What You Do and Who You Are

One of the most aggrevating questions for Carl is the one that almost everyone asks when they first meet a man: "What do you do?"

I have always found it interesting to follow the difference between men and women on this question. I can go an entire evening in a party setting with a room full of people I've never met and not encounter this question or maybe encounter it only once or twice. Now I hear "what does your husband do?" a lot, but I usually have to talk about my work before the question arises.

It is an incredible question when you think about it. It assumes a hell of a lot. It assumes that all adult males should be able to answer the question succinctly. It assumes that knowing the answer to the question is tantemount to knowing the person. It assumes that any adult male who cannot answer the question is lacking something.

Carl does a lot. In fact, he probably does more in a day than most people in the 9 to 5 work a day world. In fact, he probably does too much. We have a sign on our wall that says "If you have been working for 15 hours and it feels like the end of the world, it is not. It is just the end of the day." That is because Carl often works until he can't any more.

But Carl works at many things that can't be formalized into a "position" or "job." I won't even try to give them labels here because to label them misses the point.

I put Carl in a growing class of people who understand the difference between having a job and doing what Sarah Nelson and D.J. Swanson (co-creators of CLAWS) calls "joyful work." These people also understand the value of leisure.

When Carl and I talk about work, we often have a hard time distinguishing between "work" and "play." This is because many of the things we do/have done are pleasurable and productive. We have come to call these things "activities" in an effort not to label them according to the dichotomy.

The following quote from Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society is quinessential Carl Wilkerson. I swear he said all of this in the past week in one way or another:

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.

So the next time you see Carl (or anyone for that matter), rethink the kneejerk quesiton of "what do you do?" and ask a more fun question like "seen a great sunset lately?" or "what's your favorite ice cream?"

Come on, break the dominant paradigm and have some fun!

Who is Carl Wilkerson?

Well, that is way too big a question to address in one post, but I do what to start out with that question because that is why I stole the blog -- to tell people who Carl Wilkerson really is.

There will be many answers to this question.

I plan to explore as many of them as I can for the rest of my life.

The superficial answer is that he is a Will Ferrell look-alike who can be both grumpy and funny. (BTW, he does a perfect imitation of Ferrell, especially Mugatu "I invented the piano key necktie. What have you ever done? Nothing! nothing! Nothing!" from Zoolander)

20 things you probably don't know about Carl Wilkerson:

1. Almost every single animal that meets him loves him.

2. He has composed over 200 songs and recorded many of them.

3. Our cat, Anawim, has total control of his mind and can make him do her will.

4. He cries at sunsets because they are so beautiful to him.

5. He knows all the words to every sitcom theme song ever composed (at least to every one before 1990).

6. He has never seen a single episode of the show "Friends" and has made it his quest in life to never do so.

7. He can imitate every main male character on Seinfield.

8. He is a mathematical genius and reads math books for fun.

9. He reads French fluently and he can hold his own in a conversation in French.

10. He has been to the Masters in Georgia (pre-Tiger Woods).

11. He plays guitar and keyboard by ear and can listen to almoast any song twice and play it.

12. He practices yoga.

13. He was a card-carrying member of the National Organization for Women for several years.

14. He ran his own e-bay business out of my mother's shed in the backyard.

15. He studied karate.

16. He used to work for a pizza joint that may have been a front for the mob. He knows nothing and he didn't want to find out.

17. He can recite his lines from scripts he learned as far back as high school drama. He is a master at memorizing complicated lines.

18. When we were living with my mom after my dad passed away, he gave my mom at backrub every morning as a thank you for coffee she made him.

19. He can name the winners and losers of every world series ever played. Just throw a year from 1903 to 2004 and he will most likely be able to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the series for that year. He is a walking, talking, breathing, living baseball history alminac. (He even knows more than the average fan about Negro leagues, minor leagues, college leagues and women's leagues)

20. He sat in the hospital for three days when I had surgery in 1995 watching over me. The truth is, over the years, he has spent a lot of time waiting for me, watching me and taking care of me. He is my caregiver and my guardian. I would not have survived lupus, asthma, cancer or fibromyalgia without him. Most men would have run away by now. He has been my steady consort in spite of all the sickness I have faced.

I'm Taking over this Blog!!!!

Early this morning I left taking Carl's computer and his car and going to my brother's RV to work for the day (he has wi-fi, we have nothing). I left a note to my dear husband that told him where I was and for him to call me when he awoke.

Carl says to me upon realizing that he has no computer and no transportation, "Well, I guess when you have sex with someone on a regular basis, taking their stuff isn't theft."

I laughed. Then I decided that was close enough to permission to steal his blog as well.

So, I'm taking over One Who Dares.

Okay, I didn't exactly steal it. I mean, Carl can still make posts and if he wants to he can change the password and kick me off the blog. But I've been looking for a venue to share with everyone what a great guy Carl is because he spends a lot of time and effort helping people notice me and my needs and my causes and it is time to not let his efforts be taken for granted.

So I found this old blog laying around the house and decided it need to be rejuvinated.

So, sweetie, I've stole something else ("What's new?" I'm sure he's thinking) and I'm going to let the world know about my Scorpion.