I was on a kickball team at the time. I know, it’s not really a competitive sport, but we were in a league with matching t-shirts and referees and rankings and all that. Although we told ourselves we were out there just to have fun, we weren’t kidding anyone. We wanted to win.

Therein is the key: When the goal is winning, everything changes. When a teammate flubs a sure catch, you’re disappointed. When the referee makes a bad call, you’re mad. When the other team scores 10 points in an inning, you’re deflated.

And most of all, for me personally, when YOU mess up, you feel like you let everyone down. Because you’re trying to win, and if you get in the way of winning, you have failed.

Keep in mind that we’re talking about kickball here. The same sport that pretty much requires you to drink a beer on the sideline.

Now, some people truly don’t care about winning. They truly just want to have fun. I share that goal, but as long as the idea of winning is on the table, I still beat myself up when I make a mistake. It’s in my nature.

I’ve played competitive sports my entire life, and I can replay just as many mistakes and near misses as awesome plays and goals in the highlight reel in my mind. It’s very, very hard for me to let go of near misses and mistakes when it comes to competitive sports.

Basically, even in casual kickball leagues, I’d walk away from the games more stressed and frustrated than when I arrived. That’s not what sports are meant to be for men in their upper 20s.

So I retired from competitive sports. I briefly came out of retirement last summer to play in a soccer tournament with the guys with whom I grew up playing soccer; it was worth it to see them, but I wish we could have just played against each other for a weekend.

The toughest part about this self-discovery is that I LOVE team sports. I love working with players with different strengths and weaknesses to find the optimal configuration. I love the challenge of guarding the best player on the other team. I love how every game is different. And honestly, I love that the pressure isn’t always on you to succeed. Sometimes you can take a back seat to other players when you need a breather, and that’s okay.

Thankfully, pickup sports offer the challenge of team competition without the angst of competitive sports. So I’ve played pickup sports for years–mostly frisbee after college, then soccer and football, and now pretty much just soccer. I feel at home on the field, and playing a game after a long day at work reduces my stress level instead of adding to it.

I’m guessing that a lot of people enjoy the camaraderie of showing up with the same team every week. Do you still participate in competitive sports? Are you able to just have fun?

So when a friend suggested we go strawberry picking today, I jumped at the opportunity.

What we didn’t realize until we arrived at Eckert’s Farm was that today was literally the last day that the strawberry fields were open. Strawberry season was coming to a close, and as a friendly employee who called herself “Sherrie” informed us, there were very few strawberries left on the bushes.

In fact, “Sherrie” suggested that if we really wanted to pick strawberries, we go out to the fields for a few minutes and then come back to buy pre-picked strawberries at the Eckert’s country store to fill up our baskets. Sherrie didn’t think we had what it took to find the last remaining strawberries.

Challenge accepted, Sherrie.

Now, back in the day when I went strawberry picking, there were an abundance of large, ripe strawberries ready for the plucking. You could settle down in one spot for a few minutes and walk away with heaps of fruit. They’d practically jump into your basket.

Well, Sherrie was right about one thing–there were very few strawberries left, and those that remained were sunbaked and rotten. But if you looked under the leaves and in the shade of the plants, you could find a few good ones left.

Driven by my passion to prove Sherrie wrong, I literally got down on my hands and knees to find even the tiniest strawberry that hadn’t gone bad. Juices running down my fingers, I slipped my hands under the supple leaves and felt around for the fruits. I parted the plants at the base and took what was mine.

As a result of me crawling around on the grass for two hours, I ended up with a pretty bad allergic reaction, no doubt part of Sherrie’s plan from the beginning. Also, my old-man back hurt way more than when I was a kid. But I fought through the rashes and the pain to emerge triumphant from the field with the basket of strawberries that you see here.

I was hoping that Sherrie would still be welcoming visitors with her warm smile and welcoming attitude, but she had jumped ship. Which is a totally a Sherrie thing to do.

Have you ever been strawberry picking, apple plucking, or pumpkin hunting? I especially want to hear your story if you went on the last day of the season. I really wonder what we would have picked instead if yesterday was the last day instead of today. What comes after strawberries? Mulberries? Thyme?

Now that I’ve finished this post, I just realize that I should have made it a survival post. Dammit, Sherrie!

You shouldn’t be surprised to learn that never happened. (Although I’m still taking applications for the handmaiden. Must come with log cabin and internet access.)

We all have these daunting life goals that we think we’ll figure out “someday.” Someday you’ll write your novel. Someday you’ll go to Ireland. Someday you’ll hold a penguin like a baby.

As we build up these goals, we actually get further away from realizing them. That is, until we look around and see other people realizing the same dreams all the time. 

Over the last few years, I’ve seen writers all around me completing novels. Talented, albeit mostly unpublished authors. In fact, they’ve all written multiple novels over the last few years. They live busy lives, and yet they find the time to write. Nay, they make the time to write. Time isn’t going to find you. You have to grab it by the corset and make it yours. I’m talking about you, Anne, Trisha, and Regan. In terms of the novel writing. Not the corset grabbing.

So I gave myself two months. If you can’t commit to doing something in two months–something that means the world to you–then it probably doesn’t mean the world to you, and it’s probably never going to happen. Give it up and move on to new dreams. (The one exception to this rule is having a baby. Give that 9 months.)

This isn’t meant to be a self-congratulatory post (I already did that on Facebook), but I completed my goal. At 11:15 pm on Saturday night, I got to write “The End” at the end of a 74,226-word novel.

I have to admit, it felt amazing. I was beside myself with joy. There may or may not have been some sing-talking of “Call Me Maybe.”

I have a lot to say about the Two-Month Gauntlet, because I want to inspire people to give it a shot. It will be one of the most gratifying things you ever do. Blog reader Emma took the challenge and started a laughter yoga club, as did another writer friend of mine, so I’m not alone here. It can be done.

Just to be clear, I don’t mean this in a vague, ambiguous, inspirational speaker, “you can do anything if you put your mind to it” kind of way. I mean that you should pull out a piece of paper right now and write down five dreams you have, pick one, and start working on it tomorrow. I really mean this. Stop holding yourself back and make one of those dreams happen–not “someday,” but in two friggin’ months. Start out with a small one if you want.

Here’s how:

1. Pick a goal for which you have control over the outcome. For a long time, my goal was, “write a bestselling novel.” In hindsight, that was ludicrous. I have very limited control over whether or not my novel is a bestseller. I can write a great novel and promote the hell out of it, but it may not matter. What I do have control over, however, is actually writing a novel. So that was my goal.
2. Pick general, attainable daily goals that add up to the overall goal after two months. My goal was write 1,000 words a day. Your goal may not be a creative goal–maybe it requires money. Do something every day to save money (see my post from two years ago about planning for spontaneous travel), and something every day to make money. Even just a few bucks. There’s a lot of variation here depending on your dream, but the point is that you spend an hour or so every day working towards your goal. If the dream is worth it, it’s worth an hour a day.
3. Move forward every day. I wanted so badly to go back and edit every day, but it would have been way too easy to get caught up in editing instead of moving forward. Focus on forward momentum, and in doing so, let go of perfection. Wouldn’t you rather accomplish something great in an imperfect way than not accomplish it at all? (Exceptions: bowling a perfect game and getting engaged. Shoot for 300 on both of them.)
4. Give yourself a way to productively procrastinate. If you’re a master procrastinator like I am, use it to your advantage. Find something else that you should be doing over those two months and put off doing it. Pick something legitimately important, and every time you find yourself about to do it, procrastinate and work on your goal instead. I’m dead serious about this.
5. Don’t overplan. Surprise yourself every day. It’s human nature–this is why we gamble. We don’t know what the next roll of the dice is going to be, but we’re thrilled to find out. With my novel, I wrote about a chapter a night, and at the end of the writing session, I wrote down a few ideas of what was going to happen in the next chapter. Beyond that, I had a few tricks up my sleeve, but I really didn’t know where my characters were going. Which sounds like total writer’s BS, I know. But it’s true. And it let me be surprised every day by what happened next. You know how I describe “the chase” as being the best and most elusive part of a relationship? My novel was one two-month chase, and I bet you can apply the same theory to your dream.

So yeah, I’m quite serious about this. I want this for you. I want you to dance to “Call Me Maybe”  too (wait, did I mention the dancing? Am I teenage girl?).

If you read this and have the balls to pick a dream–and if you’re serious about it–send me an e-mail at jamey.stegmaier@gmail.com. Or post it in the comments if you’re ready for public accountability. Specifically, tell me your dream and your daily goals to get there. If I have any thoughts, I’ll share them, but most likely you’ll just know that someone else out there is rooting for you. And I’d love to write about your experience on the blog in two months.

What’s next for the novel? Well, I’m sitting on it for a few days, and then I’ll read it for the first time and make any necessary sweeping changes. Then I’ll send it out to a few beta readers to see if it’s any good. If it is, I’ll send it out to a few more beta readers to give it a hard edit. Then I’ll send it out to one more beta reader to really show my manuscript who’s boss. And then we’ll see.

So go ahead and pull out that piece of paper. Write down a few dreams. And then, if you dare, circle one and make it yours.

Today I’d like to add a third person to that list: My mother, Margot Stegmaier.

The metric for success I created when I started this series says that true success in a particular area of your life comes with an embodiment of the following traits:

1. Courage
2. Action-Oriented
3. Focus
4. Devotion
5. Patience
6. Passion
7. Absorbent

I bet you look at your own mother and see a lot of the same traits too.

To write this entry, I enlisted the help of the three other people who have experienced my mother as closely as I have: my brother, sister, and father. I’ll share their perspective on my mom’s success as a mother and then get to mine

Dad

Mom had an early introduction to motherhood that began when she herself was a mere child. As the oldest girl in a large family, her own mom, as was the practice of the day, placed her in the roll of caring for younger siblings. This is roughly the equivalent of sentencing someone to ten years of confinement to a bedbug-and flea-infested mud hut. I speak from experience, because that is how Uncle Frank and I tried to make Aunt Anne feel whenever we were left in her charge.

Nonetheless, I recall observing Mom when I first knew her, during that time at Catholic University when she was still doing her best to avoid me, as she worked with a bunch of D.C. kids in a big brother/sister program. Most of the college students were clueless and the kids were out of control. Until Mom stepped in. She employed a masterful blend of firmness and soft touch to which the kids responded easily, and soon bedlam gave in to military precision.

Seeing how well Mom worked with kids was the second thing that really made her attractive to me. A few years later we were preparing for marriage and the question came up about children. Five sounded like a good number for us. Having come from families of eight and six kids, mom and I saw advantages and disadvantages of lots of kids, but I don’t recall the reasoning that led to the number five. Of course, the plan was subject to change.

Being good Catholics, we were always open to children, but nature has a way of rearranging lives. When Fr. Tom asked us, three years into our marriage, if we would be interested in adopting a child, the responsible thoughtfulness we attempted to display could barely cloak the thrill, anticipation, and excited anxiety we felt.

Mom tells the story of our waiting for Jamey better than I could, but I recall KNOWING that she both wanted children and would be a great mom, even as, in true mom fashion, she kept asking, “Are we sure we want to do this? Do we really know what we’re doing? What if we (fill in the blank with any parental failure)?” And the ever present “Are you really going to be there to help when I need you?” The questions, however, ultimately faded in the endless focus on preparing for the baby’s arrival.

When mom first held that baby in her arms, she stood a mile deep in an ocean of passion for motherhood. Where did that come from? Where do oceans come from? She could never again imagine a world without it.

Brother

Mom’s never-tiring love has been a part of my life since the earliest memories. I literally have no knowledge or experience of a time when I was without it–no matter how far away I travelled or whatever adventure I was immersed in. It was always something so beyond questioning or doubting that it didn’t really need to be thought about. Of course, as I’ve gotten older, its become more apparent to me what is involved in being a good mother–and how rare and attention-worthy excellent mothers like mine are.

For example, when you start living on your own in the “real world,” you realize exactly how much effort and sacrifice are required to prepare quality meals for yourself–much less for a family. Yet this has always been one of the unquestioned assumptions in our family–that we would all sit down, together, over something wholesome (and, with the exception of zuchinni, delicious) and share dinner. Making this happen day in, day out, was mom. Growing up, it didn’t seem at all unusual, because it was so constant. It was as if there was some super-human force standing behind it all, keeping us all together. The experience growing up in a household ordered by this super-human woman–and her love–provides a backdrop for my whole life, something that hovers behind and above me, all the time.

Sister

I am getting married in less than two months. I have a job that keeps me busy during the day, and sometimes in the evenings and on weekends. Mom and my fiance have therefore done much of the planning for it. Many people say that MOBs (mother-of-the-bride) either relive their weddings or redo their weddings when their daughters are engaged. Mom has done neither.

Her wedding was different than mine will be in many ways. She was 22 and kept things very simple: she did her own hair and makeup, had no special bouquet for her wedding portrait and did not send save-the-dates. (Did anyone send save-the-dates in 1977??) I also think her parents had enormous influence over the kind of reception she had. Frankly, I think Mom’s opinions about her reception were often overridden by her parents.

That said, Mom has thrown herself into planning a wedding FOR ME. She considers my opinions and listens to my preferences before she signs the florist contract or orders bubbles for the send-off.

Don’t get me wrong–if Mom could redo or relive her wedding I think she would be tempted. For example, a part of her might have wished she had altered her mom’s wedding gown for her wedding. I am wearing the same dress that she and my grandma wore, but, unlike me, my mom did not hire a seamstress to adapt the dress fit “her” style and tastes. What’s amazing about Mom is that she is really good at actively suppressing these desires to redo her wedding. This is selflessness in its purest form. I guess this is a mother’s love, although no one but Mom could love me like this.

Me

I think the vast majority of the ways that mothers impact their children is simply by the way they run the house.

My sister, my Aunt Anne, Mom, and Grandma.

Whenever I go home to visit my parents as an adult, Mom will inevitably say, “I can’t believe I never taught you ____.” Almost always it’s something home related, like cooking or cleaning or sewing.

But the truth is, I know how to do all of those things. Mom does them better, so I yield to her when I’m home, but thanks to her, I’m completely comfortable in the kitchen. I arrived at college knowing how to do my laundry and repair clothes and make smart financial decisions.

Mom didn’t have to sit me down and hold an official lesson on how to cook, for example. Instead, she included my siblings and me whenever she cooked, and we learned by osmosis over time. I think this is one of the greatest gifts that Mom gave us.

It’s been really interesting to learn by my mother’s example as an adult. The lessons are different. They’re no longer about how to run a home (except when I’m at home). They’re about how to stay committed to someone for life. They’re about how to reach out to those you love even when they live thousands of miles away. They’re about making tough choices to improve yourself as a person and continue to grow.

Perhaps the most special long-distance lesson I’ve learned from my mother is the way that she interacts with her own mom, who is now 88. Grandma is physically healthy, but her mind wavers between sharp and forgetful.

Mom spends a lot of time and energy on Grandma. In a way, she has slipped out of the daughter role and into the mother role with her. It’s been incredibly inspiring to see how she takes care of Grandma. I can only hope that I am even half as compassionate and patient with my mom when she gets old as she is with her mother.

***

Mom, I hope you know the huge success you’ve achieved as a mother. Thank you for the lessons you meant to teach me and the ones you didn’t know you were teaching. Thank you for our weekly chats. Thank you for your endless support. Thank you for letting me go when I felt the need to go to college out of state, for going to all my soccer games growing up, for helping me learn Japanese when you didn’t know a thing about the language. Thank you for the cool hand on my forehead when I had migraines, and thank you for scheduling playdates for your introverted son. I needed that.

Most of all, thank you for choosing to be my mother. Motherhood is a choice, for biological kids like my brother and sister, and for non-biological kids like me. Thank you for giving me a life, a family, and many years of love.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Love,

Jamey

“That was by far the best concert I’ve ever been to.”

And then I say it again the next time. Maybe each consecutive concert is inherently better than the last.

A few very memorable concerts are as follows:

• Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis (I think the dome has been renamed dozens of times since then. Right now it’s probably something like the Dippin’ Dots/Zynga/Eat Fresh Dome). I’ll never forget how absolutely perfect their sound was. It was crisp and clear and big without blowing out your ears. They got the sound exactly right, and as a result, they rocked.
• Phoenix in Lousiville: I’m sure you’ve been to a concert where you’re on your feet the entire time and you feel like you share the same heartbeat with everyone else in the theater. That happened for most of the Phoenix concert. If you’ve never heard the song “Rome” live, you need to.
• Okerville River/The New Pornographers at The Pageant in St. Louis: I went for The New Pornographers, but I mention Okerville River here because they were absolutely incredible. It’s rare that you can hear a band for the first time and feel like you know all of their songs within a few minutes. And then The New Pornographers brought the house down. There was also a hot Asian girl in the vicinity, which always helps.
• Kings of Leon at The Pageant in St. Louis: I really don’t remember anything about this concert, but I feel like I should mention it because I was there before they got big.
• Deer Tick in St. Louis: I wrote about this experience way back in 2010 when I was young and nubile. It was a spontaneous act, going to see a band that I’d never heard of due to an extra ticket a friend had, and although I’m pretty sure I have permanent hearing loss due to the concert, it was worth it. I’ve been waiting for Deer Tick to return, and they’re finally coming back to St. Louis on May 16! If you’re a fan, let me know. Seriously. Let me know ASAP.
• Ray LaMontagne in Louisville: Definitely the most chill concert I’ve ever been to. We just sat back, relaxed, and enjoyed the show.
• Tom Petty at Verizon Amphitheater (which has also been renamed a dozen times. Currently I’m pretty sure it’s the Baconnaise/Weight Watchers Amphitheater): I’ve seen Petty twice at the same outdoor concert area, and both times he was incredible.

But the best concert I’ve ever been to? I’m going to have to go with the most recent one: Guster at the Sheldon Concert Hall here in St. Louis. It was an acoustic concert, which let Guster show how talented they are. The show felt incredibly intimate due to the way they interacted with the crowd. It was as if we were all hanging out with Guster at a jam session. They’re still on their acoustic tour, so if you get the chance to see them, don’t miss out. And check out their Facebook page before you go to the concert. They might ask you to bring something.

Concerts I need to go to: U2, The Arcade Fire, The Generationals, The Heartless Bastards, Grouplove, and Van Morrison (is he still alive? Or will this require time travel? Is it worth creating an alternate universe just to see a band from the past?)

And most importantly, what’s the best concert YOU’VE ever been to? I’ll accept the top three if you can’t narrow it down.

You’ve seen or heard this type of adoption humor before. It’s a fairly common joke in movies, sitcoms, and online memes.

I’m writing today as someone who is not at all sensitive or ashamed of the fact that I’m adopted to say that this type of humor needs to stop. Especially in mass media.

I’m not proposing this for me. I’m proposing it for every adopted child out there and every family that has an adopted child.

This type of humor pervades the misconception that adoption is a stigma. The stigma has diminished over time, but it’s still lurking out there in the form of this type of “humor.” Plain and simple, adoption is not at all a bad thing or something to be ashamed of.

Circumstances vary from person to person, but in every adoption, at least one or both parties involved are acting out of love. Most biological parents who put their child up for adoption do it out of love so that their child can have a better life than the one that they can offer. I know that some adopted kids struggle with the idea that someone gave up on them early on in life, but even those kids have adoptive parents (or as I like to call them, parents) on the receiving end who choose to love them as their own. That’s such a powerful choice to make.

Can you comprehend how selfless those choices are? Those acts of love are absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

You might look at these memes and think that everyone knows they’re just jokes. The thing is, though, kids don’t know they’re jokes—kids can sense when there’s a greater truth or message behind a joke. Humor can be a wonderful way to break down barriers, but only if everyone is in on the joke.

Plus, not all adopted kids have parents like mine who didn’t put a stigma on adoption. I’ve always known that I was adopted—there was never a special sit-down chat where my parent’s “broke the news” to me. If you’ve gotten to the point where you’re “breaking the news,” you’re essentially telling the kid that adoption is a secret that you have to hide as long as possible.

Here’s an example: I watched a movie called Kung Fu Panda 2 a few months ago. In the movie, the titular panda goes on a quest for his “real” parents (another ridiculous concept, in my opinion. An adopted child’s real parents are the ones who raised him and parented him. Rather, the correct term is biological parents). The panda’s father is a stork who has hidden the adoption for his son’s entire life. A number of jokes are made about the panda not realizing that he’s adopted.

Kung Fu Panda 2 is a kids movie. Somehow the writers of this movie thought that it would be a good idea to convey the idea that adoption is a dirty little secret that you should hide from your child, and that if you’re an adopted child, you should be ashamed (as the panda is when he finds out). Eventually the movie gets around to the idea that the panda is grateful for the life his father gave him, which was a nice touch, but that’s literally at the very end of two Kung Fu Panda movies rife with adoption humor.

This topic is close to home for me because I know how…well, how normal it can be to be raised in a household where being adopted is openly discussed and shared (my brother and sister aren’t adopted). This stigma doesn’t have to persist. If we stop making adoption jokes, the stigma will go away.

If this message resonates with you, I’d invite you to share this post. Share it with anyone: family, friends, adoptive parents, adopted friends, and the writers of Kung Fu Panda 2. Let’s all choose to stop making nonsensical jokes about adoption so that we can remove all stigma or shame from adoption forever. Let’s all make adoption seem like the very normal, loving act that it is. I’m sure you know some adopted kids—do it for them.

How have the people in your life approached adoption? How have you?

What do you do?

If the scenario were different in one or more of the following ways, would your decision change?

• Your father is younger. Mid-50s.
• Your father has a living will that states that he wants to be unplugged from the machines in this scenario.
• The surgery is inexpensive but just as risky with no guarantee of success.
• It’s not your father–it’s a sibling or a child of yours.

Yesterday I wrote about what it’s like to make these kinds of choices for a pet. Most everyone said that they would go to great lengths to save their pet if it could return to a good quality of life for a significant amount of time. Someone on Facebook said that they’d sell their house before not covering a major expense for her pet.

So I started to wonder: How much do we treat our pets like humans when it comes to these major decisions? Do we have the same respect for life for humans that we do for pets? Why or why not?

There’s a decent chance that someday you’ll get the call that we all dread, the one where we learn that a family member is being kept alive by machines. Maybe it’s because of an accident, or maybe they’re just sick, and they reached that tipping point where their body needs some help.

In most of these cases, the person will be conscious, and they’ll be able to convey what they want. What if they say they want you to pull the plug? Would you do it (or sign off on the doctor doing it)? Or would you fight for their life, sparing no expense? At what point does fighting for them become more about you and your needs and less about them and theirs?

Do you value human life in the same way that you value your pet’s life? How do you treat them differently, if at all?

What do you do?

If the scenario were different in one or more of the following ways, would your decision change?

• The dog is only 1 or 2 years old.
• The dog’s quality of life won’t change at all after the medicine/surgery.
• You can make the payments over a period of 2 years ($250/month) instead of out of pocket.

The most interesting of those in my opinion is the age of the dog. If you’ve had your pet for a year, sure, there’s a special bond there, but nothing compared to if you’ve had the dog for 12 years. Based on that alone, it would be much more difficult to put the dog down at 12 than 1. But there’s this other factor when it comes to pets: life expectancy. Most dogs don’t live longer than 14 years. So you could save the younger dog that you care less about, but he’ll probably live another 8-13 years, or you can save your closest companion but only have him around for another year or two.

The other other interesting element of this is money–specifically, a lump-sum payment versus a payment plan. If you think about it, we’re on a payment plan to keep our pets alive every day: food. If you don’t feed your dog, he’ll die. Same with cats, but with cats you have the added expense of cat litter. For each of my cats, I probably spend about $20/month, or $240 for the year. It’s easy to pay that when it’s spread out over the year, but if I had to pay the full $240 on a single day each year, it would change the way I look at my cats’ general laziness and unwillingness to work.

A friend of mine got a puppy on Saturday, and the puppy got really sick yesterday. The bill was huge–somewhere between $1000 and $2000, depending on the potential reimbursement. You can see Beckham in the photos here. He’s adorable. But where do you draw the line?

It made me think about the fact that in all likelihood, I’m going to outlive Biddy and Walter. It’s a sobering fact. I would risk quite a bit to save my boys. But at the end of the day, I want to make the decision that’s best for them. I don’t want to cling to them because of MY needs or because of the effect it’ll have on ME. I want my boys to live out their days as happy and healthy as possible, and if they’re not able to live that way, the greatest way I can respect their life may be to end it.

As for the money, in the past I may have said that it’s “just an animal.” It’s gotten harder and harder for me to say that with Biddy in particular, given that I’ve had him for over 5 years. Sure, yes, he’s just an animal. He’s completely dependent on me, he has a tiny brain, and he’ll never grow up and move out and get a job. He’s a pet.

But if I knew that a doctor could cure him and I had the money, I’d be hard pressed not to do it. It would be a very difficult decision. It would also be hard to know that I could have spent that money to save hundreds of other cats and dogs by contributing funds to animal shelters. My pet or 100 anonymous pets? What makes my pet so important?

For those of you who currently have pets, what do you think you’d do in this situation? Have you thought about it? I’d love to hear from people who have unfortunately had to make this decision in the past. Do you feel like you made the right choice?

If you haven’t seen the 10-minute video about Caine’s Arcade that went viral today, I suggest you do so here (I’ll summarize below the video). Warning: You may cry. I did.

So, there is a boy in Southern California named Caine Monroy. His father runs an auto repair shop in a fairly downtrodden neighborhood, and when Caine’s not at school, he hangs around the auto repair shop quite a bit. During that downtime, he constructed an arcade (think Chuck E Cheese) out of cardboard boxes. He has a whole system of selling chances and distributing tickets and prizes–watch the video, it’s pretty brilliant what he put together.

The thing is, Caine doesn’t have any customers. We’ve all been there as kids. We have these grand plans of running the world with our business that melts chocolate bars together to form new, mega candy bars…but there’s no one for these products. It’s all a pipe dream.

But the dream is important. And so when a filmmaker named Nirvan Mullick happened upon Caine’s Arcade, he became Caine’s first customer, and he asked Caine’s father if he could make a short film about the boy. I won’t spoil the ending, but he puts together a surprise for Caine that he deems “the best day of my whole life.”

I hope each and every one of you has had a day that is so remarkable, so unexpected, that it is marked forever in your memory as the best day of your whole life. I’ve had many, many great days. Days where you know how amazing the day is while it’s still happening. But there is one day that rises above the rest.

This is the story of the first African-American female President of the United States of America. It was the best day of my whole life.

This is me around the age when this story takes place.

I was 13, and it was summer break. August, I think. Every year, the school system in my county hosted this special enrichment day for all the dorky kids in the county. There were a lot of us, and it was very well attended (about 600 kids ages 8-14).

The theme changed every year, but it must have been an election year, because the theme was the national election. We were divided into 5 “political parties” (each group had a different color), and each of the groups was divided into about 6-8 subgroups. The overall goal of the day is that we were going to hold an election, and all of the kids and parents who attended were going to vote on a political party at the end of the day to determine the new President and Vice-President.

In my subgroup, we were told that we needed to nominate candidates for president and vice-president within our group. I was a shy, quiet kid, a follower, not a leader, an observer, a behind-the-scenes guy. So I nominated one girl I knew to be the presidential candidate for our subgroup. Then, much to my surprise, someone I didn’t know nominated me. After quick vote, somehow I became the vice-presidential candidate.

We had to write speeches. I didn’t have the funds for a professional speechwriter, so I wrote my own speech and got some feedback from a few people, and then we were whisked away to a room with the other yellow-party subgroups. It was there that we would elect our political party’s candidates.

The way the voting worked was that all of the subgroup candidates would delivery their speeches, and then everyone would vote on a presidential candidate, and then, separately, a vice-presidential candidate.

I gave my speech first. Essentially, it was a speech to introduce my subgroup presidential candidate, but damn…this was a speech. It was all fire and brimstone–I believe I even led off with, “The world is crumbling around us.” Something like that. And the thing was, although I didn’t have my fear of public speaking back then, I certainly didn’t relish it. I didn’t take pleasure in being the center of attention.

But that speech won me the nomination.

This photo has no relevance to this story, but I saw it in my photo album, and for obvious reasons it needed to be published. It looks like we're in a police lineup after being arrested for dressing haphazardly.

My presidential candidate was a named Melanie. She was a year older than me, very intelligent, and an excellent public speaker. I would not be telling you this story if Melanie was not my presidential candidate that day.

We picked out a few aides to assist us, and the games were afoot. For what felt like the first time ever, on that day I was important. I was someone to be reckoned with. While the rest of the kids ate lunch in the cafeteria, I ate in a private dining room with the other candidates. The press followed us around. We were allowed to smoke and drink. It was amazing!

Even better, during the first presidential debate (for which my role again was simply to announce my running mate–in fact, I’m pretty sure that was my only role all day, but it seemed very important) I looked around at the other political parties to discover that I was friends with a number of the other candidates. I believe the infamous Trev was in the green party.

To be honest, most of the day was a blur. But it was a good blur, a great blur. It culminated in a huge gymnasium where it was announced that my yellow party had won the election. Again, my role was to introduce Melanie, the first African-American female President. But for a little kid who never expected any of that to happen, it was my proudest moment.

My sister and I had a sleepover with Trev and his sister that night, and we probably spent some of that time melting chocolate bars into mega candy bars with hopes of world domination. But that night as I fell asleep in my sleeping bag, I knew that I had already conquered the world earlier in the day. I knew that I had just experienced the best day of my whole life.

I hope you have the chance to watch Caine’s story. It will move you not only because of the child you once were, but also because a filmmaker took the time to tell Caine’s story and give him the best day of his life. It made me want to do that for someone too. Someday. For now I just donated to Caine’s college fund and wrote a blog entry so that you too can share your best day story in the comments.

I have nothing against people who GChat. If that’s how you like to communicate, keep doing it. I’m not here to convince you otherwise.

But I feel like I get asked to switch to GChat more than I’m asked to switch from any other form of conversation. Never am I talking with someone in person and they say, “Hey, let’s switch over to e-mail.” I guess it kind of happens the other way around, but it’s a natural progression (especially when dating)–you e-mail a few times and then meet in person.

Here’s the thing: E-mail is my preferred method of communication, surpassed only by talking in person, and not all the time. E-mail lets me respond to someone at my own pace, when I want to, and with the time to gather my thoughts. Even if I reply to e-mail fairly quickly, which I often do, I can do other things in between writing e-mails. And I like the option to leave the e-mails behind for any reason at any time and not feel like I’m walking away from a live conversation, which GChat is.

With GChat, however, there’s an immediacy to it. It demands your immediate attention…and yet it’s not quite as fast as a real conversation. Honestly, it simply doesn’t seem like the best use of time. It’s more of a distraction than anything else. If you really need to talk to me about something, call me and we’ll work it out in 2 minutes, not 15 minutes of smiley faces and overlapping statements.

It’s for this same reason that I don’t like having conversations by text. I don’t want to be a part of any text conversation that lasts longer than 3 texts each unless it’s naughty. And even then, it’s too hard to type, and it creates the bad kind of multitasking scenario. The kind when you’re not really focused on anything despite dead air.

So you tell me: The next time someone says to me, “Can we just GChat?”, is there any compelling reason or scenario when I should say yes? Do you GChat?