Random Ramblings

I think life should be more like TV. I think all of life’s problems ought to be solved in 30 minutes with simple homilies, don’t you? I think weight and oral hygiene ought to be our biggest concerns. I think we should all have powerful, high-paying jobs, and everyone should drive fancy sports cars. All our desires should be instantly gratified. Women should always wear tight clothing, and men should carry powerful handguns. Life overall should be more glamorous, thrill-packed, and filled with applause, don’t you think?… Then again, if real life was like that, what would we watch on television? -Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes

Growing up I loved Calvin and Hobbes. Bar non, it was my favorite comic in the newspaper. I to this day still remember the words in the last frame of the last comic in the series; “It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy… Let’s go exploring!” (Impressive, since the final comic was published almost 15 year ago).

What did I like about it? I think it was part that Calvin had an imagination. I was an imiaginative kid, and I always loved the strips where Calvin was having a daydream, like Spaceman Spiff or Stupendous Man. I grew up like that, using my imagination (video games weren’t huge in my life at this point, I didn’t get my first system, a super nintendo, until 7th grade, and my first computer until my sophomore year of high school). I’d hang out with friends (or, sometimes, by myself) imagining all sorts of adventures to keep myself occupied and/or amused.

Calvin was also incredibly smart. I don’t think I was aware of it at the time, but I think the 11th grade vocabulary I had in third grade was mostly due to Calvin’s waxing philosophical in some of the strips. He’s the only first grader I know who can use the words “vicariously” and “mediocre” in a complete sentence.

Mostly, I remember Sunday mornings before church, getting up and having my dad read the comics to me and my sister, with us on either arm of his chair, and every sunday Calvin and Hobbes was there, in all its half-page glory.

Just something I found amusing for the day, call it reliving my childhood. =)

Tags: Humor, Writing by Andrew Laine
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This weekend, as I went to starbucks before church, I passed Sherwood Ice Arena to a disheartening sight: Harmony Christian Books & Homeschool, a former competitor when I was in Christian retail, is going out of business and liquidating its store. It doesn’t come as a complete shock, though. It’s no surprise that small Christian stores are struggling, in part due to the economy and in part due to inability to compete with big box stores like Best Buy and Borders.

Harmony’s not the first retailer I’ve seen struggling: Shortly after I got out of the game, the Greatest Gift in Wilsonville had shut down, another small, family-run business. Rainbow West in Tigard, to the best of my knowledge, has closed down again (unless they’ve moved, which they have a nasty habit of doing without telling anyone) And the signs advertising space for lease in two locations of Christian Supply stores, one in Tanasbourne and one in Lake Oswego, don’t bode well, either, a clear indication that even the chain stores are feeling the pinch.

Part of it, clearly, is the inability to compete. Let’s face it: When Best Buy can sell Veggietales for 7.99 on release, and Christian Supply has it for 12.99 but gets it the Saturday before the secular market, particularly now, an extra three-days wait is easily accepted for the 5.00 savings. And Best Buy can afford that, as we’d had drilled into us countless times while I was still in Christian retail, they have larger ticket items that allow them to take such hits on their smaller purchases. However, I don’t think that’s entirely it, either. I think, to an extent, Christian retail brought it upon itself.

At this point, I’m sure many of you are kind of shocked at my hypothesis. “Brought it upon itself? How can they be to blame?” I don’t think Christian retail set out to deliberately sabotage itself, but I think by a process of decisions its made over the last couple of decades, it’s gotten into the mess it’s in now.

Christian retail used to be just that – Christian. It catered to an audience of born-again believers, looking for music that was uplifting, books that were inspiring, and Bibles that were… well.. Bibles. And it was good, people could find all of those items together in one place. However, over the years, things changed. Sales didn’t seem to be as good in the Christian markets as they were in the secular markets, and someone, somewhere, began to ask, “Why?”

They began to compare what was selling in the secular markets with what was selling in the Christian markets, and you know what they found out? What was hot in the secular markets didn’t really have a counterpart in the Christian market. Clearly, though, if it was that popular in the secular area, it would also be popular in the Christian area as well. And thus began Christian retail’s struggle to become “relevant” to the changing times.

Before I launch into this too far, a disclaimer: I am not going to get on my soap box and say whether or not certain types of music or books are more Godly than the other. We are, after all each given a different measure of faith, and while some may find certain things okay, others won’t. But I will point out a few different cases in which I saw something that struck me as seriously wrong in the Christian retail markets that I think stemmed from the problem of trying to be everything the secular market is without being the secular market.

That being said, Christian retailers began to bring in more things of what was popular: Christian rock bands that sounded just like the secular artists that were popular on the radio. In some cases, it wound up being a secular band trying to get its break. Take, for instance, Evanesence. Few people will remember, but they started their life as a “Christian” band on Wind-Up records. I remember we had the CDs up for about a whopping two weeks while I worked at Christian Supply just starting out. Then, one day, my manager told me that we had to pull them all. Puzzled, I asked why (the only thing I knew was the girl on the cover scared me). Come to find out, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, one of the band members had said “We’re really popular in the Christian markets, but we’re not a Christian band. What the [bleep] is up with that?”. There was an apology issued almost immediately from the record label, assuring us all that they would do a better job screening their artists before release. One two different occasions, I had to pull CDs by 12 Stones because of language/inappropriate comments in the CD liners. At the time, they seemed like trivial things, but looking back, they were things that never should have happened in the first place.

Music isn’t the only thing that became popular. An almost constant stream of “self help” books became the next big thing. It amazes me looking back at how many of the “next big things” were, in fact, big until they came out, then no one cared. And the number of ones that came through that had almost no theological foundation was appalling. The vast majority of the books in the “Christian Living” section were books based on pop psychology with scripture thrown in to make it look more spiritual. I remember vividly a book titled “Get a Life! It IS all about you”, which offered almost nothing from a Christian standpoint, but relied heavily on what’s popular in the psychology world. That’s frightening, folks. As Christians, God’s word is supposed to be our source. Not popular psychological theories.

And then Bibles. Let me say, when I was a kid, we had two kinds of bibles: NIV and KJV. (there were probably more, but those were the only two that anyone cared about). Now, there’s a bible in every shape, size, and kind. And some of them are borderline sacrilegious. For instance, the Bible as a Seventeen-style girl’s magazine. Because, clearly, the best way to get girls to read the bible is to make it look like a secular magazine that they’d rather be reading.

Regardless, things still weren’t booming in Christian retail. There were still things that were more popular in the secular market that the Christian markets couldn’t replicate. So, most recently, I’ve noticed a shift from strictly “Christian” items to items that are “Family Friendly”.

“Family Friendly”? Seriously?

It first hit me the day I entered the Lake Oswego Christian supply and found, prominently displayed, Disney movies. Disney movies with no discernable spiritual messages (Well, that is, unless you find one of the many books that specifically tries to draw spiritual themes out of secular movies), no real connection to what Christ came to do on earth. Then, a few weeks later on a trip to Vancouver Mall, I found in Crown Books & Gifts carrying Hannah Montana and High School musical CDs. The clincher, however, was reviewing the Easter sales flyer I recieved from Christian supply that had, in fact, no mention of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. At this point, it occurred to me that Christian retail has lost its collective soul.

Isn’t Christ supposed to be the focus? If we turn “Christian” into a synonym for “Family Friendly”, what has Christ done? Christ died on the cross, but for what? So we can use his name in vain attempts to promote a business that we’re running under man’s power with man’s logic?

Allow me to be counter-intuitive: Christian retail lost its soul and, I believe, is losing business because it fails to differentiate itself from the secular market anymore. If you walk into a Christian retail establishment, odds are you’ll probably get a similar level of service to a Borders or a Best Buy, a lot of the same products, but with higher prices. And since Christian retail’s moved to try not to invoke Christ as often, what’s differentiating them from the competition? Higher prices. It’s sad, but true.

I would love to see a Christian retailer let God build the house for once, live by faith, and see what happens. Stop trying to please the secular markets, but trust that God can provide the business if they try to run a business that’s pleasing to God. Christian retail shouldn’t have to change everytime the secular markets catch onto a trend that’s popular. Christians SHOULDN’T be keeping up with the Joneses, we were called to be set apart from the world, not to try and be like it but still maintain our identity as Christians. We should be seperated, and I just wish one retailer would decide “Okay, that’s the business plan. We’ll see how God can provide.”

Alas, I doubt I’ll see it in my day unless I open it myself… And that’s a market I don’t really want back into.

Tags: Religious, Writing by Andrew Laine
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It’s not our public face that defines who we are, it’s who we are when no one else is watching. Men judge by actions, but only God judges by hearts.

(It’s probably been said by someone more eloquently than I, but it’s just a thought I had this week)

Tags: Religious, Writing by Andrew Laine
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I wet to dinner at Chili’s tonight, and in addition to dinner, I got a show to go along with it. Talk about your mealtime value!

The waitress came around, took my order, and shortly thereafter, I had food. I hadn’t been eating more than five minutes, when a guy walks over and sits down at the table across the aisle from me. The guy looked jittery, which was making me a little nervous (the soup spoon shifted to my left hand, just in case). A couple of awkward minutes pass, him shaking a bit and me… well.. watching him out of the corner of my eye cautiously, when my waitress comes back, and he was suddenly on his feet, catching her attention.

“Uh, hi, you might not remember me, but you waited on my table the other day…”
“Uh-huh…” she said, politely.
“I just wanted to tell you that you did an excellent job yesterday, you were great…”
“Why thank you!”
He came all the way out here, shaking like a leaf in the wind, to tell her what a great job she’s doing? I don’t buy it.
“…This is going to sound weird, but…” Oh boy, here it comes… “I was wondering if I might take you to dinner sometime?”
Admittedly, I had to stifle a laugh at this point. He saw a pretty waitress and decided to come back and ask her to dinner. How… well.. shallow!
“Oh, that’s really sweet, but…” The rest of the sentence was drowned out by some loud person behind me, but the point was clear from the body language. Defeated, he walked away, shot down like a lousy pilot.

I mulled the incident over during the rest of my dinner. I couldn’t really piece together what would drive a man (or boy, in this case, he had to be a teenager) to go back to a restaurant and ask the waitress, who he doesn’t know from Eve, out to dinner? It’s certainly not something I’d be inclined to do, if I needed a date for an event or something that badly, I’d just as soon see if one of my female friends would be willing to put up with me for an evening.

I think it boils down to one simple fact: It’s how Hollywood tells us love and romance should be. Guy walks into a restaurant, meets waitress, asks waitress to dinner, waitress accepts, they go out, and by the end of the movie, they’re married, living happily ever after. Love is effortless, you just glide into it with that special someone and everything is perfect.

I don’t speak from the perspective of a married man, but I have some relationship experience, and there’s one thing I’ve observed: Love is work. Sure, there will be those moments that things are effortless, but there will also be the trials. I think we expect that once we find someone special, there’s never going to be any work involved. We want our happy endings, we want the credits to roll and have everything resolved. I think that’s why divorce has become so rampant in America today. People get married with the delusion that they’re going to get their happy ending, when in fact, they don’t. Then people become discontented with what they wound up with. They feel cheated out of their happy ending and decide to go off and try to find it somewhere else, and the cycle repeats itself.

I think Americans really should stop looking to hollywood to tell them how love should be

Tags: Writing by Andrew Laine
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It’s amazing what simply cleaning up your hard drive can do once in a while.

As I was cleaning up in preparation to wipe the whole thing out and start over, I came across an Word file I didn’t recall creating, so I opened it (ignoring the fact that, if there’s a file you don’t remember creating on your computer, it’s not particularly wise to open it…). It turned out to be harmless enough, in fact it was a chat log from a conversation I’d had with a friend some years ago. (the date stamp reads June of 2005). I skimmed it briefly, it was mostly just basic conversation, but then I hit one point that kind of stuck out at me. I asked her, if she could be doing anything five years from that time, what would it be, to which she replied, “Being happy. I could list a lot of things, but what it all means, at the end, is just being happy in life. Whether I am in love with someone or not, married or single, on my own with a ton of money or just barely scraping by.. I just want to be happy.”

I made a comment in reply about that being one of the better responses I’d ever gotten to that question, and that most people just list off ‘what they want to be when they grow up’. Her response to me was, “Why bother? Odds are you won’t be anywhere near what you plan or envision anyway. Could be something completely amazing you never would have dreamed.”

It’s funny how sometimes, when you’re really not paying all that much attention, God can use someone else to state the obvious and it doesn’t make sense until later.

Two and a half years have passed since the conversation, and in looking back, it’s interesting to see how much I’ve changed in my own perception of myself since then, and even beyond then back to high school. After high school, I was convinced, I was going on to work as a journalist. That was my calling. That was my life’s goal. I wanted to be a pulitzer prize winning newspaper writer with piles of awards for my hard-hitting investigations. That lasted about as long as my hopeful outlook for the future of the journalistic profession (I have seen the future, kids, and it ain’t pretty. If you weren’t already aware, most journalists are nuts…).

Once that was over, I went to work in retail while trying to sort life out. After some time settling in, I thought I had it figured out again: Forget journalism; I want to tell stories! I want to write bestselling novels, have my books turned into movies by film greats like Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, masterful epics that will make all bow to the creativity that is mine! And so I started writing. A lot. I did so much starting, in fact, that I finished maybe one full length story. As creative as I was capable of being, I didn’t find myself having the patience to keep things going very long. Besides, all the writing I ever have time for seems to be devoted to blogging (which, while not as creative as storytelling, helps me keep sharp, even if there are only a handful of people who actually read what I write here).

I think what it all came down to was, I was trying to use what I was doing to make myself happy instead of being happy in whatever I was doing, and it wasn’t working. In fact, the lesson that my friend had tried teaching me didn’t set in until much, much later.

It was sometime last year. I’d changed quite a bit from the boy with dreams of journalism in his head. I’d become a cynical retailer, unhappy in multiple respects with my life but utterly unable to give anyone (myself included) an explanation as to why I was unhappy. People around me saw it, I think, though few, if any, said anything. In March I went to a men’s retreat for church, and at one point while praying, exasperated with life in general, not really sure which way was up, I said, “Okay, God, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. I keep thinking I have things figured out, but none of what I figure out is working. I’m not happy with anything, so would you please just show me where I’m supposed to be going?”

Kids, let me assure you, if you want to maintain the status quo, that is probably not the prayer for you, and had I known what I would’ve been getting myself into in advance, I probably never would have prayed it.

About a week after I said that prayer, God reminded me of a verse; the words of the apostle Paul, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” It was a good thing, too, because in the coming months, everything would seemingly start to fall apart, and that verse would take on a completely new meaning. As life turned to chaos around me, as things I’d been sure about failed, I found I was happy. In losing the things I thought were most valuable, I gained something more valuable: the ability to be content.

It’s also allowed me to do things I wasn’t able to do before. I’ve gotten (shockingly) comfortable around small children (my sister about had a coronary when I picked up one of the kids at church tonight). My change in jobs has given me the ability to spend more time at church, including (as previously mentioned) joining the preaching class. All things that, had you asked me five years ago, I would’ve laughed at you for even suggesting that I might be doing them.

My dreams of being a journalist went by the wayside long ago. My aspirations for being a bestselling novelist have since gone, too. But the one thing I think I’ve finally figured out is, I’m going to be happy with whatever God wants me doing, and if I live out my life doing His will, my life will be well-spent.

Tags: Personal, Writing by Andrew Laine
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Saturday was my second preaching class, and I came (semi)prepared with a sermonette. My earlier post, you’ll notice, I had decided on Jonah 2:1-9. But then Chris brought me back to earth when, last Sunday, he said, “please keep it under 5 minutes”. It actually served as a pretty good lead in to my sermon. (“This sermon was originally going to be a little longer… *holds up notebook*…these are my notes on the book of Jonah, it’s about a third of the notebook pages. But then Chris said keep it under five minutes and I realized I was about thirty five minutes too long…”) So I whittled it down to three points that I drew off of Jonah 2:9, although during the reading of the text I included verse 8 with it. It says:

They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy,
But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.

I’ll try and give an abbreviated rundown of a 4 minute, 12 second sermon.

When you think about Jonah, just about everyone knows what Jonah is famous for: He was swallowed by a fish and spit up on land. But not a lot of people spent time thinking about what he was doing while he was in the fish: He was praying. I drew three things from that passage that I hope will be helpful to you:

1) We should sacrifice with the voice of thanksgiving – When we feel God calling us to give something up for him, we shouldn’t gripe about it, we should be thankful that God is using us to do something and excited to see how he plans to use us. It made me think of Abraham, when God had given him Isaac, his promise seed, and then said, “Oh, by the way Abraham, I want you to go up on the mountain and sacrifice your son for me.” The one thing that you don’t see Abraham do is argue the point with God. Any of you parents, imagine taking your kid and killing them as an offering to God (parents of teenagers need not apply. =). Abraham knew that God had promised to make him a great nation, and believed that, even if God asked him to sacrafice his only son, that God knew what he was doing, and he did.

2) We should keep the vows we make – Basically, if you say you’re going to do something, do it. Don’t tell someone, “Oh, yeah, I’ll take care of that,” and then a week later have them come back and “Oh, uh, ooops, forgot about that, sorry.” That’s no way to be. I’m as guilty as anyone else of it, I load myself up with stuff and then let things slide that I shouldn’t, and it’s something I’m working on myself. But Christian, let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. Don’t flip flop on it.

3) We need to recognize that Salvation is of God – God sent his son to die for our sins, so that we may go to heaven and live with him for eternity. There is no problem that is too big for God, and when life is crashing down around our ears, we still need to recognize, God is in control. When Jonah was in the belly of the whale, in verse 2 he refers to it as being in “the belly of hell”. It was probably not a particularly pleasant form of transportation. But Jonah was in that whale at that time because God had ordained it, and he knew what he was doing.

That’s it for this sermon, tune in next month, for my sermon that I’m planning on John 11:35 (“Jesus wept”) titled “Jesus is crying, and it’s probably something YOU did.”

(Believe it or not, that sermon’s not going to be how I’m sure it probably sounds… =)

Tags: Religious, Writing by Andrew Laine
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After talking with a couple people about preaching out of Jonah, the question has been raised, “Why Jonah? What’s so special about that book, anyway?”

Well, that’s the book I’ve felt God wants me to preach out of, and with good reason. I can draw a couple of parallels to my own life with it to better illustrate (and as someone once said, “Preach what you know, not what you don’t.”).

for those not familiar, Jonah was a prophet (oooh, ooooooh), but he really never got it (sad, but true)…

Wait… Veggietales did that one? Well, shoot.

Well, anyway, Jonah starts out with God telling Jonah to go and preach to Nineveh, a Gentile city that the Jews were none too fond of. As such, Jonah wasn’t particularly pleased that God wanted him to go there, so he ran the opposite direction.

Comparatively, in my own life I first felt God nudging me towards preaching back in March. We were at men’s retreat, I was sharing a room with the pastor’s father, and during a late night chat, seemingly out of nowhere, he says, “Have you ever thought about preaching?”

I suddenly found myself scrambling for excuses. “No, never. God wouldn’t use me for that, I’m sure he’s got many people far better qualified for that out there somewhere. I’m a lousy public speaker, no one would bother to listen to me.” Now, granted, greater than these have tried these excuses before (See: Moses). But God wasn’t finished with me yet.

The next Sunday, something in the message hit me on that same calling.

The Sunday following, it hit me again.

This continued up through June before I finally said, “Okay, God, look, I get it. You want me? Fine. But you’re going to have to drag me in kicking and screaming.” Somewhere at this point, it was as if God said, “Well, you asked…”

In Jonah, as he’s fleeing for Tarshish, Jonah’s sleeping below decks, and out of nowhere a storm begins to toss the ship, and all the sailors start running around in fear. This brings me to parallel number two: The storms.

In July, I discovered one of my two roommates at the time had decided (rather randomly, as was his custom) to move to Reedsport to be with his “girlfriend” (I use quotes there because they were no longer together by the time we’d officially moved out). As if that weren’t enough stress, the apartment complex was jacking our rent up. By August, it hit me that where I was in my job wasn’t where God wanted me. In fact, I didn’t really know where God wanted me, but by September I was unemployed for a three week stint. And by September, relationally Jenn and I both came to the conclusion that neither of us was where God wanted us, and broke things off.

It was around September 9th, end of the first week unemployed, that Robb Foreman preached a sermon titled “Be Ye Steadfast”. If you’re interested, the sermon can be found here. It was that night that I finally bowed my head and said “I get it now, Lord. Whatever you want from me, however you plan on using me, I’m yours.”

I’m not saying, “Trust Jesus and you’ll be employed,” or “Trust Jesus and you’ll never worry again.” But when I finally got to the point where I had to rely on him, it made me realize how truly insignificant my problems were. I landed a temp job during September by week three, and permanent, gainful employment starting October 8th. I’ve been able to throw myself into more things around church to help out as we’re getting into the building. And you know what? For the first time in my life, I really feel like I’m getting where God wants me. I’m still not quite there, but I’m getting there.

Jonah had to trust God, too. When they figured out God was angry with him, he told them to throw him into the sea. Getting thrown out in the middle of the ocean during a storm took a bit of a leap of faith that God would provide, and when God provided the fish that swallowed him, Jonah prayed to God for deliverance. The inside of a giant fish is an excellent picture of having to rely on God’s guidance. After all, how much control did Jonah have in steering it? chances are, not much.

Anyway… Not trying to give the full sermon (because God only knows, this isn’t it), but there’s the explanation. God knows why. =)

Tags: Personal, Religious, Writing by Andrew Laine
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I had my second to last session with Citizen’s Police Academy tonight, and honestly, if nothing else I feel like I’m steeped in the depravity of humans more than I really ever wanted to be. The criminal mind isn’t a pretty picture, and the people who have to deal with it on a regular basis are truly a special breed.

I think it finally hit me somewhere between the Westside Interagency Narcotics presentation and the Elder safe presentation that we, as human beings, are a really screwed up species. What causes a person to become so consumed with producing meth that they neglect their kids and expose them to those dangerous fumes? Why are some social groups normal people hanging out, and others vicious gangs? What would make a person take their father out to a racetrack in Idaho, drop him with fake personal information, and then go home to live off his pension and social security checks?

It’s great to see the agencies combating these things, but at the same time, they aren’t a total solution to the problem. The problem is bigger than law enforcement can take on alone, and we live in a time where the average citizen is either too ill informed to know how to help, or they don’t care. That’s a sad commentary on life as it is.

I really enjoyed the citizen’s police academy, but to a small extent, I think I’ve come away a little jaded by it…

Tags: Personal, Writing by Andrew Laine
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So after the first preaching class, I felt I should start preparing my first sermonette for the next class, which is next month. Now, it might seem odd to write a five minute sermon over the course of a month, but to quote my pastor, “You ought to try it sometime.”

It’s not that I don’t have the material, after praying about it I’ve decided to preach out of the book of Jonah. It’s not that there’s nothing to learn there, Jonah’s only a four chapter book in the bible. The problem, it seems, is that there’s too much material.

In 2nd Timothy 3:16, the Bible says that, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Essentially, someone can preach from just about any verse of the bible (Even “Jesus Wept”. Might be a short sermon, though. “And the Bible says, “Jesus Wept.” It does not say why in this verse, but it was probably something YOU did…”)

So take a whole book out of the Bible, and it multiplies the potential messages exponentially.

With Jonah, for example, we could talk about how Jonah is representative of a lot of modern Christians, when God tells them to do one thing they turn and run the exact opposite direction (a subject that would be ironic for me to preach on, since that’s the first thing I did when I felt called to preach). We can talk about how Jonah alludes to Christ coming to save both Jew and Gentile by Jonah’s preaching to the Ninevites (a Gentile city), or how his being in the belly of the whale three days and three nights is representative of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. There’s so much material to draw on.

So… A month until next class… I think it’ll be a long month. (But good all the same… =)

Tags: Personal, Religious, Writing by Andrew Laine
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Okay, so Saturday, if you couldn’t tell, was one of the really big “hands on” days. Here’s basically what we did.

I got there late after breakfast with my dad, then getting locked out of the building. Having missed Tuesday night, I didn’t know where exactly we were meeting, so I had to call the switchboard at the sheriff’s office to get one of the sergeants to find me. Once I arrived, it was the middle of the use-of-force lecture. This was mostly refresher material for me, since a lot of it was covered by the CHL class I took at the Clackamas PSTC. After that, we took a break, then came back for more classroom time going over survival skills. That wound up being a lot of the same material as use of force, plus some more stuff I remember covering in the CHL class (The OODA loop, for example).

Well, we broke for lunch, then came back for the fun stuff: Hands on training.

First thing they had us doing was using training weapons to shoot at a martial arts dummy wearing a Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt. I capped Pooh and Tigger. When told to aim for Eeyore next time, I said, “I can’t, my mother would kill me.”

Then they split us into two groups. I went with the group that started in the Range 3000 Use of Force simulator.

You already got the story on this, but I’ll give you a few thoughts. For one thing, even though it’s a simulation, if you treat it seriously, it becomes real to you. You don’t want to screw it up because you’ll be explaining your actions later, for sure. You have to be attentive, noticing threat cues. It’s also true what they say about your senses being heightened when you’re in that kind of stress. The second sim, where he went for the gun, between the time I saw the gun and the time I started firing, I could tell you that he had a .38 special snub nosed revolver in his right hand, was wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, and a red baseball cap, and owned a ford pickup. These weren’t things I analyzed during the rest of the simulation, this is stuff I picked up in the fractions of a second before I dropped the hammer. And, I cannot emphasize this enough, thank a cop. I had the advantage of having my pistol in retracted ready position and Bob beat me to the first shot, had I been drawing from the holster, he probably would’ve done me in. A cop would’ve had to draw and shoot, because there wasn’t anything to tip him off to the fact that Bob was packing this time, save his quick dip to the truck bed. And, to this day, I’m second guessing everything I did in that situation, and I didn’t even shoot a real human being.

Well, after that two people were chosen as volunteers for the next class, where we went in the training room and they were used in three scenarios with them being “deputies” and the one deputy being the “thug”. Well, the first kid got shot twice (he blamed the deputy’s quick draw, I blamed his lack of movement whilst confronting the guy). Then, the girl goes up, seeing the same guy who failed to appear for his court date, and who shot her partner, and after the confrontation, he reaches into his jacket while shouting “talk to my lawyer!” and she unloads three training rounds at him. He was going for a cell phone, at which point, the instructor said, “Everyone take a look at this.” We looked at the scene, she’s standing over his dead body, gun drawn, he lies there with a cell phone next to his body. The trainer says, “Front page of the Oregonian tomorrow: ‘Talk to my lawyer!” with this picture underneath, with a scathing editorial on police violence.” Humorous, but sadly true. The office gave him several opportunities to comply before she shot him reaching for something in his coat (which prior experience would’ve dictated was a gun), but would the media have noticed? No, the dead body with the cell phone makes a better story. :-p

Well, finally, for the last training room exercise, we did what’s called the “box drill”. Basically, they take one student outside, put a box over their head, then set up a scenario. The student is walked into the scenario, has the box removed, and from the second the box comes off, they are to react to the surrounding situation.

First woman goes up. The instructor in the “hit man” suit (that you can punch at) waits with a shock knife in front of her. Box comes off, he flips it on (making a frightening zapping noise) and starts bellowing “I’m going to kill you!”, woman runs off screaming.

Second woman goes up, the trainer’s wife, and is positioned with her back to him. Box comes off, she looks around, and just as the realization comes that he’s behind her, he grabs her. She shrieks, then goes into “stomp & elbow” tactics.

Third woman comes up, trainer stands in corner, she’s placed facing him across the room. Box comes off, he charges at her, she sidesteps, he runs past. I volunteered to go last. Now, putting a box on your head may not sound like a good psychological tool to mess with you, but until you’re there, you don’t even realize…

So I’m in the hall, box on my head, nervous, but I start focusing.

Okay, they’re going to lead me in, the second that box comes off, I’m going to orient myself towards him and come out swinging before he even knows what hit him. He’s twice my size, but I’ll have the element of surprise, he won’t know it’s coming. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Quick right, quick left, knee to the crotch. He’s going down like the Kingdome. I’m going to drop him like a hot rock…

This thought process continued as the lead me in. I counted my steps, trying to remain oriented within the space. The box comes off. “React!”

He is no more than a foot away to the left.

My right arm started back.

I begin to pivot so I get a good line on him.

Before I can cold-cock him, he speaks.

“Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to the Max station from here? I’m a little lost…”

I burst into laughter and walked away. The one person ready to meet violence with violence, and I get the guy wanting directions. This earned me many compliments for my restraint, as most everyone agreed it was apparent I was about to nail him.

What followed is my lessons in tasers.

First things first, I’d like to explain a myspace bulletin I made. It said simply this:

Tasers don’t kill people…
…doing stupid things before getting yourself tasered does.

I say this for two reasons.

First of all, if you look at any “taser induced death”, there’s one common denominator to virtually all cases of taser death: the deceased was hopped up on something. In some cases, he was already for all intents and purposes dead. In one recorded incident, the person’s core body temp before being tased was 109. I’m no physiology major, but that’s bad. VERY bad. As in “about to die anyway” bad. It’s not the officer’s fault he kicked the bucket shortly after the tasing, the fact is, the person was about to die. Now he’s just dead and not causing any destruction while dying.

Secondly, I watched 20 people get tasered. All ages, shapes, and sizes. I saw someone old enough to be my grandfather get tased for longer than most of the class, and he walked away from it smiling. I saw a guy ride the lightning for a full five seconds, and he’s still living.

You learn quite a bit in these classes, I again highly recommend taking them in your home area if there’s a department that offers them. It’s well worth it just for the experience you’ll take away (and I’m only three weeks into things!)

Tags: Personal, Writing by Andrew Laine
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