Out Of the Box: Introduction

When Josiah was a little guy, preschool television had not completely exploded into the mega-billion dollar industry it is now.  There had been some major hits like Bob the Builder, Blue's Clues, and Barney.  But there also was a lot of stuff that fell into two major categories: Canadian Kids Television and Crap.  Nickelodeon had not launched Noggin (which later became Nick Junior).  Disney had not come up with Preschool Disney.  Entities like Baby Einstein and The Wiggles were just coming onto the scene. So for those early morning hours after the big kids went to school and before preschools got out, these stations tried to fill the hours with shows they purchased from other groups.  That is where Canadian Kids Television came into play.  For some reason, there was more groups in the Great White North that funded kids tv.  So they had developed more shows.  It was always amusing to hear all of these shows with their Canuck accents and our children learning words, sounding like young hockey players.  (The same thing happened with The Wiggles, except with all of our kids sounding like extras on Crocodile Dundee.)  Disney and Nick snapped up rebroadcast rights to these shows and filled their lineup (PB&J Otter, Franklin, Little Bear).  Unfortunately, they also purchased a lot of shows that fell into the Crap pile.  Sometimes these were also Canadian shows, but more like Quebec (technically, it is Canadian, but they like to remind us that - like a divorced couple - that province has TWO parents and one is France.)  This explained shows like Doodlebops, because there really wasn't any other possible explanation for that monstrosity.

Before long, Disney and Nick realized that creating their own shows was far more profitable than buying existing shows.  So they slowly replaced all of the imports and created their own shows with infinite merchandising rights.  Brilliant financial move.  But for anyone who had children in the first few years of the new millenium, we will always remember those other shows.  One such shows that landed squarely in the Crap pile was Out of the Box.  It was so dumb.  Absolutely ridiculous.  They had the "clubhouse" like Barney.  They had the two super-earnest hosts like Blues Clues.  And they had, well, not much else.  Oh, wait, they also had this horrible theme song set off by terrible puns.



Whenever I hear the phrase "out of the box," this is what pops to mind.  It has made me hate the phrase even more than most people who are encouraged to think outside of the box.  This past Sunday, we had a guest preacher at Summit Church.  He talked about living outside of our box.  I held in my usual aversion to that line to listen.  He was talking about how we can have extremely busy lives and still be unbelievably bored.  We get into a monotonous routine and get stuck in a rut.  As a result, we start to make choices that are easy and comfortable to stay in our box.  He challenged the church to start to be willing to move out of their box (or comfort zone or hedgehog or whatever catch phrase you happen to embrace).

I looked at Heather and we both said the same thing.  We already got out of our box.  Back in February, when we had to turn in our Match List for Match Day, we knew we faced a tough decision.  There was Orlando - the place we called home and loved dearly and had lived the majority of our married lives together.  It had our church, our friends, our kids' schools.  It was close to both of our parents.  It had doctors that Heather had spent two years with and residents who were wanting her to work with them.  Then there was Columbia.  On the surface, there was no reason to pick Columbia.  I had been there three times - once in high school for a yearbook conference, once to take the kids to the children's museum while visiting family in Rock Hill, and once for a wedding.  It was the place we turned North when traveling to Rock Hill.  It had Steve Spurrier and team fans who found it hilarious to only use part of their mascot name to sound obscene.  But we had this gut feeling we were supposed to go there.  Heather's interview there had been amazing.  She felt drawn there and felt like they wanted her.  I really only had her word to go on.  But we both were willing to make the jump.  So we listed it first and ended up matching there.  In that moment, we were out of the box.  If we had stayed in Orlando, that would have been the easy and comfortable and rut-increasing choice.  Leaving for Columbia was the right choice.

We will be leaving in just a few weeks.  In the words of Ron Burgundy, I am a swirling ball of emotions as we prepare to go.  Normally, my response is to blog about stuff like this.  For some reason, I have hesitated to do that this time.  But I feel that I would be robbing myself of a positive outlet for me to think through this process.  And I feel that I would be robbing others from knowing the impact they made on my life.  Between now and our move in June, I plan on writing a good number of posts that will be in the "Out of the Box" series.  Some of them will be looking back at the last four years of medical school.  Some of them will be looking ahead.  And a great majority of them will be trying to explain why I have grown to call a tourist trap my home.  Instead of listing all the things I will miss about Orlando, I will write about the things I am thankful that I got to experience in Orlando.  Some of you may find yourself splayed across this site in those articles.  For that, I apologize in advance.  Some of you will not.  For that, I apologize in advance.  I know that this is the Internet we are talking about - the haven of the disgruntled, wronged and cynical.  But if I don't include you in a post and you felt that I should have, please do not take offense.  I mean no slight.  After thirteen years of living in the City Moderately Beautiful, I have to trim things down.  And if it really bothers you, let me know and I'll write something special just for you.

The first in this series (well, actually the second, since this technically is the first - although this is more of a prologue or forward and shouldn't count towards pagination) will look back at Florida State University's College of Medicine.  It will post sooner than you think.  I hope you will join me on my journey of self-reflection as we move out of our box.  Out of the box. OUT of the box.  Take one box...

Dreams

I didn't know which category this would fall into.  It actually has elements from several, so I just left the little identifying disc off.  Hope that doesn't offend anyone.

I have never had much use for dreams.  I don't mean the life aspirations kind of dreams.  "I have a dream to be a late night talk show host."  Those are useful - rarely realized - but useful.  I mean the kind of dreams that invade your mind, wrecking an otherwise peaceful sleep.  Some people dream all the time.  It's usually really vivid stuff.  And they can remember almost all of them the next morning.  My wife and daughter are both like this.  Every morning they can give you a rundown of their dreams.  I'm not like this.  I guess I dream like most people, but I rarely can remember them the next day.  I'm talking maybe once a month.  (Until recently, when it has been happening almost daily.)  So when I do, they are usually very vivid and/or troubling dreams.  And my mind has trouble differentiating between what happens in my dream and real life.  So I'll wake up all upset or scared for no good reason.  Fun stuff.

Most of my dreams are troubling.  It is almost like my mind dips into all the stuff that scares the crud out of me and creates a movie out of it.  There have been dreams about losing the kids.  A large number of my dreams involve me getting into a fight or getting attacked.  I'll get into huge arguments with people - ones that have massive ramifications within my dream world.  And, I guess this is normal, I'm naked a lot in my dreams.  Like, when I shouldn't be.  I'll be running around trying to hide myself while at the United Nations to argue with someone.  Weird stuff like that.

I have had very memorable dreams where I got into a big knock down, drag out fight with a work superior that I was having trouble with in real life.  That is always a problem.  You wake up and are all wary of the person when you get to work.  My mind is on hyper-alert with that person - all because in the dream I finally unloaded all the stuff that I had bottled up in real life.  Even now, I'll have dreams involving massive showdowns with former pastors, bosses, nemeses - usually they are people that I didn't feel resolved with when they left my daily interactions.  I'll be all irritated at them all over again - only they are peacefully doing their daily routine five hours away.

It's always weird who ends up in a dream.  Completely random.  Like, I won't think about a person for years.  Then one night, WHAM, they are there running around with me trying to overthrow some evil overlord.  And my mind has the ability to come up with some wacky stuff.  Back when I was in elementary school, I had this horrible nightmare where I was getting attacked by all these weird monsters.  The one that absolutely freaked me out was this guy who had what looked like a dryer hose coming out of his suit where his neck and head should be.  (Kind of like Chairface Chippendale from The Tick, but a dryer hose instead of a chair.)  But, it was really a big vacuum hose, and it actually would suck things towards him.  I always called him Vacuum Cleaner Man.  It was horrifying.  And the worst thing is that I took one of my infrequent weekend naps that day and the stupid dream picked up right where it left off the night before.  Back to running away from Vacuum Man.  (Must have been generated by my extreme hatred of housework.)

I very rarely have happy dreams.  But I did have one the other day.  It was like I was watching a "Behind the Music" show - one of those television documentaries.  It was about Steve Burns, from Blue's Clues.  Of course, it also was a melding of other shows - like Bob the Builder.  Steve was narrating the show.  He was talking about how the show had been going well.  Then he said, "But things were about to get tougher.  Little did they know the controversy that would soon erupt.  What was the problem?  Take a look at this video and you'll see."  Then a clip started to play.  Blue was riding down a hill on a sled.  Steve came running up from behind and jumped on the sled and they raced down the snow.  Trees and houses were whipping along behind, and then there was a flash of orange for just a second.  "Did you see it?  If we slow it down, you'll see what many people perceived as a cross in the background."  The film slowed down as they passed the orange and, sure enough, it was a weirdly shaped orange cross.  "People soon began to accuse Steve of the unthinkable - that he was claiming to be . . . Jesus Christ."  (What?!?)  Steve continued in that typical overly emphatic voice that narrators use.  "Many people found this accusation ridiculous.  And Steve, of course, denied it.  But, little did they know . . . that Steve . . . had the twelve apostles in his backyard . . . as lawn chairs."  And it cut to a series of pictures showing his backyard.  Sure enough, there were a whole bunch of molded plastic chairs that looked like caricatures of the Twelve Apostles.  Their arms formed the arms, their legs were the front two legs, their face was the upper back of the chair, and the rest of the chair looked like robes.  They showed Peter, John, James.  Then I woke up.  I had to laugh at that whole thing.

A lot of people have sexy dreams.  (Uh, oh, where is this going?)  It is pretty common.  And, according to dream analysts, they don't mean anything.  This type is not as frequent for me as other types.  Sometimes, an element of that will take place when I am running around naked trying to fight ninjas.  You know, like in the movies where two people in extreme danger find time to make whoopie.  Like there isn't anything better they could be doing to prepare for the impending doom.  But, my strong sense of inner morality always short circuits those sections.  That has been the case since I was a teenager.  Very strange - like a subconscious dream purity ring.

I think the worst dreams are the ones that involve things that are so close to life that it takes supreme effort to convince myself it didn't happen.  A few months back, I had a dream where my good friend and ministry partner Charles and I had a really ugly fight.  It was nasty.  At the end of the dream, we ended up disbanding Defender Ministries and swearing to never talk to each other.  I had such a hard time the next day that Heather had me call Charles, just so my mind could reboot.  I felt stupid, but it worked.

The reason that I was even thinking about all of this was because last night I had a rough dream.  My family and my in-laws were all at some big fancy house (kind of like the one in Modern Family last night).  We were waiting for some guests to arrive.  And I was all excited because everyone was going to see how much weight I had lost.  I was nervous all day, so I kept munching on food.  Mostly it was just almonds. But I also drained a container of cheese balls.  (I HATE cheese balls.  But the kids had some the other day, so that must be where that came from.)  Finally, the other people showed up.  My Aunt Dee was there (but in a wheelchair).  And there were several other people too.  I came running down the circular staircase without a shirt on (but, oddly, not completely naked).  And they all criticized me because I hadn't lost enough weight.  They thought they would be more impressed.  And, cue alarm clock.

Needless to say, I felt pretty bad about myself when I woke up.  I try not to take too many messages from dreams.  I think they are so wacky that you could drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what was going on.  Or you could come up with some bizarre conclusions that really would mess you up if you tried to apply them.  But I am pretty sure that our insecurities in life do seep into our dreams.  Maybe that's why I'm always naked - I'm afraid that people will see me for what I really look like.  I know if I am troubled that I will often have more vivid troubling dreams.  (Hmmm, I've had those every day this week.  I wonder what that says.)  I don't know what I should take from last night's dream.  Maybe I am afraid that even after all this work, that other people still see me as a big fat failure.  Maybe I'm worried that I am going to start eating things I shouldn't.  Maybe it was nothing more than the turkey last night didn't sit well.

Fortunately, battling dreams isn't a whole lot different than battling my own perceptions.  I frequently will assume that people around me are thinking something about me or secretly judging me.  "Hey look at that fat guy.  Man, he's fat.  And what's he thinking wearing THOSE shoes?"  In reality, they probably didn't even realize I was there.  They were too busy worrying that everyone was judging THEM.  Part of my food addiction efforts has been convincing myself that what I think other people are saying about me, is actually what I am saying about myself.  So I have to fight my inner dialogue (which, trust me, can be more vicious than anything anyone else would say to me).  When I start in on myself, I have to fight those statements with truth.  And that is the same thing I have to do with dreams.  Because, let's face it, neither perceptions nor dreams have anything to do with reality.  Now if I can just find a way to stay dressed...