Steve

In my hubristic youth, I purported to have many answers. As life inserted its realities, my easy wisdom evanesced quickly into a universe of seemingly unrelated facts. However, in conjunction with an increasingly hoary head, the puzzles of life are again beginning to coalesce into a more reasonably understandable picture.

As my teaching/coaching career came to an end, a mother of three students came to me and suggested that I watch Mr. Holland's Opus and see myself in it. I did so and was humbled to tears at the honor she gave me in that comment. I had spent many years in the trenches with these kids and had become very close to many of them. Now, as most of them have married and are having families of their own, I jokingly claim their children as my grandstudents or grandplayers. Back here in Wisconsin, one step-daughter, Nichole, has given me a grandchild and another, Natalie, is nurturing one that is due in September.

Conversations with a close friend once brought him to the conclusion that I read Dostoyevsky's The Idiot and see myself in it. (As Myshkin, the idiot) I have not read it as yet and wonder about the 'honor' given me in that comment.

My wife, Linda, was the only member of our family that received a flu shot this year. Matthew, Kimberly, and I are all down with the flu but Linda escaped scot-free. Kleenex is at a premium as mucus is rising here as fast as the tax rates in Baraboo; as fast as OldWhig's hackles and dander toward the idea of larger government.

So, a grandchild on the way, being likened to the idiot, and suffering from the flu... unrelated facts or circumstances of life? Nay, nay, I tell you! These are integral clusters of pixels forming a single coherent picture of meaning. These situations point out very plainly to the discerning mind that 1) I am a phlegming idiot, and 2) that I am an expectorant grandfather.

Now isn't that definitive proof of intelligent design, you dogmatic offspring of Beelzebub and High Priests of the Temple of Darwin ?