It's been one month today since my marriage of just over 6 years ended in divorce. This may not make much sense, but most of the time, I feel like there's so much I could say and yet so little worth actually saying all at the same time. At any rate, I persist in these scribblings to help me get things straight in my head and, to borrow the legal parlance, to have a record to examine and learn from going forward.
It's beyond a cliche, but I really am trying to take the post-divorce process one day at a time. At least so far, I haven't had too much in the way of truly bad days filled with stinging regret or overwhelming grief. That doesn't mean those hard days will never come, it's just that they haven't shown up yet. Now that I think about it, part of the reason for the seeming shortage of really bad days since the divorce is because I experienced and survived so much of the trauma that is more frequently associated with the post-divorce process during the breakdown of the marriage and during the legal process of the divorce itself. Even if I never verbalized it, I'm pretty sure that some part of me knew that, by drinking the grief and pain cup down to the very bottom as my marriage was disintegrating, I would spare myself some post-divorce pain and grief on the back end. To be sure, those days where I knew the marriage was breaking irretrievably apart were difficult beyond anything words can describe. There were, among many other things, endless hours of self-doubt, wondering whether I was crazy, and questioning if I was overreacting. Those things were very bad, but the searing pain of knowing that, as much as it broke my heart, that I was right in knowing that there was nothing I could do to save the marriage was even worse.
There's no one post that can really cover everything that goes along with a divorce, so maybe the better option is to focus on where I am right now, at this moment. Anyone who knows me knows that I love music, that it speaks to me at a depth I am hard pressed to explain to anyone, and that when song lyrics express what I'm feeling, I'll usually just quote the lyrics because there's no need to try to reinvent the wheel when somebody else has already said it perfectly. Today's lyrical wisdom comes from the song, "A Little Bit Stronger", by Sara Evans. As a younger man, I never used to like country music even a little bit, but as I've gotten older and lived in Nashville for a while, I've come to discover that one of the things that country music does very well is setting heartbreak and all that comes along with it to music. As the title suggests, this song is about someone trying to live, survive, and put the pieces back together after the end of a relationship. I won't quote all the lyrics verbatim, but the song starts off describing the process of just getting up and forcing you to do all the things that need to be done (getting up, getting ready, going to work) to make a life for yourself, especially in the aftermath of a painful break-up. The lyrics that describe what I'm feeling now begin:
"It doesn't happen overnight.
But you turn around and a month's gone by,
And you realize you haven't cried.
I'm not giving you an hour or a second or another minute longer.
I'm busy getting stronger.
(Chorus)
And I'm done hoping we could work it out.
I'm done with how it feels, spinning my wheels,
Letting you drag my heart around.
And I'm done thinking you could ever change.
I know my heart will never be the same.
But I'm telling myself I'll be OK,
Even on my weakest day,
I get a little bit stronger."
There's so much good stuff in there it's really hard to pick just one thing. One of the main things that made my marriage so hard to walk away from is that neither of us are bad people, and I think we genuinely did care about each other. Unfortunately, it occurred to me one day that we'd reached an unbreakable stalemate in our marriage. There were things that both of us wanted, desired, and needed that, for any number of reasons, the other person could not or would not provide. Even though my now ex-wife despises this word, some of those things were deal breakers...it's just that I'm the only one of us who would call those things what they were and do anything about it. The overarching theme of those lyrics and the song itself is to just keep pressing forward, even when it hurts, so that time and space away from the relationship can allow you to heal. I thought of this song because it has been one month today since the divorce, and I really do believe that, as more time passes and as I spend less of that time thinking to much about the past and things that I can't change, I will get a little bit stronger because it's already happening.
Although I don't see it happening anytime soon (and it shouldn't because it's not fair to get into a new relationship until I'm sufficiently healed from the divorce), a big part of the motivation to get a little bit stronger every day is to get to a place where I am healed and whole enough to love again. As counterintuitive as it may sound, with everything I've learned from my marriage and divorce, I believe that I'm even better suited now at 35 to choose a better marriage partner and have a better marital relationship than I was at 27. I've always thought of myself as a hopeful romantic, and I still see myself that way. I believe as deeply as I believe anything that one of the main reasons God put me on this planet is to have an outstanding, awe-inspiring marriage, one that reflects how He loves the church and serves as a shining example that marriage is the closest thing to in-person, intimate relationship with God that humans will ever experience this side of heaven. I want and intend to be the best husband and father I can possibly be one day, but if I don't put in the hard but necessary work to get healed right now (every minute of every hour of every day), that will never happen. With a lot of faith, hard work, and God's help, I am becoming the husband, father, man of God, and ambassador for His kingdom that I am called to be, and I am excited beyond measure to see what God has for me in all of these realms. I will end this post with my fervent, ongoing prayer for my life:
"Lord, Your will and Your plan be done in my life and not mine...may Your hand and Your guidance be upon me...and give me Your spirit of peace and calm to accept the things You have for me...Amen."
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Friday, October 31, 2014
Parallels, Experience, and Knowledge
One of the primary benefits of getting older is living long enough to see parallels in life. It's a potentially sanity saving thing to have enough life experience to be able to learn from history, and in so doing, to be able to both avoid repeating similar mistakes in the future. More than that, having lived through enormously difficult circumstances before can either be crippling (if the focus is only on the current crisis and the long journey of survival and recovery ahead) or enlightening (by providing comfort in the firsthand knowledge, not mere speculative optimism, that you have gone through your own personal hell and survived). My divorce became final two days ago, and based in part on the events recounted in this post, I know beyond a shadow of any doubt that I will survive, thrive, and be a better man, husband, and father in the future.
Before I get to the story that is the subject of this post, I would be remiss if I didn't make clear that the biggest reason that I have hope for the future is my faith in God. There simply are no words to adequately thank Him for His mercy, grace, and love. I will be the first to admit that I have fallen short of His glory in my marriage and in my life as a whole on more occasions than I care to remember. I am both blessed and profoundly grateful that His love and salvation do not require perfection on my part. Father, I can't and won't promise that I will never fall short of your standard again. However, what I can and will do is to trust you, to ask forgiveness when I fail, and to bring it all (hopes, dreams, fears, failures, and beyond) to you. I once heard it said that God can take anything except our silence, I believe that's true. Therefore, it is incumbent upon me to do a better job to communicate with and to spend time with Him, and I definitely intend to do just that.
OK, so on with the story. It is the late summer of 1997, I am 17 years old (turning 18 in August), and I have just graduated high school that May. I have a full academic scholarship to attend college at Middle Tennessee State University ("MTSU"), which is about 45 minutes away from the small town in which I attended high school. At this point, I've been dating a girl I will call "AP" since about midway through my junior year, and I have a decision to make. It's a decision that many young people have had to navigate at this point in their lives...whether to stay with their high school sweetheart or whether to split up with them and go to college single.
On the "stay together" side of the ledger, there were quite a few reasons to try to make it work. Since AP would still be in the same town where we met, 45 minutes isn't that far a distance. She was a good person, a great friend, and a positive influence on me in many ways. Moreover, young love though it was, AP loved me unconditionally, and I know she would have been faithful and would have done everything in her power to make our relationship work. Perhaps the most difficult part of this list to deal with was my desire not to hurt her because she had been so good to me during our time together.
There were also some valid arguments on the "split up" list of reasons. First and foremost, my father was in no financial position to help me stay in college if I somehow lost my scholarship. Accordingly, I knew that maintaining my scholarship had to be my first priority, and that it would require a virtually single-minded focus (especially early on until I got the hang of college life), thereby leaving little time to dedicate to a long-distance relationship. In addition to academics, I had also been an All-Region football player in high school. Although my football talent did not earn me an athletic scholarship, I still wanted to know just how good a player I was and how I measured up against Division I athletes. As such, I planned to try out for the college football team as a walk-on, which would leave even less time for my relationship with AP. Further, I'd be dishonest if I didn't admit that it was thrilling almost to the point of intoxication knowing that I would soon be meeting and exposed to an entirely new universe of smart, interesting people (yes, including women), some of whom might becomes professional colleagues, friends, or even love interests. Finally, even though MTSU was only 45 minutes from my hometown, given how naive and inexperienced I was with so many things, that college campus might as well have been on Mars. I expected that my college life in a suburb of a mid-major metropolitan city (Nashville) would be quite a change and a culture shock from my small hometown, and while it was not on the level of change I would have experienced in New York or Los Angeles, I wasn't disappointed. It was, at once, scarily unknown and incredibly exciting.
Based on the tenor of this post, it's probably not too hard to discern that I chose to break up with AP shortly before I left for college, but it wasn't an easy decision at all. In fact, it was one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do (especially at that juncture in my young life), and I absolutely dreaded communicating my decision to AP. There were many nights before I left for college that I laid awake, staring at the ceiling and praying earnestly for guidance as to what I should do. Once I'd made my decision, I had more than a few moments of doubt, stress, and heartache as to whether I was doing the right thing. Hell, even after I'd informed AP of my choice and had already moved to MTSU to start college life, I had more than a few doubts as to whether I'd made the right call or not, and I did experience more than a little grief and regret at the pain my decision had caused.
The ultimate deciding factor led me to choose the "split up" door was where I saw my life going and where I hoped it would go. Having lived in my small hometown longer than anywhere else I'd grown up, I knew for a fact that opportunities for the kind of life, opportunities, and successes I hoped to have were, to be charitable, extremely limited. More candidly though, I'd seen more than a few smart, talented people get sucked down and irrevocably tied to that suffocating little town to the detriment of their future, and I knew as certainly as I knew anything that I didn't want that future for myself. Unfortunately, I knew that every moment I spent with AP trying to maintain a relationship would be time I spent looking back toward a life, place, and future that I didn't want and time that I couldn't spend being present, living in the moment during my college life, and focusing on the future I did want to build. As it turns out, I made the right decision to split up with AP, and that decision is still paying dividends even to this day.
Looking back on my break up with AP so many years ago reveals many similarities to my recent divorce. I've heard it said many times that the seven year mark is the most common fish or cut bait time for married couples. In my case, that turned out to be pretty accurate. My now ex-wife and I were married for just over 6 years, and if our dating and engagement period is included, our total time together was about 7 and a half years. As with my high school relationship with AP, after the amount of time my wife and I were together, I knew pretty well what I had and what I didn't have in my marriage. I knew what my marriage was, what it was not, and in too many sad ways, what it would never be. At that point, my only real decision was whether to consciously choose to stay in the marriage, knowing that the future would contain copious amounts of suffocation, unhappiness, and a profound lack of fulfillment. No matter how painful it was to end my marriage (and it was more painful than I'd ever imagined), I knew that would be a pittance compared to the pain and unhappiness of wasting years that could never be better spent or lived again in a dysfunctional, destructive marriage that was inevitably doomed to failure. Also, the fear, doubt, uncertainty, and sleepless nights that came with the decision to get a divorce were many orders of magnitude more scary and stressful than the high school break up decision because the stakes were so much higher.
Comparing an average high school relationship to a marriage is like comparing a grass hut with a dirt floor to the Empire State Building. Spouses have their lives, careers, financial futures, and more wrapped up in one another, whereas high school dating partners usually don't. Additionally, there's the old "devil you know vs. the devil you don't" issue. My now ex-wife and I had our share of problems, but we were and are both fundamentally good people, and there were more than a few good things about our relationship. For example, we were good friends and had a lot of common interests (and maybe we should've always been just friends), our perspectives on the outside world (politics, current events, etc.) were pretty similar, and we ran a pretty solid household together for better than half a decade. I mention these things because there's no guarantee I'll find those things and more in another woman, or even that I'll ever find someone I love enough to get married again. However, because I made the hard choice to end my high school relationship, I met and had relationships with several high-quality women and solid people (CL, TWC, and yes, even my now ex-wife) who taught me a lot about life, about myself, and who made me a better man.
I'm still very early in my post-divorce journey. It wasn't easy to make and to follow through with the decision to end my marriage, but I believe in my heart that it was the right call. I have no idea exactly what my future holds, and I do know there will be more than a few hard times, but I've lived long enough to know, trust, and believe that there are so many more incredible times to come and so many amazing people to meet that I can't conceive of right now...and that, dear reader, is more than enough to help make life worth living. :)
Before I get to the story that is the subject of this post, I would be remiss if I didn't make clear that the biggest reason that I have hope for the future is my faith in God. There simply are no words to adequately thank Him for His mercy, grace, and love. I will be the first to admit that I have fallen short of His glory in my marriage and in my life as a whole on more occasions than I care to remember. I am both blessed and profoundly grateful that His love and salvation do not require perfection on my part. Father, I can't and won't promise that I will never fall short of your standard again. However, what I can and will do is to trust you, to ask forgiveness when I fail, and to bring it all (hopes, dreams, fears, failures, and beyond) to you. I once heard it said that God can take anything except our silence, I believe that's true. Therefore, it is incumbent upon me to do a better job to communicate with and to spend time with Him, and I definitely intend to do just that.
OK, so on with the story. It is the late summer of 1997, I am 17 years old (turning 18 in August), and I have just graduated high school that May. I have a full academic scholarship to attend college at Middle Tennessee State University ("MTSU"), which is about 45 minutes away from the small town in which I attended high school. At this point, I've been dating a girl I will call "AP" since about midway through my junior year, and I have a decision to make. It's a decision that many young people have had to navigate at this point in their lives...whether to stay with their high school sweetheart or whether to split up with them and go to college single.
On the "stay together" side of the ledger, there were quite a few reasons to try to make it work. Since AP would still be in the same town where we met, 45 minutes isn't that far a distance. She was a good person, a great friend, and a positive influence on me in many ways. Moreover, young love though it was, AP loved me unconditionally, and I know she would have been faithful and would have done everything in her power to make our relationship work. Perhaps the most difficult part of this list to deal with was my desire not to hurt her because she had been so good to me during our time together.
There were also some valid arguments on the "split up" list of reasons. First and foremost, my father was in no financial position to help me stay in college if I somehow lost my scholarship. Accordingly, I knew that maintaining my scholarship had to be my first priority, and that it would require a virtually single-minded focus (especially early on until I got the hang of college life), thereby leaving little time to dedicate to a long-distance relationship. In addition to academics, I had also been an All-Region football player in high school. Although my football talent did not earn me an athletic scholarship, I still wanted to know just how good a player I was and how I measured up against Division I athletes. As such, I planned to try out for the college football team as a walk-on, which would leave even less time for my relationship with AP. Further, I'd be dishonest if I didn't admit that it was thrilling almost to the point of intoxication knowing that I would soon be meeting and exposed to an entirely new universe of smart, interesting people (yes, including women), some of whom might becomes professional colleagues, friends, or even love interests. Finally, even though MTSU was only 45 minutes from my hometown, given how naive and inexperienced I was with so many things, that college campus might as well have been on Mars. I expected that my college life in a suburb of a mid-major metropolitan city (Nashville) would be quite a change and a culture shock from my small hometown, and while it was not on the level of change I would have experienced in New York or Los Angeles, I wasn't disappointed. It was, at once, scarily unknown and incredibly exciting.
Based on the tenor of this post, it's probably not too hard to discern that I chose to break up with AP shortly before I left for college, but it wasn't an easy decision at all. In fact, it was one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do (especially at that juncture in my young life), and I absolutely dreaded communicating my decision to AP. There were many nights before I left for college that I laid awake, staring at the ceiling and praying earnestly for guidance as to what I should do. Once I'd made my decision, I had more than a few moments of doubt, stress, and heartache as to whether I was doing the right thing. Hell, even after I'd informed AP of my choice and had already moved to MTSU to start college life, I had more than a few doubts as to whether I'd made the right call or not, and I did experience more than a little grief and regret at the pain my decision had caused.
The ultimate deciding factor led me to choose the "split up" door was where I saw my life going and where I hoped it would go. Having lived in my small hometown longer than anywhere else I'd grown up, I knew for a fact that opportunities for the kind of life, opportunities, and successes I hoped to have were, to be charitable, extremely limited. More candidly though, I'd seen more than a few smart, talented people get sucked down and irrevocably tied to that suffocating little town to the detriment of their future, and I knew as certainly as I knew anything that I didn't want that future for myself. Unfortunately, I knew that every moment I spent with AP trying to maintain a relationship would be time I spent looking back toward a life, place, and future that I didn't want and time that I couldn't spend being present, living in the moment during my college life, and focusing on the future I did want to build. As it turns out, I made the right decision to split up with AP, and that decision is still paying dividends even to this day.
Looking back on my break up with AP so many years ago reveals many similarities to my recent divorce. I've heard it said many times that the seven year mark is the most common fish or cut bait time for married couples. In my case, that turned out to be pretty accurate. My now ex-wife and I were married for just over 6 years, and if our dating and engagement period is included, our total time together was about 7 and a half years. As with my high school relationship with AP, after the amount of time my wife and I were together, I knew pretty well what I had and what I didn't have in my marriage. I knew what my marriage was, what it was not, and in too many sad ways, what it would never be. At that point, my only real decision was whether to consciously choose to stay in the marriage, knowing that the future would contain copious amounts of suffocation, unhappiness, and a profound lack of fulfillment. No matter how painful it was to end my marriage (and it was more painful than I'd ever imagined), I knew that would be a pittance compared to the pain and unhappiness of wasting years that could never be better spent or lived again in a dysfunctional, destructive marriage that was inevitably doomed to failure. Also, the fear, doubt, uncertainty, and sleepless nights that came with the decision to get a divorce were many orders of magnitude more scary and stressful than the high school break up decision because the stakes were so much higher.
Comparing an average high school relationship to a marriage is like comparing a grass hut with a dirt floor to the Empire State Building. Spouses have their lives, careers, financial futures, and more wrapped up in one another, whereas high school dating partners usually don't. Additionally, there's the old "devil you know vs. the devil you don't" issue. My now ex-wife and I had our share of problems, but we were and are both fundamentally good people, and there were more than a few good things about our relationship. For example, we were good friends and had a lot of common interests (and maybe we should've always been just friends), our perspectives on the outside world (politics, current events, etc.) were pretty similar, and we ran a pretty solid household together for better than half a decade. I mention these things because there's no guarantee I'll find those things and more in another woman, or even that I'll ever find someone I love enough to get married again. However, because I made the hard choice to end my high school relationship, I met and had relationships with several high-quality women and solid people (CL, TWC, and yes, even my now ex-wife) who taught me a lot about life, about myself, and who made me a better man.
I'm still very early in my post-divorce journey. It wasn't easy to make and to follow through with the decision to end my marriage, but I believe in my heart that it was the right call. I have no idea exactly what my future holds, and I do know there will be more than a few hard times, but I've lived long enough to know, trust, and believe that there are so many more incredible times to come and so many amazing people to meet that I can't conceive of right now...and that, dear reader, is more than enough to help make life worth living. :)
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
D-Day (It's Been Too Long...)
According to this blog, it's been 4 years and 6 days (counting today) since I've written anything. Like many other good things in my life which have fallen by the wayside during that time, more than 4 years between writing and posting is just too long. I'm certainly a little biased, but I'm not a bad writer, and re-reading some of my older posts makes clear to me that at least some of them served a therapeutic and healing purpose. I have no idea how often I'll write going forward, but I will probably do a little writing from time to time in the future, even if only to help get things straight in my head.
I am writing this post just before bedtime on Wednesday, October 29, 2014. Today was a day that will live in infamy...the day that no married person or couple should ever have to experience. At just after 10:30 A.M. this morning, the Honorable Philip Smith in the Fourth Circuit Court for Davidson County, Tennessee, granted me a divorce from Althea Penix, my wife of 6 years and 25 days, on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. Typing that sentence is absolutely heartbreaking beyond anything I can put into words. Divorce, while sometimes necessary, is an awful, excruciating process that I would not wish on my worst enemy.
I will likely have more to say on this topic in future scribblings, but for now, I'll just settle for trying to capture my feelings on such a life-changing day. Above all else, I wish more than anything Althea and I could have worked things out in a way where we both could have been happy and fulfilled in our marriage. For any number of reasons, that simply wasn't possible, and that's why today became necessary.
With that said, I am glad that the legal part of the divorce process is now over. Especially in the beginning, when it first became clear that our marriage was not going to survive, there were far too many angry and hurtful words spoken going both directions. While understandable given the circumstances, that didn't make the legal process any easier. As a fair-minded person, I genuinely try to give credit where it is due, and in this regard, Althea deserves some credit: notwithstanding the incredibly rocky and unfortunate beginning to the divorce process, she eventually did calm down enough to see that there is life after the legal process and the divorce, and that both of us would be better served (financially and otherwise) to come to a settlement agreement. She could have made the legal process much more painful and expensive, but she made a mature, logical decision not to do so, and it is to her everlasting credit that she made that choice.
In closing, I'll admit that I have been kind of all over the place emotionally today, and frankly, I expect that to continue for a while. The hopes and dreams that Althea and I started out to achieve as a married couple will never come to pass now, and that is unbelievably sad. Short of death itself, divorce is probably the second biggest loss and separation from love that we as humans can experience. Because divorce is a loss, it is only natural that the grieving process must occur in order to move on from that loss. The 5 most generally recognized stages of the grieving process are: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness/periodic depression, and acceptance. No one can say ahead of time when those stages will run their respective courses ahead of time. All I know is that I experienced some of all of these stages prior to and during the divorce process, and that I will certainly experience them again as the healing process unfolds.
Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life, and I look forward to seeing what it holds.
Marriage of Chris Whittaker and Althea Penix
October 4, 2008 through October 29, 2014 (R.I.P)
I am writing this post just before bedtime on Wednesday, October 29, 2014. Today was a day that will live in infamy...the day that no married person or couple should ever have to experience. At just after 10:30 A.M. this morning, the Honorable Philip Smith in the Fourth Circuit Court for Davidson County, Tennessee, granted me a divorce from Althea Penix, my wife of 6 years and 25 days, on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. Typing that sentence is absolutely heartbreaking beyond anything I can put into words. Divorce, while sometimes necessary, is an awful, excruciating process that I would not wish on my worst enemy.
I will likely have more to say on this topic in future scribblings, but for now, I'll just settle for trying to capture my feelings on such a life-changing day. Above all else, I wish more than anything Althea and I could have worked things out in a way where we both could have been happy and fulfilled in our marriage. For any number of reasons, that simply wasn't possible, and that's why today became necessary.
With that said, I am glad that the legal part of the divorce process is now over. Especially in the beginning, when it first became clear that our marriage was not going to survive, there were far too many angry and hurtful words spoken going both directions. While understandable given the circumstances, that didn't make the legal process any easier. As a fair-minded person, I genuinely try to give credit where it is due, and in this regard, Althea deserves some credit: notwithstanding the incredibly rocky and unfortunate beginning to the divorce process, she eventually did calm down enough to see that there is life after the legal process and the divorce, and that both of us would be better served (financially and otherwise) to come to a settlement agreement. She could have made the legal process much more painful and expensive, but she made a mature, logical decision not to do so, and it is to her everlasting credit that she made that choice.
In closing, I'll admit that I have been kind of all over the place emotionally today, and frankly, I expect that to continue for a while. The hopes and dreams that Althea and I started out to achieve as a married couple will never come to pass now, and that is unbelievably sad. Short of death itself, divorce is probably the second biggest loss and separation from love that we as humans can experience. Because divorce is a loss, it is only natural that the grieving process must occur in order to move on from that loss. The 5 most generally recognized stages of the grieving process are: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness/periodic depression, and acceptance. No one can say ahead of time when those stages will run their respective courses ahead of time. All I know is that I experienced some of all of these stages prior to and during the divorce process, and that I will certainly experience them again as the healing process unfolds.
Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life, and I look forward to seeing what it holds.
Marriage of Chris Whittaker and Althea Penix
October 4, 2008 through October 29, 2014 (R.I.P)
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Velasquez Whips Lesnar to Win UFC Heavyweight Belt
When the UFC first started as an organization, the heavyweight division was a joke. Other than former wrestling great Dan Severn, it was a collection of out of shape has beens and circus freaks like Tank Abbott. Even after the UFC blew up after the first Forrest Griffin/Stephan Bonnar fight, the heavyweight division was still terrible. Its main contenders were 6'7" Tim Sylvia (who won mostly because of his height), Randy Couture (who was really a light heavyweight), and Minotauro Nogueira (who had great jiu-jitsu but little else). Over the past few years, the UFC has truly added some top notch heavyweight talent. The big four in the heavyweight division are Brock Lesnar, Shane Carwin, Junior Dos Santos, and Cain Velasquez. Lesnar has proven to be among the biggest draws in company history, and all four of these guys are big, strong, and talented. At UFC 121, challenger Cain Velasquez took on champion Brock Lesnar for the UFC heavyweight belt in perhaps the biggest and best heavyweight fight in UFC history.
Coming into the fight, Lesnar had only lost once (via submission to Frank Mir) and Velasquez was undefeated. After losing to Mir, Lesnar knocked out Randy Couture to become champion, knocked out Frank Mir to avenge his only loss in the UFC, then defeated number one contender Shane Carwin via submission. Meanwhile, Velasquez had just been steamrolling anyone in his path, including a highlight reel knockout of Minotauro Nogueira, who almost never gets knocked out. Coming into the fight, the conventional wisdom was that Lesnar and Velasquez both possessed elite wrestling talent that would essentially be a wash, so whoever did better in the stand up game and/or submissions would probably win. Being the champion and outweighing Velasquez by about 20 pounds, Lesnar was slightly favored to retain his belt.
Having watched almost every UFC pay-per-view event over the last several years, I had watched almost every fight these two fighters had fought. Based on their performances in past fights, I thought Velasquez would probably win, but I didn't expect him to dominate Lesnar the way he did. In Lesnar three fights prior to Velasquez, he did get better as a fighter. Against Randy Couture, he was able to use his reach and strength to keep Couture off him and eventually knock him out. Against Frank Mir, Lesnar was able to take Mir down at will, avoid his submissions, and use his long arms to pound Mir out. Of most concern was his fight against Shane Carwin. For the entire first round, Carwin was able to take Lesnar down, and he just rained down punch after punch on Lesnar for the entire round. However, coming out of his corner to start the second round, it was obvious Carwin had nothing left in his gas tank, so Lesnar was able to take him down and submit him to retain his belt. The thing that stood out most about the Carwin/Lesnar fight was Brock's lack of stand up game and his inability to take a punch. Carwin is a hard puncher, and he landed some solid shots on Lesnar, but it shouldn't have caused Lesnar to flop and flail around the cage the way it did. It truly looked like Lesnar had never practice how to take a punch in camp, and that would prove to be a disaster against a cardio and punching machine like Cain Velasquez.
Right after the bell rang to start the fight, Lesnar charged out of the corner and threw a wild knee that missed badly. After circling each other for a short time, Lesnar was able to land a take down against Velasquez. Unfortunately for Lesnar, Velasquez was able to pop right back up, and that was the last good thing that happened for Lesnar in the fight. Once back on his feet, Velasquez rocked Lesnar with several hard shots to the head and took him down. Unlike Shane Carwin, Velasquez had too much cardio endurance to get tired and allow Lesnar back into the fight. In fact, when the referee finally waved off the fight in the final minute of Round 1, Velasquez didn't even look like he was breathing heavily. For perhaps the first time in his entire career at any level, Brock Lesnar was manhandled and dominated from he opening bell until the fight was mercifully stopped. There are now enough talented fighters in the UFC heavyweight division to give Cain Velasquez some competition, but he is an absolute beast and he is here to stay. Meanwhile, Brock Lesnar has a ton of work to do if he intends to get back into the mix to regain the heavyweight title. Specifically, he must improve his boxing, he must learn how to take a punch and not fall down, and he has to learn to get up off his back as quickly as possible once he hits the ground. Still, this was a great fight, and I am sure it made the UFC a ton of money.
Coming into the fight, Lesnar had only lost once (via submission to Frank Mir) and Velasquez was undefeated. After losing to Mir, Lesnar knocked out Randy Couture to become champion, knocked out Frank Mir to avenge his only loss in the UFC, then defeated number one contender Shane Carwin via submission. Meanwhile, Velasquez had just been steamrolling anyone in his path, including a highlight reel knockout of Minotauro Nogueira, who almost never gets knocked out. Coming into the fight, the conventional wisdom was that Lesnar and Velasquez both possessed elite wrestling talent that would essentially be a wash, so whoever did better in the stand up game and/or submissions would probably win. Being the champion and outweighing Velasquez by about 20 pounds, Lesnar was slightly favored to retain his belt.
Having watched almost every UFC pay-per-view event over the last several years, I had watched almost every fight these two fighters had fought. Based on their performances in past fights, I thought Velasquez would probably win, but I didn't expect him to dominate Lesnar the way he did. In Lesnar three fights prior to Velasquez, he did get better as a fighter. Against Randy Couture, he was able to use his reach and strength to keep Couture off him and eventually knock him out. Against Frank Mir, Lesnar was able to take Mir down at will, avoid his submissions, and use his long arms to pound Mir out. Of most concern was his fight against Shane Carwin. For the entire first round, Carwin was able to take Lesnar down, and he just rained down punch after punch on Lesnar for the entire round. However, coming out of his corner to start the second round, it was obvious Carwin had nothing left in his gas tank, so Lesnar was able to take him down and submit him to retain his belt. The thing that stood out most about the Carwin/Lesnar fight was Brock's lack of stand up game and his inability to take a punch. Carwin is a hard puncher, and he landed some solid shots on Lesnar, but it shouldn't have caused Lesnar to flop and flail around the cage the way it did. It truly looked like Lesnar had never practice how to take a punch in camp, and that would prove to be a disaster against a cardio and punching machine like Cain Velasquez.
Right after the bell rang to start the fight, Lesnar charged out of the corner and threw a wild knee that missed badly. After circling each other for a short time, Lesnar was able to land a take down against Velasquez. Unfortunately for Lesnar, Velasquez was able to pop right back up, and that was the last good thing that happened for Lesnar in the fight. Once back on his feet, Velasquez rocked Lesnar with several hard shots to the head and took him down. Unlike Shane Carwin, Velasquez had too much cardio endurance to get tired and allow Lesnar back into the fight. In fact, when the referee finally waved off the fight in the final minute of Round 1, Velasquez didn't even look like he was breathing heavily. For perhaps the first time in his entire career at any level, Brock Lesnar was manhandled and dominated from he opening bell until the fight was mercifully stopped. There are now enough talented fighters in the UFC heavyweight division to give Cain Velasquez some competition, but he is an absolute beast and he is here to stay. Meanwhile, Brock Lesnar has a ton of work to do if he intends to get back into the mix to regain the heavyweight title. Specifically, he must improve his boxing, he must learn how to take a punch and not fall down, and he has to learn to get up off his back as quickly as possible once he hits the ground. Still, this was a great fight, and I am sure it made the UFC a ton of money.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Titans Take Out Raiders in 2010 Season Opener
Since Althea and Grace had never been to a NFL football game before, I decided to get the 3 of us tickets to the Titans' 2010 season opener at home against the Oakland Raiders. The game was a lot of fun, but it was incredibly hot for mid-September, and that was made worse by the fact that our seats were in the upper level. Sometimes, it seemed like we were 10 feet away from the sun, and that was miserable. We were all covered in sweat by the end of the game, and it's possible I might have a sunburn. Note to self: when attending Titans' games in the future, go later in the season.
Because the Titans started 0-6 in 2009, it was important for them to get a win as soon as possible in 2010, and they did so by defeating the Raiders 38-13. Chris Johnson continued running like the elite back he is, racking up 142 yards and a late touchdown to ice the game. The Titans' defense made some good plays and harassed new Raiders' QB Jason Campbell into multiple mistakes. The game wasn't as much of a blowout as the score suggests, as the Titans didn't really put the game out of reach until Chris Johnson's 4th quarter touchdown run. Still, there were some things that could cause an astute fan concern as the season goes forward. First and foremost, Vince Young still looks like a mediocre, inconsistent quarterback. Even though he has improved somewhat, he still leaves too many plays on the field. Also, the defense made too many stupid penalties an didn't take advantage of all the mistakes Oakland made. The Titans seem to have some potential this year, but they will have to play better against better teams if they expect to make the playoffs.
Because the Titans started 0-6 in 2009, it was important for them to get a win as soon as possible in 2010, and they did so by defeating the Raiders 38-13. Chris Johnson continued running like the elite back he is, racking up 142 yards and a late touchdown to ice the game. The Titans' defense made some good plays and harassed new Raiders' QB Jason Campbell into multiple mistakes. The game wasn't as much of a blowout as the score suggests, as the Titans didn't really put the game out of reach until Chris Johnson's 4th quarter touchdown run. Still, there were some things that could cause an astute fan concern as the season goes forward. First and foremost, Vince Young still looks like a mediocre, inconsistent quarterback. Even though he has improved somewhat, he still leaves too many plays on the field. Also, the defense made too many stupid penalties an didn't take advantage of all the mistakes Oakland made. The Titans seem to have some potential this year, but they will have to play better against better teams if they expect to make the playoffs.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
8/28 Restoring Honor Rally
Fox News TV host and talk radio show host Glenn Beck was the primary organizer of a rally in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 2010 called "Restoring Honor". At first, I wasn't really inclined to go because I thought it would be just another political rally, which did not interest me in the least. As the event got closer, I listened to Glenn talk about the rally on his radio program. The more I heard, the more interested I became.
Perhaps the biggest draw for me was Beck's repeated insistence that this would not be a political rally. As proof of that, he begged rally attendees to leave their political signs at home, and asked that they only bring themselves, their friends, and their families. Second, Beck said the purpose of the rally was twofold: to call Americans to restore honor to their lives and to honor the troops. Beck's definition of restoring honor included asking attendees to get all the lies out of their lives, to decide what they believe in and where their faith lies, and to live accordingly. He also admonished attendees to prioritize their lives around things that really matter, especially family as a whole and teaching values to their children. In terms of honoring the troops, the rally served as a fundraiser for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, a charity that raises money to provide college scholarships for the children of Special Ops soldiers killed in action.
Based on the stated purposes of the rally, my own sense that this was an event that would be attended by huge numbers of Americans, and my desire for a sort of restoration of faith and hope for my mind and soul that America will make it and is not doomed, I decided to attend the rally. I went to Beck's website and located a group leaving from Nashville to go to the rally after work on the Friday night before the rally the next Saturday. Most of the major hotels were booked solid, and the lowest priced hotel I found was more than $ 300 for a single night, and that was before spending a penny to get to and from D.C. The group on the website, on the other hand, planned to drive overnight (meaning that no hotel room was needed), attend the rally the next day, and drive back to Nashville after the rally (with a plan to get back in town by 3:00 A.M. or so Sunday morning). I initially thought the group would be making the trip in a big bus or at least in a mid-sized tour bus, but due to logistical issues, it turned out to be a group of 7 of us going to D.C. and back in a Dodge Grand Caravan. The tour organizer was a nice husband and wife team who owned a local taxi business, and they did all the driving, so it could have been worse.
We actually left Knoxville a few minutes before 5:30 on Friday night, and we made fairly good time the whole trip up. We stopped in Greeneville, TN and ate a late dinner at a truck stop, which wasn't the best idea and gave me stomach problems later, but hey, that's travel food. We hoped to get into D.C. before 6:00 A.M. to beat incoming traffic and to get a good place in line for the D.C. Metro Rail, which would take us to less than a mile from the rally site (the steps of the Lincoln Memorial), where we would walk the rest of the way. We got into D.C. just after 4:30 A.M. and ate an early breakfast at McDonald's, then made our way to the Metro Rail station. We decided to park at the station on the side of D.C. closest to Virginia and a little farther away from the rally site so we wouldn't have to fight D.C. traffic through the city to get going back home. That turned out to be a smart decision. We slept in the van until about 6:15 A.M., then we got in line for the Metro Rail. It was a good thing we got a good spot in line, and that the station we chose was the first on the route (which contained approximately a dozen stops total) to the rally site because the metro rail ride alone took over an hour from our stop to the rally site. Beyond that, looking at the inbound traffic, all the interstates and highways were essentially a parking lot, and I had no idea whether those folks stuck in traffic would make it to the rally on time (it was from 10:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M.). We thought we were packed in pretty tight at the stop where we boarded, but as we made stop after stop on the way to the rally site, people kept packing in more and more tightly (just like sardines) until no one could move and no more people could fit on the train. I'm fairly certain that was a safety hazard that would have killed us all in the event of a fire or crash, but thankfully, that didn't happen.
We got off the train at about 8:30, and it took about 30 minutes to walk to the rally site. D.C. is a beautiful city if you look at the scenery and don't think about the fact that the folks who work there (allegedly on our behalf) are spending us into bankruptcy. The closer we got to the rally site, the more dense the crowd became. I took some pictures of the massive Washington Monument on my phone. It really is awe-inspiring when you consider that it was built 200 years ago before almost all of modern construction technology as we know it. Next up was the World War II Memorial, which has each state in the union represented with a state-specific stone to honor the contributions of the soldiers from that state to the war effort. After that memorial came the Reflecting Pool, which led up to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The water of the reflecting pool was dirty, but it was still a beautiful sight to behold. The stage for the rally was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, but we couldn't get close enough to see it with the naked eye because of the density of the crowd. Fortunately, there were Jumbo-trons every so often starting at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial back past the end of the Washington Monument. The sound system turned out to project fairly well, but it was somewhat hard to make out what the speakers said when they spoke more loudly.
After some tough navigation of the crowd, we were able to find a spot for the 7 of us about halfway between the steps of the two memorials and right next to the Reflecting Pool. Earlier in the morning, the sun was bright, but it was breezy and comfortable. However, much like the subway, the rally itself was packed in tight with attendees, which multiplied body heat exponentially. The rally began with Glenn Beck speaking. He thanked the crowd for coming and told us briefly about how the rally came together. He said the timing of the rally (on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech) was originally coincidence, but he came to believe it was divine providence because the substance of this rally had so much in common with Dr. King's legacy of peace, faith, and non-violence. He said he would be presenting awards to several people who stood out for their charity and service to others (among other things).
The next part of the program was conducted by Sarah Palin. Although the media used her presence to try to claim this was a political event, Palin (despite her annoying accent) was just the opposite of political on this day. She first spoke about the experience of being the mother of a soldier, then she introduced several soldiers to the crowd. She told the heroic story of each soldier, including Retired Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell of Operation Redwing fame, and the crowd gave each soldier a rousing round of applause. Next, the mother of a fallen Special Operations soldier came out and spoke to the crowd about the love and support she received from the Special Operations Warrior Foundation after the death of her son. Once she told her story, Glenn Beck joined her on the stage to plead for donations to the SOWF. Beck asked everyone there to get out their cell phones and to text a $ 10 donation to the SOWF. It seemed like 9 of every 10 people at the rally did just that. Later that weekend, I learned that the rally raised over $ 5.5 million dollars for the SOWF. At $ 10 per donation, that puts the number of attendees at least in the hundreds of thousands.
The next and final part of the program was the presentation of awards to the honorees of the rally. The first award went to a black pastor with several decades' experience in the ministry. He spoke of a legacy of peace and service, and thanked Glenn Beck for his faith, for organizing the rally, and for the award. The next award went to St. Louis Cardinals' (MLB) slugger Albert Pujols. The award had nothing to do with Pujols' baseball exploits and everything to do with his faithfulness and love for his family, and for his tireless community service to the St. Louis community. Pujols spoke of his humble beginnings in the Dominican Republic, his great appreciation for all the success God gave him, and the importance of using his blessings to bless others. The last speaker I saw, and in my mind, the highlight of the rally, was Dr. Aveda Kin niece of Dr. Martin Luther King. She was under tremendous pressure from the professional race-baiters (think New Black Panther Party, NAACP, etc.) not to attend the rally, but she did anyway. She too thanked Glenn for organizing the rally, and said that her uncle would have been proud of the rally because it stood for people coming together based on content of character rather than skin color. After she was done speaking, the tour organizer's wife was getting sunburned and she was sweating profusely. She decided to go back to the van with half an hour to go in the rally, and because I was suffering pretty badly from the heat myself, I decided to go with them. We made good time getting back to the van (arriving about 2:30 P.M.), and we took a nap while we waited for the rest of the group to get back to the van (they made it back about 4:00 P.M.). The entire group left D.C. about 5:00 P.M., ate dinner at a Chili's in Virginia about 8:00 P.M., and got back to Nashville about 3:30 A.M.
Here is what I took away from the rally and the trip: 1.) Driving 16 hours one way by car (32 total hours of driving in 48 hours) sucks. That's a game for someone much younger (late teens or early 20s) because I haven't been that sore in quite a while.; 2.) I will definitely be bringing sunblock and an umbrella (at a minimum) to any future rallies I attend. I also might be willing to sit a little further back if I can get some shade from the sun.; 3.) This rally stood in sharp contrast to the pathetic Al Sharpton event just down the street. The racist reverend's rally might have had a few hundred attendees at best, and I am fairly certain the idiots who took the stage after the Glenn Beck rally was over wearing Tea Party shirts and trying to insult Democrats to get on camera and make the Tea Party look bad probably came from his event.; 4.) The crowd estimate for the Beck rally from CBS was 87,000. That's absolutely laughable. The area from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial past the Reflecting Pool back to the Washington Monument holds 200,000 people, and it was packed full. Each of the side areas on either side of the Reflecting Pool holds between 100,000 and 150,000 each, and both of those areas were packed full. When you add in the various smatterings of people back past the Washington Monument, I think Glenn's estimate of between 500,000 and 650,000 attendees is much closer to the truth. His claim is bolstered by my math above regarding the donations to the SOWF. If 9 of 10 attendees each gave $ 10, then approximately 550,000 people attended this rally.; 5.) This was the most well-behaved, civl crowd of this size I have ever seen. Looking beyond all the families with small children at the rally, there was not a single arrest of anyone attending this rally, and the grounds of the rally site were just as clean (or cleaner) than when we got there. All the trash was in designated containers or trash areas, while the grounds themselves were immaculate. Look at any leftist/progressive rally a fraction of that size, and similar claims can not be made.; 6.) I got what I came for at this rally. Before I attended the rally, I felt an ongoing sense of despair at the direction of the country, and even worse yet, I felt alone. That is not the case any longer. Now I know that there are huge numbers of other like-minded people out there who want nothing more than to live and raise their families in peace and freedom without being terrorized and having their wealth and freedom stolen by their own government. It gives me hope to press forward and keep fighting for the America I have come to know and love, and faith that God has truly blessed America and that we hold a special place in his heart. For those reasons, I consider it a blessing to have been able to attend this rally, and I am glad I went.
In closing, I should also say a special thank you to my wife, who agreed to hold down the fort at home and gave me her blessing to go the rally even though my plan to attend materialized on short notice. I don't ask for many things, so when I say that something is important to me, my wife is pretty good about trying to make it happen for me. That's not something every married man has at home, but I do, and I am thankful for it.
Perhaps the biggest draw for me was Beck's repeated insistence that this would not be a political rally. As proof of that, he begged rally attendees to leave their political signs at home, and asked that they only bring themselves, their friends, and their families. Second, Beck said the purpose of the rally was twofold: to call Americans to restore honor to their lives and to honor the troops. Beck's definition of restoring honor included asking attendees to get all the lies out of their lives, to decide what they believe in and where their faith lies, and to live accordingly. He also admonished attendees to prioritize their lives around things that really matter, especially family as a whole and teaching values to their children. In terms of honoring the troops, the rally served as a fundraiser for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, a charity that raises money to provide college scholarships for the children of Special Ops soldiers killed in action.
Based on the stated purposes of the rally, my own sense that this was an event that would be attended by huge numbers of Americans, and my desire for a sort of restoration of faith and hope for my mind and soul that America will make it and is not doomed, I decided to attend the rally. I went to Beck's website and located a group leaving from Nashville to go to the rally after work on the Friday night before the rally the next Saturday. Most of the major hotels were booked solid, and the lowest priced hotel I found was more than $ 300 for a single night, and that was before spending a penny to get to and from D.C. The group on the website, on the other hand, planned to drive overnight (meaning that no hotel room was needed), attend the rally the next day, and drive back to Nashville after the rally (with a plan to get back in town by 3:00 A.M. or so Sunday morning). I initially thought the group would be making the trip in a big bus or at least in a mid-sized tour bus, but due to logistical issues, it turned out to be a group of 7 of us going to D.C. and back in a Dodge Grand Caravan. The tour organizer was a nice husband and wife team who owned a local taxi business, and they did all the driving, so it could have been worse.
We actually left Knoxville a few minutes before 5:30 on Friday night, and we made fairly good time the whole trip up. We stopped in Greeneville, TN and ate a late dinner at a truck stop, which wasn't the best idea and gave me stomach problems later, but hey, that's travel food. We hoped to get into D.C. before 6:00 A.M. to beat incoming traffic and to get a good place in line for the D.C. Metro Rail, which would take us to less than a mile from the rally site (the steps of the Lincoln Memorial), where we would walk the rest of the way. We got into D.C. just after 4:30 A.M. and ate an early breakfast at McDonald's, then made our way to the Metro Rail station. We decided to park at the station on the side of D.C. closest to Virginia and a little farther away from the rally site so we wouldn't have to fight D.C. traffic through the city to get going back home. That turned out to be a smart decision. We slept in the van until about 6:15 A.M., then we got in line for the Metro Rail. It was a good thing we got a good spot in line, and that the station we chose was the first on the route (which contained approximately a dozen stops total) to the rally site because the metro rail ride alone took over an hour from our stop to the rally site. Beyond that, looking at the inbound traffic, all the interstates and highways were essentially a parking lot, and I had no idea whether those folks stuck in traffic would make it to the rally on time (it was from 10:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M.). We thought we were packed in pretty tight at the stop where we boarded, but as we made stop after stop on the way to the rally site, people kept packing in more and more tightly (just like sardines) until no one could move and no more people could fit on the train. I'm fairly certain that was a safety hazard that would have killed us all in the event of a fire or crash, but thankfully, that didn't happen.
We got off the train at about 8:30, and it took about 30 minutes to walk to the rally site. D.C. is a beautiful city if you look at the scenery and don't think about the fact that the folks who work there (allegedly on our behalf) are spending us into bankruptcy. The closer we got to the rally site, the more dense the crowd became. I took some pictures of the massive Washington Monument on my phone. It really is awe-inspiring when you consider that it was built 200 years ago before almost all of modern construction technology as we know it. Next up was the World War II Memorial, which has each state in the union represented with a state-specific stone to honor the contributions of the soldiers from that state to the war effort. After that memorial came the Reflecting Pool, which led up to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The water of the reflecting pool was dirty, but it was still a beautiful sight to behold. The stage for the rally was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, but we couldn't get close enough to see it with the naked eye because of the density of the crowd. Fortunately, there were Jumbo-trons every so often starting at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial back past the end of the Washington Monument. The sound system turned out to project fairly well, but it was somewhat hard to make out what the speakers said when they spoke more loudly.
After some tough navigation of the crowd, we were able to find a spot for the 7 of us about halfway between the steps of the two memorials and right next to the Reflecting Pool. Earlier in the morning, the sun was bright, but it was breezy and comfortable. However, much like the subway, the rally itself was packed in tight with attendees, which multiplied body heat exponentially. The rally began with Glenn Beck speaking. He thanked the crowd for coming and told us briefly about how the rally came together. He said the timing of the rally (on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech) was originally coincidence, but he came to believe it was divine providence because the substance of this rally had so much in common with Dr. King's legacy of peace, faith, and non-violence. He said he would be presenting awards to several people who stood out for their charity and service to others (among other things).
The next part of the program was conducted by Sarah Palin. Although the media used her presence to try to claim this was a political event, Palin (despite her annoying accent) was just the opposite of political on this day. She first spoke about the experience of being the mother of a soldier, then she introduced several soldiers to the crowd. She told the heroic story of each soldier, including Retired Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell of Operation Redwing fame, and the crowd gave each soldier a rousing round of applause. Next, the mother of a fallen Special Operations soldier came out and spoke to the crowd about the love and support she received from the Special Operations Warrior Foundation after the death of her son. Once she told her story, Glenn Beck joined her on the stage to plead for donations to the SOWF. Beck asked everyone there to get out their cell phones and to text a $ 10 donation to the SOWF. It seemed like 9 of every 10 people at the rally did just that. Later that weekend, I learned that the rally raised over $ 5.5 million dollars for the SOWF. At $ 10 per donation, that puts the number of attendees at least in the hundreds of thousands.
The next and final part of the program was the presentation of awards to the honorees of the rally. The first award went to a black pastor with several decades' experience in the ministry. He spoke of a legacy of peace and service, and thanked Glenn Beck for his faith, for organizing the rally, and for the award. The next award went to St. Louis Cardinals' (MLB) slugger Albert Pujols. The award had nothing to do with Pujols' baseball exploits and everything to do with his faithfulness and love for his family, and for his tireless community service to the St. Louis community. Pujols spoke of his humble beginnings in the Dominican Republic, his great appreciation for all the success God gave him, and the importance of using his blessings to bless others. The last speaker I saw, and in my mind, the highlight of the rally, was Dr. Aveda Kin niece of Dr. Martin Luther King. She was under tremendous pressure from the professional race-baiters (think New Black Panther Party, NAACP, etc.) not to attend the rally, but she did anyway. She too thanked Glenn for organizing the rally, and said that her uncle would have been proud of the rally because it stood for people coming together based on content of character rather than skin color. After she was done speaking, the tour organizer's wife was getting sunburned and she was sweating profusely. She decided to go back to the van with half an hour to go in the rally, and because I was suffering pretty badly from the heat myself, I decided to go with them. We made good time getting back to the van (arriving about 2:30 P.M.), and we took a nap while we waited for the rest of the group to get back to the van (they made it back about 4:00 P.M.). The entire group left D.C. about 5:00 P.M., ate dinner at a Chili's in Virginia about 8:00 P.M., and got back to Nashville about 3:30 A.M.
Here is what I took away from the rally and the trip: 1.) Driving 16 hours one way by car (32 total hours of driving in 48 hours) sucks. That's a game for someone much younger (late teens or early 20s) because I haven't been that sore in quite a while.; 2.) I will definitely be bringing sunblock and an umbrella (at a minimum) to any future rallies I attend. I also might be willing to sit a little further back if I can get some shade from the sun.; 3.) This rally stood in sharp contrast to the pathetic Al Sharpton event just down the street. The racist reverend's rally might have had a few hundred attendees at best, and I am fairly certain the idiots who took the stage after the Glenn Beck rally was over wearing Tea Party shirts and trying to insult Democrats to get on camera and make the Tea Party look bad probably came from his event.; 4.) The crowd estimate for the Beck rally from CBS was 87,000. That's absolutely laughable. The area from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial past the Reflecting Pool back to the Washington Monument holds 200,000 people, and it was packed full. Each of the side areas on either side of the Reflecting Pool holds between 100,000 and 150,000 each, and both of those areas were packed full. When you add in the various smatterings of people back past the Washington Monument, I think Glenn's estimate of between 500,000 and 650,000 attendees is much closer to the truth. His claim is bolstered by my math above regarding the donations to the SOWF. If 9 of 10 attendees each gave $ 10, then approximately 550,000 people attended this rally.; 5.) This was the most well-behaved, civl crowd of this size I have ever seen. Looking beyond all the families with small children at the rally, there was not a single arrest of anyone attending this rally, and the grounds of the rally site were just as clean (or cleaner) than when we got there. All the trash was in designated containers or trash areas, while the grounds themselves were immaculate. Look at any leftist/progressive rally a fraction of that size, and similar claims can not be made.; 6.) I got what I came for at this rally. Before I attended the rally, I felt an ongoing sense of despair at the direction of the country, and even worse yet, I felt alone. That is not the case any longer. Now I know that there are huge numbers of other like-minded people out there who want nothing more than to live and raise their families in peace and freedom without being terrorized and having their wealth and freedom stolen by their own government. It gives me hope to press forward and keep fighting for the America I have come to know and love, and faith that God has truly blessed America and that we hold a special place in his heart. For those reasons, I consider it a blessing to have been able to attend this rally, and I am glad I went.
In closing, I should also say a special thank you to my wife, who agreed to hold down the fort at home and gave me her blessing to go the rally even though my plan to attend materialized on short notice. I don't ask for many things, so when I say that something is important to me, my wife is pretty good about trying to make it happen for me. That's not something every married man has at home, but I do, and I am thankful for it.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Marcus Luttrell Live
Anyone who follows the heoric exploits of the bravest soldiers our military has to offer knows the name Marcus Luttrell. He wrote a book about his harrowing experience in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2005 called "Lone Survivor", and for anyone who hasn't read it, I can't recommend it strongly enough. Although I would almost never otherwise link to the Huffington Post because of its political bent, its story about Patrick Robinson (the author who helped write "Lone Survivor" with Marcus) is simply too good not to link to.
As July 4th approached this year, my thoughts initially turned to the same things most Americans think of on that day: great food, fireworks, family, freedom, and a general sense of pride and patriotism. Beyond those things, something began gnawing at me this year...something that made me want to experience this uniquely American holiday at a deeper level and in a way that wasn't all about me. Late last week, I found out that the Mid-South Tea Party was holding a rally on July 4, 2010, and that Marcus Luttrell would be their keynote speaker. Even though I hadn't really planned on it logistically or financially, I knew I had to go. I should also point out that my wife was kind and understanding enough to let me go. Fortunately for me, she knows that I don't really ask for very many things, and that when I tell her something is important, that it means something to me on the inside, she will generally be cool with me going. It's not something every married man has, so I truly appreciate that about her.
Thinking back to yesterday, it was July in Tennessee, which meant it was ridiculously hot and humid, and the place where the rally was offered little in the way of shade. That didn't really seem to matter to the attendees, and there was a palpable buzz in the air awaiting Marcus's speech, even through the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of the Star Spangled banner by the crowd. After a couple of cold drinks, it was Marcus's time. For anyone who doesn't know the high points of his story, they can be found here, here, and here. Still, there is nothing in the world that can compare hearing it told live by the man himself.
Going into this, I didn't know if Marcus was going to tell pieces of his story, the whole things, or something in between those two. It turns out that I got more than I could ever have hoped for. Not only did he recount the story of Operation Red Wing, he was kind enough to tell us about some of his childohood in Texas and a few of his experiences in Navy SEAL training. Here are the things I remember most from that day: 1.) Despite hundreds of people in attendance, the blazing sun, and over an hour of speaking from Marcus, I could literally have heard a pin drop the entire time. Everyone was absolutely riveted listening to his story...there was no one going to the bathroom, no children crying, no sodas being opened...nothing. The only exception was the occasional click of a camera from someone taking a picture or two.; 2.) Some of the details from the story were absoluely mind boggling: one of his teammates being blinded by gunfire yet still fighting until being overwhelmed by Taliban fighters; another teammate who was shot multiple times but who managed to call in support before he died; despite a broken neck from multiple falls down the mountain, Marcus having the presence of mind to draw maps on his leg to provide U.S. forces with critical intelligence if he made it out alive; and perhaps most incredibly, Marcus's revelation that he wrang out his socks and drank his own sweat and even sometimes drinking his own urine to stave off dehydration during his seven mile crawl to recovery and ultimate safety. 3.) It was evident that this man, this hero, was and is still heartbroken from his mission, and that he suffers from tremendous survivor's guilt. Lt. Michael Murphy (one of the SEALs killed in his operation) was Luttrell's best friend, and it was clear that these men were blood brothers who loved each other. At the end of his speech Marcus choked up as he recounted his promise to himself and to God at the end of his mission that, although there were times he knew death was coming and some that he might welcome it, if he survived, he would tell his story so that his friends would be remembered and never forgotten.
Like the word "love", the phrase "it changed my life" is badly overused these days, but I can safely say this was a life-changing experience for me. In addition to enhancing my already immense respect for our fighting men and women, it gave me a more human perspective on the struggles through which they suffer so that America and its citizens can be free. It was an honor and a privilege for me to hear Marcus Luttrell speak, and he will remain in my thoughts and prayers for as long as I live. God Bless you Marcus, we love you.
As July 4th approached this year, my thoughts initially turned to the same things most Americans think of on that day: great food, fireworks, family, freedom, and a general sense of pride and patriotism. Beyond those things, something began gnawing at me this year...something that made me want to experience this uniquely American holiday at a deeper level and in a way that wasn't all about me. Late last week, I found out that the Mid-South Tea Party was holding a rally on July 4, 2010, and that Marcus Luttrell would be their keynote speaker. Even though I hadn't really planned on it logistically or financially, I knew I had to go. I should also point out that my wife was kind and understanding enough to let me go. Fortunately for me, she knows that I don't really ask for very many things, and that when I tell her something is important, that it means something to me on the inside, she will generally be cool with me going. It's not something every married man has, so I truly appreciate that about her.
Thinking back to yesterday, it was July in Tennessee, which meant it was ridiculously hot and humid, and the place where the rally was offered little in the way of shade. That didn't really seem to matter to the attendees, and there was a palpable buzz in the air awaiting Marcus's speech, even through the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of the Star Spangled banner by the crowd. After a couple of cold drinks, it was Marcus's time. For anyone who doesn't know the high points of his story, they can be found here, here, and here. Still, there is nothing in the world that can compare hearing it told live by the man himself.
Going into this, I didn't know if Marcus was going to tell pieces of his story, the whole things, or something in between those two. It turns out that I got more than I could ever have hoped for. Not only did he recount the story of Operation Red Wing, he was kind enough to tell us about some of his childohood in Texas and a few of his experiences in Navy SEAL training. Here are the things I remember most from that day: 1.) Despite hundreds of people in attendance, the blazing sun, and over an hour of speaking from Marcus, I could literally have heard a pin drop the entire time. Everyone was absolutely riveted listening to his story...there was no one going to the bathroom, no children crying, no sodas being opened...nothing. The only exception was the occasional click of a camera from someone taking a picture or two.; 2.) Some of the details from the story were absoluely mind boggling: one of his teammates being blinded by gunfire yet still fighting until being overwhelmed by Taliban fighters; another teammate who was shot multiple times but who managed to call in support before he died; despite a broken neck from multiple falls down the mountain, Marcus having the presence of mind to draw maps on his leg to provide U.S. forces with critical intelligence if he made it out alive; and perhaps most incredibly, Marcus's revelation that he wrang out his socks and drank his own sweat and even sometimes drinking his own urine to stave off dehydration during his seven mile crawl to recovery and ultimate safety. 3.) It was evident that this man, this hero, was and is still heartbroken from his mission, and that he suffers from tremendous survivor's guilt. Lt. Michael Murphy (one of the SEALs killed in his operation) was Luttrell's best friend, and it was clear that these men were blood brothers who loved each other. At the end of his speech Marcus choked up as he recounted his promise to himself and to God at the end of his mission that, although there were times he knew death was coming and some that he might welcome it, if he survived, he would tell his story so that his friends would be remembered and never forgotten.
Like the word "love", the phrase "it changed my life" is badly overused these days, but I can safely say this was a life-changing experience for me. In addition to enhancing my already immense respect for our fighting men and women, it gave me a more human perspective on the struggles through which they suffer so that America and its citizens can be free. It was an honor and a privilege for me to hear Marcus Luttrell speak, and he will remain in my thoughts and prayers for as long as I live. God Bless you Marcus, we love you.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
U.S.A. World Cup Miracle Victory
The United States has always had somewhat of a tough go of things in World Cup play. Frankly, soccer is not really an American sport, and it is usually dominated by European and/or South American teams. In 2010, the U.S. had kind of an up and down performance leading up to the World Cup. Although the team ultimately qualified to play, there were times they looked pretty good and others where their age and lack of top end soccer skills showed.
In the first round (Group play) of the 2010 World Cup, the U.S. was in a group with Algeria, Slovenia, and England. Their first game was against England, and although England was clearly the better team, thanks to a lapse in concentration and mistake by England's goalie, the U.S. managed to escape with a 1-1 draw, earning the team 1 point in group play. In their next game against Slovenia, the U.S. went down 2-0 and looked to be on the way out, but they staged a furious second half two goal rally to tie the game. In the last couple of minutes of the Slovenia game, the U.S. was completely robbed by the referee on a terrible offsides call that disallowed what would have been the tying goal. Therefore, they settled for a 2-2 tie, earning one more point for the team in group play. This set up a win or go home scenario in their final game against Algeria. If they won and England won by less than 2 goals, they would win the group, be the top seed from the group in the 2nd round, and have a much easier schedule to play. If they won and England won by 2 goals or more, they would be second place and the second seed from their group, meaning they would have to play an almost impossible schedule of difficult teams to advance.
This soccer game is truly one of the few sporting events where anyone who watched it will remember what they were doing and where they were when they watched it. I happened to be home to watch the game because some repair people were coming to the house, and for a while, it looked like the U.S. would continue its run of World Cup failure. As the game dragged on, the U.S. missed chance after chance to score, hitting the crossbar and the post a couple of times and getting robbed of yet another goal by an awful offsides call by the referee. When the 90th minute came and went, 3 minutes of injury time were announced, and there was little hope in any U.S. fans that victory would come.
Algeria had the first scoring chance in injury time, but U.S. goalie Tim Howard made a good stop, got up quickly, and made a great throw down the right side of the field to start off one of the most famous plays in U.S. soccer history. The throw came to Landon Donovan on the right side, who made a great pass to Jozy Altidore deep in the Algeria side of the field. I thought to myself as the play began that we might have something going, but I didn't want to get my hopes up to be crushed by another failure. Altidore then made a great cross pass to Clint Dempsey, but his shot was blocked by a great sliding tackle from Algeria's goalie. In the next 10 seconds or so, here was the reaction of me and millions of other U.S. soccer fans: 1.) NOOOO!!!! (on the block and tackle by Algeria's goalie); 2.) Hey wait a minute... (as the ball popped out free about 8 yards from the goal with no one around it...no one except U.S. midfielder Landon Donovan); 3.) YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!! Followed up by me running around the house screaming like a madman (after Donovan, cool as a cucumber, knocked home the rebound into the back of the net).
I'm not old enough to remember the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team's Miracle on Ice, and I won't compare the two because this game didn't have the significance of the Miracle on Ice (symbolically helping to begin toppling communist Russia), but this game meant a lot to me and millions of other Americans. If there is any doubt about that, check the internet for the unbridled glee and celebrations that erupted in thousands of bars across America when Donovan's shot found the back of the net. I am privilege to have watched this game live, and even if the U.S. doesn't win another game, I think their World Cup trip was worthwhile.
UPDATE: Even though they won their group and had the easiest remaining schedule of any team in the World Cup, the advancing age, tired legs, and missed scoring chances I mentioned earlier finally caught up to the U.S. in the knockout round as they lost a tough game to Ghana 2-1. Inexplicably, the U.S. coach started a defenseman who had not played in the World Cup at all and who isn't even that good on his MLS team. Sure enough, after a defensive blunder, Ghana took advantage of the blunder and bad positioning by U.S. goalie Tim Howard to go up 1-0. Landon Donovan tied the game on a penalty kick in the second half, and no one else scored in regulation, leading to a 1-1 tie headed into 30 minutes of extra time. 3 minutes into the extra time, the young, fresh legs of Ghana (average team age: 24) made a great play and scored in the 93rd minute. The U.S. could not score, and Ghana won 2-1, eliminating the U.S.
In the first round (Group play) of the 2010 World Cup, the U.S. was in a group with Algeria, Slovenia, and England. Their first game was against England, and although England was clearly the better team, thanks to a lapse in concentration and mistake by England's goalie, the U.S. managed to escape with a 1-1 draw, earning the team 1 point in group play. In their next game against Slovenia, the U.S. went down 2-0 and looked to be on the way out, but they staged a furious second half two goal rally to tie the game. In the last couple of minutes of the Slovenia game, the U.S. was completely robbed by the referee on a terrible offsides call that disallowed what would have been the tying goal. Therefore, they settled for a 2-2 tie, earning one more point for the team in group play. This set up a win or go home scenario in their final game against Algeria. If they won and England won by less than 2 goals, they would win the group, be the top seed from the group in the 2nd round, and have a much easier schedule to play. If they won and England won by 2 goals or more, they would be second place and the second seed from their group, meaning they would have to play an almost impossible schedule of difficult teams to advance.
This soccer game is truly one of the few sporting events where anyone who watched it will remember what they were doing and where they were when they watched it. I happened to be home to watch the game because some repair people were coming to the house, and for a while, it looked like the U.S. would continue its run of World Cup failure. As the game dragged on, the U.S. missed chance after chance to score, hitting the crossbar and the post a couple of times and getting robbed of yet another goal by an awful offsides call by the referee. When the 90th minute came and went, 3 minutes of injury time were announced, and there was little hope in any U.S. fans that victory would come.
Algeria had the first scoring chance in injury time, but U.S. goalie Tim Howard made a good stop, got up quickly, and made a great throw down the right side of the field to start off one of the most famous plays in U.S. soccer history. The throw came to Landon Donovan on the right side, who made a great pass to Jozy Altidore deep in the Algeria side of the field. I thought to myself as the play began that we might have something going, but I didn't want to get my hopes up to be crushed by another failure. Altidore then made a great cross pass to Clint Dempsey, but his shot was blocked by a great sliding tackle from Algeria's goalie. In the next 10 seconds or so, here was the reaction of me and millions of other U.S. soccer fans: 1.) NOOOO!!!! (on the block and tackle by Algeria's goalie); 2.) Hey wait a minute... (as the ball popped out free about 8 yards from the goal with no one around it...no one except U.S. midfielder Landon Donovan); 3.) YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!! Followed up by me running around the house screaming like a madman (after Donovan, cool as a cucumber, knocked home the rebound into the back of the net).
I'm not old enough to remember the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team's Miracle on Ice, and I won't compare the two because this game didn't have the significance of the Miracle on Ice (symbolically helping to begin toppling communist Russia), but this game meant a lot to me and millions of other Americans. If there is any doubt about that, check the internet for the unbridled glee and celebrations that erupted in thousands of bars across America when Donovan's shot found the back of the net. I am privilege to have watched this game live, and even if the U.S. doesn't win another game, I think their World Cup trip was worthwhile.
UPDATE: Even though they won their group and had the easiest remaining schedule of any team in the World Cup, the advancing age, tired legs, and missed scoring chances I mentioned earlier finally caught up to the U.S. in the knockout round as they lost a tough game to Ghana 2-1. Inexplicably, the U.S. coach started a defenseman who had not played in the World Cup at all and who isn't even that good on his MLS team. Sure enough, after a defensive blunder, Ghana took advantage of the blunder and bad positioning by U.S. goalie Tim Howard to go up 1-0. Landon Donovan tied the game on a penalty kick in the second half, and no one else scored in regulation, leading to a 1-1 tie headed into 30 minutes of extra time. 3 minutes into the extra time, the young, fresh legs of Ghana (average team age: 24) made a great play and scored in the 93rd minute. The U.S. could not score, and Ghana won 2-1, eliminating the U.S.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Daughtry and Lifehouse in Nashville
One of my presents to Althea this year for Valentine's Day was a pair of tickets for us to see Chris Daughtry and Lifehouse live in concert at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. Before the concert, I took Althea to dinner at Toyama (our favorite Japanese hibachi restaurant), and dinner was just as good there as it is every other time we eat there. The concert was earlier tonight, and here is my review.
The opening band (whose name escapes me) was a rock-ish sort of band, and as opening acts go, they weren't that bad. Still, the fact that I can't remember their name can't be a good thing. Lifehouse was up next, and they were fabulous as always. They are perhaps my favorite overall band of all time, and Althea likes them too, one of the few musical acts for which we both share an affinity. They played about 8 songs, including their biggest hits ("First Time", "Whatever it Takes", Hanging by a Moment"). I really hope (and have heard) that Lifehouse will be headlining a tour later this year and that they will come to Nashville. For reasons I don't know or understand, Lifehouse hasn't played Nashville as a headliner in quite some time (if ever). I saw them play in Knoxville a couple of years ago and earlier tonight as an opening act, but that's pretty much it.
Chris Daughtry was the main act of the evening, and his overall performance was pretty good. The only real issue I had with his performance is that Chris has a bad habit of taking his mouth too far away from the microphone on big notes. My guess is that this tendency is an unfortunate side effect from his American Idol days. On the show, if he kept his mouth close to the microphone, it would sound too much like a scream and sometimes the microphone would screech out feedback on the big notes. That's too bad because he's one of the few rock artists who can actually sing well enough to hit the loud notes with the correct pitch in the proper key.
Since Daughtry hasn't been a big hit or a headliner for very long, he pretty much had to play all his hit songs. I am sure that if I were a bigger fan and/or had listened to each CD of his in its entirety, I would have been more into the show all night. Even so, my favorite song of his ("No Surprise") was a big hit with the crowd, and I enjoyed it immensely right along with them. Perhaps just as (or even more) noteworthy as the performance quality of Chris's songs was the quality of Chris's special guests and cover songs. Chris did a better than serviceable, mostly acoustic rendition of "In the Air Tonight", by Phil Collins, and the accompanying light show was neat to watch. He also performed a cover of "Whipping Post" (originally by The Allman Brothers) as a duet with Brad, the lead singer from Three Doors Down. Although the song itself isn't something I was inspired to run out and buy or listen to, Brad stole the show with his performance of his part of the song. Listening to the relatively vapid and shallow lyrics of the recent work of Three Doors Down, I hadn't really heard anything to indicate any real vocal skill on the part of their lead single. However, Brad's performance of "Whipping Post" was outstanding, showing excellent range, great passion, and good stage presence...I was pleasantly surprised.
For me though, the biggest hit of the show was Chris Daughtry's band-less, acoustic duet with Kelly Clarkson. Both Kelly and Chris said that "Fast Car", by Tracy Chapman, was and is one of their favorite songs of all time. I like the song it very much too, and I was initially concerned that they would mangle it. Fortunately, my concern was misplaced, as both Chris and Kelly turned in stellar performances. Chris played the acoustic guitar and sang his part well, and Kelly sang even better than him. Kelly Clarkson seems like a genuinely real and good person in real life, which makes her success easy to root for. That said, I believe she is at her best when she does slower songs and power ballads. She has the vocal chops for the faster, more pop-heavy songs, but for whatever reason, the emotion doesn't really come through her in those kind of songs, so they come over as somewhat forced and unenjoyable (for her and, in turn, for her fans). Her portion of this performance was striking in its quality, and the feeling with which she sang bordered on hauntingly believable, as if she had experienced the story of the song herself...really a good showing for Kelly.
On the whole, this was an enjoyable show worth the price of admission, and I'm glad I went, but I don't think I would go to see another Daughtry-headlined show again.
The opening band (whose name escapes me) was a rock-ish sort of band, and as opening acts go, they weren't that bad. Still, the fact that I can't remember their name can't be a good thing. Lifehouse was up next, and they were fabulous as always. They are perhaps my favorite overall band of all time, and Althea likes them too, one of the few musical acts for which we both share an affinity. They played about 8 songs, including their biggest hits ("First Time", "Whatever it Takes", Hanging by a Moment"). I really hope (and have heard) that Lifehouse will be headlining a tour later this year and that they will come to Nashville. For reasons I don't know or understand, Lifehouse hasn't played Nashville as a headliner in quite some time (if ever). I saw them play in Knoxville a couple of years ago and earlier tonight as an opening act, but that's pretty much it.
Chris Daughtry was the main act of the evening, and his overall performance was pretty good. The only real issue I had with his performance is that Chris has a bad habit of taking his mouth too far away from the microphone on big notes. My guess is that this tendency is an unfortunate side effect from his American Idol days. On the show, if he kept his mouth close to the microphone, it would sound too much like a scream and sometimes the microphone would screech out feedback on the big notes. That's too bad because he's one of the few rock artists who can actually sing well enough to hit the loud notes with the correct pitch in the proper key.
Since Daughtry hasn't been a big hit or a headliner for very long, he pretty much had to play all his hit songs. I am sure that if I were a bigger fan and/or had listened to each CD of his in its entirety, I would have been more into the show all night. Even so, my favorite song of his ("No Surprise") was a big hit with the crowd, and I enjoyed it immensely right along with them. Perhaps just as (or even more) noteworthy as the performance quality of Chris's songs was the quality of Chris's special guests and cover songs. Chris did a better than serviceable, mostly acoustic rendition of "In the Air Tonight", by Phil Collins, and the accompanying light show was neat to watch. He also performed a cover of "Whipping Post" (originally by The Allman Brothers) as a duet with Brad, the lead singer from Three Doors Down. Although the song itself isn't something I was inspired to run out and buy or listen to, Brad stole the show with his performance of his part of the song. Listening to the relatively vapid and shallow lyrics of the recent work of Three Doors Down, I hadn't really heard anything to indicate any real vocal skill on the part of their lead single. However, Brad's performance of "Whipping Post" was outstanding, showing excellent range, great passion, and good stage presence...I was pleasantly surprised.
For me though, the biggest hit of the show was Chris Daughtry's band-less, acoustic duet with Kelly Clarkson. Both Kelly and Chris said that "Fast Car", by Tracy Chapman, was and is one of their favorite songs of all time. I like the song it very much too, and I was initially concerned that they would mangle it. Fortunately, my concern was misplaced, as both Chris and Kelly turned in stellar performances. Chris played the acoustic guitar and sang his part well, and Kelly sang even better than him. Kelly Clarkson seems like a genuinely real and good person in real life, which makes her success easy to root for. That said, I believe she is at her best when she does slower songs and power ballads. She has the vocal chops for the faster, more pop-heavy songs, but for whatever reason, the emotion doesn't really come through her in those kind of songs, so they come over as somewhat forced and unenjoyable (for her and, in turn, for her fans). Her portion of this performance was striking in its quality, and the feeling with which she sang bordered on hauntingly believable, as if she had experienced the story of the song herself...really a good showing for Kelly.
On the whole, this was an enjoyable show worth the price of admission, and I'm glad I went, but I don't think I would go to see another Daughtry-headlined show again.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Vickie Jones, R.I.P.
My parents divorced when I was 6 years old, and from birth until about my 11th birthday, my brother, my father, and I moved around to several different cities in different states. We eventually settled in Lewisburg, Tennessee, a small town about 45 minutes south of Nashville and 25 minutes north of the Alabama/Tennessee state line. Shortly after we got to Lewisburg, my dad started dating a woman about 9 years his junior named Vickie Jones. After about 6 weeks of dating, Vickie moved into our house and never left. My brother and I didn't agree with it at the time, and we weren't asked, but it happened anyway. My Dad and Vickie never officially tied the knot and got married, mostly because Vickie's state-provided medical insurance and other government benefits would have been cut off if they had. Whether my brother and I liked it or not, we had a stepmother in substance if not in fact.
Vickie had a hard life and a hard childhood before she met my dad, but she was basically a good woman with a big heart. I certainly didn't always agree with Vickie, and I had my share of issues with her, but she contributed financially to raising my brother and I, she put up with my biological mother's shenanigans, and she did love my dad and put up with him for the better part of 2 decades, which should qualify her for some sort of sainthood. Also, as I have gotten older, I have learned (for the most part) not to speculate on what goes on between a man and a woman or why 2 people love each other. The fact that she and my father said they loved each other and stayed together all those years was good enough for me.
Unfortunately, Vickie was sick for a very long time. She suffered from a laundry list of ailments, including heart, lung, and breathing problems, and she got progressively sicker over the past 4 years. For the last couple of years, she required in-home care, at-home breathing treatments, and multiple hospital stays. Vickie was admitted to the hospital a couple of weeks ago, and my Dad thought she would come out of the hospital this time just like the other half-dozen times before, until she took a turn for the worse on Monday. The doctors told my Dad she wasn't expected to make it, and her health deteriorated rapidly over the next 24 hours. Vickie passed away with her family and friends at her side just before 2:00 P.M. on Wednesday, February 17, 2010. She was 46 years old.
I spent the next few days helping my dad through the fog that comes with losing a life partner. I set up the arrangements for Vickie's cremation and memorial service, helped Dad with some legal issues surrounding Vickie's will, and made sure that Vickie's crazy, white trash family didn't act a fool at the hospital or the memorial service. I was so glad to be able to be with and there for my dad when he needed me. Even so, it was surreal because I saw and heard my father cry more in the last week than I did during my entire childhood.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention how great and understanding my job was about allowing me to leave work and take bereavement leave to be with my family. Also, Dad's co-workers at Federal Express were wonderful. They came to the hospital, sent flowers, and turned out en masse for Vickie's memorial service. It was also great to see my Uncle Dave (my dad's older brother) and my cousins Van and Valerie (my Uncle Dave's kids, who are close to my age). I hope that we are able to see more of each other in the future.
As for Vickie, I was able to talk with her in the hospital the last time she was in the hospital before she died. She told me that she was saved, that she had accepted the Lord as her savior, and that she knew she was going to heaven. Where someone spends eternity is far and away the most important of any of the things I have discussed here, and it is the most important decision of anyone's life. In the hospital, a few minutes before she died, I read Psalm 23 to her, and I like to think that maybe it helped calm her down and kept her from being scared about dying. Our flesh clings to life because we don't know what the great beyond of this life holds for us. I am glad that Vickie is at rest and that she isn't suffering anymore, and she died surrounded by the people who cared about her the most. We should all be so lucky. To Vickie, I would say thank you for helping to raise me, thank you for loving my father, and enjoy heaven until we get there...we will see you again someday.
Vickie had a hard life and a hard childhood before she met my dad, but she was basically a good woman with a big heart. I certainly didn't always agree with Vickie, and I had my share of issues with her, but she contributed financially to raising my brother and I, she put up with my biological mother's shenanigans, and she did love my dad and put up with him for the better part of 2 decades, which should qualify her for some sort of sainthood. Also, as I have gotten older, I have learned (for the most part) not to speculate on what goes on between a man and a woman or why 2 people love each other. The fact that she and my father said they loved each other and stayed together all those years was good enough for me.
Unfortunately, Vickie was sick for a very long time. She suffered from a laundry list of ailments, including heart, lung, and breathing problems, and she got progressively sicker over the past 4 years. For the last couple of years, she required in-home care, at-home breathing treatments, and multiple hospital stays. Vickie was admitted to the hospital a couple of weeks ago, and my Dad thought she would come out of the hospital this time just like the other half-dozen times before, until she took a turn for the worse on Monday. The doctors told my Dad she wasn't expected to make it, and her health deteriorated rapidly over the next 24 hours. Vickie passed away with her family and friends at her side just before 2:00 P.M. on Wednesday, February 17, 2010. She was 46 years old.
I spent the next few days helping my dad through the fog that comes with losing a life partner. I set up the arrangements for Vickie's cremation and memorial service, helped Dad with some legal issues surrounding Vickie's will, and made sure that Vickie's crazy, white trash family didn't act a fool at the hospital or the memorial service. I was so glad to be able to be with and there for my dad when he needed me. Even so, it was surreal because I saw and heard my father cry more in the last week than I did during my entire childhood.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention how great and understanding my job was about allowing me to leave work and take bereavement leave to be with my family. Also, Dad's co-workers at Federal Express were wonderful. They came to the hospital, sent flowers, and turned out en masse for Vickie's memorial service. It was also great to see my Uncle Dave (my dad's older brother) and my cousins Van and Valerie (my Uncle Dave's kids, who are close to my age). I hope that we are able to see more of each other in the future.
As for Vickie, I was able to talk with her in the hospital the last time she was in the hospital before she died. She told me that she was saved, that she had accepted the Lord as her savior, and that she knew she was going to heaven. Where someone spends eternity is far and away the most important of any of the things I have discussed here, and it is the most important decision of anyone's life. In the hospital, a few minutes before she died, I read Psalm 23 to her, and I like to think that maybe it helped calm her down and kept her from being scared about dying. Our flesh clings to life because we don't know what the great beyond of this life holds for us. I am glad that Vickie is at rest and that she isn't suffering anymore, and she died surrounded by the people who cared about her the most. We should all be so lucky. To Vickie, I would say thank you for helping to raise me, thank you for loving my father, and enjoy heaven until we get there...we will see you again someday.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Individual 2010 New Year's Goals
Too many people these days get married and lose any sense of self and individuality, which I don't think is healthy. So, even though the wife and I have our own joint goals for 2010, I have a couple of individual goals of my own that I intend to complete. My experience has taught me that, the more measurable and simple the goal is, the more likely I am to achieve it. With that in mind, here are my individual goals for 2010:
1.) Over the course of my engagement, honeymoon, and first year of marriage, I put on some unwanted pounds that were the complete opposite of muscle and which were located in the worst possible place (stomach). At one point, I was up to 252 pounds, which is a couple of pounds more than I weighed while I was playing college football, only the distribution of weight was all wrong and didn't look nearly as nice. During my 8+ months of unemployment, I began to limit my calorie intake and really step up my workouts, and I managed to lose a total of 22 pounds, getting down to 230. 230 is much more manageable, and helped some of my clothes to fit better, but it isn't where I want to be weight-wise for the long term. Eventually, I would like to be down under 200 pounds (185-195 would be ideal). Taking into consideration that I don't have a celebrity trainer, and that I have to live in the real world, I want to set a goal that will make real progress toward my target weight, but which won't be so unreasonable that I throw up my hands and quit in disgust (which has happened before).
My minimum weight loss goal is 15 pounds for the year (slightly over 1 pound per month), which would put me at 215 pounds. That said, I would be thrilled to make it to 210 or lower.
2.) I intend to pay off all of my small debts (5 debts, all $ 2,500.00 and lower) by the end of this year, but preferably no later than June or July. Other than money that goes to vacations and recurring bills, after the smaller debts (approximately $ 5,500.00 total) are paid off, the money I was using to pay off those debts will then be directed toward my larger debts.
3.) From time to time, I look at my full bookshelves of all the books I have read and just shake my head. I know most of what I read is stored someplace deep in my brain, but sometimes I can't bring what I have read immediately to mind, especially if it has been a while since I read the book I am trying to remember. Obviously, I can't spend my entire life reading the same books over and over if I expect to learn anything new.
Therefore, going forward, I have decided to write brief summaries of all the books I read. That way, I can pull up the summary I wrote back when I read the book, read it, and hopefully jog my memory as to most of the details of the book in question. Additionally, my book reading goal for this year is to average one book per week, which would be at least 52 books for the year.
If I can complete these goals (and then some), I think this is going to be a great year...so, Happy New Year to all, and I wish you great success on your own goals in the first year of the new decade!
1.) Over the course of my engagement, honeymoon, and first year of marriage, I put on some unwanted pounds that were the complete opposite of muscle and which were located in the worst possible place (stomach). At one point, I was up to 252 pounds, which is a couple of pounds more than I weighed while I was playing college football, only the distribution of weight was all wrong and didn't look nearly as nice. During my 8+ months of unemployment, I began to limit my calorie intake and really step up my workouts, and I managed to lose a total of 22 pounds, getting down to 230. 230 is much more manageable, and helped some of my clothes to fit better, but it isn't where I want to be weight-wise for the long term. Eventually, I would like to be down under 200 pounds (185-195 would be ideal). Taking into consideration that I don't have a celebrity trainer, and that I have to live in the real world, I want to set a goal that will make real progress toward my target weight, but which won't be so unreasonable that I throw up my hands and quit in disgust (which has happened before).
My minimum weight loss goal is 15 pounds for the year (slightly over 1 pound per month), which would put me at 215 pounds. That said, I would be thrilled to make it to 210 or lower.
2.) I intend to pay off all of my small debts (5 debts, all $ 2,500.00 and lower) by the end of this year, but preferably no later than June or July. Other than money that goes to vacations and recurring bills, after the smaller debts (approximately $ 5,500.00 total) are paid off, the money I was using to pay off those debts will then be directed toward my larger debts.
3.) From time to time, I look at my full bookshelves of all the books I have read and just shake my head. I know most of what I read is stored someplace deep in my brain, but sometimes I can't bring what I have read immediately to mind, especially if it has been a while since I read the book I am trying to remember. Obviously, I can't spend my entire life reading the same books over and over if I expect to learn anything new.
Therefore, going forward, I have decided to write brief summaries of all the books I read. That way, I can pull up the summary I wrote back when I read the book, read it, and hopefully jog my memory as to most of the details of the book in question. Additionally, my book reading goal for this year is to average one book per week, which would be at least 52 books for the year.
If I can complete these goals (and then some), I think this is going to be a great year...so, Happy New Year to all, and I wish you great success on your own goals in the first year of the new decade!
Thursday, December 31, 2009
2009 Year in Review
Pre-2009 Overview:
Coming into 2009, my marriage was about 3 months old, and I had a good-paying job that I'd been working for over a year and a half, and I was beginning to make some progress in getting some of my smaller bills paid off.
The 2009 Bad News:
Unfortunately (in most ways), I lost my job only a few weeks into the year, which set back almost all of the financial progress I made and put so much stress on my marriage that I sometimes wondered whether it would survive. There were times I felt like I was a broke student again, living on $ 20 for a full 2 weeks, eating off the dollar menu at fast-food places, and questioning my progress in life and place in this world.
The 2009 Good News:
Thankfully, as He has always done, God helped me to survive and brought me through the other side as a smarter man into a better place than I could have imagined when times were at their worst. Despite the hardships, I trust God with my life more now than I ever have before. No matter how bad things get, He proves time and again that He will never put more on me than I can bear, and that he will never let me slip over the edge into such a bad place that he can never bring me back.
I've been at my new job about 6 weeks now, and I like it pretty well. My co-workers and bosses are great, the work I am doing is tough but interesting, and I think my career and finances are back on track. I am extremely grateful that my marriage survived the beating it took in its first year, and even though there is work yet to be done, the survival of my marriage through such tough times gives me hope for a better marital future.
2009 Conclusion:
2009 was definitely an interesting and eventful year, but all things being equal, I am glad it's in the books, and I am hopeful that 2010 will be much, much better.
Coming into 2009, my marriage was about 3 months old, and I had a good-paying job that I'd been working for over a year and a half, and I was beginning to make some progress in getting some of my smaller bills paid off.
The 2009 Bad News:
Unfortunately (in most ways), I lost my job only a few weeks into the year, which set back almost all of the financial progress I made and put so much stress on my marriage that I sometimes wondered whether it would survive. There were times I felt like I was a broke student again, living on $ 20 for a full 2 weeks, eating off the dollar menu at fast-food places, and questioning my progress in life and place in this world.
The 2009 Good News:
Thankfully, as He has always done, God helped me to survive and brought me through the other side as a smarter man into a better place than I could have imagined when times were at their worst. Despite the hardships, I trust God with my life more now than I ever have before. No matter how bad things get, He proves time and again that He will never put more on me than I can bear, and that he will never let me slip over the edge into such a bad place that he can never bring me back.
I've been at my new job about 6 weeks now, and I like it pretty well. My co-workers and bosses are great, the work I am doing is tough but interesting, and I think my career and finances are back on track. I am extremely grateful that my marriage survived the beating it took in its first year, and even though there is work yet to be done, the survival of my marriage through such tough times gives me hope for a better marital future.
2009 Conclusion:
2009 was definitely an interesting and eventful year, but all things being equal, I am glad it's in the books, and I am hopeful that 2010 will be much, much better.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Back to Work Full-Time and Loving It
I have been employed full-time pretty much my entire adult life, even through college and law school. The last time I had a full-time attorney job was in early March of this year, now over 8 months ago.
That is the longest period of time I have ever been without a full-time job in my entire life, and it sucked more than I can possibly put into words. There are so many things I took for granted up until recently, mainly having money of my own, being able to afford a few luxuries in life, working as a professional, and most importantly, being able to pay my bills. These things sound so small, right up until the minute they are taken away.
I was able to find part-time work as a softball umpire and flag football referee, which I sincerely enjoyed. The job paid better than most menial labor positions, and it did make a dent in my bills. However, the truth is that I would not have been able to pay my bills without the financial support from my family and friends, and I would have been homeless or living with my Dad if it weren't for my wife. I have already told my family and friends how much I appreciate their help during this difficult time, but I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to express how truly wonderful my wife was over these last 8+ months. We had some disagreements about money, but she never once failed to help me when it was absolutely necessary. Althea, no matter what happens in the future, I will never forget how supportive you were when I needed you the most, so thank you, and I love you.
As you may have guessed by now, after putting out more than 250 application packages for jobs from Hawaii to Italy, I am blessed to be back working full-time at a job in downtown Nashville. My starting salary is about 10% less than I was making back in March, but I think that is a fair trade given the increased quality of life, good bosses, seemingly cool co-workers, and potential for advancement that comes with this position. Also, this job is actually closer to home than my last job, a nice little bonus. Today was my first day back to work, and it felt great being back at work as an attorney again. I have to give a big shout out to Terrance for getting me the interview that led to this job...brother, if you need my last can of pork and beans, you need only to ask. :) Although I know I have a lot to learn working in an area of the law I don't know much about (yet), I am eager to learn and willing to work hard, and that should serve me well. As an aside, I bear no ill will toward my last employer...they gave me a great opportunity and paid me fairly for my hard work, it was simply time for both of us to move on.
I haven't always done the best job handling money, but that is something upon which I sincerely intend to improve this time around, especially when it comes to rendering unto God what is rightfully His. When I was unemployed, I made a promise to God that, if he put me back to work, I would be faithful in my tithing, and that is something I have never done before. I truly believe that God keeps His word, so I look forward with interest to see what God will do when I am faithful with my finances. Lord, thank you for putting me back to work. I promise to work as hard as I can, and to do my work with integrity in a manner befitting your kingdom and showing appreciation for your blessings.
That is the longest period of time I have ever been without a full-time job in my entire life, and it sucked more than I can possibly put into words. There are so many things I took for granted up until recently, mainly having money of my own, being able to afford a few luxuries in life, working as a professional, and most importantly, being able to pay my bills. These things sound so small, right up until the minute they are taken away.
I was able to find part-time work as a softball umpire and flag football referee, which I sincerely enjoyed. The job paid better than most menial labor positions, and it did make a dent in my bills. However, the truth is that I would not have been able to pay my bills without the financial support from my family and friends, and I would have been homeless or living with my Dad if it weren't for my wife. I have already told my family and friends how much I appreciate their help during this difficult time, but I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to express how truly wonderful my wife was over these last 8+ months. We had some disagreements about money, but she never once failed to help me when it was absolutely necessary. Althea, no matter what happens in the future, I will never forget how supportive you were when I needed you the most, so thank you, and I love you.
As you may have guessed by now, after putting out more than 250 application packages for jobs from Hawaii to Italy, I am blessed to be back working full-time at a job in downtown Nashville. My starting salary is about 10% less than I was making back in March, but I think that is a fair trade given the increased quality of life, good bosses, seemingly cool co-workers, and potential for advancement that comes with this position. Also, this job is actually closer to home than my last job, a nice little bonus. Today was my first day back to work, and it felt great being back at work as an attorney again. I have to give a big shout out to Terrance for getting me the interview that led to this job...brother, if you need my last can of pork and beans, you need only to ask. :) Although I know I have a lot to learn working in an area of the law I don't know much about (yet), I am eager to learn and willing to work hard, and that should serve me well. As an aside, I bear no ill will toward my last employer...they gave me a great opportunity and paid me fairly for my hard work, it was simply time for both of us to move on.
I haven't always done the best job handling money, but that is something upon which I sincerely intend to improve this time around, especially when it comes to rendering unto God what is rightfully His. When I was unemployed, I made a promise to God that, if he put me back to work, I would be faithful in my tithing, and that is something I have never done before. I truly believe that God keeps His word, so I look forward with interest to see what God will do when I am faithful with my finances. Lord, thank you for putting me back to work. I promise to work as hard as I can, and to do my work with integrity in a manner befitting your kingdom and showing appreciation for your blessings.
Friday, October 30, 2009
The Job Search is 99.9% Over
I've been unemployed or employed only part-time since March of this year. After nearly 8 months, I finally got a call today offering me a job. The reason I say the search is 99.9% over is because my future boss told me the interview process is over, that he had checked my references, and that he would like me to come and work in his department.
He told me that he still has to get my final salary number, and thus my final hiring approval, from the Personnel Department. As soon as the has that, I will get a start date, an office, and a firm salary figure. At that time, and not before, the search will be 100% over. I had a celebratory dinner at home with the wife tonight, but we will do something bigger and nicer to celebrate after I start my job and get my first paycheck.
I can't wait to get back to work, and a post full celebration of new job/reflection on my time between jobs will be coming in the very near future. But for now, today was a really good day, and it was a long time coming. Thank you Lord, for everything.
He told me that he still has to get my final salary number, and thus my final hiring approval, from the Personnel Department. As soon as the has that, I will get a start date, an office, and a firm salary figure. At that time, and not before, the search will be 100% over. I had a celebratory dinner at home with the wife tonight, but we will do something bigger and nicer to celebrate after I start my job and get my first paycheck.
I can't wait to get back to work, and a post full celebration of new job/reflection on my time between jobs will be coming in the very near future. But for now, today was a really good day, and it was a long time coming. Thank you Lord, for everything.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Jason Whitlock on Changing the Rules about Strange Tang
His recent attacks on Rush Limbaugh based on "quotes" that Limbaugh never actually said, FOXSports.com's Jason Whitlock is one of my favorite columnists about contemporary issues that have to do with sports and athletes. His columns are so interesting because they almost always have a new, unique angle or perspective that you will never hear from the mainstream media. Whether Whitlock himself personally holds these beliefs is irrelevant, because the job of a writer is to write interesting things that people will read with enthusiasm, and putting conventional wisdom down on paper won't get you there very often.
Most recently, ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips was fired from ESPN for his extramarital affair with a woman half his age. His mistress flipped out when he tried to end the affair, contacted his wife, and even tried to mess with his kids at school, but at least she didn't kill him like Steve McNair's mistress did. Although my faith and personal beliefs don't really permit me the luxury of believing in what Whitlock suggests as an actual solution to the affair pandemic for men (athletes and non-athletes alike), his suggestion to remove some of the taboo and social shame that comes with an affair at least makes some intellectual sense. Whitlock first brought up how destructive affairs can sometimes be (he calls the other woman phenomenon Strange Tang or Pussy Galore) in the case of Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino, who banged a woman not his wife on the table of a restaurant and then had the woman try to extort money from him...not good times. Strange Tang has also claimed Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton, former Indiana Pacers hoops star Reggie Miller, and Dallas Mavericks superstar NBA F Dirk Nowitzki as its victims, and for every 3-4 of these cases we hear about, there are many more that we don't. The impact on the families of these men is inexcusable and even having an affair demonstrates terrible judgment, but as Whitlock says, affairs have absolutely no bearing on whether someone is a good coach, commentator, or athlete, and it's time to stop pretending otherwise.
Here are the money quotes from Whitlock's article, read and decide for yourself:
"There are moments in our history when common sense forces us to change the rules in deference to a unique, unprecedented force of nature. In the aftermath of ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips' sordid affair with Monica Lewinsky II, we can no longer deny the inadequacies of America's current relationship rules as they pertain to the battle against Pussy Galore.
It's time to change the rules of the game. There's been too much carnage. She shredded Rick Pitino's reputation. She pushed Josh Hamilton off the wagon. She sweet-talked Charles Barkley into driving drunk. She hoodwinked Dirk Nowitzki into falling in love with a fugitive. And now a 22-year-old slump-buster has apparently cost Steve Phillips his marriage and his credibility to analyze baseball. It's not right. A little off-the-books nookie should not infringe on man's ability to discuss bats and balls in October. Enough is enough. It's time we had an adult conversation about Ms. Galore and her ability to ruin lives, careers and reputations. We have given her this power and it's obvious she's abusing it.
...Let's put an end to the sexual madness. Let's recognize where we're at as a society and open our borders. Technological, medical and sociological advances have rendered monogamy a theory/fantasy attained solely by men without options and even less self-confidence. Sexual prohibition for a healthy American man is as futile as alcohol prohibition. Man was meant to eat, drink and be merry, and a heterosexual man's happiness is directly tied to his visitation privileges with PG. Man is most happy when he is free to experience her pleasure in her varied forms, textures and styles of dress.
I like steak. Capital Grille is my favorite steakhouse. I could eat at Capital Grille seven nights a week. But, especially when I'm traveling, I like to experience different steakhouses. My occasional trips to Shula's, Morton's, Ruth's Chris and Smith and Wollensky in no way infringe upon my undying love and support of Capital Grille. In fact, shortly after I've digested my meal at a different steakhouse, I'm reminded just how much I love Cap Grille.
Consequently, if a man can afford a no-disease, no-pregnancy occasional night on the town without it affecting his financial and lovemaking responsibilities at home, as mature adults we must reach the point where we can allow this without breaking up the family or running a man from political office/off the set of a popular TV show.
It's simply not personal. It's physical. And in many ways it's a weakness magnified by societal evolution. Monogamy was invented before women entered the workplace, text messaging, cell phones, Viagra, exercise, makeup, perfume, hair extensions, shaved legs, clothes that revealed cleavage, Internet porn and on and on. Seriously, think about it. Let's just go back 50 or 60 years. The typical American man didn't exercise and smoked cigarettes. By age 45 he was almost completely out of the game. Stress, hypertension and just being fat and lazy knocked about all the starch out of his little man. Marilyn Monroe could proposition him, and there was a 75 percent chance he couldn't answer the call to duty.
...Gender equality has given men more access to women. This is not a good thing for fidelity. Madonna, Britney, Paris and Lil' Kim haven't helped much, either. Women are far more sexually aggressive than they used to be. They'll describe in graphic detail exactly what they'll do that your wife can't or won't, and they'll back it up by texting you a naked cell-phone pic.
...It's long past time to change the rules. We have to quit judging married men by their ability or inability to keep it in their pants. Women are looking for love in the wrong place. It's not in our crotch. We keep lust there. Only humans are dumb enough to place such importance on sexual monogamy. It's unnatural. It's emotionally crippling. It destroys families. And it's wreaked havoc on ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" set. Harold Reynolds and Steve Phillips were arguably my two favorite baseball analysts.
Let's redefine marriage by putting sex in its proper place. Reproduction should remain sacred between a married man and woman. Sex should be enjoyed between consenting, mature adults.
I say a moderately famous man earning between $250K and $500K a year should be allowed a mistress he can see weekly, one week-long, $8,000 vacation he can take with his mistress and five strip club nights with his boys a year. A moderately famous man earning between $500K and $1 million a year should be allowed a mistress he can see weekly and every other weekend, a 10-day, $15,000 vacation with his mistress, a $1,500-a-month, fully-furnished apartment for his mistress and seven strip club nights with his boys.
Any man earning more than $1 million a year should come and go as he damn well pleases."
Most recently, ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips was fired from ESPN for his extramarital affair with a woman half his age. His mistress flipped out when he tried to end the affair, contacted his wife, and even tried to mess with his kids at school, but at least she didn't kill him like Steve McNair's mistress did. Although my faith and personal beliefs don't really permit me the luxury of believing in what Whitlock suggests as an actual solution to the affair pandemic for men (athletes and non-athletes alike), his suggestion to remove some of the taboo and social shame that comes with an affair at least makes some intellectual sense. Whitlock first brought up how destructive affairs can sometimes be (he calls the other woman phenomenon Strange Tang or Pussy Galore) in the case of Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino, who banged a woman not his wife on the table of a restaurant and then had the woman try to extort money from him...not good times. Strange Tang has also claimed Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton, former Indiana Pacers hoops star Reggie Miller, and Dallas Mavericks superstar NBA F Dirk Nowitzki as its victims, and for every 3-4 of these cases we hear about, there are many more that we don't. The impact on the families of these men is inexcusable and even having an affair demonstrates terrible judgment, but as Whitlock says, affairs have absolutely no bearing on whether someone is a good coach, commentator, or athlete, and it's time to stop pretending otherwise.
Here are the money quotes from Whitlock's article, read and decide for yourself:
"There are moments in our history when common sense forces us to change the rules in deference to a unique, unprecedented force of nature. In the aftermath of ESPN baseball analyst Steve Phillips' sordid affair with Monica Lewinsky II, we can no longer deny the inadequacies of America's current relationship rules as they pertain to the battle against Pussy Galore.
It's time to change the rules of the game. There's been too much carnage. She shredded Rick Pitino's reputation. She pushed Josh Hamilton off the wagon. She sweet-talked Charles Barkley into driving drunk. She hoodwinked Dirk Nowitzki into falling in love with a fugitive. And now a 22-year-old slump-buster has apparently cost Steve Phillips his marriage and his credibility to analyze baseball. It's not right. A little off-the-books nookie should not infringe on man's ability to discuss bats and balls in October. Enough is enough. It's time we had an adult conversation about Ms. Galore and her ability to ruin lives, careers and reputations. We have given her this power and it's obvious she's abusing it.
...Let's put an end to the sexual madness. Let's recognize where we're at as a society and open our borders. Technological, medical and sociological advances have rendered monogamy a theory/fantasy attained solely by men without options and even less self-confidence. Sexual prohibition for a healthy American man is as futile as alcohol prohibition. Man was meant to eat, drink and be merry, and a heterosexual man's happiness is directly tied to his visitation privileges with PG. Man is most happy when he is free to experience her pleasure in her varied forms, textures and styles of dress.
I like steak. Capital Grille is my favorite steakhouse. I could eat at Capital Grille seven nights a week. But, especially when I'm traveling, I like to experience different steakhouses. My occasional trips to Shula's, Morton's, Ruth's Chris and Smith and Wollensky in no way infringe upon my undying love and support of Capital Grille. In fact, shortly after I've digested my meal at a different steakhouse, I'm reminded just how much I love Cap Grille.
Consequently, if a man can afford a no-disease, no-pregnancy occasional night on the town without it affecting his financial and lovemaking responsibilities at home, as mature adults we must reach the point where we can allow this without breaking up the family or running a man from political office/off the set of a popular TV show.
It's simply not personal. It's physical. And in many ways it's a weakness magnified by societal evolution. Monogamy was invented before women entered the workplace, text messaging, cell phones, Viagra, exercise, makeup, perfume, hair extensions, shaved legs, clothes that revealed cleavage, Internet porn and on and on. Seriously, think about it. Let's just go back 50 or 60 years. The typical American man didn't exercise and smoked cigarettes. By age 45 he was almost completely out of the game. Stress, hypertension and just being fat and lazy knocked about all the starch out of his little man. Marilyn Monroe could proposition him, and there was a 75 percent chance he couldn't answer the call to duty.
...Gender equality has given men more access to women. This is not a good thing for fidelity. Madonna, Britney, Paris and Lil' Kim haven't helped much, either. Women are far more sexually aggressive than they used to be. They'll describe in graphic detail exactly what they'll do that your wife can't or won't, and they'll back it up by texting you a naked cell-phone pic.
...It's long past time to change the rules. We have to quit judging married men by their ability or inability to keep it in their pants. Women are looking for love in the wrong place. It's not in our crotch. We keep lust there. Only humans are dumb enough to place such importance on sexual monogamy. It's unnatural. It's emotionally crippling. It destroys families. And it's wreaked havoc on ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" set. Harold Reynolds and Steve Phillips were arguably my two favorite baseball analysts.
Let's redefine marriage by putting sex in its proper place. Reproduction should remain sacred between a married man and woman. Sex should be enjoyed between consenting, mature adults.
I say a moderately famous man earning between $250K and $500K a year should be allowed a mistress he can see weekly, one week-long, $8,000 vacation he can take with his mistress and five strip club nights with his boys a year. A moderately famous man earning between $500K and $1 million a year should be allowed a mistress he can see weekly and every other weekend, a 10-day, $15,000 vacation with his mistress, a $1,500-a-month, fully-furnished apartment for his mistress and seven strip club nights with his boys.
Any man earning more than $1 million a year should come and go as he damn well pleases."
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The Rules of Bedroom Golf
I found this list of "rules" on the Tall Cool Drink of Water blog...truly hilarious!
The Rules of Bedroom Golf
1. Each player shall furnish his own equipment for play.
2. Play on a course must be approved by the owner of the hole.
3. Unlike outdoor golf, the object is to get the club in the hole and keep the balls out.
4. For most effective play, the club should have a firm shaft. Course owners are permitted to check shaft stiffness before play begins.
5. Course owners reserve the right to restrict club length to avoid damage to the hole.
6. The object of the game is to take as many strokes as necessary until the course owner is satisfied that play is completed. Failure to do so may result in being denied permission to play the course again.
7. It is considered bad form to begin playing the hole immediately upon arrival at the course. The experienced player will normally take time to admire the entire course with special attention to well formed bunkers.
8. Players are cautioned not to mention other courses they have played, or are currently playing, to the owner of the course being played. Upset course owners have been known to damage players' equipment for this reason.
9. Players are encouraged to bring proper rain gear for their own protection.
10. Players should ensure themselves that their match has been properly scheduled, particularly when a new course is being played for the first time. Previous players have been known to become irate if they discover someone else playing on what they considered to be a private course.
11. Players should not assume a course is in shape for play at tall times. Some players may be embarrassed if they find the course to be temporarily under repair. Players are advised to be extremely tactful in this situation. More advanced players will find alternative means of play when this is the case.
12. The course owners is responsible for manicuring and pruning any bush around the hole to allow for improved viewing of alignment with, and approach to the hole.
13. Players are advised to obtain the course owners permission before attempting to play the back nine.
14. Slow play is encouraged. However, players should be prepared to proceed at a quicker pace, at least temporarily, at the course owners request.
15. It is considered outstanding performance, time permitting, to play the same hole several times in one match.
The Rules of Bedroom Golf
1. Each player shall furnish his own equipment for play.
2. Play on a course must be approved by the owner of the hole.
3. Unlike outdoor golf, the object is to get the club in the hole and keep the balls out.
4. For most effective play, the club should have a firm shaft. Course owners are permitted to check shaft stiffness before play begins.
5. Course owners reserve the right to restrict club length to avoid damage to the hole.
6. The object of the game is to take as many strokes as necessary until the course owner is satisfied that play is completed. Failure to do so may result in being denied permission to play the course again.
7. It is considered bad form to begin playing the hole immediately upon arrival at the course. The experienced player will normally take time to admire the entire course with special attention to well formed bunkers.
8. Players are cautioned not to mention other courses they have played, or are currently playing, to the owner of the course being played. Upset course owners have been known to damage players' equipment for this reason.
9. Players are encouraged to bring proper rain gear for their own protection.
10. Players should ensure themselves that their match has been properly scheduled, particularly when a new course is being played for the first time. Previous players have been known to become irate if they discover someone else playing on what they considered to be a private course.
11. Players should not assume a course is in shape for play at tall times. Some players may be embarrassed if they find the course to be temporarily under repair. Players are advised to be extremely tactful in this situation. More advanced players will find alternative means of play when this is the case.
12. The course owners is responsible for manicuring and pruning any bush around the hole to allow for improved viewing of alignment with, and approach to the hole.
13. Players are advised to obtain the course owners permission before attempting to play the back nine.
14. Slow play is encouraged. However, players should be prepared to proceed at a quicker pace, at least temporarily, at the course owners request.
15. It is considered outstanding performance, time permitting, to play the same hole several times in one match.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
We Had a Miscarriage
Ever since I was a teenager, I have looked forward to the day I would be a father myself. As a younger man, that desire had a lot to do with not repeating the same mistakes raising my own child(ren) that my father made. As I got older, it became more about passing on all the love I have to give, and the knowledge, experience, and wisdom I have gained in my 30 years (so far) on this planet...and of course, I'd still like to avoid the mistakes of past generations.
From a purely selfish perspective, I always wanted to wait a few years and enjoy my new marriage before having kids. However, Althea is a few years older than me, and is already a statistical outlier for a healthy pregnancy, so we had to start trying to get pregnant right after the wedding.
Given those desires, I was so happy when Althea told me she had a positive pregnancy test a couple of weeks ago. When we went to her OB/GYN appointment, the doctor told us her hormone levels were low and that she couldn't see much on the ultrasound, which was a cause for concern, so we made an appointment to come back in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, we never made that appointment. Over the weekend, Althea started to have bleeding and severe stomach cramps, neither of which are supposed to happen when a woman is pregnant. Althea has one of the highest tolerances for pain of anyone I have ever known, so I knew that it was time to go to the hospital when she was curled up in the fetal position in our bedroom and unable to move.
We called her OB/GYN doctor, and she was so great, helping us even though it was the weekend. She called ahead and cleared the way for Althea to be admitted to the hospital as soon as we got there. We got to the hospital, and Althea got some pain medicine, but the bleeding didn't stop. We stayed the night at the hospital, and Althea was discharged the next day. At her next OB/GYN appointment a couple of days later, the doctor confirmed what we already knew...Althea had a miscarriage. One the one hand, I am glad she wasn't farther along in the pregnancy (i.e., long enough to know the sex, pick out a name, see the baby's features, etc.). On the other hand, it doesn't make me (or us) any less sad. I'm not sure why this happened...the doctor says miscarriages often happen when there will be major problems that might injure, deform, or kill the baby-to-be. I prefer to think that maybe God just needed our baby up in heaven with Him and the angels more than we needed him or her down here.
Regardless of the reason, all we can do is grieve, pray, heal, and try again when the doctor says we can. In the meantime, we will give thanks to God for allowing us to contribute one more beautiful soul to heaven. Even if we didn't get to meet this child here in this life, we will get to meet him or her one day in heaven, and I can't wait.
From a purely selfish perspective, I always wanted to wait a few years and enjoy my new marriage before having kids. However, Althea is a few years older than me, and is already a statistical outlier for a healthy pregnancy, so we had to start trying to get pregnant right after the wedding.
Given those desires, I was so happy when Althea told me she had a positive pregnancy test a couple of weeks ago. When we went to her OB/GYN appointment, the doctor told us her hormone levels were low and that she couldn't see much on the ultrasound, which was a cause for concern, so we made an appointment to come back in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, we never made that appointment. Over the weekend, Althea started to have bleeding and severe stomach cramps, neither of which are supposed to happen when a woman is pregnant. Althea has one of the highest tolerances for pain of anyone I have ever known, so I knew that it was time to go to the hospital when she was curled up in the fetal position in our bedroom and unable to move.
We called her OB/GYN doctor, and she was so great, helping us even though it was the weekend. She called ahead and cleared the way for Althea to be admitted to the hospital as soon as we got there. We got to the hospital, and Althea got some pain medicine, but the bleeding didn't stop. We stayed the night at the hospital, and Althea was discharged the next day. At her next OB/GYN appointment a couple of days later, the doctor confirmed what we already knew...Althea had a miscarriage. One the one hand, I am glad she wasn't farther along in the pregnancy (i.e., long enough to know the sex, pick out a name, see the baby's features, etc.). On the other hand, it doesn't make me (or us) any less sad. I'm not sure why this happened...the doctor says miscarriages often happen when there will be major problems that might injure, deform, or kill the baby-to-be. I prefer to think that maybe God just needed our baby up in heaven with Him and the angels more than we needed him or her down here.
Regardless of the reason, all we can do is grieve, pray, heal, and try again when the doctor says we can. In the meantime, we will give thanks to God for allowing us to contribute one more beautiful soul to heaven. Even if we didn't get to meet this child here in this life, we will get to meet him or her one day in heaven, and I can't wait.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Letalvis Cobbins Found Guilty in Christian and Newsom Torture Slaying
I previously blogged about the gruesome torture, rape, and murder of Chris Newsom and Channon Christian, a young white Knoxville couple by 4 black men in a run down house in a rough part of town in Knoxville. The first defendant, Letalvis Cobbins, went on trial in a Knoxville court with a jury chosen from Nashville due to pretrial publicity. In terms of legal strategy, this was a smart move by Cobbins' lawyers, as Nashville is considerably more liberal than Knoxville.
Cobbins was found guilty of most of the crimes he was charged with and pled guilty to some other charges. Although he was eligible for the death penalty, the jury, for reasons known only to them and to God, gave him life without parole instead. I wrote to Michelle Malkin to update her on the case, and she was kind enough to publish my e-mail update on her blog. This is the second time I have made her blog, and while that's very cool, I sincerely wish the circumstances were different.
Accused ringleader Lemaricus Davidson goes on trial for his role in the slayings later this year, and I hope that jury doesn't repeat this one's disgrace. Hopefully they will give Davidson the death penalty he deserves and these kids and their families the justice they deserve.
Cobbins was found guilty of most of the crimes he was charged with and pled guilty to some other charges. Although he was eligible for the death penalty, the jury, for reasons known only to them and to God, gave him life without parole instead. I wrote to Michelle Malkin to update her on the case, and she was kind enough to publish my e-mail update on her blog. This is the second time I have made her blog, and while that's very cool, I sincerely wish the circumstances were different.
Accused ringleader Lemaricus Davidson goes on trial for his role in the slayings later this year, and I hope that jury doesn't repeat this one's disgrace. Hopefully they will give Davidson the death penalty he deserves and these kids and their families the justice they deserve.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Why Pro Athletes Should Never Marry
Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock waxes philosophic about why pro athletes should never marry, at least not in the prime of their careers at the peak of their earning capacity. Whitlock is talking about this topic in light of Steve McNair's recent murder, but as he astutely points out, it is bigger than that.
My take is that pro athletes and professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.), should hold off on marriage as long as possible. I always wanted to be married before I finished law school so I would know my wife wasn't with me just because I am a lawyer, but it wasn't meant to be. Strangely, although my occupation is a good conversation piece and is somewhat impressive to the ladies, it was never the basis of a relationship. Even now, my wife respects me because I am an attorney, but she would be happy with me no matter what I did as long as I was happy and could be a good provider. I waited until I was almost 30 to get married, and it was a wise thing to do. I would recommend it to pro football players, because that's when they usually start on the downside of their careers (except for elite quarterbacks, who can play into their late 30s or early 40s). Bottom line, if pro athletes who stand to make a fortune aren't married before they get rich, they should stay single until their playing days are over, or at a minimum, they should get the best lawyer they can find and have the woman sign the most ironclad prenuptial agreement possible.
Money quotes are below, check it out.
"Besides a strip club, massage parlor or whore house, I can't think of a work environment less supportive of a monogamous, healthy relationship than a men's locker room.
Strange Tang is the No. 1 topic of conversation inside a locker room. It's not steroids, the playbook or the next opponent. It's gossip about strip clubs, girls met in soon-to-be-visited cities on Facebook and Myspace and getting drunk.
Oh, you might occasionally overhear someone on the God Squad chitchatting about the next Bible study or the evils of the Internet porn they accidently looked at for 90 minutes. But mostly the locker room is a haven for unapologetic sinners. It's a place where you pick up a lot of bad habits.
A professional locker room is filled with in-shape, wealthy young men. They're carted around the country in private planes. They're at an age when they and their peers are supposed to do their hardest partying. They're members of an elite fraternity, and their membership in the fraternity can expire at any moment.
What would you do? More than likely, you'd go as hard as you could for as long as you could.At the very least, you'd occasionally dabble.
Why get married?
The athlete and the wife know it's a lie on their wedding day. He knows he's on a moving train and he can't jump off. She knows she jumped on that moving train and it never really slowed the whole time they were dating. It might've momentarily stopped, unloaded old passengers and re-boarded new ones, but she knows exactly where the train is headed and has a pretty good estimate on just how many miles are left on the trip.
The desperate hope is the marriage will survive until he retires and then the train will stop for good. That's the biggest pipe dream going. By the time the train stops, he absolutely loves the ride. He can't sleep without the steady hum of the tracks, the rocking of the compartment, the look and the smell of the new passengers.
He's a full-blown addict in desperate need of his next high when they retire his jersey. That's why he's hitting on teenagers working the drive-thru window at fast food joints. That's why he's proposing to 22-year-old strippers. He has a habit to feed.
If you're a millionaire athlete and you haven't made the mistake of impregnating half the women in your old neighborhood/college campus, why not hire someone to clean your house, prepare your home-cooked meals and date whomever you choose, whenever you choose? Get over your insecurity that you better lock her up while you're in the league because she might not want you when you get cut and she figures out the only money-producing skill you have is throwing a football, fielding a groundball or hitting a three off a screen.
There's a damn good chance she's just as insecure as you are and has less to offer. She'll wait. Or someone just like her will.
They say it's cheaper to keep her. The truth is, most athletes should never purchase anything. Just test drive. That way, the new car smell they love never goes away."
My take is that pro athletes and professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.), should hold off on marriage as long as possible. I always wanted to be married before I finished law school so I would know my wife wasn't with me just because I am a lawyer, but it wasn't meant to be. Strangely, although my occupation is a good conversation piece and is somewhat impressive to the ladies, it was never the basis of a relationship. Even now, my wife respects me because I am an attorney, but she would be happy with me no matter what I did as long as I was happy and could be a good provider. I waited until I was almost 30 to get married, and it was a wise thing to do. I would recommend it to pro football players, because that's when they usually start on the downside of their careers (except for elite quarterbacks, who can play into their late 30s or early 40s). Bottom line, if pro athletes who stand to make a fortune aren't married before they get rich, they should stay single until their playing days are over, or at a minimum, they should get the best lawyer they can find and have the woman sign the most ironclad prenuptial agreement possible.
Money quotes are below, check it out.
"Besides a strip club, massage parlor or whore house, I can't think of a work environment less supportive of a monogamous, healthy relationship than a men's locker room.
Strange Tang is the No. 1 topic of conversation inside a locker room. It's not steroids, the playbook or the next opponent. It's gossip about strip clubs, girls met in soon-to-be-visited cities on Facebook and Myspace and getting drunk.
Oh, you might occasionally overhear someone on the God Squad chitchatting about the next Bible study or the evils of the Internet porn they accidently looked at for 90 minutes. But mostly the locker room is a haven for unapologetic sinners. It's a place where you pick up a lot of bad habits.
A professional locker room is filled with in-shape, wealthy young men. They're carted around the country in private planes. They're at an age when they and their peers are supposed to do their hardest partying. They're members of an elite fraternity, and their membership in the fraternity can expire at any moment.
What would you do? More than likely, you'd go as hard as you could for as long as you could.At the very least, you'd occasionally dabble.
Why get married?
The athlete and the wife know it's a lie on their wedding day. He knows he's on a moving train and he can't jump off. She knows she jumped on that moving train and it never really slowed the whole time they were dating. It might've momentarily stopped, unloaded old passengers and re-boarded new ones, but she knows exactly where the train is headed and has a pretty good estimate on just how many miles are left on the trip.
The desperate hope is the marriage will survive until he retires and then the train will stop for good. That's the biggest pipe dream going. By the time the train stops, he absolutely loves the ride. He can't sleep without the steady hum of the tracks, the rocking of the compartment, the look and the smell of the new passengers.
He's a full-blown addict in desperate need of his next high when they retire his jersey. That's why he's hitting on teenagers working the drive-thru window at fast food joints. That's why he's proposing to 22-year-old strippers. He has a habit to feed.
If you're a millionaire athlete and you haven't made the mistake of impregnating half the women in your old neighborhood/college campus, why not hire someone to clean your house, prepare your home-cooked meals and date whomever you choose, whenever you choose? Get over your insecurity that you better lock her up while you're in the league because she might not want you when you get cut and she figures out the only money-producing skill you have is throwing a football, fielding a groundball or hitting a three off a screen.
There's a damn good chance she's just as insecure as you are and has less to offer. She'll wait. Or someone just like her will.
They say it's cheaper to keep her. The truth is, most athletes should never purchase anything. Just test drive. That way, the new car smell they love never goes away."
Monday, July 27, 2009
Great Article on Secret Service Agent Training
This Washington Post article details the rigors of Secret Service training for future agents. It sounds rough, but given the threats faced by America today and the extremely high number of people who would love nothing better than to murder an American president, this training is necessary. Read the whole thing.
"LESSON ONE: Get Ready To Die
The teacher walks into the mat room.
"Good morning, Mr. Mixon," the students say in unison.
"Cut that [expletive] out. Don't act like you give a crap about my morning."
Steve Mixon smiles, or maybe it's a snarl. Before he became an instructor at the Secret Service training camp outside Washington, Mixon served as a team leader on President George W. Bush's Counter Assault Team.
"Everyone's going to leave today in some degree of pain," Mixon tells the special agent trainees.
The 24 recruits, dressed in black combat pants and jackets, stiffen into four rows, jingling handcuffs. Scott Swantner clenches his jaw. Krista Bradford rubs raw knuckles. One trainee, who broke a rib, is keeping it a secret, fearing he'll be discharged.
"Everything is in play here, guys. Everything you learned from Day One," Mixon tells them in a basement that muffles rifle blasts. "Assailant control. Guillotine chokeholds."
For the members of Special Agent Training Class No. 283, this is finals time. They have been cramming here for months, since days after the election of Barack Obama, hoping to join the men and women charged with protecting the president. Not all of them will make it.
If they fail, they will leave humiliated. If they pass, they'll become members of an elite, stealthy service during a period of exceptional pressures. At their annual party, Ralph Basham, the former director, greeted his replacement: "I'm the happiest guy in Washington because I'm not the director of the Secret Service anymore."
With the rise of Islamic terrorism, the agency's roster of protectees has grown. With the election of the first African American president, public scrutiny has exploded. Presidents typically receive 3,000 threats a year, says a Secret Service expert. Obama is outpacing the average.
"We understand the historic significance," says the current director, Mark Sullivan. "If we make a mistake, it's going to be devastating for the country. We're not going to let the country down."
That promise depends in large part on what happens inside this 493-acre compound. Unmarked, behind barbed wire and hidden in the woods, the James J. Rowley Training Center sits so close to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway that its inhabitants -- in chemical weapons suits, suicide bomber vests or white robes while role-playing the pope -- can hear the commuter traffic's oblivious swish.
Obama's security detail drills here two weeks out of every eight. The vice president's detail, the first lady's, the agents who protect foreign dignitaries and former presidents, as well as the tactical units -- the counter snipers posted on the White House roof, and the Emergency Response Team, which stops incursions into the White House grounds--also drill here.
Overseeing them are instructors like Mixon, who wears a size 52 suit jacket, whose T-shirt says "Fighting Solves Everything," and whose 2-year-old son knows how to do a one-man takedown. This morning Mixon, 40, is testing control tactics, or ground-fighting.
Forty minutes into the wristlocks and head stuns, the trainees' necks burn with scratches. Dan Batt is supposed to disarm a classmate but accidentally knees him in the groin.
"Right in the junk!" Mixon laughs.
Dan wants to apologize for his clumsiness -- his infant daughter is teething and kept him up half the night -- but the men keep wrestling, too afraid to stop. A student in the class ahead of them flunked out the week before graduation for buckling during push-ups.
"Next!" Mixon calls.
Scott Swantner ten-huts, shoulders back, towering over the others. A former rifle platoon commander with the Marine Corps, Scott lost three fingers in Iraq. In Beltsville, he attended remedial control tactics with Krista Bradford every Friday before sunrise.
"Yes, sir!" Scott says cheerlessly. For the last scenario of their four-hour exam, the mat room becomes a heavy metal bar. Red and blue lights flash in the dark. The rock band Disturbed blares from speakers.
Their instructions: "Patty McGuire has made threats against POTUS [President of the United States] and you have an arrest warrant . . . An informant told you Patty is in the bar."
In pairs, the trainees open the door.
"Why don't you [expletive] off and die?" shrieks Disturbed. The instructors pounce with sticks and training knives. They slam the trainees into the wall. They rip at their hair. One trainee shatters his instructor's cheekbone. But another freezes, goes into "brain vapor-lock," as his partner is repeatedly shot.
Krista and her partner wait outside for their turn. "If they clench their fists," Krista strategizes, "I'll pull out my baton."
Krista is 4 feet 11 inches. She moves like a gymnast, nimbly, with concentrated grace. She has lively green eyes, fine features and a buoyant ponytail. She cheers Scott, Dan and the others between drills with Dove chocolates. A social worker, she also used to work at Disney World, dressing up as cartoon characters.
"She was Minnie Mouse, for God sakes," Mixon grumbles.
Within seconds of entering the mat-room bar, Krista's partner, an Army National Guardsman who earned a Bronze Star, is knocked to the ground. A role-player drags Krista across the floor by the cuff of her pants. He straddles Krista and punches her.
"Get off me!" Krista screams.
"Get ready to die!" the music screams.
"Keep fighting!" Mixon screams.
The role-player twists Krista's arms around her neck and pulls, choking her with her own hands. She gags. Her nose is bleeding. Her cheek is bleeding. Blood blisters on her legs, bruised by training bullets while chasing assassins through the woods, trickle and ooze.
On her back, in the dark, Krista watches the role-player's face swirl into darker shades of gray. She is losing consciousness. Mixon yells, "Do something!"
In the Secret Service, the saying goes, "You never quit. You always win. Everything else is negotiable."
Krista lifts her head an inch, level with her assailant's hand. She opens her mouth.
"Here it comes! Get ready to die!" the music screams.
Krista grinds her teeth into the meat of his palm. He releases her, and Krista and her partner stagger out of the room. Their final exam is over. A drop of sweat dangles from the tip of her partner's nose. He looks at Krista, gasping:
"Did we pass?"
LESSON TWO (Nine Months Earlier): Do Whatever It Takes
Business was slow at the Sherwin-Williams paint store. Dan Batt, a sales associate, sat cataloguing colors: Salute red, Nantucket Dune.
Dan is 24, the second-oldest of nine home-schooled children, a quiet man with sloping shoulders, fair skin and pure black hair. He has a face that often gets skipped over in a crowd, a modest chin and nice-boy eyes.
Dan smiled mildly as a teenager tramped into the store.
"But I want it, Dad!" A blast of cold Buffalo air blew in with the girl and her father.
She wanted to paint her bedroom Lime Rickey green. It was, Dan thought, a hideous color.
"This is a very, uh, fun color," Dan later recalled saying.
Dan always deferred to the customer. His wife was seven months pregnant, and they needed the paycheck.
"Yes, he said to everyone. "Yes, yes, yes."
No, this wasn't the career he'd wanted. His mother, who read her Bible, had taught him about good and bad, and he dreamed -- never mind that he is shy -- of fighting for good. When Dan's cellphone rang later at the store, "Restricted Number," he felt something lurch inside his chest. Maybe his wife was having early contractions. Or maybe, improbably, it was the other call, the one that meant Dan had mixed his last Lime Rickey.
Twelve hundred miles to the south in New Orleans, Krista Bradford, 32, was driving her car. She almost didn't answer when her call came. Krista had just assessed a 4-year-old autistic girl. She told the girl's mother to buy crayons and blocks, she later recalled. As a social worker, Krista was tired of rappelling into lives after they'd crumbled. She wanted to try something preemptive, such as law enforcement. Krista herself had experienced the limits of social services. She was given up at birth in an adoption that failed, and later moved into an adolescent group house where she reached for a serving bowl and was stabbed in the hand with a fork.
"I'll be a good protector," Krista believed. "I know how important it is to be protected."
The application process took nine months, complicated by a background check that tracked three different childhood last names, and a job history that included dressing up as Jiminy Cricket and Dopey.
Eventually one afternoon, her cellphone flashed: "Withheld." "Hello?" Krista said, thinking: I'll do whatever it takes.
Four states away, in an Oakland, Calif., shipyard, Scott Swantner, 30, watched a freighter offload a container. An Iraq war veteran, he was two weeks into a job at the Pacific Maritime Association. He had the air of a man whose penalty kick had clunked off a goal post. Earlier in the year, Scott had spent a month filling out the 34-page Secret Service application. He had flown from his Berlin Marine post to California to renew his driver's license, which had been shredded in Nasiriyah by a rocket-propelled grenade. He had passed the written test, the drug test, the vision test, the hearing test, the initial interview, the panel interview, the home interview, and the "worst experience of my life," the polygraph, which elicited every foible and shame. Tall and broad, Scott had played right guard for the Naval Academy football team. He has thick, brown hair, buzz cut for the military. His features project success. Scott's father, a termite inspector, constantly told his winning boy, "Don't screw up."
Yet, somehow Scott had. He had fallen short on the Secret Service's physical exam, he guessed, "because of my hand." As a Marine, Scott had hoped to emulate his grandfather's World War II service in the Pacific. Instead, in Iraq, Scott lost two soldiers in his platoon -- "You feel you let them down. It'll always stick with you" -- and, later, part of his left hand. Things that had come easily for Scott were now doubted. Secret Service screeners questioned Scott's commander: "He says he can physically do this, but can he?" Can he still shoot? Eventually, Scott was told they had found a better-qualified applicant. Scott took the shipyard job. He was talking to a longshoreman when his cellphone beeped: "Unknown."
The voice sounded friendly. "Hey, it's Charlie White." From the San Francisco Field Office. "We want to offer you -- " The Secret Service had never accepted anyone with his disability before but had reconsidered. They were going to give Scott a try.
The acceptance calls rang out in 24 corners of the country. In Plant City, Fla., a YMCA director felt his phone vibrate during a board meeting debating zumba dance classes. In Tulsa, a police officer exhausted from jumping fences while chasing drug dealers till 2 a.m. snapped open his phone. In Baltimore, a Home Depot manager folded his orange apron then and there in Hardwood Flooring.
Their family and friends sometimes found the news confusing: "So you're going to be a spy?" "Do you change your name?" "Will the president talk to you directly through that plastic thing in your ear?"
The new recruits -- 21 men and three women, 25 to 32 years old -- assembled in Glynco, Ga., for 12 weeks of basic federal law-enforcement training. Then they moved to a Residence Inn in Maryland. They unpacked creatine bodybuilding powder and Aveda Comforting Tea, boxing DVDs and voodoo dolls. On their first morning, the recruits ride in government vans to the classified complex. A guard in a booth raises the gate. They cross over, into a mission called for by Congress following the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley. They are admitted onto the grounds and into the secrets of the Service.
"We train unlike any other federal agency," says A.T. Smith, an assistant director, who stands by while the trainees stencil their names on their T-shirts. "We train to the edge, and then we lean over." The center's drills are increasingly scenario-based, says Smith, who had served as Hillary Clinton's detail leader. "For years, our training was based on the lone gunman and the long-range rifle. Now it's automatic weapons, multiple explosions as a diversion to a secondary attack." An intelligence PowerPoint presentation on "The Emerging Threat" flashes from the old-style assassin, Squeaky Fromme, to chanting Islamic fanatics. Threat experts have created a new Obama-era prototype, a white supremacist who calls Obama "a mud person" and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, a Jew, "the Antichrist."
New hazards have prompted a new emphasis in training -- a kind of extreme, lethal improv -- using scenarios that are dynamic and demand responses that run counter to typical human behavior. Smith says, "Our goal is to make it instinct." To alter reflexes, to rewire the "muscle memory" of recruits, they built 37 buildings, including fake colonial-style houses and a mock airport. Facades line the main street: a cafe, a tattoo parlor and a hardware store.
"It's like a small town," Smith explains.
Except that all day and many nights, explosions rock presidential candidates at the pizzeria. The dogs, on command, break from their leashes and maul shrieking men. Gunmen fire from the All Saints Church at the president's wife. Marine One, the president's helicopter, crashes in the swimming pool, and fleeing black Suburbans climb the curbs at 45 mph. Behind every mailbox, lamppost and flowering bush, a killer possibly squats, racking his AK, or, he might spray a vial of sarin.
Smith smiles: "I never said it was a nice town. I said it was a small town."
LESSON THREE: Be Obsessive-Compulsive
"Your head's going to spin and you feel like you're going to throw up," says Mixon. "Don't do it in my mat room."
This is Mixon's welcome speech to SATC No. 283 on its first day. "Sometimes trainees pass out in the bathroom, so develop a buddy system among yourselves."
Krista finds a buddy -- the other woman who can't do a pull-up. Dan's buddy is the Tulsa cop who classmates swear can bench-press a Honda. Scott scans the room with the dark-browed scowl of an American eagle, privately amazed that he is even here.
Mixon distributes their "Use of Force" chart, which graphs the amount of force to use on a subject, depending on their level of menace. The trainees' eyes widen at its complexity.
"Details! Think details!" Mixon says. He walks around the room, his chest forward, like a piece of earth-moving equipment. "What is your job? The man in the most powerful office in the world -- you're standing next to him with a loaded gun." Success, Mixon says, rests on attention to detail.
"Use the force necessary. You can hit them with your car, stab them with a big pin," Mixon says. "We in the Secret Service are super Type-A personalities, people who want to take control and win at all costs." But within legal limits, Mixon warns. "Don't get that little extra shot in there, that extra revenge...I want to make sure if I'm going through a door with you, that I can trust you. If not, I'm not going to let you take that walk on graduation day."
All day, instructors say, Do sweat the details:
"I expect neat hair! No goatees!"
"If you wore boxer shorts, it's the last day you do!"
"Cut off [alcoholic] drinking eight hours prior to range practice!"
"You know the old joke: We're just one assassination away from wearing the FBI badge!"
The recruits recite a list of rules. Dan reads No. 16 out loud, "No sleeping in class." He stifles a new-father yawn. Dan is the only recruit who moved his family to Beltsville. He wedged a Pack 'n Play next to the bed. He bought his 4-month-old a pink Secret Service onesie. He keeps uniforms in the bathroom, so he doesn't wake his wife and infant when he dresses at dawn. At the end of the nine-hour hazing, the students stand, soaked and mute. A former IRS employee nods toward a sweat splash on the mat: "That's me and Scott, right about there."
The Home Depot manager stamps his foot. "One day down."
Krista exhales. "Four days and 15 weeks to go."
Krista is counting down to graduation on a hand-drawn chart, penciling an "X" when she wakes up every morning. She tallies Mixon's sessions with a dash that she crosses when completed. Holidays are coded in orange marker. She jokingly calls it her "calendar of what to dread." Her meticulousness is actually the sign of a good agent. "You got to have a little OCD [obsessive-compulsive disorder] to have this job," says the firearms coordinator. "You worry about every little thing. That's what we do. That's who we are."
Why? The firearms instructor explains: "A bad guy's attacking POTUS, you fire and you miss. Who you gonna hit? POTUS!" Trainees have to score 80 percent in marksmanship. They spend months learning how to shoot and assemble their Sig Sauer P229 pistols, MP5 9mm submachine guns, Remington 12-gauge shotguns. Krista buys a finger-exerciser to build trigger muscles. She and the others will fire about a thousand rounds at practice targets such as the vacant-eyed white man with glasses and thinning hair, lifting his pistol. They aim for "center mass," the heart. No warning shots.
"What should be the first thing on your belt?" an instructor asks.
"Spare magazine?" Dan says.
"Right. I've seen people load pagers and cellphones. They don't go bang when you pull the trigger." The students struggle to memorize details that parse life and death. During barricade-shooting, a technician chastens Dan: "Don't expose your leg. You get hit in the fibular artery, you're dead in seconds." Though, if hit, you are still expected to fight: "You have 10 seconds where you can keep fighting." They call it "the dead man's 10 seconds." The one Secret Service employee who died in the line of duty shot the would-be assassin after he'd been mortally wounded. "He fired back. He didn't give up."
"Do not use starch or bleach on the ballistic panels," a teacher says, laundry tips for their sweaty bulletproof vests. "And if you're at the White House and hear shooting, hit the deck -- the vest does not stop ERT [Emergency Response Team] bullets."
During their sixth week, students take an emergency medicine course: "So you're standing post on the golf course, and someone gets struck by lightning ... " They learn how to treat a head of state who's been eviscerated: "Some of you with military backgrounds were taught to urinate on the intestines to keep them warm. That is not Secret Service protocol." And how to deliver a baby while standing post (happened twice last year): "I don't want to hear about you using your shoelaces or anything nasty to tie the cord. Do not let the woman go to the bathroom, or Junior is going to be bungee jumping into the toilet."
Krista memorizes her flashcards and aces the medical exam.
The "details! details!" theme follows them into a surveillance course, where trainees trail each other around Maryland malls. "Act normal," the teacher says, Rule No. 5. "If you're halfway through your low-fat blueberry muffin -- that's not really low-fat -- finish it. Otherwise, it looks suspicious. If you and your partner are friends, act like friends! And do not make out in surveillance -- it's happened."
During the rescue swimming unit, the instructor specifies, "Talk to the flailing victim. Now, there is an exception: If Mr. Obama falls overboard, do you say, 'Mr. Obama, kick your feet! Move your legs!' No. Get in the water." The deadliest details emerge during WMD training. Much of it is classified, involving untraceable toxins that could kill the president in his hotel suite while he is showering or clipping his toenails.
"There is an unbelievable amount of unaccounted-for chemical weapons," says the WMD specialist. "And when it turns up, it better not be on your advance. But if it does, this class is going to help."
The students learn how to adjust their gas masks after they've clapped on the president's, whose straps are custom-sewn for a tight seal. They inhale caustic fumes in a gas chamber, discovering their initial symptoms -- Scott's throat itches, Dan's eyes blaze, Krista's lips sting -- to recognize a gas attack.
WMD attacks could come at any time, the instructor says in class: "You're on an advance team in Ohio, and you eat at the Golden Corral salad bar." An assassin squirts SEB toxin from a rubber ball in his sleeve onto the chopped lettuce. The entire team gets sick.
"The president is due in minutes, and you're in bed, projectile vomiting to knock the clock off the wall. Every orifice in your body is going to be exuding liquid, like doing back-to-back advances in Cairo."
The trainees stare, glassy-eyed. It is 4:30 p.m., break time.
"Okay, folks," says the WMD specialist. The students are saturated in detail, in every blood, blister, nerve, bacterial and viral agent that will clot, choke and putrefy their bodily organs.
The teacher smiles sweetly as the students shuffle toward the candy machines. "You guys have a nice day!"
LESSON FOUR: Keep Moving
The control tactics coordinator addresses Scott as "the delicate one."
Scott is huge and meat-freezer hard, aside from his injured hand.
The coordinator says, "Are we sadists? No. We find and exploit any weakness in all trainees. It's stress inoculation."
"They're terrified, that's our preferred mode," says Mixon. (When the trainees aren't looking, he coos over pictures of his toddler nuzzling cherry blossoms.)
On this sunny afternoon on the race-car pad, the students' source of terror is a tactical driving test. The armored vehicles, many from President George H.W. Bush's old fleet, roll out of a garage, "the inner sanctum."
An instructor who chauffeured George W. Bush cautions, "I hit a bump in Denver and hit Bush's head on the ceiling. He asked me when was the last time I had a drug test. Try to avoid that."
Krista slides into the driver's seat, "Anyone want a paper bag?" Her feet strain to reach the pedals.
"Don't forget to lock the back doors. Nothing more embarrassing than the president busting your chops because you forgot to lock the door," an instructor says. Then he shares one of the Service's biggest secrets -- where they hide the presidential spare keys.
"All right, Scott Swantner's up," says the evaluator, Tipper Gore's former driver, his voice drawling over the police radio. Scott shifts vehicle No. 5 into gear, facing a slalom course of orange traffic cones.
The blacktop -- 1,800 feet long, 300 feet wide -- is streaked with truck-tire marks from the Humvee-heavy limousines. One instructor executes a J-turn, performed when a driver can't ram a roadblock. He zooms backward and whips the wheel, spinning the limousine a screeching reverse 180 degrees. The air is pungent with gas and smoking rubber.
"The track's clear. Turn on your lights and sirens," the evaluator says to Scott.
Scott must complete two runs, no fishtailing or skidding outside the lines. For Scott this is a natural. He thrives inside lines: lays out his uniform just so each night, cooks one low-sodium recipe on Saturday and eats leftovers every evening.
"Ready, set, bang!"
Scott weaves through the orange cones. "Run the course hard, as if you're taking the protectee to a hospital," the evaluator had told them.
Recently here, Obama's security detail had practiced assaults on a motorcade parade. A mock Obama, first lady and two daughters strolled, waving to cheering crowds. Suddenly, over the trees, mortars crashed. Fanatics in pickup trucks thundered out, crippling "the Beast," the president's limousine. Counter snipers in a tower fired back. The Counter Assault Team stampeded. The first family was bundled into the spare limousine, "the Tomb," and sped out of the kill zone. Scott's class had also practiced "pushing out" of the kill zone. The maneuver: Drive a Suburban into the president's rear fender, pushing his disabled limousine.
"If you're 'pushing out' on a $3 million car, you're not out of gas," the instructor said. "You're in the woods, you're taking rounds, the limo's dead. What do you do?"
"Push it out," Scott said.
"Want to know what we do, in two words?" the instructor said. "Keep moving."
Motorcade attacks average 45 seconds, he said. "Get out of the kill zone. If Iraq has taught us one thing -- you cannot stop."
In Musayyib, Iraq, Scott's Marines kept him moving the night a Russian-made fuse tore off part of his hand. Scott was clearing houses. A group of frightened girls showed him grenade fuses inside an old helmet. "I'm taking these," Scott said, reaching down. Then, he recalled, "I heard a pop. The guys I was with wouldn't let me look down." But they kept Scott moving. It took 15 minutes to walk to their patrol. Scott was in shock, dripping blood, but somehow he moved his feet.
Privately Scott blames himself: "I should have known." But he jokes with friends, "Give me seven!" He tells himself, "Got to move on." And though doubtful, Scott keeps moving.
On the driving pad, the evaluator scratches his head. "I don't see any problems with this class," he mumbles, and he adds their test numbers again. "Scott might be the weakest." Scott scored 68, missing the 70-point minimum.
The evaluator announces: "I need Car 5 to stay here. Which is Scott Swantner?"
Scott bites his lip. He calls the feeling "black hole," a place where a voice warns of disappointment. "It's my voice," Scott says later, "It says, 'Don't fail.' With a little crowd of people agreeing -- my family and guys I served with in Iraq. I don't want to let people down."
The evaluator notes, "could be his fingers, driving with your thumb and index finger." On the range, it was the same. When Scott jerked the trigger, the instructor shook his head: "He doesn't have much there to hold on to the gun." The rest of the class rumbles off the pad. The evaluator tells Scott, "We got to run through this again, get you up to snuff."
"Yes, sir."
Overhead, gray clouds crowd out the sun. Raindrops pit Scott's windshield. Two days later, Scott joins the others outside the mat room for their control tactics midterm. One role-playing instructor moans, "I got killed 24 times today. This is embarrassing."
Mixon is giving the test, pretending to be a member of the president's political staff. Mixon the political aide races over to Scott on tippy-toes, his eyes wild, his voice high:
"Oh, my God! You gotta help me! This guy is in there, and the president's going to be here in, like, 10 minutes! I told the guy to leave and he told me to go [expletive] myself! Make him leave! He scares me!!"
Scott stalks off to investigate.
Mixon the staffer smiles, "Thanks! I'm going to go get a latte."
After each student fights the assailant, he or she is directed to a small, dark room. Except for Scott, who is told to wait in the stairwell.
"I don't like being separated like this," he says.
Out on the driving pad, in fact, the driving evaluator had made a math mistake. Scott had qualified, first try.
"This has been the longest week," Scott sighs in the stairwell. He begins to pace. It is part of him now, a survival instinct.Two words: keep moving.
LESSON FIVE: Be a Meat Shield
Dan's wife is kicking him. Third or fourth time tonight. The baby is whimpering, and Dan is sleeping through it, even though he lies closer to her crib. Dan pops in her pacifier, he later recalls, amazed by how quickly his wife wakes up. It's as if she possesses a different set of senses.
In the morning, at the center, Dan huddles in the fake lobby of a fake hotel with Krista and the Tulsa cop. On the mezzanine above them, Bill Clinton's current detail skulks along the railings, poking submachine guns around corners, practicing clearing halls.
The mandatory three-mile runs are giving Dan painful shin splints. "You still got five weeks, man," the Tulsa cop tells Dan. "You don't want to get stress fractures."
But Dan is afraid he'll be dismissed if he doesn't run. And besides, he's a guy who says yes: at the paint store to Lime Rickey, and at a recent baton drill to battling three of his biggest classmates -- a sky diver, a self-described Cro-Magnon and Scott -- all at once. Afterward, Dan tottered away in a cold sweat, as dizzy as he'd been when he fainted as an 8-year-old altar boy. "Dude, you're white. You need to get checked out," said the Tulsa cop, lugging Dan off to the emergency medical services office down the hall.
Dan's gentle nature is a problem, and it worries him. "My whole life I'm always right in the middle," he once said. He may be the most agreeable recruit, but Dan won't make it as an agent if his response is always affirmative.
On this morning, at the fake hotel, Mixon ambles over to the students and cracks his neck. He's here to teach them how the Secret Service says no.
"We'll start with basic stuff. Attacks on the rope line, lapel grabs, overzealous handshakes. "
During the George W. Bush years, an instructor says, Bush always told them if he was planning to shake hands. "We're not in that environment now. We're in a Clintonesque environment, you have to deal with spontaneous rope lines."
Mixon says: "You may say, why do I need to know this?" because new agents don't work on the president's security detail. They investigate crimes and work advance or security posts. "But my first post-standing was in Brownsville, for President Clinton. I was standing there in my new J.C. Penney suit, and Clinton dives into the crowd. The shift leader grabs me by the back of my belt loops and made me help. You could be working rope lines in a matter of weeks."
Dan watches Mixon demonstrate releasing a fan's handshake. He peels back the fan's thumb with so much force, it makes a popping sound.
"If he's still jaw-jacking, saying to the protectee, 'We need to save the three-legged mosquito!' and the protectee's giving you that 'Oh, [expletive]' look, you'll peel him off," Mixon says. "The press is always around, and he's just a knucklehead, not necessarily a threat, so -- " Mixon cuts to the Tulsa cop. "You can't punch him in the face."
During a break, Dan calls Amanda. She's busy changing the baby. They met when he was 11 and she was 9. They still speak to each other with a childhood sweetness.
When the trainees reassemble, Mixon initiates them into the most sacred rite of protection:
"If there's an attack, get as big as you can to protect him. Make a nice meat shield between the protectee and the problem." It takes a few beats to understand "meat shield."
"And where's the shielding for the protectee?" Mixon says.
The students blink. "The shift leader?" "The limousine?"
"No," Mixon says. "Point to yourself. You are the shielding for the protectee."
Scott taps his foot. Dan and Krista exchange glances.
"Your job is to get big. Get your lats out wide. We are now a meat shield. A sandwich: Kevlar, your body, another layer of Kevlar -- covering the protectee."
For the U.N. General Assembly, Mixon says, "you'll be working foreign protectees, Sultan Abu Bin Abu Babab. In an attack, get the protectee's head down, cover vital organs. If he falls, pick him up. You may have to think for them -- 'move, move, move' -- they may be literally pooping themselves."
"Do the protectees know what our responses are going to be?" says Krista.
"The president, yes. But the first lady of Iceland, no. On 9/11, two agents snatched Cheney out of his desk, and his feet never touched the ground till he was out of danger."
For weeks, the class practices shift formations, as if working a security detail. A pudgy politician makes speeches: "Keep paying your taxes! We need the money!" Dan, Krista and Scott shadow him out of boardrooms, into ballrooms and onto a Boeing 707 replica of Air Force One. They encounter actors and role-playing agents as innocuous as a flirty redhead and as deadly as a bald man wielding a syringe of Ebola.
Mixon critiques them: "You guys made a nice meat shield," he says to Krista. When shots rang out, Krista cupped the candidate's body with her own, his greasy hair sliding over her throat. "Excellent job controlling him. Bradford got as big as she's ever gotten in her life. Mighty Midget came to the rescue."
To Scott, who repelled an autograph seeker, Mixon says, "Too much aggression. You were on him like a spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew."
"I'll turn it down, sir," says Scott. He's adjusting to post-Iraq rules of engagement.
And Mixon scolds Dan, who saw a man throw a bottle. "Apparently, you can throw a bottle at the president and nothing happens. Don't wait for someone to hit you. You can hit him back first."
But Mixon levels his biggest criticism at the entire class. "Everyone took steps backwards when the shooting started." He glares at a former police officer.
"I'm used to going down on a knee," the former cop pleads. It's a reflex, basic officer safety.
"Well, resist. Now you're working protection. You need to be the shield."
Students remove their earplugs and safety glasses, dazed, looking existentially perplexed. An instructor who had protected Bush shrugs:
"That's the premise of protective training -- to override human nature."
In the evening, Dan drives back to the Residence Inn, to human nature as it seems intended. He locks his training gun and bathes the baby. She eats potato puffs in her high chair and laughs at her dad on the floor doing push-ups.
Dan's wife, Amanda, a luminescent brunette, cooks them tuna casserole and tries not to think about his work. "It's hard for me to visualize," she says.
The baby is sitting on Amanda's lap, gnawing a teething ring. Dan is mulling Mixon's lesson, which he's not yet internalized.
But the words "meat shield" spark recognition in Amanda's soft eyes. When she was pregnant in Buffalo, "I slipped and fell on the ice. As I was going down, I was thinking, 'Don't fall to hurt the baby. Don't fall on your stomach.' I didn't care if I broke an arm, I had to protect the baby."
Amanda sprained her wrist. She used her body as a shield.
Dan turns to his wife, nodding, as if the tumblers in his head were finally grinding in the right combination. Click: meat shield.
"It's the instinct, the mother instinct," Dan says. "When the cubs are in danger, the mother bear gets big, as Mr. Mixon says."
Being a Secret Service agent might be a stoic, macho job. It is also a little bit like being pregnant with the president.
LESSON SIX: Stand Your Ground
"Let's see -- gun, lip gloss," Krista says. It is 5:30 a.m. at the Residence Inn.
Dan texts Krista, "R U driving in this morn?"
Yes, but Krista has to drive in early for remedial submachine gun. She qualified on the MP5, but her supervisor said she needs practice. He also assigned her to remedial physical fitness, though her scores are on par with the Tulsa cop's. Krista jokes to Dan and Scott that she has remedial lunch and remedial breathing. She plays the song by Pink: "So What?" She never lets the guys see her tear up. She averages 96.5 percent on her written exams. In the bathroom, a green smear of Biore Pore Perfect mask dabs the pull-up bar Krista installed for practice. Last night, she hit her cheek while cranking out four pull-ups. Enough for her to pass.
"Don't be defined by other people's limited perceptions!" says the Post-it on her bathroom mirror.
Her instructors may see a perky, size-2 woman dispensing ibuprofen and Alka Seltzer to classmates who are beat--up or hung-over. They may see that she is only one of two recruits who'd never used a weapon or been in a fight before.
But what they don't know, Krista says, is that she'll do "whatever it takes." Tumbling as a child from failed adoptions to foster homes, with no sense of where her mother was, she used to write letters, "Dear Mrs. X, Today I graduated from high school . . ." She felt like she'd been "born in midair." Now she is determined to embrace an identity that is defined by standing your ground. Standing one's ground -- standing post -- is the recruits' next lesson. First, a classroom lecture:
"No playing BrickBreaker."
"No hands in pockets." Hands should be up and ready; as Mixon puts it, "New York, Italian."
"In Muslim countries, no pounding a balled fist into a palm. It's like the middle finger."
"If you have to go to the bathroom, suck it up. Don't drink water. You can always get an IV after your shift."
Then, the students are tested in the tactical village. Krista and Mr. Home Depot stand outside a bookstore, where a candidate is signing books. Across the street, men squeal up and rob a bank. Some of the other recruits had chased the robbers.
"It may be a diversion, a favorite tactic of Tommy Taliban and his al-Qaeda friends," Mixon says. Never abandon your guard post, Mixon says, even if someone faints: "Make sure he's not doing the funky chicken with foam coming out of his mouth, it could be a nerve gas attack. Otherwise, it's not your problem."
A role-player nicknamed "the horse" tries to push into the bookstore. Other trainees didn't notice him, but Krista, weighing 105 pounds, blocks him with her flattened palm. A drunk rolls out of the bar next door, distracting Mr. Home Depot. Another man lopes up, wearing a suicide bomber vest.
"Bomb!!!!" Krista yells, shooting the suicide bomber. Mixon had taught them to shout so loudly, "dope dealers two blocks away should be flushing toilets."
Afterward, Mr. Home Depot says, "Can't believe I didn't see the guy with the freakin' bomb." Home Depot has such good aim on the range, he routinely rubs Krista's trigger finger with his, to transfer his magic.
"You had tunnel vision," the evaluator says to him, and turns to Krista, "Even with the horse in front of you, you saw. I watched your eyes. I'm impressed. You a former cop, ma'am?"
Krista braces for his smirk, "I'm a former social worker, sir."
"No. You're a protection agent now."
But not until Krista passes control tactics, which she fails along with four other trainees. "You've got to find that inner bitch," the coordinator says, "the thing that pisses you off, and use it."
Two weeks before graduation, the five retest. The scenario: standing post; bad guys pounce. When it's over, they can barely speak, panting:
"You do okay?"
"Who knows."
"No one knows."
"Did he shoot you?"
"I think he did."
Everyone passes except for Krista. When Mixon tells her on the spot, all her breath leaves her body.
"I know I can do it," she says, her lips pale. "I'm going to graduate." She is mottled with so many blood blisters from training bullets, a massage therapist pulled her aside to ask about an abusive relationship. After she leaves, Mixon explains that Krista didn't "demonstrate the warrior spirit." Like Krista, Mixon grew up without a mother. Her heart gave out when he was 2. No one tucked him in at night, and he realized, as Krista did at an early age, that he would have to make his own way.
One spring evening in 1981, as a "poor, badass kid" in Kentucky, Mixon watched the news on his black-and-white TV. He saw a man in a gray suit jump up, as if he were impenetrable, and block a .22--caliber bullet meant for President Ronald Reagan. Right then, Mixon decided he wanted to be that hard man. He still keeps the old TV in his garage. Now that he has a 2-year-old, he tells the boy when he trips and cries, in a voice blunted with gruff love: "Shake it off."
As a social worker, Krista's slogan is: "positive reinforcement."
As an agent, Mixon's slogan is: "Americans sleep well in their beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm them!"
"We can't pass her cause we think she's a nice girl," Mixon says.
Over the next week, Krista sticks with her class. They dress in business suits and visit the intelligence division at headquarters, inside a vault. They see pictures of 50 "class 3" subjects who, if given a chance, would attack the president, including one grizzled white man, "whereabouts unknown, last seen in Tennessee." A class 3 must be supervised if the president visits his district. "Be creative," an instructor had advised. "Some agents take them out for ice cream, take them bowling, make sure he's on his medication. In L.A., we took class 3s to the movies when the president was in town."
They peer into the 24-hour duty desk, a glass-enclosed room resembling a flight- tracking center. The names of 37 protectees light up the wall, along with their call signs and locations. The Obama girls are at Camp David; Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are in Walnut Mountain, Ga. The next day, the review board convenes and decides to give Krista one more try.
"My whole future depends on tomorrow, and when I pass, Jess," her pull-up buddy, "and I are going to go get eyelash extensions," Krista jokes. The anxiety has whittled her weight so sharply, she's using a safety pin to hold up her pants.
"If I had to go through the extra training and the adversity you faced," Dan tells her, "I don't know how I could get up in the morning."
Her mother helps. "Short people rule!" reads a card from Krista's birth mother, whom Krista eventually tracked down. When Krista first called, her mother gulped: "I've been waiting for this call for 19 years." Five months after Krista was born, her mother married her father. They had three more kids.
Her classmates also help. The entire SATC No. 283 turns out in the chilly predawn for Krista's test. "She's like the group mom," says one guy, twice her size. Krista had ordered shoulder holsters for them all. But in the end it is Krista alone, one week before graduation, walking barefoot past her friends into the mat room. Most of the guys hang back. Scott walks up to the closed door and presses against it, listening:
Krista is standing post. Two trainers jump her. She uses her gun and baton to beat them back. Then the evaluator says, "All right, now we're overseas and you're not allowed to carry a weapon." Krista must overcome them, unarmed.
"Get on the ground!" Krista screams. "Police! Stop fighting!" There's pleading in her screams. The guys in the hall are squirming, looking down at their boots.
"Stop! Stop! Aaaagh!" Krista's screams are wild, and after a minute the sounds grow guttural. "Aaaagh! Yaaagh!" Scott's forehead furrows. Goose bumps rise on the arms of a New Orleans cop who once heard the transmission of an officer friend being executed by thugs. He wants to break into the mat room. His eyes fill with tears: "It's what a radio sounds like when a cop is dying."
LESSON SEVEN: Get A Will
The firearms instructor clicks on a PowerPoint slide: a picture of a toilet.
"You're in the hopper; where's the safest place to put your weapon?"
"On the toilet paper holder?"
"No, you get lead all over the toilet paper and then . . . you see? Put the gun between your feet. Which stall do you use?"
No one tries to answer.
"The stall next to the wall. You don't want someone reaching to grab your gun. Call ahead for reservations."
Thus concludes the last Secret Service class, one day before graduation. The previous lecturer told them about alcohol counseling. Four employees had DUI arrests in the past year. She also said: "Get a will."
"Good riddance!" Dan says, tossing a bag of combat training pants into the center's laundry cart. His voice has hardened, as has his body, as has his attitude. Dan turns people down now. And when the shooting started during their final exercises, Dan became a meat shield -- "I didn't even think,it was instinct" -- repudiating a gunman's bullet with a full-bodied no.
That night, Dan and Amanda sleep peacefully. The baby's front teeth have finally cut through her gums. In the morning, at commencement, Dan mills around backstage at the fake hotel.
Everyone is there except for Krista. She was released from training for failing control tactics. She hung on until the last hour, doing advance work for a candidate at a nature preserve, tramping through goose droppings in the rain, until the training director summoned her to his office. Krista's classmates were stricken. When Scott walked past the mat room, he avoided Mixon's eyes, hunching over his new government-issued BlackBerry.
Mixon said, "I feel like I failed. I've given my all; she's given her all. In good conscience though, I would be attending her funeral next week."
Krista is back home in New Orleans now, running along the bayou, pushing the mandatory three-mile run to five, six, seven. She thinks she should have passed. "The only rule in fighting is to never quit. I never stopped fighting." She appealed the decision and is waiting to hear from headquarters. She says she'll do whatever it takes to become an agent.
Backstage, at the center's fake hotel, an instructor says: "One minute to showtime!"
"I need some Visine," says a recruit. "I drank too much last night."
They all line up: the chubbiest recruit, who lost 85 pounds to enlist; the homesick recruit, who never unpacked his suitcase; the grittiest recruit, who agonized in silence over his detached rib. Each had beat his weakness. Scott glances around, the doubt for once lifting from his dark brows. On their last day of training, Scott walked onto the outdoor range and plugged 24 out of 30 shots into the heart of a silhouette -- a class record, and a refutation of the claim that a seven-fingered man can't shoot.
Out in the audience, in the front row, Scott's father is beaming, holding two cameras in case one malfunctions. He flew in from California, a giant man, who says, "God help the person who comes up against Scott." And then all at once, he turns red, and lifts a thick thumb to wipe away his tears: "When we got that call at 3 a.m. from Iraq, it was very, very tough ... "
Mixon takes a seat in the back, behind the families watching the ceremony.
There is the speech: "You have completed 28 weeks of the most intensive training of any law enforcement agency in the world."
And the oath of office: "I do solemnly swear . . . so help me God."
Mixon leans forward, rubbing scarred knuckles, his gaze alighting on his pupils' open faces, his own expression different from that of the glowing parents, more knowing, a trace sad.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the special agents of Class 283!" Applause.
Mixon wanders into the crowd to say goodbye. The Tulsa cop's father exclaims, "I'm the happiest duck in the pond!"
"You got your badge!" Scott's father gushes. "You want me to hold it?"
Mixon pushes past a row of chairs to offer Scott his hand: "Congratulations."
"Yes, sir."
"Hey, cut this 'sir' [expletive] out."
Scott meets Mixon's eyes.
Mixon pulls back for a moment and then opens his arms, wrapping Scott in a hug. In a hurried, hidden gesture, Mixon lifts his mouth to Scott's ear. He whispers to the new Secret Service agent, "Stay safe."
"LESSON ONE: Get Ready To Die
The teacher walks into the mat room.
"Good morning, Mr. Mixon," the students say in unison.
"Cut that [expletive] out. Don't act like you give a crap about my morning."
Steve Mixon smiles, or maybe it's a snarl. Before he became an instructor at the Secret Service training camp outside Washington, Mixon served as a team leader on President George W. Bush's Counter Assault Team.
"Everyone's going to leave today in some degree of pain," Mixon tells the special agent trainees.
The 24 recruits, dressed in black combat pants and jackets, stiffen into four rows, jingling handcuffs. Scott Swantner clenches his jaw. Krista Bradford rubs raw knuckles. One trainee, who broke a rib, is keeping it a secret, fearing he'll be discharged.
"Everything is in play here, guys. Everything you learned from Day One," Mixon tells them in a basement that muffles rifle blasts. "Assailant control. Guillotine chokeholds."
For the members of Special Agent Training Class No. 283, this is finals time. They have been cramming here for months, since days after the election of Barack Obama, hoping to join the men and women charged with protecting the president. Not all of them will make it.
If they fail, they will leave humiliated. If they pass, they'll become members of an elite, stealthy service during a period of exceptional pressures. At their annual party, Ralph Basham, the former director, greeted his replacement: "I'm the happiest guy in Washington because I'm not the director of the Secret Service anymore."
With the rise of Islamic terrorism, the agency's roster of protectees has grown. With the election of the first African American president, public scrutiny has exploded. Presidents typically receive 3,000 threats a year, says a Secret Service expert. Obama is outpacing the average.
"We understand the historic significance," says the current director, Mark Sullivan. "If we make a mistake, it's going to be devastating for the country. We're not going to let the country down."
That promise depends in large part on what happens inside this 493-acre compound. Unmarked, behind barbed wire and hidden in the woods, the James J. Rowley Training Center sits so close to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway that its inhabitants -- in chemical weapons suits, suicide bomber vests or white robes while role-playing the pope -- can hear the commuter traffic's oblivious swish.
Obama's security detail drills here two weeks out of every eight. The vice president's detail, the first lady's, the agents who protect foreign dignitaries and former presidents, as well as the tactical units -- the counter snipers posted on the White House roof, and the Emergency Response Team, which stops incursions into the White House grounds--also drill here.
Overseeing them are instructors like Mixon, who wears a size 52 suit jacket, whose T-shirt says "Fighting Solves Everything," and whose 2-year-old son knows how to do a one-man takedown. This morning Mixon, 40, is testing control tactics, or ground-fighting.
Forty minutes into the wristlocks and head stuns, the trainees' necks burn with scratches. Dan Batt is supposed to disarm a classmate but accidentally knees him in the groin.
"Right in the junk!" Mixon laughs.
Dan wants to apologize for his clumsiness -- his infant daughter is teething and kept him up half the night -- but the men keep wrestling, too afraid to stop. A student in the class ahead of them flunked out the week before graduation for buckling during push-ups.
"Next!" Mixon calls.
Scott Swantner ten-huts, shoulders back, towering over the others. A former rifle platoon commander with the Marine Corps, Scott lost three fingers in Iraq. In Beltsville, he attended remedial control tactics with Krista Bradford every Friday before sunrise.
"Yes, sir!" Scott says cheerlessly. For the last scenario of their four-hour exam, the mat room becomes a heavy metal bar. Red and blue lights flash in the dark. The rock band Disturbed blares from speakers.
Their instructions: "Patty McGuire has made threats against POTUS [President of the United States] and you have an arrest warrant . . . An informant told you Patty is in the bar."
In pairs, the trainees open the door.
"Why don't you [expletive] off and die?" shrieks Disturbed. The instructors pounce with sticks and training knives. They slam the trainees into the wall. They rip at their hair. One trainee shatters his instructor's cheekbone. But another freezes, goes into "brain vapor-lock," as his partner is repeatedly shot.
Krista and her partner wait outside for their turn. "If they clench their fists," Krista strategizes, "I'll pull out my baton."
Krista is 4 feet 11 inches. She moves like a gymnast, nimbly, with concentrated grace. She has lively green eyes, fine features and a buoyant ponytail. She cheers Scott, Dan and the others between drills with Dove chocolates. A social worker, she also used to work at Disney World, dressing up as cartoon characters.
"She was Minnie Mouse, for God sakes," Mixon grumbles.
Within seconds of entering the mat-room bar, Krista's partner, an Army National Guardsman who earned a Bronze Star, is knocked to the ground. A role-player drags Krista across the floor by the cuff of her pants. He straddles Krista and punches her.
"Get off me!" Krista screams.
"Get ready to die!" the music screams.
"Keep fighting!" Mixon screams.
The role-player twists Krista's arms around her neck and pulls, choking her with her own hands. She gags. Her nose is bleeding. Her cheek is bleeding. Blood blisters on her legs, bruised by training bullets while chasing assassins through the woods, trickle and ooze.
On her back, in the dark, Krista watches the role-player's face swirl into darker shades of gray. She is losing consciousness. Mixon yells, "Do something!"
In the Secret Service, the saying goes, "You never quit. You always win. Everything else is negotiable."
Krista lifts her head an inch, level with her assailant's hand. She opens her mouth.
"Here it comes! Get ready to die!" the music screams.
Krista grinds her teeth into the meat of his palm. He releases her, and Krista and her partner stagger out of the room. Their final exam is over. A drop of sweat dangles from the tip of her partner's nose. He looks at Krista, gasping:
"Did we pass?"
LESSON TWO (Nine Months Earlier): Do Whatever It Takes
Business was slow at the Sherwin-Williams paint store. Dan Batt, a sales associate, sat cataloguing colors: Salute red, Nantucket Dune.
Dan is 24, the second-oldest of nine home-schooled children, a quiet man with sloping shoulders, fair skin and pure black hair. He has a face that often gets skipped over in a crowd, a modest chin and nice-boy eyes.
Dan smiled mildly as a teenager tramped into the store.
"But I want it, Dad!" A blast of cold Buffalo air blew in with the girl and her father.
She wanted to paint her bedroom Lime Rickey green. It was, Dan thought, a hideous color.
"This is a very, uh, fun color," Dan later recalled saying.
Dan always deferred to the customer. His wife was seven months pregnant, and they needed the paycheck.
"Yes, he said to everyone. "Yes, yes, yes."
No, this wasn't the career he'd wanted. His mother, who read her Bible, had taught him about good and bad, and he dreamed -- never mind that he is shy -- of fighting for good. When Dan's cellphone rang later at the store, "Restricted Number," he felt something lurch inside his chest. Maybe his wife was having early contractions. Or maybe, improbably, it was the other call, the one that meant Dan had mixed his last Lime Rickey.
Twelve hundred miles to the south in New Orleans, Krista Bradford, 32, was driving her car. She almost didn't answer when her call came. Krista had just assessed a 4-year-old autistic girl. She told the girl's mother to buy crayons and blocks, she later recalled. As a social worker, Krista was tired of rappelling into lives after they'd crumbled. She wanted to try something preemptive, such as law enforcement. Krista herself had experienced the limits of social services. She was given up at birth in an adoption that failed, and later moved into an adolescent group house where she reached for a serving bowl and was stabbed in the hand with a fork.
"I'll be a good protector," Krista believed. "I know how important it is to be protected."
The application process took nine months, complicated by a background check that tracked three different childhood last names, and a job history that included dressing up as Jiminy Cricket and Dopey.
Eventually one afternoon, her cellphone flashed: "Withheld." "Hello?" Krista said, thinking: I'll do whatever it takes.
Four states away, in an Oakland, Calif., shipyard, Scott Swantner, 30, watched a freighter offload a container. An Iraq war veteran, he was two weeks into a job at the Pacific Maritime Association. He had the air of a man whose penalty kick had clunked off a goal post. Earlier in the year, Scott had spent a month filling out the 34-page Secret Service application. He had flown from his Berlin Marine post to California to renew his driver's license, which had been shredded in Nasiriyah by a rocket-propelled grenade. He had passed the written test, the drug test, the vision test, the hearing test, the initial interview, the panel interview, the home interview, and the "worst experience of my life," the polygraph, which elicited every foible and shame. Tall and broad, Scott had played right guard for the Naval Academy football team. He has thick, brown hair, buzz cut for the military. His features project success. Scott's father, a termite inspector, constantly told his winning boy, "Don't screw up."
Yet, somehow Scott had. He had fallen short on the Secret Service's physical exam, he guessed, "because of my hand." As a Marine, Scott had hoped to emulate his grandfather's World War II service in the Pacific. Instead, in Iraq, Scott lost two soldiers in his platoon -- "You feel you let them down. It'll always stick with you" -- and, later, part of his left hand. Things that had come easily for Scott were now doubted. Secret Service screeners questioned Scott's commander: "He says he can physically do this, but can he?" Can he still shoot? Eventually, Scott was told they had found a better-qualified applicant. Scott took the shipyard job. He was talking to a longshoreman when his cellphone beeped: "Unknown."
The voice sounded friendly. "Hey, it's Charlie White." From the San Francisco Field Office. "We want to offer you -- " The Secret Service had never accepted anyone with his disability before but had reconsidered. They were going to give Scott a try.
The acceptance calls rang out in 24 corners of the country. In Plant City, Fla., a YMCA director felt his phone vibrate during a board meeting debating zumba dance classes. In Tulsa, a police officer exhausted from jumping fences while chasing drug dealers till 2 a.m. snapped open his phone. In Baltimore, a Home Depot manager folded his orange apron then and there in Hardwood Flooring.
Their family and friends sometimes found the news confusing: "So you're going to be a spy?" "Do you change your name?" "Will the president talk to you directly through that plastic thing in your ear?"
The new recruits -- 21 men and three women, 25 to 32 years old -- assembled in Glynco, Ga., for 12 weeks of basic federal law-enforcement training. Then they moved to a Residence Inn in Maryland. They unpacked creatine bodybuilding powder and Aveda Comforting Tea, boxing DVDs and voodoo dolls. On their first morning, the recruits ride in government vans to the classified complex. A guard in a booth raises the gate. They cross over, into a mission called for by Congress following the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley. They are admitted onto the grounds and into the secrets of the Service.
"We train unlike any other federal agency," says A.T. Smith, an assistant director, who stands by while the trainees stencil their names on their T-shirts. "We train to the edge, and then we lean over." The center's drills are increasingly scenario-based, says Smith, who had served as Hillary Clinton's detail leader. "For years, our training was based on the lone gunman and the long-range rifle. Now it's automatic weapons, multiple explosions as a diversion to a secondary attack." An intelligence PowerPoint presentation on "The Emerging Threat" flashes from the old-style assassin, Squeaky Fromme, to chanting Islamic fanatics. Threat experts have created a new Obama-era prototype, a white supremacist who calls Obama "a mud person" and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, a Jew, "the Antichrist."
New hazards have prompted a new emphasis in training -- a kind of extreme, lethal improv -- using scenarios that are dynamic and demand responses that run counter to typical human behavior. Smith says, "Our goal is to make it instinct." To alter reflexes, to rewire the "muscle memory" of recruits, they built 37 buildings, including fake colonial-style houses and a mock airport. Facades line the main street: a cafe, a tattoo parlor and a hardware store.
"It's like a small town," Smith explains.
Except that all day and many nights, explosions rock presidential candidates at the pizzeria. The dogs, on command, break from their leashes and maul shrieking men. Gunmen fire from the All Saints Church at the president's wife. Marine One, the president's helicopter, crashes in the swimming pool, and fleeing black Suburbans climb the curbs at 45 mph. Behind every mailbox, lamppost and flowering bush, a killer possibly squats, racking his AK, or, he might spray a vial of sarin.
Smith smiles: "I never said it was a nice town. I said it was a small town."
LESSON THREE: Be Obsessive-Compulsive
"Your head's going to spin and you feel like you're going to throw up," says Mixon. "Don't do it in my mat room."
This is Mixon's welcome speech to SATC No. 283 on its first day. "Sometimes trainees pass out in the bathroom, so develop a buddy system among yourselves."
Krista finds a buddy -- the other woman who can't do a pull-up. Dan's buddy is the Tulsa cop who classmates swear can bench-press a Honda. Scott scans the room with the dark-browed scowl of an American eagle, privately amazed that he is even here.
Mixon distributes their "Use of Force" chart, which graphs the amount of force to use on a subject, depending on their level of menace. The trainees' eyes widen at its complexity.
"Details! Think details!" Mixon says. He walks around the room, his chest forward, like a piece of earth-moving equipment. "What is your job? The man in the most powerful office in the world -- you're standing next to him with a loaded gun." Success, Mixon says, rests on attention to detail.
"Use the force necessary. You can hit them with your car, stab them with a big pin," Mixon says. "We in the Secret Service are super Type-A personalities, people who want to take control and win at all costs." But within legal limits, Mixon warns. "Don't get that little extra shot in there, that extra revenge...I want to make sure if I'm going through a door with you, that I can trust you. If not, I'm not going to let you take that walk on graduation day."
All day, instructors say, Do sweat the details:
"I expect neat hair! No goatees!"
"If you wore boxer shorts, it's the last day you do!"
"Cut off [alcoholic] drinking eight hours prior to range practice!"
"You know the old joke: We're just one assassination away from wearing the FBI badge!"
The recruits recite a list of rules. Dan reads No. 16 out loud, "No sleeping in class." He stifles a new-father yawn. Dan is the only recruit who moved his family to Beltsville. He wedged a Pack 'n Play next to the bed. He bought his 4-month-old a pink Secret Service onesie. He keeps uniforms in the bathroom, so he doesn't wake his wife and infant when he dresses at dawn. At the end of the nine-hour hazing, the students stand, soaked and mute. A former IRS employee nods toward a sweat splash on the mat: "That's me and Scott, right about there."
The Home Depot manager stamps his foot. "One day down."
Krista exhales. "Four days and 15 weeks to go."
Krista is counting down to graduation on a hand-drawn chart, penciling an "X" when she wakes up every morning. She tallies Mixon's sessions with a dash that she crosses when completed. Holidays are coded in orange marker. She jokingly calls it her "calendar of what to dread." Her meticulousness is actually the sign of a good agent. "You got to have a little OCD [obsessive-compulsive disorder] to have this job," says the firearms coordinator. "You worry about every little thing. That's what we do. That's who we are."
Why? The firearms instructor explains: "A bad guy's attacking POTUS, you fire and you miss. Who you gonna hit? POTUS!" Trainees have to score 80 percent in marksmanship. They spend months learning how to shoot and assemble their Sig Sauer P229 pistols, MP5 9mm submachine guns, Remington 12-gauge shotguns. Krista buys a finger-exerciser to build trigger muscles. She and the others will fire about a thousand rounds at practice targets such as the vacant-eyed white man with glasses and thinning hair, lifting his pistol. They aim for "center mass," the heart. No warning shots.
"What should be the first thing on your belt?" an instructor asks.
"Spare magazine?" Dan says.
"Right. I've seen people load pagers and cellphones. They don't go bang when you pull the trigger." The students struggle to memorize details that parse life and death. During barricade-shooting, a technician chastens Dan: "Don't expose your leg. You get hit in the fibular artery, you're dead in seconds." Though, if hit, you are still expected to fight: "You have 10 seconds where you can keep fighting." They call it "the dead man's 10 seconds." The one Secret Service employee who died in the line of duty shot the would-be assassin after he'd been mortally wounded. "He fired back. He didn't give up."
"Do not use starch or bleach on the ballistic panels," a teacher says, laundry tips for their sweaty bulletproof vests. "And if you're at the White House and hear shooting, hit the deck -- the vest does not stop ERT [Emergency Response Team] bullets."
During their sixth week, students take an emergency medicine course: "So you're standing post on the golf course, and someone gets struck by lightning ... " They learn how to treat a head of state who's been eviscerated: "Some of you with military backgrounds were taught to urinate on the intestines to keep them warm. That is not Secret Service protocol." And how to deliver a baby while standing post (happened twice last year): "I don't want to hear about you using your shoelaces or anything nasty to tie the cord. Do not let the woman go to the bathroom, or Junior is going to be bungee jumping into the toilet."
Krista memorizes her flashcards and aces the medical exam.
The "details! details!" theme follows them into a surveillance course, where trainees trail each other around Maryland malls. "Act normal," the teacher says, Rule No. 5. "If you're halfway through your low-fat blueberry muffin -- that's not really low-fat -- finish it. Otherwise, it looks suspicious. If you and your partner are friends, act like friends! And do not make out in surveillance -- it's happened."
During the rescue swimming unit, the instructor specifies, "Talk to the flailing victim. Now, there is an exception: If Mr. Obama falls overboard, do you say, 'Mr. Obama, kick your feet! Move your legs!' No. Get in the water." The deadliest details emerge during WMD training. Much of it is classified, involving untraceable toxins that could kill the president in his hotel suite while he is showering or clipping his toenails.
"There is an unbelievable amount of unaccounted-for chemical weapons," says the WMD specialist. "And when it turns up, it better not be on your advance. But if it does, this class is going to help."
The students learn how to adjust their gas masks after they've clapped on the president's, whose straps are custom-sewn for a tight seal. They inhale caustic fumes in a gas chamber, discovering their initial symptoms -- Scott's throat itches, Dan's eyes blaze, Krista's lips sting -- to recognize a gas attack.
WMD attacks could come at any time, the instructor says in class: "You're on an advance team in Ohio, and you eat at the Golden Corral salad bar." An assassin squirts SEB toxin from a rubber ball in his sleeve onto the chopped lettuce. The entire team gets sick.
"The president is due in minutes, and you're in bed, projectile vomiting to knock the clock off the wall. Every orifice in your body is going to be exuding liquid, like doing back-to-back advances in Cairo."
The trainees stare, glassy-eyed. It is 4:30 p.m., break time.
"Okay, folks," says the WMD specialist. The students are saturated in detail, in every blood, blister, nerve, bacterial and viral agent that will clot, choke and putrefy their bodily organs.
The teacher smiles sweetly as the students shuffle toward the candy machines. "You guys have a nice day!"
LESSON FOUR: Keep Moving
The control tactics coordinator addresses Scott as "the delicate one."
Scott is huge and meat-freezer hard, aside from his injured hand.
The coordinator says, "Are we sadists? No. We find and exploit any weakness in all trainees. It's stress inoculation."
"They're terrified, that's our preferred mode," says Mixon. (When the trainees aren't looking, he coos over pictures of his toddler nuzzling cherry blossoms.)
On this sunny afternoon on the race-car pad, the students' source of terror is a tactical driving test. The armored vehicles, many from President George H.W. Bush's old fleet, roll out of a garage, "the inner sanctum."
An instructor who chauffeured George W. Bush cautions, "I hit a bump in Denver and hit Bush's head on the ceiling. He asked me when was the last time I had a drug test. Try to avoid that."
Krista slides into the driver's seat, "Anyone want a paper bag?" Her feet strain to reach the pedals.
"Don't forget to lock the back doors. Nothing more embarrassing than the president busting your chops because you forgot to lock the door," an instructor says. Then he shares one of the Service's biggest secrets -- where they hide the presidential spare keys.
"All right, Scott Swantner's up," says the evaluator, Tipper Gore's former driver, his voice drawling over the police radio. Scott shifts vehicle No. 5 into gear, facing a slalom course of orange traffic cones.
The blacktop -- 1,800 feet long, 300 feet wide -- is streaked with truck-tire marks from the Humvee-heavy limousines. One instructor executes a J-turn, performed when a driver can't ram a roadblock. He zooms backward and whips the wheel, spinning the limousine a screeching reverse 180 degrees. The air is pungent with gas and smoking rubber.
"The track's clear. Turn on your lights and sirens," the evaluator says to Scott.
Scott must complete two runs, no fishtailing or skidding outside the lines. For Scott this is a natural. He thrives inside lines: lays out his uniform just so each night, cooks one low-sodium recipe on Saturday and eats leftovers every evening.
"Ready, set, bang!"
Scott weaves through the orange cones. "Run the course hard, as if you're taking the protectee to a hospital," the evaluator had told them.
Recently here, Obama's security detail had practiced assaults on a motorcade parade. A mock Obama, first lady and two daughters strolled, waving to cheering crowds. Suddenly, over the trees, mortars crashed. Fanatics in pickup trucks thundered out, crippling "the Beast," the president's limousine. Counter snipers in a tower fired back. The Counter Assault Team stampeded. The first family was bundled into the spare limousine, "the Tomb," and sped out of the kill zone. Scott's class had also practiced "pushing out" of the kill zone. The maneuver: Drive a Suburban into the president's rear fender, pushing his disabled limousine.
"If you're 'pushing out' on a $3 million car, you're not out of gas," the instructor said. "You're in the woods, you're taking rounds, the limo's dead. What do you do?"
"Push it out," Scott said.
"Want to know what we do, in two words?" the instructor said. "Keep moving."
Motorcade attacks average 45 seconds, he said. "Get out of the kill zone. If Iraq has taught us one thing -- you cannot stop."
In Musayyib, Iraq, Scott's Marines kept him moving the night a Russian-made fuse tore off part of his hand. Scott was clearing houses. A group of frightened girls showed him grenade fuses inside an old helmet. "I'm taking these," Scott said, reaching down. Then, he recalled, "I heard a pop. The guys I was with wouldn't let me look down." But they kept Scott moving. It took 15 minutes to walk to their patrol. Scott was in shock, dripping blood, but somehow he moved his feet.
Privately Scott blames himself: "I should have known." But he jokes with friends, "Give me seven!" He tells himself, "Got to move on." And though doubtful, Scott keeps moving.
On the driving pad, the evaluator scratches his head. "I don't see any problems with this class," he mumbles, and he adds their test numbers again. "Scott might be the weakest." Scott scored 68, missing the 70-point minimum.
The evaluator announces: "I need Car 5 to stay here. Which is Scott Swantner?"
Scott bites his lip. He calls the feeling "black hole," a place where a voice warns of disappointment. "It's my voice," Scott says later, "It says, 'Don't fail.' With a little crowd of people agreeing -- my family and guys I served with in Iraq. I don't want to let people down."
The evaluator notes, "could be his fingers, driving with your thumb and index finger." On the range, it was the same. When Scott jerked the trigger, the instructor shook his head: "He doesn't have much there to hold on to the gun." The rest of the class rumbles off the pad. The evaluator tells Scott, "We got to run through this again, get you up to snuff."
"Yes, sir."
Overhead, gray clouds crowd out the sun. Raindrops pit Scott's windshield. Two days later, Scott joins the others outside the mat room for their control tactics midterm. One role-playing instructor moans, "I got killed 24 times today. This is embarrassing."
Mixon is giving the test, pretending to be a member of the president's political staff. Mixon the political aide races over to Scott on tippy-toes, his eyes wild, his voice high:
"Oh, my God! You gotta help me! This guy is in there, and the president's going to be here in, like, 10 minutes! I told the guy to leave and he told me to go [expletive] myself! Make him leave! He scares me!!"
Scott stalks off to investigate.
Mixon the staffer smiles, "Thanks! I'm going to go get a latte."
After each student fights the assailant, he or she is directed to a small, dark room. Except for Scott, who is told to wait in the stairwell.
"I don't like being separated like this," he says.
Out on the driving pad, in fact, the driving evaluator had made a math mistake. Scott had qualified, first try.
"This has been the longest week," Scott sighs in the stairwell. He begins to pace. It is part of him now, a survival instinct.Two words: keep moving.
LESSON FIVE: Be a Meat Shield
Dan's wife is kicking him. Third or fourth time tonight. The baby is whimpering, and Dan is sleeping through it, even though he lies closer to her crib. Dan pops in her pacifier, he later recalls, amazed by how quickly his wife wakes up. It's as if she possesses a different set of senses.
In the morning, at the center, Dan huddles in the fake lobby of a fake hotel with Krista and the Tulsa cop. On the mezzanine above them, Bill Clinton's current detail skulks along the railings, poking submachine guns around corners, practicing clearing halls.
The mandatory three-mile runs are giving Dan painful shin splints. "You still got five weeks, man," the Tulsa cop tells Dan. "You don't want to get stress fractures."
But Dan is afraid he'll be dismissed if he doesn't run. And besides, he's a guy who says yes: at the paint store to Lime Rickey, and at a recent baton drill to battling three of his biggest classmates -- a sky diver, a self-described Cro-Magnon and Scott -- all at once. Afterward, Dan tottered away in a cold sweat, as dizzy as he'd been when he fainted as an 8-year-old altar boy. "Dude, you're white. You need to get checked out," said the Tulsa cop, lugging Dan off to the emergency medical services office down the hall.
Dan's gentle nature is a problem, and it worries him. "My whole life I'm always right in the middle," he once said. He may be the most agreeable recruit, but Dan won't make it as an agent if his response is always affirmative.
On this morning, at the fake hotel, Mixon ambles over to the students and cracks his neck. He's here to teach them how the Secret Service says no.
"We'll start with basic stuff. Attacks on the rope line, lapel grabs, overzealous handshakes. "
During the George W. Bush years, an instructor says, Bush always told them if he was planning to shake hands. "We're not in that environment now. We're in a Clintonesque environment, you have to deal with spontaneous rope lines."
Mixon says: "You may say, why do I need to know this?" because new agents don't work on the president's security detail. They investigate crimes and work advance or security posts. "But my first post-standing was in Brownsville, for President Clinton. I was standing there in my new J.C. Penney suit, and Clinton dives into the crowd. The shift leader grabs me by the back of my belt loops and made me help. You could be working rope lines in a matter of weeks."
Dan watches Mixon demonstrate releasing a fan's handshake. He peels back the fan's thumb with so much force, it makes a popping sound.
"If he's still jaw-jacking, saying to the protectee, 'We need to save the three-legged mosquito!' and the protectee's giving you that 'Oh, [expletive]' look, you'll peel him off," Mixon says. "The press is always around, and he's just a knucklehead, not necessarily a threat, so -- " Mixon cuts to the Tulsa cop. "You can't punch him in the face."
During a break, Dan calls Amanda. She's busy changing the baby. They met when he was 11 and she was 9. They still speak to each other with a childhood sweetness.
When the trainees reassemble, Mixon initiates them into the most sacred rite of protection:
"If there's an attack, get as big as you can to protect him. Make a nice meat shield between the protectee and the problem." It takes a few beats to understand "meat shield."
"And where's the shielding for the protectee?" Mixon says.
The students blink. "The shift leader?" "The limousine?"
"No," Mixon says. "Point to yourself. You are the shielding for the protectee."
Scott taps his foot. Dan and Krista exchange glances.
"Your job is to get big. Get your lats out wide. We are now a meat shield. A sandwich: Kevlar, your body, another layer of Kevlar -- covering the protectee."
For the U.N. General Assembly, Mixon says, "you'll be working foreign protectees, Sultan Abu Bin Abu Babab. In an attack, get the protectee's head down, cover vital organs. If he falls, pick him up. You may have to think for them -- 'move, move, move' -- they may be literally pooping themselves."
"Do the protectees know what our responses are going to be?" says Krista.
"The president, yes. But the first lady of Iceland, no. On 9/11, two agents snatched Cheney out of his desk, and his feet never touched the ground till he was out of danger."
For weeks, the class practices shift formations, as if working a security detail. A pudgy politician makes speeches: "Keep paying your taxes! We need the money!" Dan, Krista and Scott shadow him out of boardrooms, into ballrooms and onto a Boeing 707 replica of Air Force One. They encounter actors and role-playing agents as innocuous as a flirty redhead and as deadly as a bald man wielding a syringe of Ebola.
Mixon critiques them: "You guys made a nice meat shield," he says to Krista. When shots rang out, Krista cupped the candidate's body with her own, his greasy hair sliding over her throat. "Excellent job controlling him. Bradford got as big as she's ever gotten in her life. Mighty Midget came to the rescue."
To Scott, who repelled an autograph seeker, Mixon says, "Too much aggression. You were on him like a spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew."
"I'll turn it down, sir," says Scott. He's adjusting to post-Iraq rules of engagement.
And Mixon scolds Dan, who saw a man throw a bottle. "Apparently, you can throw a bottle at the president and nothing happens. Don't wait for someone to hit you. You can hit him back first."
But Mixon levels his biggest criticism at the entire class. "Everyone took steps backwards when the shooting started." He glares at a former police officer.
"I'm used to going down on a knee," the former cop pleads. It's a reflex, basic officer safety.
"Well, resist. Now you're working protection. You need to be the shield."
Students remove their earplugs and safety glasses, dazed, looking existentially perplexed. An instructor who had protected Bush shrugs:
"That's the premise of protective training -- to override human nature."
In the evening, Dan drives back to the Residence Inn, to human nature as it seems intended. He locks his training gun and bathes the baby. She eats potato puffs in her high chair and laughs at her dad on the floor doing push-ups.
Dan's wife, Amanda, a luminescent brunette, cooks them tuna casserole and tries not to think about his work. "It's hard for me to visualize," she says.
The baby is sitting on Amanda's lap, gnawing a teething ring. Dan is mulling Mixon's lesson, which he's not yet internalized.
But the words "meat shield" spark recognition in Amanda's soft eyes. When she was pregnant in Buffalo, "I slipped and fell on the ice. As I was going down, I was thinking, 'Don't fall to hurt the baby. Don't fall on your stomach.' I didn't care if I broke an arm, I had to protect the baby."
Amanda sprained her wrist. She used her body as a shield.
Dan turns to his wife, nodding, as if the tumblers in his head were finally grinding in the right combination. Click: meat shield.
"It's the instinct, the mother instinct," Dan says. "When the cubs are in danger, the mother bear gets big, as Mr. Mixon says."
Being a Secret Service agent might be a stoic, macho job. It is also a little bit like being pregnant with the president.
LESSON SIX: Stand Your Ground
"Let's see -- gun, lip gloss," Krista says. It is 5:30 a.m. at the Residence Inn.
Dan texts Krista, "R U driving in this morn?"
Yes, but Krista has to drive in early for remedial submachine gun. She qualified on the MP5, but her supervisor said she needs practice. He also assigned her to remedial physical fitness, though her scores are on par with the Tulsa cop's. Krista jokes to Dan and Scott that she has remedial lunch and remedial breathing. She plays the song by Pink: "So What?" She never lets the guys see her tear up. She averages 96.5 percent on her written exams. In the bathroom, a green smear of Biore Pore Perfect mask dabs the pull-up bar Krista installed for practice. Last night, she hit her cheek while cranking out four pull-ups. Enough for her to pass.
"Don't be defined by other people's limited perceptions!" says the Post-it on her bathroom mirror.
Her instructors may see a perky, size-2 woman dispensing ibuprofen and Alka Seltzer to classmates who are beat--up or hung-over. They may see that she is only one of two recruits who'd never used a weapon or been in a fight before.
But what they don't know, Krista says, is that she'll do "whatever it takes." Tumbling as a child from failed adoptions to foster homes, with no sense of where her mother was, she used to write letters, "Dear Mrs. X, Today I graduated from high school . . ." She felt like she'd been "born in midair." Now she is determined to embrace an identity that is defined by standing your ground. Standing one's ground -- standing post -- is the recruits' next lesson. First, a classroom lecture:
"No playing BrickBreaker."
"No hands in pockets." Hands should be up and ready; as Mixon puts it, "New York, Italian."
"In Muslim countries, no pounding a balled fist into a palm. It's like the middle finger."
"If you have to go to the bathroom, suck it up. Don't drink water. You can always get an IV after your shift."
Then, the students are tested in the tactical village. Krista and Mr. Home Depot stand outside a bookstore, where a candidate is signing books. Across the street, men squeal up and rob a bank. Some of the other recruits had chased the robbers.
"It may be a diversion, a favorite tactic of Tommy Taliban and his al-Qaeda friends," Mixon says. Never abandon your guard post, Mixon says, even if someone faints: "Make sure he's not doing the funky chicken with foam coming out of his mouth, it could be a nerve gas attack. Otherwise, it's not your problem."
A role-player nicknamed "the horse" tries to push into the bookstore. Other trainees didn't notice him, but Krista, weighing 105 pounds, blocks him with her flattened palm. A drunk rolls out of the bar next door, distracting Mr. Home Depot. Another man lopes up, wearing a suicide bomber vest.
"Bomb!!!!" Krista yells, shooting the suicide bomber. Mixon had taught them to shout so loudly, "dope dealers two blocks away should be flushing toilets."
Afterward, Mr. Home Depot says, "Can't believe I didn't see the guy with the freakin' bomb." Home Depot has such good aim on the range, he routinely rubs Krista's trigger finger with his, to transfer his magic.
"You had tunnel vision," the evaluator says to him, and turns to Krista, "Even with the horse in front of you, you saw. I watched your eyes. I'm impressed. You a former cop, ma'am?"
Krista braces for his smirk, "I'm a former social worker, sir."
"No. You're a protection agent now."
But not until Krista passes control tactics, which she fails along with four other trainees. "You've got to find that inner bitch," the coordinator says, "the thing that pisses you off, and use it."
Two weeks before graduation, the five retest. The scenario: standing post; bad guys pounce. When it's over, they can barely speak, panting:
"You do okay?"
"Who knows."
"No one knows."
"Did he shoot you?"
"I think he did."
Everyone passes except for Krista. When Mixon tells her on the spot, all her breath leaves her body.
"I know I can do it," she says, her lips pale. "I'm going to graduate." She is mottled with so many blood blisters from training bullets, a massage therapist pulled her aside to ask about an abusive relationship. After she leaves, Mixon explains that Krista didn't "demonstrate the warrior spirit." Like Krista, Mixon grew up without a mother. Her heart gave out when he was 2. No one tucked him in at night, and he realized, as Krista did at an early age, that he would have to make his own way.
One spring evening in 1981, as a "poor, badass kid" in Kentucky, Mixon watched the news on his black-and-white TV. He saw a man in a gray suit jump up, as if he were impenetrable, and block a .22--caliber bullet meant for President Ronald Reagan. Right then, Mixon decided he wanted to be that hard man. He still keeps the old TV in his garage. Now that he has a 2-year-old, he tells the boy when he trips and cries, in a voice blunted with gruff love: "Shake it off."
As a social worker, Krista's slogan is: "positive reinforcement."
As an agent, Mixon's slogan is: "Americans sleep well in their beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm them!"
"We can't pass her cause we think she's a nice girl," Mixon says.
Over the next week, Krista sticks with her class. They dress in business suits and visit the intelligence division at headquarters, inside a vault. They see pictures of 50 "class 3" subjects who, if given a chance, would attack the president, including one grizzled white man, "whereabouts unknown, last seen in Tennessee." A class 3 must be supervised if the president visits his district. "Be creative," an instructor had advised. "Some agents take them out for ice cream, take them bowling, make sure he's on his medication. In L.A., we took class 3s to the movies when the president was in town."
They peer into the 24-hour duty desk, a glass-enclosed room resembling a flight- tracking center. The names of 37 protectees light up the wall, along with their call signs and locations. The Obama girls are at Camp David; Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are in Walnut Mountain, Ga. The next day, the review board convenes and decides to give Krista one more try.
"My whole future depends on tomorrow, and when I pass, Jess," her pull-up buddy, "and I are going to go get eyelash extensions," Krista jokes. The anxiety has whittled her weight so sharply, she's using a safety pin to hold up her pants.
"If I had to go through the extra training and the adversity you faced," Dan tells her, "I don't know how I could get up in the morning."
Her mother helps. "Short people rule!" reads a card from Krista's birth mother, whom Krista eventually tracked down. When Krista first called, her mother gulped: "I've been waiting for this call for 19 years." Five months after Krista was born, her mother married her father. They had three more kids.
Her classmates also help. The entire SATC No. 283 turns out in the chilly predawn for Krista's test. "She's like the group mom," says one guy, twice her size. Krista had ordered shoulder holsters for them all. But in the end it is Krista alone, one week before graduation, walking barefoot past her friends into the mat room. Most of the guys hang back. Scott walks up to the closed door and presses against it, listening:
Krista is standing post. Two trainers jump her. She uses her gun and baton to beat them back. Then the evaluator says, "All right, now we're overseas and you're not allowed to carry a weapon." Krista must overcome them, unarmed.
"Get on the ground!" Krista screams. "Police! Stop fighting!" There's pleading in her screams. The guys in the hall are squirming, looking down at their boots.
"Stop! Stop! Aaaagh!" Krista's screams are wild, and after a minute the sounds grow guttural. "Aaaagh! Yaaagh!" Scott's forehead furrows. Goose bumps rise on the arms of a New Orleans cop who once heard the transmission of an officer friend being executed by thugs. He wants to break into the mat room. His eyes fill with tears: "It's what a radio sounds like when a cop is dying."
LESSON SEVEN: Get A Will
The firearms instructor clicks on a PowerPoint slide: a picture of a toilet.
"You're in the hopper; where's the safest place to put your weapon?"
"On the toilet paper holder?"
"No, you get lead all over the toilet paper and then . . . you see? Put the gun between your feet. Which stall do you use?"
No one tries to answer.
"The stall next to the wall. You don't want someone reaching to grab your gun. Call ahead for reservations."
Thus concludes the last Secret Service class, one day before graduation. The previous lecturer told them about alcohol counseling. Four employees had DUI arrests in the past year. She also said: "Get a will."
"Good riddance!" Dan says, tossing a bag of combat training pants into the center's laundry cart. His voice has hardened, as has his body, as has his attitude. Dan turns people down now. And when the shooting started during their final exercises, Dan became a meat shield -- "I didn't even think,it was instinct" -- repudiating a gunman's bullet with a full-bodied no.
That night, Dan and Amanda sleep peacefully. The baby's front teeth have finally cut through her gums. In the morning, at commencement, Dan mills around backstage at the fake hotel.
Everyone is there except for Krista. She was released from training for failing control tactics. She hung on until the last hour, doing advance work for a candidate at a nature preserve, tramping through goose droppings in the rain, until the training director summoned her to his office. Krista's classmates were stricken. When Scott walked past the mat room, he avoided Mixon's eyes, hunching over his new government-issued BlackBerry.
Mixon said, "I feel like I failed. I've given my all; she's given her all. In good conscience though, I would be attending her funeral next week."
Krista is back home in New Orleans now, running along the bayou, pushing the mandatory three-mile run to five, six, seven. She thinks she should have passed. "The only rule in fighting is to never quit. I never stopped fighting." She appealed the decision and is waiting to hear from headquarters. She says she'll do whatever it takes to become an agent.
Backstage, at the center's fake hotel, an instructor says: "One minute to showtime!"
"I need some Visine," says a recruit. "I drank too much last night."
They all line up: the chubbiest recruit, who lost 85 pounds to enlist; the homesick recruit, who never unpacked his suitcase; the grittiest recruit, who agonized in silence over his detached rib. Each had beat his weakness. Scott glances around, the doubt for once lifting from his dark brows. On their last day of training, Scott walked onto the outdoor range and plugged 24 out of 30 shots into the heart of a silhouette -- a class record, and a refutation of the claim that a seven-fingered man can't shoot.
Out in the audience, in the front row, Scott's father is beaming, holding two cameras in case one malfunctions. He flew in from California, a giant man, who says, "God help the person who comes up against Scott." And then all at once, he turns red, and lifts a thick thumb to wipe away his tears: "When we got that call at 3 a.m. from Iraq, it was very, very tough ... "
Mixon takes a seat in the back, behind the families watching the ceremony.
There is the speech: "You have completed 28 weeks of the most intensive training of any law enforcement agency in the world."
And the oath of office: "I do solemnly swear . . . so help me God."
Mixon leans forward, rubbing scarred knuckles, his gaze alighting on his pupils' open faces, his own expression different from that of the glowing parents, more knowing, a trace sad.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the special agents of Class 283!" Applause.
Mixon wanders into the crowd to say goodbye. The Tulsa cop's father exclaims, "I'm the happiest duck in the pond!"
"You got your badge!" Scott's father gushes. "You want me to hold it?"
Mixon pushes past a row of chairs to offer Scott his hand: "Congratulations."
"Yes, sir."
"Hey, cut this 'sir' [expletive] out."
Scott meets Mixon's eyes.
Mixon pulls back for a moment and then opens his arms, wrapping Scott in a hug. In a hurried, hidden gesture, Mixon lifts his mouth to Scott's ear. He whispers to the new Secret Service agent, "Stay safe."
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