Saturday Nights

My brother Michael drove out from Detroit to join us for dinner last night.  My brother is super smart, and exceptionally witty.  He has been like this for quite some time, probably since birth, but there is no way to measure the wittiness and smarts of a newborn.  But in high school he got a perfect score, a 36, on the reading portion of the ACT and he was voted Class Clown by his graduating class.

Over grilled salmon Michael told us he recently took on his entire house in Trivia Pursuit.  My brother's brain competed against the combined brain knowledge of his 6 roommates, and he won without any trouble.  Michael also ranted about the Republican convention and how ridiculous it is that people can bring regular guns to the convention, but squirt guns are not permitted. 

*My friend Paul who lives in Tampa just posted on Facebook about this convention writing, "The RNC convention center looks like the Baghdad green zone. There were literally hundreds of officers and soldiers with automatic rifles standing around giant iron barricades."

After playing cards with the parents and my Aunt Mary, my brother and I headed down to the beach to sibling bond over a couple of beers.  After venting about work politics, he shared with me he fears he'll never meet a girl comparably smart and funny.  I think his fear is valid.  Because he's REALLY smart - like smarter than all the not so smart Politicians who pretend to be smart. 

Last fall I had a brilliant professor express interest in wanting to get to know me.  But I never did drinks or dinner with him because after reading his bio online I feared if I did meet up with him we'd have nothing to talk about.  He's way into political science and all this smart stuff that I wish I was into, but am only starting to dabble in out of obligation.  I want to be a follower of Christ who actually has a decent understanding of the world in which we live.

People in American, in general, aren't really into important stuff.  Instead we're into facebook, and Katie Perry, and going into debt to have whatever it is we want.  My NYC roommate and I use to claim, "FUN RULES!"  This is the life motto of most young people in the US.  It's not a bad motto, but when you want to help make the world a better place you kind of have to know where our world is hurting and how you can be part of the change in making a difference.

After my trip to Uganda this past spring I determined that someday I'll be a translator to the 85% of people in the US who don't care.  The 15% of people who are into all the important stuff aren't always the most effective in how they go about communicating to the masses what is important.  I like to think I'm both smart enough and naturally disinterested enough to be a middle man messenger. 

After my brother and I finished our beers, he went in for the night and I walked further down the beach to join the boys down the shore...

to be continued in the next post