Confidence, now in pog form!

I am not a confident person.  In fact, I got beat up 7 times in middle school.  All different people but the same situation.  Their punch would be coming at me in slow motion like in a movie and I'd be thinking, "Dang, I need to do something so I don't get hit."  While I was thinking about that, their punch would land perfectly on my chin, chest, eye, ear or lip.

I'll be honest, I'm a biter when it comes to fighting.  And I'll kick you in your Planters peanuts if I feel like I'm trapped and there's nothing else for me to do.  I thought I had fighting figured out though because in mid 90's the Bruce Lee story entitled "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story" came out and I was so pumped when I watched that movie.  He just kicked peoples' asses, i.e. people at a party, angry cooks, and that demon thing that was a manifestation of his doubts, insecurities and fears.

Which maybe I have an inner demon that keeps me from being confident.  I hate not knowing things and I hate being perceived as if I don't know something about a subject.  Yet  I haven't seen any inner demons bust down a cubicle wall when I'm daydreaming or listening to music on Youtube though.  There is one hefty dude down the hall that is always giving me the evil eye when we pass each other, I have my hunches.

The guy who thought of Jesus during sex

When I was really into going to church all the time and scared of hell and scared of being a disappointment to others, I was considered godly.  I kind of put two and two together of what godliness looks like in the Baptist scene.  As I started to think on my own and develop some opinions I noticed there's wasn't any room to be fond of anybody who was different.  I remember being in a Sunday school class and a guy who was very intelligent and passionate about God started explaining things and everybody else in the class dismissed it as not really on track because it wasn't our doctrine or what we were used to.  Because a difference in opinion to a Baptist is heresy.  But the guy was nice.  Really nice.  He was a movie theater worker and had the personality to greet people.

I talked with him once during the sermon, we skipped it and had time to talk.  It was fun but things got weird because he started telling me about his sex life and not that that scares me but I didn't really know him.  And he said one thing to me to which I had 2 responses to.  He said, "I just wanna think of Jesus even when I'm having sex with my wife."  And I was like, first off, "No," and secondly, "No."

Because it's things like this that make people think Christians are wacky and they are wacky when they think things like this.  Can't we just enjoy sex as sex instead of thinking of a stereotypical guy with a beard and long flowing robe who pissed off religious people of his day?

So yeah, even with my Baptist upbringing, I think as I'm on this side of church that people in general are weird.  But I realize I say this while I'm looking in a mirror.

Knowing is 1/32 the battle

I recently connected with my father on Facebook and it's crazy because it wasn't an easy thing to message him.  I wasn't really sure what to say.  Like was I going to say, "Hey...ummm...what's new?  How's the past 31 years been?  I know how to shave."  But in the moment I felt like I over did it.  I tried the approach like everything's been fine and we've known each other.  I called him Pops in the message.  And I typed what I typed and after hitting the send button.  I was like, "Oh crap, I hope I wasn't too forward."

But it's funny because I know where I get my hunger for knowledge and my trait of telling really long drawn out jokes where there's like three subplots involved and you would have had to read Plato's Republic and then at the end when I reveal the punchline, I'm the only one who thinks it's funny.

You know how when something's on your mind before you go to bed you dream about that thing?  I had a dream I was playing chess with my father and in the middle of the game when I moved my piece I looked up and saw him reading a tome of some sort and it turned out to be the dictionary.  And I asked, "Why are you reading the dictionary?"  And he looked up, cleared his throat, and said, "This is a story about everything."