Horticultural Intelligence

There are some things I fail miserably at but never want a second chance for a do-over.

Processing the grief of losing someone I love is one of them. 

When I lost my brother almost nine years ago I failed pretty badly at the whole grieving thing. I know people will tell you that there are no right or wrong ways to grieve but there are certainly healthy and unhealthy ways which in my mind means basically the same thing. The way I grieved was pretty unhealthy. I know that now but couldn't have known it then and I certainly never wanted another opportunity to learn from my mistakes. I was content using what I had learned to help other people grieve better but then we lost Dad and now I have to personally put to the test all the theories I had of what I should have done differently.  

Last time I buried everything I could as quickly as possible and got back to work on living my life. But what I discovered much later is that feelings are rarely ever just buried. They are usually planted. 

My Hips Don't Lie

There are very few things that feel as manly as having and old war wound.

Get a bunch of guys together for any period of time and you will inevitably find us comparing scars, injuries, and stories from our past that people tell us we should be ashamed of for how stupid they were but we are actually still proud of. 

I love playing this game as much as the next guy because this is one I usually win. I was a pretty clumsy child who really liked the idea of being a daredevil. Well, I liked the idea of being known as a daredevil more than actually being a daredevil. 

But as cool as it sounded to tell people I was limping around because of "an old track and field injury" it lost it's appeal when it actually started hurting. A lot. All the time.

It was my sophomore year of high school and I was in the middle of my first season running track. I had only recently fallen in love with distance running a few months before so I knew almost nothing about injury prevention. So when I complained to my coach about a constant throbbing pain starting in my hip and shooting its way down to my knee I had no idea what to expect. 

"I'm pretty sure your issue is your IT band, or iliotibial band if you want to know the fancy name for it."

"That's terrible. How did I get an iliotibial band? Will icing it get rid of it?"

"You don't get rid of an ilitibial band, Kyle. It's that really long tendon that connects your hip bone to your knee and can sometimes get inflamed if you don't stretch it right or you put too much stress on it."

"I knew that, just making sure you are staying current the latest innovations in first aid" I said as I twitched the hair out of my face to look cool.

"Whatever. Go sit down and take an Advil."

What Will Ya Have?

When you walk into the famous Varsity restaurant in Atlanta you will not be welcomed with a warm greeting. When you walk through the door a cahier will most likely yell at you from behind the register asking “what will ya have?” before you have even had a chance to look at the menu. The odd thing is that nobody ever gets offended. It is simply part of the experience of the Varsity and it draws hundreds of people from all over the world every day.

When I was I kid my family was traveling through Missouri and we stopped at a place called Lambert’s Café which bears the title “Home of the Throwed Roll.” The roll throwing is not a special technique used by their bakers to make extra fluffy rolls but is in fact the preferred method of roll delivery to each guest’s table. At a normal restaurant, when you want a roll you simply reach into the basket placed on your table but this is not a normal restaurant. At Lambert’s getting a roll is much more interesting. Simply raise your hand in the air and an employee standing at the front of the room will throw it to you. It make sense then, that if you raise your hand for a roll you better be ready to catch but for some reason that thought did not compute in my five year old mind. I raised my hand and got distracted by something only to feel the hot buttery sensation of a huge roll being lobbed at my face while my family erupted in laughter. I was highly offended.