The kind of heavy gravity ignores

"Big things are happening" our hero thinks to himself as he waits in line. It is 11:45 pm on an island of a Monday night and here I find myself bouncing foot-to-foot as if I'm a 4 year-old doing the "Potty dance" in a queue for the highly-anticipated, nearly 2 years waited, video game of the year. The "Lord of the Rings" of the video game world. Halo 2.

Go earth.

In just 30-45 minutes, depending upon traffic and how fast I drive, I, "Master Chief", will be, once again, saving the universe and all mankind from "The Covenant" and "The Flood" while wielding an amazing assortment of weapons and never lacking in cute quips for those who would stop me.

But for now, I wait. Its a strange thing to spend 3 hours in close proximity with this especially avid form of video gamers. Its an oxymoronic phrase: "video gamers interacting." You should have seen the two fellas in front of me. The sociologist in me came out to play while watching these two Dagwoods. I swear they spoke, nearly exclusively, in grunts and gurgles. It took me about 5 minutes to realize that Lump #1's name wasn't actually "Exturmn8er702" but that he and his friend, "LyvYer2012" only refer to each other in their Xbox Live handles.

Sigh.

I could see the excitement in the glistening of their pasty-white hides and spotty mustaches 14 years in the making... "Come on puberty! You can do it!" But a surprising thing happened. Being near these guys began to get my heart pumping a little bit. They were pumped! And I have to admit, it was rubbing off on me. Yeah sure, their untucked, two sizes too big shirts show signs of their last two lunches and reek of B.O. Sure, they have the social skills of a Mongol with Tourett's and the attention span of a "huh? What were we talking about again?" But this was a big night for them. A night two years in the making, and I found their passion to be inspiring.

LyvYer told me, between heaves on his inhaler, how he'd been dreaming of this day for the last two years, "ever since I beat the Halo 1." The release of this game was a big thing for them. A heavy thing.

Sometime around hour 2 of 3, with all of my social currency spent, I began to reflect as I sometimes do.

Big things. Big, heavy things.

There's been a few of those for me this week. On Tuesday I found out that my cousin, Andee, practically a younger sister, who is in Iraq, would be -and currently is- involved in "Operation Phantom Fury." This was a little sobering. Yeah, I've sent her an email and a letter or two. I pray for her constantly. And I'll get a mass email from her occasionally as well hearing how life "over there" sucks. But until now, until I heard about casualties coming from her battalion or company, (or maybe both?) I'd been just imagining her at summer camp. A really dry summer camp... with guns... and where they curse a lot... a really dry, militant summer camp where they curse... like Boy Scout Camp in El Paso...

But now its real. People are dying and my worries are no longer held in check by anonymity. Andee is in danger. Real danger. And I fear for her. This kind of fear... its a sort of an Achilles-cutting debilitating phobia-forming fear. I'm helpless to help her.

On Wednesday, a very good friend of mine here at Baylor had a child. Around 1:51 PM, Brian Rowe's beautiful daughter, Emma Merie Grace was born into this world. Earlier in the day, Brian called me, let me know what was going on, and asked me if I would be his "communication guy." He would call me and I would farm out the information to "the Crew." In my "Goofy" voice, I answer with the kind of awe that seems to accompany all requests (no matter how mundane: "would you mind cleaning up the vomit left by the wedding party?) surrounding things like births, weddings, funerals, bar-mitzvahs, duels?, "um, garsh, I mean, shucks! Yeah Bry! Of course! I'm your man. Let me know what you need... shucks!"

The baby came. Calls went out. We all, Jordan, Rae, Dave, Crawford, Beth, Tim and myself, went to go see the newest edition to our group of fellas. It hit me when I looked through the glass and saw this little red-faced wriggling thing wrapped up like a candy bar in commercials, "she is new." Right now, this child has not a sin upon her soul. I understand why it is that parents always call their baby's "perfect" no matter how butt-ugly everyone else thinks they may be. (Oh, right, like YOU'VE never thought that.) But all light-heartedness aside, one cannot get avoid seeing the gravity of this situation. This is big. This is heavy.

I begin to fall prey to my own sense of solipsism and wonder about myself; how this all affects me. Brian, is a year younger than me. Yet, should an outsider with no knowledge of Brian other than his age see him with a stroller walking Emma, I imagine no real flags would be raised. Its natural for a 22 year-old to procreate. Perhaps he is a little young, but not too much. What does this say about me? I'm 23. I've graduated from a good University with a very marketable degree. I'm doing well in Graduate school in a cohort where nearly half of my peers are married, engaged, or well on their ways to being so. And here I am, wallowing in academia, afraid to leave my niche as the spunky student and wondering if I'm ever going to get this "Bill-paying" thing.

When I think of the long-term, I'm simply finding it hard to see anything beyond receiving my Masters in Education a year from May. Its as though there is a curtain pulled across my future. I know its there, (hope its there), but I cannot see it. And for now, now is enough to keep me occupied. My line is weighted well enough this far from the bobber.

There's the girl. Erin. She makes my heart sing but things are tough. For the last couple of years I've been a wreck when it comes to the opposite sex. Either I'm all in it or not at all. I find a woman of worth, and I have excellent taste in women, and I place her upon a pedestal; hold her as my ideal. "The girl."

But with Erin, things are different. She's not so much a "girl." She's, well, she's just "Erin." She isn't a sex to me. She's just this person I think I might love. It was a slippery kind of back-door realization of this, too. She started out as a crush. But somewhere over the years I gave up and decided to just get to know the girl, her crazy little peccadillos. But before she would show me hers, I had to show her some of mine. I dropped the playboy routine for the first time with her. We were never going to date, why not? For some reason, it has always been so easy to lay myself out there for Erin. Guys, she's amazing. I've never known someone more unafraid of a hard-day's work. She's not a wimp. But, she's girly too. Sometimes she lets me act like I make things better for her.

She's loyal. She's loyal to her friends, her parents, her family, her school.

She has most pronounced northern accent I've ever heard from someone south of Milwakee. Everytime "bags" becomes "bigs" or "gosh" becomes "gash," "Neil" becomes "mush." I'm praying like hell that she comes down here to Baylor for her master's degree. I've never lived in the same city as the girl. It would be nice. And I've seen what Baylor is when she's around. The team wins football games, Thai food tastes better and my friends are funnier. Its something I could get used to.

But when I think about it, I'm not sure I'm ready for the weight of serious monogamy. Is there anyone else? Absolutely not. If I had to choose one person on this earth, any person, with which to get married and have tons and tons and tons of marital sex, it would take me no time to give you my answer, Erin Many. (totally wanted to say something like Gandhi, Jessica Rabbit or Bosephus the Rodeo clown)

But, I know that right now, I'm not the man that Erin deserves or will need. But will I ever be? And does it matter? Its not fair to imagine Brian "ready" to have a child, a mouth to fill, diapers to change, a butt to have inoculated and clothed, a soul to guide for, at least, the next 18 years. I cannot see how my melodramatic cousin Andee, the one who would wear yellow or pink everyday for everything if she could, who loves Winnie the Pooh more than most people have any business loving any fictional character, was ready to go to war; to pledge her life to protect those of others. I don't care what you say, but how can someone be ready for something like that? Hell, even my buddies LyvYwer and Turmn8er might have balked at whether or not they were ready for something like Halo 2. But damnit, they dealt. Just as Brian will deal and Andee will deal.

Brian will raise his child. Andee will come home. Lyv and n8er will beat the game. They will carry their burdens and maybe their burdens will carry them. Life is funny like that. Gravity has no power over this kind of heavy. But we do.

Brian, Emma, Andee and Erin, I will see you all soon, ready or not.