbing to the top of the administration building and launched it as far as I could onto Reasoner Green.  I hear that the Asbury University PhysPlant is still struggling with a strange but stubborn onion problem on Reasoner Green to this day.  

But I also have one very vivid memory of the one non-onion letter he wrote me.  I was probably a sophomore or junior, and I was in the midst of trying to figure out what to do, what to major in, who to be.  

I guess I may have mentioned it to my mom, and my mom may had mentioned it to my dad (I’m sure she blew it totally out of proportion, because I never stress, I never worry, I never get anxious, and I never ever above all lose my cool).  

Anyway, I opened that non-onion letter, and In my dad’s perfect handwriting, flowing out of that Mont Bloc fountain pen that he always wrote with, he said something along these lines:

 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?  So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

I think I probably still have that letter somewhere.  I tried to find it so that I could quote directly from it, and it would have been better if i had, because in my head the next line, in his perfect handwriting, flowing from his Mont Bloc pen was “DUDE CHILL” but I don’t think that’s quite right.  I remember reading that letter, I remember where I was, I remember what I was doing and feeling, and wearing (Not really that big of a thing...I wore the exact same thing every day to class in college.  every.  day.  not my best years).  I was at first just so happy that it wasn’t an onion, but it was what that letter said that ended up meaning a great deal to me.  

At some point, over the next 4 years, and even more likely many many times after you’ve graduated, you’re going come up against something that stresses the junk out of you.  You will be stressed to the gills, tired, anxious, scared, and worried.  Your head will hurt, your face will explode, you will eat that entire 5 pound bag of peanut m&m’s in one sitting.  When you come up against that time, think of my dad, of his onions, his handwriting, and his thoughtful use of Matthew 6:25-34.  I can promise you that no matter how dark that day is, you’ll be ok.  You’ll make it through, and you’ll remember how it felt so you can tackle the next crisis.  Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?  The answer is no.

The second thing my dad, Dr. Larry Grimes told me was “no one is going to let you starve.”  This is probably more along the lines of advice that you’ll need after you graduate college, when you’re working that barely-above-minimum wage job, trying to pay the rent, trying to buy food, trying to keep it all together, but you can’t and you’re starting to split at the seams.  Remember all those people who 5 minutes ago were applauding for you—your parents, your grandparents, that one guy from church that you can’t remember his name but he always knows yours?  They’re the same people that will help you when you need it.  And you will need it.  

I thought for a long time after college that I had to do it all on my own.  I blocked everyone out, tried to carry it all by myself.  You know what happens when you do that?  You break, you lose it, stuff falls apart, everything that you’re juggling starts to hit the ground.  Keep the people that love you in your life.  Take help when its offered, and ask for it when you need it.  You don’t have to do it all by yourself, no one is going to let you starve.    

The third piece of advice my dad gave me is the hardest one to follow.  You’re about to be fully on your own for the first time.  No one is going to get you up in the morning, no one is going to make sure that you go to bed.  No one is going to tell you that it’s a really bad idea to eat a full sized snickers bar every day, and no one is going to stop you.  As an aside—Take it from me, please.  Do not eat a full sized snickers bar every day when you go to college.  It’s a bad idea.  Other bad ideas: beer, majoring in English, climbing the outside of buildings, playing Mario Kart, driving late at night on Kentucky backroads with people who are trying to stand in the back of your pickup truck.

My Dad’s advice was this: Go to class.  

To be honest, college is hard, but it’s not that hard.  There’s stuff you have to do, assignments to turn in, tests to take, and homework to finish.  But if I can graduate college, so can you.  It all starts with this—make the decision to go to class.  There are lots of excuses you can make: The weather is too nice to go to class, the weather is too nasty to go to class, It’s too far, I’m too tired, I’m late already, no one likes me, everyone likes me, I ate a snickers bar every day, I smell like onions, chapel was too deadly boring for me to have to do anything else today, my friends don’t have class this hour, I have to play some random sport, I like mario kart better than Dr whatever her name is.  You can make excuses all day long, and some of them may even be valid, but you will not pass, and you will not graduate, you will not get a good job, and you will end up eating triscuits in your parent’s basement in your undershirt if you do not go to class.  

When I was 18, during the christmas break between the first semester and the second semester of my freshman year, I made the mistake of thinking that the Grove Park Inn was constructed better than it is.  The Grove Park Inn is a hotel in Asheville that is covered in the rock that the builders excavated from the surrounding mountains.  After dinner one evening while my family was celebrating my sister getting engaged to be married (super boring), I climbed 3 stories up the outside of the Grove Park Inn, and believe it or not, a rock that was somehow poorly glued to the side of the building came off in my hand.  I ended up falling the 3 stories back to the brick patio below.  Also, believe it or not, I broke my leg.

On top of having a broken leg in a cast and being on crutches, the day that class started up that second semester back at school, it was snowing sideways through sleeting rain and terrible wind.  The sidewalks were solid, covered in ice.  If anyone had an excuse not to go go class, it was me.  Did I stay in bed? No!  I got out, slipped and fell twice on the way, but made it in time to get the last seat in that 19th century English lit class, conveniently right next to to this girl who I had been eyeballing for the past couple months.  Because I followed my Dad’s advice, Not only did I pass that class, I eventually graduated, and I married that girl.    

Lastly, 

Madelyn 

Julia

Lydia

Adam

Nathan

Sam

Payton

Samantha

Lilly Queen

Over the next 4 years, decide not to coast—be the anomaly and throw yourself into it. 

Use these college years to go on an adventure.  Study abroad.  Travel outside of your normal circle—go on a mission trip to Haiti or Paraguay, or India, or somewhere in the world that is the direct opposite of Wesley Chapel NC.  Serve someone other than yourself for a period of time longer than a couple weeks.  It will change you in ways that you will still be trying to figure out 24 years later.  You will never have an easier chance in your life to do something as big. 

Decide to say Yes more than you say No—but to all the things you should say yes to, obviously parents.  Late night mud sliding on the golf course in the rain?  Yes.  Early morning hike in the dark to watch the sun rise over the cliffs on the Kentucky river? yes.  Full size Snickers bar every day?  yes.  I mean, no.  Go out for the University quidditch team?  no.  i mean yes!     

Surround yourself with people that want the best for you, that no matter how much you think that you need it to fulfill your stadium-sized rock star dreams, they’ll tell you that it is not a good idea to pay for that brand new, canary yellow Fender Telecaster guitar with the credit card that you just received in the mail after applying for it at freshman orientation.  Find that guy.  Find that guy that will help you be your best self.  Quickly drop everyone else.  There is nothing wrong with not being friends with toxic people.  That’s the nice thing about graduating high school, and moving away.  There are a zillion people out there.  Find the good ones.  Be the good one.  

Lastly, It is far more important to say “i’m sorry” than it is to hear it.  When someone does tell you “i’m sorry”, accept it and move on.  Don’t dwell on stupid things.  Remember that it costs nothing to be a decent human.  Do everything you can to take the rough edges out of life - treat people how you want to be treated and look at life through a lense of Grace--Because a life lived full of grace is a life well lived.  Spread hope like fire, and live these next few years like the crazy ruckus cacophony that they should be...but above all. Go. To. Class.

Congratulations, Arborbrook Graduating Class of 2018! 

So that was going to be the end of the speech until I found out just a few weeks ago that we have a graduate that has signed up to join the Marine Corps.  Thank you Sam Kitchen, on behalf of everyone here, for your dedication, commitment and willingness to serve.  You have my cell number.  Call me when you need it.

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Ok, well there you go.  If you've read to the end of this, you're a better person than most.  If you watched the video, you can tell that I'm not a great speaker or read-out-loud-er.  It ment a great deal to be the graduation speaker.  

Thanks Nathan, Payton, Sam, Julia, Adam, and everyone else for thinking of me.  

Elliot in Boston

So a hundred and a half years ago, Elliot was running across the street in front of my house to get in on some neighborhood pickup baseball when an old lady hit him with her car.  Knocked him out of his flaming Vans.  Don't worry, he was fine.

Most of you know that story, how it happened, how it ended.  You can still see a few scars on his arms and nose, but if you didn't know where to look you wouldn't know they were there.

You may not know, however about the time we lost him in Boston.  A while back my friend Vern asked me about it for a sermon illustration (back when pastors still found me interesting), so I sat down and banged this out on my phone.

Here's the story:

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Elliot in Boston

Elliot, with Family and Life Ring

In 2011 the Grimes family was in Boston to take part of the 115th running of the Boston marathon.  While there are 28,000 people running the race, there are approximately 500,000 people there to watch, cheer, and hand Gatoraid and gel packs to passing runners.  

The day before the race we decided to see some of the sites around Boston and found ourself in Quincy Market for lunch.  Quincy Market is a historic building in downtown Boston that was built in 1824 and had recently been that had been converted to restaurants, retail shops, and a large eating area.  There were street performers, and musicians, lots to see and eat…

...and the place was packed full of tourists.  Runners were everywhere looking for salads.  

My family had split up to find different things to eat—Jen went for the healthy stuff, and I took my kids Sarah, Molly, and Elliot to a stall selling corn dogs.  We were staying close together, fighting through the crowds, and stood in line for a few minutes until we got to the counter.  I order the corn dogs and handed them to the kids, and Jen came from across the way to join us.  We stood there for a while, jostled by tons of people and looked for a place to sit.

Sarah looks up and says "Where's Elliot?"

He was gone.  

But he was just right there…how could he be gone?  He was...Gone. 

For a full 15 minutes, he was gone.  We were the parents of a lost child.  Jen was desperate, yelling his name.  We were running from place to place, desperately looking for our 3-year-old boy.  

My mom, who was also there, gathered my girls up and started praying.  We retraced our steps, went outside, back inside, pushed our way through the crowd.  I started looking for police, had daytime nightmares of moving to Boston and constantly searching the city, never sleeping, never finding him.  

In those 15 minutes, I became more and more desperate, terrible sadness started to cover me and my heart started breaking.  

And then, from across the way, I saw a man in a Boston Marathon jacket holding my boy.  Elliot was crying, and the man was holding him up high, looking just as hard for us as we were for him.  He looked at me full in the face, saw me from across the room and seemed to know from my desperation that I was Elliot's dad and he was my son.  I ran over to him, thanked him, and he handed Elliot to me.  I had never held him so tight.  

The man disappeared into the crowd.

We found a table, sat and ate, shattered and whole again, in silence.  My boy, who was gone, was there beside me.

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I'm not crying, you're crying.

Today Elliot turns 11.  He's a fifth grader, gnar-shreader, brother, son, baseball player, stand up comedian, alien.

He's beat death twice.

Happy Birthday Elliot.

Do They Make Genetically Modified Essential Oils?

So the other day I walked into this lady's office and saw this upward smoke fountain billowing out some sort of crazy cinnamon volcano-level action.  Essential Oils, they told me.  Diffuser, they told me.

My eyes started to water.

It was also around 100, or 150 degrees in the office.  The lights were off, shades were drawn, faces lit only by computer screen backlight, and the peaceful pulsing purple light from that defuser.

I decided to go the benefit-of-the-doubt route and started to breathe in as deeply as I could.  I put my face right in that Christmas flavored fount of misted oil, closed my eyes, and inhaled.  I felt it flit by my nose hairs, fill my sinuses, flood its way to the very darkest corners of my lungs--the corners so far only touched by body odor, or that really amazing smell that hits you when you walk into a taco bell around 3 pm.

I went to another level.

That steady stream of steam goodness showed me a clear way of solving the worlds biggest problems.  It walked me down a path where anger was set aside, hunger was managed, and teenagers made their own beds.  Without being asked!

At that moment, I realized what I had been missing in life.  Looking at me, you would think I had it all--smoking hot wife, amazing kids, house, job, multiple cars, skateboard ramp in the backyard, good looks and winning personality.

And in thinking that you'd not be wrong, I do have it all.  But... if you had been there that day, if you had put your nose where I put mine, and if you had breathed as deep as I breathed in that verticle well of wonder, you too would realize...


...that you need this graphic on a t-shirt:

I made this.  Let me know if you want one.

Not My Fault

So all this is my daughter Sarah's fault.  All of it.

This is Sarah:

She's a Dish.

She made me start a blog.  Put a survey up on her insta and all her friends, except for that one lone rational guy, voted that I should do it.  She's been hounding me to start it, so this is all her fault.

If you find something here that you like, it's her fault.  If you find something here that you don't like, it's definitely here fault.

In fact, it's all of these people's fault:

Hoodlums, all.

And definitely this one's fault:

Ignore the guy on the left.

But mostly Sarah's fault.  

Get ready for some ramblings, old stories, some stuff that I wrote at one time or another.  Get ready for some noise.  I'm pretty sure it won't last long.