Degenerate

 
Well, I’m going to have to have surgery. I have tried to avoid it, but there’s no way out of it now. I have carpal tunnel. I’ve had it for years. I put up with it because I didn’t want to have surgery. It has effected my ability to play drums. It makes guitar playing difficult. My hands fall asleep when I’m driving or holding up a book to read it. Blah blah blah.

I just didn’t want to get the surgery.

But it’s gotten to the point that my nerves, according to the doctor, are degenerating. The nerves in my hands are being destroyed. I’m losing the ability to feel. So I have to get this surgery done to stop that from happening and, in the end, I should be better off.

I just didn’t want to get the surgery.

After the doctor told me I had “degenerative nerve damage” due to severe carpal tunnel, I looked up the word “degenerate.” I kind of knew what it meant, but you look anyway, ya know? It was a boring, but accurate, typical Webster definition: “having a decline in function.”

That was the “a” definition. The “b” definition was much more interesting. It said: “having sunk to a lower, usually more vicious state.”

Which immediately brought up a memory from elementary school, fifth or sixth grade. I was in line for lunch and this kid cut in front of me. So I said what any kid would say to such an obvious social impropriety.  “Hey. No cuts!”

Without blinking, without the slightest pause or moral inclination to interrupt his fluid, degenerate response, without emotion or feeling, this kid punched me in the jaw, knocking me to the ground. In the lunch room! I could hardly believe it had happened. I was too shocked to cry. Not to mention that there were kids everywhere, which is one of the greatest tear inhibitors you can find. But I looked around, scanning the lunchroom for adults. Lunch ladies everywhere and not ONE of them had seen what the degenerate had done. Of course, there was no way I could tell anyone. That would only make it worse.

He ignored me as I got up off the floor and got in line behind him, wondering what he might do next. But he didn’t do anything. I didn’t matter to him. I was just in his way, and now that I was out of the way, I meant nothing to him.

Consider: When the world treats you this way, you need to understand that the world is degenerate. It has descended into a lower, vicious state. The world has lost feeling, like nerves lose their feeling, like a dead body can’t feel, which makes it a dangerous place to be sometimes. And we’re all a part of it. As the song says, “We are the world.”

This is why Christ came: To regenerate the degenerate.



Matthew 9:12-13
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2010

Mr. Pendergrass's Cake

When I was in elementary school, I had a teacher named Mr. Pendergrass. I have to admit that I was not especially pleased, at first, to end up in his 6th grade class. I had been hoping for another teacher who seemed a lot more with it than Mr. Pendergrass. But no one asked for my opinion and so I spent a year with a southern gentleman who was tall and stern and . . . interesting.

Mr. Pendergrass talked with a southern accent, a lot like most of my relatives at the time. He wore nerdy type glasses and he had thick wavy hair that didn’t behave. You might have laughed at him if you thought you could survive it, but we all knew better. And he wasn’t afraid to tell us we were acting stupid. He never called anyone stupid, but he let us know when we were acting stupid.

One thing that really stood out about Mr. Pendergrass is that he had what used to be called a “sardonic” sense of humor, which is a little hard to explain. Webster says it’s about being “disdainfully or skeptically humorous.” Yep. Whatever that means, that was Mr. Pendergrass. Yet, somehow, by the end of the year, I absolutely loved this teacher. I learned from him. I liked his sardonic humor. Somehow he was really likeable. It made no sense, but there you go.

So. Close to the end of that year there was a bake sale to raise money for something at the school. All the teachers made something. Cookies, pies, whatever. And Mr. Pendergrass had produced, marginally, a chocolate cake, which was my favorite. In all honesty, it wasn’t a very attractive cake. The frosting looked like it had been applied by distracted chimpanzees. But, still. It was made by Mr. Pendergrass, so I wanted it. It just seemed right that I should have it. But they were auctioning this stuff off to the highest bidder, which was bad news for me because my family wasn’t exactly floating in the green, if you know what I mean, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.

But, for some strange reason, my mom was with me on this one. The bidding started and I shouted out my bid. But the price kept going up. And up. I would look at my mom with a look of “Yes, I Know Mom, This Is Crazy,” and she would give me a little nod and I’d add another quarter to my bid until, finally, we won the cake. I can’t remember how much it was, but it was ridiculous. I think it was the highest bid of the night.

And it was a very different, very pleasant, Mr. Pendergrass who immediately walked up to me and my mom. Apparently aliens had taken over his body. He was all smiles. He laughed and shook my hand and thanked my mom. He and my mom talked about how they were both from the south. He was blown away that we would pay that much for his cake, and I suddenly saw that he was just a young man who was teaching kids at a little school in Michigan because he liked kids. Kids like me.

So here’s what went down:

1. We ate the cake that night. It was delicious. Well. Delicious enough, anyway.
2. Mr. Pendergrass gave me an A for effort, marked with a note on my final report card saying something like, “Thanks for buying my cake!” Yes, he did.
3. I never forgot him.



Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2010