Warriors
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Warriors need to be praised. ----- Young men have always been warriors. They’d go fight the battles while the elders sat around the campfire. The elders decided if fighting was the right thing and when and how to do it. The warriors executed the plan. When they returned, they were glorified for their success, or they were coddled in their loss. Either way, they were praised for their efforts. Most old men don’t seek glory like young men do. Something happens after about forty years old, where glory no longer drives behavior. Old men prefer instruction and guidance. Not glory. Learning from...
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Gettin' Through it Together
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
It's been a tough few weeks. This commentary offers no specifics, but I've learned some things. ----- Many years ago, my neighbor in Charlotte, North Carolina knocked on my door one weekday afternoon. His wife had just told him she’s leaving. She climbed her car and drove away. He was dumbstruck and he needed to talk. My wife and I had just moved in. I hardly knew him. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I froze. To my everlasting shame, I rushed our conversation so he’d stop making ME feel uncomfortable. I realized years later he was crying out for help and I failed him. I know...
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North
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
My wife and I were headed to a cocktail reception where we knew no one. "This is an opportunity," I said. ----- My wife and I were driving to a short cocktail reception full of people we’d never met. Most of them knew one another. Us? Not a soul. This is an opportunity, I said. Let’s run with it. I proposed that she and I create a story for ourselves. Pick a personality and a background and a job. We’ll create something bordering on sensational and come up with a few very specific details that will make whomever we talk to truly wonder. About us. About whether we’re telling the truth....
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Burning Our Brains
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
The heat's cooked our brains. ------ The heat’s taken its toll. It’s been unrelenting. Brutal. The greenery looks weary. The grass dries and turns brown within hours of any moisture. My car thermometer regularly reads around 110 and I saw online that it feels much hotter. We need a break. We need relief. My dog looks at me and says “No way I’m walking on that street. That street will burn my feet right off” and she’s right. It's affecting us mentally. We’re budding on crazy. It’s cooked our brains. Recent headlines are all you need to see. A lady in Birmingham faked her...
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Crossing
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Last week I danced in front of a train to try to get it to move. ----- Trains have always held great symbolic meaning. They represent the future, a new destination, an opportunity. In movies, the characters board trains in the hopes of greater things down the tracks. Lovers tearfully depart at train stations. Though tragic it’s what’s best for each of them. Bandits of the wild west knew there was a strong box on a train full of money. Convicts break out of jail and if they can make it to the train it will take them away from the misery of prison. Songs, too. The Midnight Special. Midnight...
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Caricature
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
This week I take an imaginary walk through Jackson Square in New Orleans and ask a caricature artist to draw me something...different. ----- There are sections of our society that have become parodies of themselves. Once proud, they’re now laughable forms of their former self. Imagine this: You’re walking through the New Orleans French Quarter. You stop at one of the caricature artists on Jackson Square. You say, “Hey Mr Caricature artist. I don’t want a picture of me. I want you to draw a picture of, let’s say, today’s country music.” That caricature artist would draw...
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Thirty Years
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
After thirty years of the same family tradition - I give some thought to the future. ----- For the thirtieth year in a row my SUV left my garage headed for the North Carolina Coast the second to last Saturday in July. If we weren’t in it, it would go by itself. It’s what we do. It’s what the car does. And it was packed tight with everything from fishing gear, to bed sheets, to food, to 150 oysters in the shell on ice, two cakes from Bake My Day, and a case of get-along juice, also known as wine. My in-laws have rented a house on Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina every summer and we are...
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Bunge
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
She hopped to the edge of the platform, raised her arms, and jumped. ----- The video opened on my phone and my daughter was leaping off a bridge and falling out of the frame. It took my breath away. I watched it again and texted her. “Since you sent this to me,” I said, “I assume you survived the fall?” “Yea,” she texted back. “It was awesome.” She’s in South Africa as I write this. She’s spent the month there with a student group called Lead Abroad. It’s a one-month trip where she and about thirty others study leadership and communication skills while experiencing the...
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Coffee with Milo
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
A cup of coffee with a friend and a few strangers was a wonderful start to a great day not long ago. ----- I’d like to say Hello to Randy Fowler. On Friday mornings he’s in his car on his way to the Restaurant Five in downtown Tuscaloosa with his dog Milo. He’s a regular listener to these commentaries and he reached out to me a few years ago when he liked one to offer a compliment. Turns out Randy’s daughter, Julie Otts, lives a few doors down from me here in Mobile. It’s a small world. Randy and I have visited a few times when he’s in town to visit his daughter, son-in-law, and...
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Tinkle Bell
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
I have an idea for a business. Make up words customers can't understand then upcharge 75%. ----- I think our dog is constipated. She rung her tinkle bell early early in the morning to go outside and she just roamed around the yard in a hurry with her nose down. I have no idea if this is what a constipated dog looks like. I’m assuming that’s her issue. She appears to want to do something but…can’t. The tinkle bell hangs next to the back door. The dog rings it with her nose when she needs to go out. In the wee hours my wife or I stand bleary-eyed in the door waiting for her to do her...
info_outlineToday's Keepin' it Real - the language of insiders.
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I made a short statement the other day and my son immediately replied, “That’s cap.” C A P. Cap. I’m unsure what it means. It’s either “that’s the gospel truth” or “that’s a boldface lie.” I thought about it for a moment and decided I didn’t want to know.
For centuries generations have used hairstyles, vocabulary, music and clothing to separate themselves from adults just like my kids are doing today. We called things “cool” or “grody” or “sick.” Today my kids use Cap and ‘lit’. When I say someone was ‘lit’ it means they were very overserved. With the kids today, ‘lit’ means cool or fun or hip or exciting. There’s a part of me that wants to adopt this language to try to stay young. There’s a bigger part of me that says stay away.
My daughter and her friends use the word ‘like’ as an opening quotation mark. For example: “She said like I didn’t do it and I immediately said like it was you. I saw you. And then she said like, Well, that’s cap.” And again, I’m clueless.
The stay-at-home women in my part of town have starting using the expression “all the things.” It means just so much of everything. “I’ve got so many chores and errands and the kids need me and you know, all the things.” All the things. Listen for it. It will be coming from a SUV driver in yoga tights.
Sociologists have studied that shared words and, specifically, acronyms self-identify people as part of an in-crowd. At a financial services conference I was amazed by the overflow of TLAs and FLAs. Attendees bandied them back and forth to say to each other, “I am an insider” and to remind outsiders like me that I’m an outsider. Financial services love their TLAs, and when find a tidy TLA won’t do, they go to FLAs. Three letter acronyms and four letter acronyms, by the way.
In a conference call a few weeks ago I was immediately told through the use of insider language that I was an outsider. It was a passive aggressive masterpiece. The TLAs and FLAs numbered in the dozens. The guy leading the call was letting me know he’s my alpha. It wasn’t like he was a silverback gorilla standing on a rock and beating his chest to declare his dominance but it was very much like a silverback gorilla standing on a rock and beathing his chest to declare his dominance.
The evangelicals have an insider language, too. This may offend some of them, but you’ll recognize the use of the word ‘just’ in your prayers. “Father God, just just wrap us in your love and just heal our hearts with your manifest of greatness and just feed us with the bounty of your loving kindness as we just work to serve your steadfast love and just just keep your son in front of our eyes…” I stop listening and start counting. I can’t help it. And I’m pretty sure if the universe’s editor in chief were to speak to us he’d say ‘what’s with all the justs? The reason I don’t answer your prayers is I lose focus counting.’
I’m Cam Marston and I’m JUST JUST JUST just trying to Keep it Real. And all the things.