The Stork neither Twitters nor Tweets.

"I didn't have kids to make friends!" is a quote my mother is very famous for saying to strangers as they gawked at a woman holding a screaming baby while simultaneously keeping my brother and me from killing each other (we had a thing for throwing cans) in the middle of a discount food store.

I often wonder if my mother would have Twittered if she could have while we were growing up. I feel like the thing about twittering that makes it so addictive to me is that it gives me a chance to express myself and what is going on in my life. Like screaming into a pillow, I need to tell someone, let someone know what's going on.

For instance, when I'm texting Sam, I don't really twitter.

And I can't imagine anyone more desperate for a release valve than a young parent.

I love kids. I LOVE them. They're precocious and funny and innocent and, most charmingly, simple. They have the simple blessing of being the emotional basic tool set from Wal-Mart. They don't need the socket-wrench when all you do is poop, eat, sleep and cry.

That being said, I'm not a huge fan of infants. They're cute, but the interaction is rather limited. They're basically a miniature great-grand-parent only they don't smell like cats/frustration and hide their racism better.

For my money, I like the 18-month olds and up. Right when they're talking and they're still a little fun to play with. They're walking and learning every curse you can slip out of your mouth. Kind of like writing in ink and hoping you don't sneeze. Its exciting!

We all hit that age where people start getting married and everyone comments: "Oh, they're rather young, aren't they?" And then, somewhere after undergrad and the end of grad school you hear the comments about upcoming nuptuals shift from "Oh that's so nice!!" to "Well, damn, its about time" to "Dang, I thought he was gay."

And then finally, your peers begin to have babies.

I don't have any idea how to process that thought.

I love my parents. They are wonderful, beautiful, charming, loving, kind and good. But as I begin to pop the pills of perspective that life prescribes for me, I see through dilated eyes more than I have before who my parents are. My dad is awesome, but he has a temper and oftentimes lets it cloud his judgment. My mother is one of the most brilliant women on earth, but she forgets to put both socks on sometimes.

And they have four children.

I often wonder where people get off having children. I think it takes a special kind of arrogance/confidence (or both) to think you have the ability to raise children in a world rife with drugs and peer pressure and money problems and cancer and Enron and rapists and heartbreak and the Twilight books.

And that's assuming you are a good parent. My parents were a tag team and perhaps the biggest reason for any success I've had or ever will have.

Their unconditional love, wisdom and contumacious insistence on putting my needs before theirs are my biggest blessing in my life.

What about those of us not blessed so? In the course of my job and life I've met souls from homes I can't fathom. Angry split parents playing "gotcha" on the battlefield of their children's hearts. Parents who insist on being their child's best friend when they need someone to give them structure. Parents who say hurtful things and judge too harshly. Parents who try to live vicariously through their children. Or even worse, parents who treat their children as though they were new Fendi bag that goes out of style all too soon.

Octo-mom.

Growing up you think of parents as perfect shelters. It is quite the shock when you realize that parents are really a lot like people. Imperfect and broken. So where do we get off having children?

Are they the consumation of love between two people as I was raised to believe? Are we lonely and just want someone who has to depend on us? Are they your chance at finally achieving some sort of glory on the football field/golf course/chess team? Or are they the miraculous result of sugary drinks with exotic names hidden behind cute umbrellas and veil of deniability? Sometimes I just refer to them as "proof of sex."

Or maybe all or even none of the above?

I want children someday. Maybe. I think. But when I say that, its like me talking about the dog I've wanted for the last 3 years but, upon a moment's reflection realize that I have a hard enough time making it back to my own bathroom without crapping my pants (it comes on me quick, friends) without trying to manage something else's poop schedule.

It's one of those things in which the goodness sounded in theory doesn't echo so much in practice. Like wearing the "Green Man" suit to a bar in a hot Texas summer... especially when you sweat more in some areas than others.

But then again, Children are a fad with staying power. People have been doing it for a while and it is definitely not stopping anytime soon. One is born every 5 seconds and in every country in the world. Can't beat that for popularity.

Its a scary idea. But for every Hitler, Mozart, Curie, Einstein, Khan and Piccard, there's a million "normal" people. People raised by people raised by people. Loving, wanting, hurting and living.

Maybe children are what the cliche's say they are. Maybe they are a chance, a shot in the dark that they can be a little something better than we are. I love the idea of being so in love with someone that I want to place a bet that the potential bad in me could be mitigated by the good in her in our progeny. That, and there'd be proof I had sex at least once.

At the very least, I'd have an excuse to Twitter more often.

In Trust we God.

Everyone needs something. Fish need water. Birds need sky. Dogs need butts to sniff. People need people.

Sometimes the water is dirty. Sometimes the sky is cloudy. Sometimes the butts belong to mannequins, devoid of interesting scent. Sometimes people are assholes.

But people need people.

I am a trusting person. I am one of the most upbeat, positive and optimistic people you will ever meet. I am curious. I always want to see the other side of a thing. I am always thinking. I believe in love.

I have an awesome, but very demanding, job that allows me to talk to and get to know and invest in very interesting, questioning, young men and women in need of a hand-up or a little bit of perspective. I am needed every day. It is a great thing to be needed; to be respected and relied upon.

But one thing about the nature of my job, I run Residence Life for Texas A&M's campus in Galveston, is that I very often get called upon to manage the very best or worst things that happen on this campus. It's a game of minimum's and maximums. It's a series of hills and valleys.

I have my trust violated often, my hopes dashed regularly, and my love goes unrequited as often as not. I tend to live and die with the successes and failures of my students... which means I get hurt a lot.

When I love, I tend to go to the hilt, head over heels, unquestionably on tilt, like Quixote towards his Giants.

Why? Why do we do this? Why did God make me this way?

One of the big questions I hope I get answered in the big "day-after-crossword puzzle-check-to-see-how-many-you-got-right" session with St. Peter or God or Buddha or whomever when I die is "what does God mean when he said he created us in 'his own image'?" Did he make us sentient like him? Did me mean it literally? That there's some really old dude out in space somewhere, white robes and flowing white beard?

I think it makes most sense to look at the common things about us all. And I think the answer is obvious. We all need love. Even God, in his omnipotence and wisdom, wasn't complete without others to love and love him in return.

So maybe my trusting nature is a good thing. Maybe being a Pollyanna ain't so bad.

I trust that I will love. I trust that I will get hurt. I trust that I will have my heart broken. But I also trust that there are some lessons that only experience can teach me. I know that when the skin is cut or a bone is broken, scars form to strengthen the cut and the break, leaving the mend even stronger than it was previously.

So I trust that my heart, when broken, will heal stronger at the break.

When I hear about a student who doesn't like me, I usually just assume its because they really don't know me. I'm a pretty likable guy.

Though I am the only commonality in every failed relationship I've ever had, I've never once felt a break-up was my fault or any kind of judgment on me as a person or a being. It's not that I was too self-centered, or too fat, or too crazy or too Catholic, it was always that I wasn't what the person who passed on me wanted. Just like every time I've dumped someone wasn't because they were bad people. They just weren't what I wanted. And we all need to push for what we want.

Happy people aren't happy because they ended up with the best in show, but because they ended up with someone whose crazy matches their own crazy; whose baggage be it heavy or light, colorful or bland, expensive or cheap, worn or new, matched their own.

I think God has some baggage. I believe his heart is scarred a million times from all the hurt. But he trusts in us, whether we deserve it or not. Maybe that's what love really is.

I've been told I make "Pollyanna look like a sarcastic bitch." But that is something I really love about myself. Maybe being so trusting will wear me down, fade the colors in my soul and dull the point of my whit, til I am naught but the stubby end of a chewed #2 pencil. Or maybe my "you have to be in it, to win it" strategy towards life will pick me the lucky numbers in the lottery of Love and Life.

Either way, I'm going to figure it out.

Trust me.

Plus by Minus.

"Lent is a time for you to punch yourself in the crotch every time you get a boner." - SeaNomad

This was a quote one of my favorite people in the world, and you know, after a week of Lent, I don't think she is completely off base.

I love Lent. I feel it helps me, more than any season in the Church's calendar, to grow within my relationship with my God. Something I'll never completely understand.

But I love talking about Lent even more. Especially to non-believers, it's a crazy time of self-flagellation, self-denial and religious pratter. And I get that. Give up meat one day a week? WTF? With all the trendy vegan places everywhere, that's as arbitrary as it is sacrificial. Giving something up? "I give up giving stuff up... har-har-har." And abstaining? Don't even get me started on that.

But still, I love Lent. Why?

To me, Lent is Spring-Training for the year. Lent is when we clear the slate and start working on the basics. Giving up meat on Fridays is the spiritual equivalent of wind sprints. During this Spring Training, is when we work on our swing for the new year. It's when we take an honest look at our game film from the last year, look for holes in our swing and try, through repetition-repetition-repetition-repetition to work out the kinks.

Having trouble hitting that inside curve? Work on opening your stance.

Falling for the high heat? Work on shortening up your swing to give you more time to decide on the pitch.

So it goes with Lent.

There's a lot that more that goes into the season: increased prayer, maintaining a sense of introspection (did you know Catholics are not to say "hallelujah" during Lent?) and much more doctrinal minutiae. But I think my favorite part of Lent comes in the choosing one item or activity to remove from your life.

On its face it smacks of capricious self-flagellation. But me say its a device that renders the whole more than the sum of its parts. Let me explain.

What is it to be a Christian or a member of any other religion? When you really break it down from a purely objective standpoint, being a Christian means living your life as closely as you can to a sort of code of Christian code of conduct. There is a line to be walked. Things you do that you wouldn't normally, and things that you don't that you usually would.

Well giving up something during the Lenten season is sort of like that in a a 47 day period in preparation for the rest of the year. By removing something from your life that you would usually do and enjoy, you're supposed to examine the effect of the vacuum of that thing in your life.

Giving up coffee, getting past the headaches, twitchiness, irritability and grouchiness created by the absense of that, one is free to imagine what they will drink instead. What will they discuss things over? What will they spend $4 a day on? What will they get on their breaks?

Its not the act of giving something up that matters, its what you with the space left by it that matters. It doesn't do you any good to let go of hating your father if you only replace it with hatred for your brother. Lent is a time for us to work out those kinks.

Lent is a time of addition by subraction. We grow by examining the space left by what we've lost.

So yeah maybe it's not exactly punching yourself in the crotch whenever you get a boner at all.

I just thought it was a funny quote.