Yeah, right...
When I was young, the Crips and the Bloods were starting to become more prevalent in the school system in Muskogee, and it was a sincere concern for my parents that their children not be threatened or involved in any way with gangs.
Like I'd try to get involved with gangs. My momma had nothing to worry about me getting involved with gangs because I am just not, nor every will be, gang member material.
First of all, I'm as white as white can get. I didn't just look white, I acted white, dressed white, even smelled white. The closest to dressing gangster - and remember, this was the late 70's was a pair of platform dress shoes that had a two-inch heel that my momma bought me for church.
I had Sore Thumb Syndrome; I stuck out, kinda glowed a little bit, even on a sunny day.
Second, I was NOT cool. I was tall and skinny, meaning that my pants were always too short. My momma would buy me jeans, and in a couple of weeks, maybe days, they'd be high-waters. My momma was notorious for buying my brother and I the same shirt off the same rack, just different colors. It didn't happen often, but sometimes we'd show up at school looking like Twinkies.
My momma would cut my hair, and man, in the 70's, there really wasn't a cool hair style for guys. I mean, we thought parting it down the middle and feathering it back was it, but, seriously??
And third, I just couldn't do anything to break my mom's heart. She caught me smoking when I was in the third grade, and watching her cry was more punishment than the belt from my dad when he got home. At that minute, I swore I would never BREATHE again, much less smoke cigarettes or drink or do drugs.
So off to po-dunk school we went.
On my very first day of being in Junior High at this po-dunk school, I found out that even small schools have gangs; they're called 'Rednecks'.
They wore Wranglers and boots and ball caps with logos like MFA Feed, Cat, Massey Ferguson, John Deere, Red Man, and Bubba's Pipe Line Equipment. Major League Baseball caps were nowhere to be found. Sometimes they wore cowboy hats.
And every one of them, every last one, had a faded ring in their back pocket where they kept their Skoal can.
I'm standing there at the doors of the Junior High, a white, geeky, momma's boy, scared to death as I watched this new and different type of gang move about the playground, terrorizing all the seventh graders with 'Initiation' - a Wedgie - and knowing that sooner or later, I'd come into their sights.
Later, I found that their customs were not too different from other gangs. They would talk about the Brotherhood Rituals of Redneck: going hunting and shooting deer, fishing, drinking and getting drunk (yes, even in the seventh grade! I was awestruck.), and the ever popular subjects of girls and sex and fighting and being tough.
It wasn't long that I noticed a more elite gang that moved with ease throughout the school with no fear of the administration - probably because their leader was actually on staff!
They were called FFA-ers. Future Farmer's of America.They wore corduroy jackets with their gang sign on the back, the state and town of their chapter, and their names boldly printed over the right chest.
You weren't allowed to join the FFA until the ninth grade, and even then, it was a rigorous initiation. But every Redneck wanted to join. It was amazing. When I heard what the initiation was, I had absolutely no desire to be a part. It was so horrible, I can't even describe it to you. But I'll tell you, it had to do with chickens and cows and... okay, that's enough; I can't dwell on it like that. It's too painful.
As I moved through the school year, I never really was accepted as a Redneck, nor did I want to be. But I also wasn't isolated. I made friends with the different gang members, got to play in games like Twenty-One (an all-against-all basketball game) at lunch, and became recognized as a talented musician.
And it's important that you understand that I was in Junior High, in a po-dunk school, and many of these gang members wouldn't have known 'talent' unless it came in a beer can. So, to call me 'talented' just meant that I had 'some', which was way more than most of them did.
In the eighth grade, we studied Oklahoma History, and Mr. Pittman was the teacher.
He had grown up in this little bitty community, and knew every student, their parents, where they lived and what kind of cattle they raised or crop they grew. Before becoming a teacher, Mr. Pittman could have been considered a Redneck gangmember - still was, by definition, I suppose.
All the Rednecks liked him, primarily because he was an easy teacher; easy in that he would lecture, then let the students sit and talk and do whatever.
But one thing about Mr. Pittman that everyone liked was the fact that it was so easy to get him off task. We'd enter the classroom at the bell, sit down, and Mr. Pittman would come in. A student might ask him about his calf that he's fattening up, or the storm that stirred up his pond, or advice on fixing their pickup, and he'd go for more than half of the hour, explaining or talking or advising - then realize how much time had gone by realize that his original plan of lecturing for the day couldn't fit into the remaining time allotted.
They did it all the time. They'd get Mr. Pittman going about something, and he'd get of task, totally distracted. I can't honestly tell you one thing about Oklahoma History that I remember from taking his class. But I did get an 'A', as most students did.
My childhood recollections of Redneck gangs and po-dunk schools andparticularly Mr. Pittman came back to mind as I found my own self being distracted from the to do list that I had floating in my mind. Piddly stuff, irrelevant stuff came and went, eating my time out of my watch, leaving me with a bigger TDL for the morrow.
I'm betting that most of us know of a teacher that we could easily get off subject. My private piano instructor in college, Mr. Rosfeld, was one of my favorite mentors, all time favorite teachers. But when it came to lesson time, I often times hadn't spent the quality time I should have in the practice hall, meaning that my lesson was going to not go well.
So I'd often try to distract him with talks of his personal accomplishments as a writer, composer and arranger. He would look at me and say, "Oh, Monty, what am I going to do with you?" He knew what I was doing, and I could tell in his eyes that it saddened him.
Ephesians 6:11 says: "Put on all of God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies and tricks of the Devil." One of those tricks is to keep us distracted, sometimes with piddly and unimportant and irrelevant stuff. Distractions prevent us from putting on the armor that God has for us, leaving spots and spaces of vulnerability.
It's like going into battle with just a helmet on... no boots, no camos, no gun, no flack jacket.
Know that there is an enemy who wants you to fail, and he tries to sway you from staying the course with petty and miniscule discractions.
The rest of Ephesians 6 uses the word 'stand' repeatedly, meaning stay on task, stay on purpose.
Don't let yourself be distracted.
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