Russians
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On Keepin' it Real this week, Cam takes us back to 1988 when he and his team lined up to upset the world order in an all out international rowing competition. It was one for the record books. ----- It was the spring of 1989 in Augusta, Georgia. I was a member of the Tulane University Rowing team and we were there to train for Spring Break. Crew teams from across the south and many of the elite crew teams from the northeast came to Augusta and this perfect stretch of the Savannah River to train during the week and race at the end of the week. A call went out that the organizers were throwing...
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Top Hat
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston has just returned from a few days in Fort Lauderdale. It's a different world down there, Cam says. One that he might have envied at one point in his life. ------ My wife and I returned from Ft Lauderdale Saturday. We were there for a corporate event where I was giving a speech. My client generously offered an extra couple of nights in the host hotel and our room was on the 26thfloor overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I watched the sun rise each morning as I sipped coffee and read. It began as a faint glow on the horizon to a disk coming out of the water....
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Regrets
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam hopes you have no regrets from Thanksgiving. And if you do, that you learn from them. ----- Well, how’d it go yesterday? Any family flare ups? Any thoughts you wish you’d kept to yourself? Thanksgiving gatherings are famous for finding people’s boiling points and the election having been just a few weeks ago, some are still gloating and others still licking their wounds. Any regrets from yesterday? I heard Dan Pink speak last week at a conference in San Francisco. He’s a New York Times best-selling author and his most recent book is called The Power...
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'Tis The Season
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston wants you to know he's NOT A CYNIC. But there are things this time of year that just kinda get to him... ----- ‘Tis the season for pensive and sappy messages. I’m so sorry but it’s true. They’re appearing in TV commercials, in client and vendor emails. Letters received in the mail about the joys of the season and now’s the time to be grateful and all that. I hate being a cynic, but it all appears to be virtue signaling to me. The people I know sending these messages are savage businesspeople and it’s like times running out and they’re...
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Cats
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On the way home from Oxford Saturday, Cam and his family stopped at a service station which led to him thinking about what NOT to put on his Christmas list. ----- For years I had my children convinced I was allergic to cats. I told them the reason we couldn’t have a cat as a pet was that my head would explode in a fiery ball. They wanted a cat. They asked regularly and finally accepted that I was allergic. I’m not allergic to cats. I’m not sure how they found out, but the cat-pet requests are back. Frankly, I want nothing more to do with anything that requires fuel or any sort of...
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Owls
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam tells us about some early morning attacks that are happening in his part of town. You'd be surprised at who is doing the attacking. ----- On the top of the Tangles Hair Salon on Bit and Spur Road in Mobile sits a hat and a headlamp with its light on. The headlamp is the type that an early morning jogger wears before the sun comes up. How it got up there is a heck of a story. Dennison Crocker jogs before daylight nearly every morning. His headlamp lights the way. One dark morning near Bit and Spur Road, a giant thunk, thud, and whoosh caught Dennison off...
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Can I Transfer?
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam recalls a time when he was very much out of his element and was slightly afraid for his life. ----- About midway through the fourth quarter of Alabama’s loss to Vanderbilt, my son, who is a student at the University, sent me a text. It read, “Can I transfer?” I laughed. As a Tulane student we were fond of saying that on Saturdays in the fall, the New Orleans Superdome hosted a cocktail party for students to mix and mingle in the stands. Occasionally we would look up and notice that a football game was going on in front of us, but we never let it...
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FBI
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston tells us about a bomb maker he met who sends the bombs he makes to his friends. Oddly enough, you and I should be happy he's doing it. ----- There’s a man on the outskirts of Mobile who spends a good part of his days making bombs. He uses items he finds around town and buys from retail stores. He then sends his bombs to his buddies to see if they can disarm them. It’s a game and, believe me, it’s a game you and I should be grateful they’re playing. I’m participating in a seven-week course called the FBI Citizens Academy. For two hours each...
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Infantilized
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keeping It Real, Cam Marston reacts to a book review about society and how we're raising kids. It's not the kids fault, Cam says, it's definitely the parents. ----- The Economist magazine reviewed a book called Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood. The author, Keith Hayward, argues that western society is keeping kids less mature than previous generations. He tells of a young lady who insisted on spelling the word hamster with a P. When corrected repeatedly, she called her mom and put her on speakerphone to tell her boss not to be so mean. That’s laughable, but...
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Lucy At The Vet
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam's family dog heard what he said to the vet. And she has something to say about it. ----- When I walked through the back door our dog, Lucy, looked at me as if to say “you and I have some unfinished business.” Lucy had been feeling bad. She was lethargic and had thrown up in four or five places in the house. On the rugs, of course. I got to my hands and knees to try to clean them up. It was nasty. She definitely wasn’t herself and my wife, who Lucy seems to regard as The Kind One, took her to the vet. My wife texted that afternoon saying, “Please go...
info_outlineOne condiment in particular kept my kids alive.
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There’s no ketchup in my house right now. I made burgers for the family Sunday night and we had no ketchup. This may sound trivial but it’s an extraordinary landmark in our family’s life.
When my kids were much younger, my wife and I relied on frozen chicken nuggets about five nights a week to feed the kids. Our four kids are two years apart with the last two being twins. Imagine dinner time with a six-year-old, a four-year-old, and two-year-old twins. It was pandemonium. We’d pop a cookie sheet full of nuggets into the oven. They were quick. They were easy and though they weren’t particularly healthy, they kept the kids alive until the next day which, at that point, is all we wanted. Chicken nuggets were our bread and butter. They were our life saver.
In time, though, the kids tired of them. We experimented with different brands, with different shaped nuggets. We learned that rib meat nuggets were too chewy and who knew chickens had ribs? And the kids were unimpressed by the dinosaur shaped nuggets.
We then told them they weren’t eating nuggets anymore. These were new. These were different. These were chicken nuggettas. They’re different and better and that bought us a little time.
Then we added a small dollop of ketchup on the side of their plate and…boom. The kids loved the nuggets with the ketchup. They wanted more ketchup. And more. Soon it became a plate full of ketchup with chicken nuggets somewhere underneath. I told my wife that the word KID was an acronym for Ketchup Infusion Device because that’s what the nuggets became.
We bought the ketchup at the warehouse clubs. Three giant bottles shrink wrapped together, wondering how long the ketchup last before we’d need more. We’d walk through the back door with the bottles of ketchup over our heads like warriors returning with the spoils of battle. The kids saw it and knew everything was going to be ok.
The kids liked chicken nuggets with ketchup so much that my wife and I began calling everything we cooked chicken. We’d have pork chicken, beef chicken, turkey chicken, each of which was served under ketchup. We tried weaning our kids off the ketchup but when food hit the kitchen table, they’d be looking for the bottle. We wondered if we’d gone too far but…they were eating and they weren’t complaining which, if you’re a parent, you understand.
If my kids were like trees and we could cut them in half and count their rings, their inner most rings would be made entirely of chicken nuggets and lots and lots of ketchup.
And then last Sunday night, I bring the hot burgers in from the grill and start putting the toppings on the countertop and…no ketchup. Not even the secret reserve bottle which we keep in the back of the pantry for emergencies. None. And when I announced we had no ketchup I braced for the blowback. Years ago, this news would have fueled an insurrection. Instead, they shrugged and fixed their plate.
My goodness, how things have changed, thank the Lord.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to keep it real.