So when I step in front of a class, I know I’m going to encounter students who want to stretch the truth to benefit their academic careers. I would be lying if I didn’t admit to being a little deceitful at times in order to save face. One of the most common fibs is telling a professor you missed class the other morning because you were sick, but really, your absence was because of your failure to drag yourself out of bed in the morning. That kind of verbal liberalism happens frequently. But I encountered not just an outright lie a couple of semester ago, but a liar who must have been so apathetic of my existence that she then told the true story while I was standing in the room.

Here’s the story. There will be no names or gender identification:

I had a student miss a couple of classes, and I had been alerted by a higher up on campus that the student would be absent because of injuries the student had sustained during the weekend. When the student got back to campus and showed up for class, the student had a bandaged hand, cuts on his/her fact and a black eye. We stepped outside the door for some privacy when he/she detailed his/her story. The student told me he/she had gotten in a car accident on his/her way home. I asked if he/she was OK and if there was anything I could do to help. The student said he/she was OK, and I told him/her that he/she could make up any missed work because he/she seemingly had a legitimate excuse.

We headed back into the classroom. I took my position at the front to get ready, the student took his/her seat near friends. They reacted to how he/she looked, and they expressed their sympathy and concern. Someone asked, “How did this happen?” I heard the question, and I was barely paying attention because I figured the student would simply recount his/her car accident story. Instead, the student told his/her classmate that he/she had been home and out on the town one night. He/she hopped on someone else’s back for a piggyback ride, and they both fell to the ground.

I stood at the front of the classroom in shock. The student had gone out of his/her way to lie to me, then forgotten I was in the room when he/she told the truth about his/her injuries. I’m sure my mouth was agape. I was probably a caricature of “Suprised Man.” I couldn’t believe it. Did this student think I was of no consequence, that my opinion didn’t matter? Or did the student simply space out and forget I was in the room? Either way, I was taken aback at the gall this student exhibited.

But it’s all part of the job, I guess. I moved past it pretty quickly, but it’s something I’ll never forget about this student. So, as George Eliot said, “Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.” You said, ma’am. You said it. (Yes, I wrote ma’am. George Eliot is the pen name for Mary Anne Evans.)

Listen in on the third Pick and Pop podcast from Aug. 13, during which I discuss Donte Stallworth’s one-year suspension (with no pay) from the NFL, Tiger’s early PGA Championship lead, Ben Wallace’s revelation that he almost retired before rejoining the Detroit Pistons and the Washington Redskins preseason opener. Justin and I will work out some time to do these together, but in the interim, I’m goin’ it alone because Cherot and I are doing the long distance thing. Anyway, take a listen and post your comments or responses to the topics and issues I’ve raised. We want you to be part of the discussion, so start hitting up those comments. Enjoy.

Pick and Pop Podcast for 8/13/09

Link will take you to the Pick and Pop entry. Click on the link to hear the podcast.

Listen in on the second Pick and Pop podcast from Aug. 4, during which I discusss the NFL craze that’s hitting the nation, key questions facing each NFL division, the newly released NBA schedule, the big MLB trades and predictions covering the MLB division winners. Because Justin is in MD and I’m in NC, I flew solo on this one. Justin and I will work out some time to do these together, but in the interim, I’m goin’ it alone because Cherot and I are doing the long distance thing. Anyway, take a listen and post your comments or responses to the topics and issues I’ve raised. We want you to be part of the discussion, so start hitting up those comments. Enjoy.

Pick and Pop Podcast for 8/4

Link will take you to the Pick and Pop entry. Click on the link to hear the podcast.

I put together the first Pick and Pop podcast June 30 and discussed the potential of a salary cap in Major League Baseball, the New York Knicks’ confusig interest in Jason Kidd, the Washington Wizards front court conundrum and more. Because Justin is in MD and I’m in NC, I flew solo on this one. Justin and I will work out some time to do these together, but in the interim, I’m goin’ it alone because Cherot and I are doing the long distance thing. Anyway, take a listen and post your comments or responses to the topics and issues I’ve raised. We want you to be part of the discussion, so start hitting up those comments. Enjoy.

Pick and Pop Podcast for 6/30

Link will take you to the Pick and Pop entry. Click on the link to hear the podcast.

I walked out of my professor’s office with my head down. I dragged my feet slightly and slumped my shoulders. I found myself in a state of intense contemplation, although to the students who passed me in the hallway, I probably appeared more comical, like a living, breathing caricature of a dejected Charlie Brown. But truly, I was in serious thought. I was in my senior year as an undergrad, and my future lay unmapped. I had not a single idea of what I wanted to do once these quick four years of college came to an end. Should I continue my education? Should I join the work force? Should I take a year off from school? These are the typical questions that more than likely pinball around the heads of all soon-to-be graduates. They affected me, as well. Like a finely placed haymaker, my concern about my options (or lack thereof) staggered me. The uneasiness gripped me, and in a moment of un-clarity, I made a rash decision: I’ll take the LSAT.

I had always considered a career in law because my father is a lawyer and because my mother told me I would make a good attorney. (But motherly approval is often blind, so I took that bit of reasoning with a grain of salt.) Mostly, I decided to take the LSAT because of my scant experience in the field of journalism and my indecision about the importance of graduate school for journalism. Admittedly and unfortunately, the prospect of a career that pays – literally – colored my judgment.

I made up my mind to take the test fairly late in the school year, which didn’t provide me with enough time to prepare adequately. I bought the review books with the practice tests, every one of which proclaimed loudly on the cover with big bold block letters that it was the No. 1 test preparation guide money could buy. I hurriedly signed up for a weekend course, which consisted of two, eight-hour days. Apparently, this short, but intense, mental workout was sold as a satisfactory substitute for the normal multi-week courses. I didn’t buy it. But I attended both sessions, which were held in a cramped conference room at a hotel in Raleigh, N.C., perhaps further confirmation that this weekend LSAT walkthrough wasn’t the best choice. Still, I left each session with a throbbing headache. I was used to the marathon of a semester. Now, I had to acclimate myself to the sprint of a two-day schedule. I made it through the weekend of classes with my bottle of tension headache medication and, more importantly, a better, if not complete, knowledge of what to expect on the LSAT.

Now, I had two weeks until the test. I set aside four-hour chunks of time every day for the next 14 days. I locked myself in a room in the library on Elon’s campus and took practice test after practice test. A passerby probably noticed the excruciating mental pain I endured while in the room. A pencil held firmly in my right hand, sweat just noticeable on my brow, my left hand propping up my head as I read through each question multiple times, my wristwatch ticking silently as it counted down the finite minutes I had to complete a section. Every test I took showed no marked improvement. I was concerned. But soon enough, the day for the test arrived.

I drove to the University of Greensboro in my 1997 Taurus with the music blaring, so as to block out any distractions. I arrived at the campus, parked and walked to the building. I checked in, sat down and felt my heartbeat throbbing in my chest. The anticipation and a feeling of ineptness struck me from every angle. As the tests were distributed, I tried to quell the feelings by thinking about baseball or television or anything else. It hardly worked. I poured over every question in the booklet. Sometimes I read a question so many times, the words lost their meaning.

Seven hours later I had finished the test. I left with a feeling of accomplishment. Not because I thought I preformed well, though. In fact, my confidence was slowly eroding as I made the long walk back to my car. I only found solace in the fact that there was nothing I could do to amend the situation now.

I received my scores three weeks later, and as I suspected, I scored below average. I went into a brief bout of denial. “I never do well on standardized tests,” I told myself. “Had I prepared more, I would’ve done better, I’m sure,” I said. But eventually, I had to deal honestly with myself. I made a mistake. I allowed pre-graduation jitters guide me into a test I was never prepared to take. I let my emotions veto my rationality. And I paid for it. No decent law school would accept me on the strength of my GPA alone.

I don’t regret taking the taking the test. I regret the decision-making process, which led to my poor preparation. I have vowed never to allow myself to rush to judgment. Thoughtful contemplation and meticulous execution will always trump hasty determinations. But like most life-lessons, I had to learn that the hard way.

When things get too much for me, I retreat to my iPod. I know. It’s not very romantic. I don’t sit in the shade of a favorite tree, contemplating my finiteness in the midst of a larger world. I don’t lose myself in a sea of words penned by the great authors, displacing my psyche into a fictional dimension. I don’t have a significant other I run to for solace and a shoulder, discovering comfort in the arms of another. (Ed. Note: I do have that significant other now, who I can easily turn to in times of need. But when I wrote this, I didn’t.) Instead, I plug in. I pick up the iPod, insert the buds into my ears and hit play. I let the music transport me. Who needs the choppy, abbreviated beauty of Hemingway and the biting satire of Heller when you have the cryptic lyrics coupled with rock-jazz stylings of Steely Dan and the reggae/rock/hip-hop/blues hybrid of Sublime? Who needs the everyman, depressing musings of Steinbeck and the wacky world of Trafalmadorians of Vonnegut when you have the blue-collar mentality of Bruce and the ghetto storytelling of Nas? In fact, as I sit here writing this, the music of Chris Thomas King plays in the background. His soft, understated yet powerful voice rips through the speakers as he tickles his acoustic guitar, fusing jazz and hip-hop to augment his mostly blues-dominated sound. He sings, while his guitar gently weeps – thank you, George – “Born under bad sign/I’ve been down since I began to crawl/If it wasn’t for bad luck/I wouldn’t have no luck at all.” The bluntness of the chorus is universal. At different times in our lives when the breaks don’t go our way, those words become paramount. When I feel down or stressed, I’m reminded of that chorus, and I immediately snatch up my iPod to hear which artist will attempt to staunch my temporary era of bad feelings.

The reference to the iPod may suggest this is a recent behavior. But I’ve looked to music for many years, whether it required using a Walkman, a Discman or even a record player when I had an urge to listen to my father’s “Snoopy and the Red Baron” 45. (Although, that song never really held much cultural or emotional significance for me. I left that to the Abbey Road LP.) Music speaks to me. Honest, open, thoughtful lyrics reach me and usually prove more expressive than I do. The instruments talk to me, oftentimes demonstrating more emotion than I ever illustrate. It’s that rich, textured combination of words and sounds that allows me to examine myself and research my affections. I need an impetus, something to catalyze me so that I can discover what I’m feeling and why it’s causing me such joy or anger or sadness or disappointment or wherever else I’ve stopped on the gamut of emotions. With the end of the semester bearing down, I often feel overwhelmed by the papers, the reading, the studying, the graduate assistantship, the freelancing and the prospect of a relationship. In order to slow myself down and push all that to the back of my mind, I turn to Common, a smooth, smoky-voiced, socially-conscious rapper. I flip to his song “Be” from his album of the same name. It’s the short introduction to his powerful 11-track album and contains a funky bass riff that builds to a climax before eventually being overtaken by a chorus of violins that pushes the bass to the background. Common quickly rips through his song, ending with the words: “Never looking back or too far in front of me/The present is a gift/And I just wanna BE.” Those three simple lines dominate my thoughts and cause a platonic shift in my mentality. It lends perspective to a mind that was previously too cluttered to find it.

I recall one time in particular where music really helped lift me from the doldrums. After I finished my sophomore year at Elon, I decided to stay in North Carolina for the summer so I could work at the local newspaper in Burlington. Indeed, I had already lived away from home for four semesters of college, but it dawned on me fairly quickly into the summer that I probably wouldn’t be going home for an extended period of time ever again. This thought jolted me. I had grown accustomed to being away at college, but I had never allowed the thought to enter my mind that my permanent residence was no longer so permanent. I sat at my desk in my apartment and stared at the computer screen in quiet contemplation. I could feel a lump welling in my throat; the one that warns of possible tears. I was alone, but I wouldn’t let myself cry. I forced my lip to stop quivering, shook my distant and detached stare and opened the iTunes application on my PC. I skipped toward the end of my play list for some Steely Dan. They’re low-toned, jazzy rhythms would soothe me, I thought. I played “Deacon Blues,” a not-so-veiled reference to a school a few miles down the interstate from me. The song cuts in with a light tapping of the cymbals, Walter Becker’s restrained electric guitar and the inauthentic – yet wholly effective – synthesized sounds of a flute. Donald Fagen’s untraditional voice, tinged with his trademark lisp, enters and the antiheroes’ dance begins. The song, while seemingly about a resignation to the L.A. musician’s lifestyle, has a practical application for me. The lyrics seem to have a more ubiquitous quality. To me, I sense not only the loneliness, but also the surrender to it. Fagen sings, “I crawl like a viper/Through these suburban streets/Make love to these women/Languid and bittersweet/I’ll rise when the sun goes down/Cover every game in town/A world of my own/I’ll make it my home sweet home.” As is true with most Steely Dan tracks, the horns sneak onto the track later, culminating with a prominent, well-placed and poignant saxophone solo. (An appropriate choice, considering the chorus mentions a saxophone.) The chorus: “I’ll learn to work the saxophone/I’ll play just what I feel/Drink Scotch whisky all night long/And die behind the wheel/They got a name for the winners in the world/I want a name when I lose/They call Alabama the Crimson Tide/Call me Deacon Blues.” I feed off the disconsolate, abandoned feeling emanating from the song, and in some weird way, it makes me feel better. Maybe I needed to know others out there experience a sense of homelessness. Whatever the reason, it forced me to crack a bit of a smile, and it helped me through that evening. I admit, maybe one or two tears reached the ducts. But Steely Dan at least put a smile on my face while they rolled down my cheek.

It requires the deft footwork, superior vision and quick steps more suited to an NFL running back. Hit the hole, spin around the cart, juke to the right, jump the child, and finally reach the electronics department.

Grab a cart, and it becomes tantamount to car racing. Take a hard right, pull in tightly behind another cart and wait for the chance to make a move to the outside. Beware of blind spots, though. Wrecks are sometimes inevitable.

Getting through Burlington’s Wal-Mart – the part department store, part grocery store – is a laborious task. It tests patience or boils blood. It remains busy from sun up to sunrise – all the more reason it shouldn’t have reallocated large chunks of its parking lot to the sale of soil, mulch and other gardening amenities.

“It’s as if the whole of Burlington is at the store at one time,” said Elon junior Joe Torralbes. “I like to do my shopping at 4 a.m.”

The store, located only a couple of miles from Elon University’s campus, is an overwhelming presence. It’s big business in an slow-moving, small country town. Walk through the sliding doors, occasionally receive a hearty “hello” from the greeter, and one’s immersed in the vastness of the Supercenter.

At least a half-mile from the front of the store to the back, and from side to side, Wal-Mart sells everything under its high ceilings and neon white lights. Board games, clothes, school supplies, groceries, electronics, Wal-Mart’s got it. And employees clad in blue vests scurry to their respective departments, perhaps making the store more bureaucratic than it need be.

The 30 terminals overrun the front end of the store, although rarely half of them are open. Of course, that forces lines to snake into aisles overrun with spilled merchandise and clog up the middle of the store.

And when the shopping is complete, one customer walks through the doors into the parking lot, cart in tow, sense of relief on his face. He mutters to himself, “That was a chore.”

The utterance isn’t sure to change next week.

The bus slowed to a halt in the empty, dew-soaked parking lot. I slipped off with the rest of my classmates. We gathered for a moment, stretching out our tired and cramped legs and rubbing our sleep-deprived eyes. It had been long trip already, but we still had more than a week left. Our professors walked off the bus into the early-morning sun and led us up a brief, sinewy, stone pathway housed under the soft shade of the surrounding trees that may have been elms. I tugged down on my knit cap with a lowercase “dc” emblazoned on the front that symbolized the Washington Wizards, and I zipped up my red winter jacket as far as it would go and hid my mouth and nose behind it. The 30 of us – all battling the frigid January winter weather – soon turned a corner and set our road-weary sights on one of the more impressive and daunting sights we had ever seen. It stopped me cold for a moment. My feet seemed to be glued to the ground as I stared at the rows and rows of white, nondescript crosses that lined an undulating bright green countryside. The graves extended to the infinite horizon. It was early morning, so the sun was not at is peak. Shadows covered a great many of the graves, but the ones to the East were showered in the soft dawn tones of orange and yellow. The class fanned out across the graveyard.

On this trip across Europe, we had seen cemeteries in England, and would see mass graves in St. Petersburg, Russia. Yet for some reason, this American graveyard at Colleville sur Mer, which rested above the once blood-soaked Omaha Beach and deadly cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, seemed more awe-inspiring than anything we had seem before it or surely anything we would see later. The serenity of the morning, the structure of the cemetery and the gentle crashing of the waves on the beach belied the horrendous events that had transpired here less than 60 years ago.

As I walked among the knee-high graves, I thought back to John McCrae and his poem In Flanders Field. It was a World War I poem, but it held significance on this day:

Hundreds of graves are anonymous, some have identification marks and others bear the Star of David at the top to signify the death of a Jewish soldier. In the past, being in a cemetery forced me to recognize the finiteness of life, but standing there at Colleville made me ponder the D-Day invasion of 1944 that provided a rebirth for Americans and the inhabitants of this region. Then, I thought about my great-uncle Patrick Edward Fitzpatrick, or Uncle Eddie to me.

He slipped onto a landing barge that overcast June 6 day in 1944 and took the short, but assuredly tense, ride across the English Channel poised to continue the assault on the German forces at Normandy. He was 30 years old at the time – a bit older than the average soldier. He had been drafted into the war, or to him, stolen away by the Army from his job at Pepco and his life in Maryland. He was a tall, strapping, strong Irishman who had played some minor league baseball. (He often tells the story of showering next to Walter Johnson after one mid-summer game.) His job in the armed forces was to repair communication lines, so he was not a foot soldier, per se. When the boats approached the coast, he jumped over the side of the boat, waded through the water and hid behind a Jeep until he hit land. Once he felt the sand under his feet, he jumped into the nearest hole he could find until he was clear to continue his advance up the beach. He recalls looking to his left and watching Allied forces – mostly Americans – attempt to scale the vast, ominous wall of Pointe du Hoc. They were picked off easier than most. He says entire barges dumped only the dead into the Channel. He has no idea how anyone survived the invasion. Today, at 93 years old, he considers himself one of the lucky ones. (Ed. Note: My great uncle was 93 at the time this was written. He died two years later in 2007.)

All his stories careen through my head as I turn my empty stare from grave to grave. I rejoin the rest of the group and we begin our descent from the cemetery to the beach. We walk down a short pier and our professor tells us to take off our shoes and socks. We oblige and walk barefoot across the sand and toward the water. The wind whips off the Channel’s waters. I pull snugly on my knit cap again, my feet freezing in the wet, hard sand. My professor produces 32 roses. He hands all of us one rose apiece and tells us to wade knee deep into the water. Despite our better judgment, we follow his instructions. The cold water stings my bare skin. We form a circle, read In Flanders Field at our professor’s behest, observe a moment of silence and toss our roses into the water. It may seem like one of those typical cornball, cheesy movie moments, but I truly appreciated the gesture. I was standing on the very same beach my great-uncle was thrust onto in 1944. I was looking up the beach at the remnants of the German-used batteries that killed thousands upon thousands of Allied troops. I was having war flashbacks, or at least sympathy flashbacks.

I turned back with the rest of the group, did my best to dry my feet and put my shoes and socks back on. I walked up the hill to Colleville and took one last look at the immense cemetery. I felt a major pang of emotion overtake me, and I realized then and there my great uncle’s heroic acts, along with the other men and women who served that day, will always be remembered. I thought to myself that winter day in France that nothing I ever see or do will compare to my moments in Normandy at Omaha Beach. I tugged on my coat and walked back to the bus. We had more than a week to go and several more countries to visit, but the denouement of my trip happened at Omaha. The rest would only be filler.

It was early, about 6:30 in the morning, and the traffic to work was still heavy. Caleb turned to his mother in the driver’s seat and did what most teenagers do on the last Friday of summer vacation: He complained.

“Traffic was [terrible],” Caleb said. “I was getting ready for school, and was kind of complaining about going back.” He also had contemplated requesting the day off from work, extending his last weekend of the summer to three days. But he thought to himself, “What’s one more day?”

He arrived at work in the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, at about 7 a.m. It was a typical August day. A bit overcast, but the weather was cool. It’s never too hot in Nairobi because Kenya sits on a plateau.

He went down to the basement and prepared for his day. He worked in the commissary tending the cash register, stocking product, doing general repairs. He did a few odd jobs before setting to the task of fixing a broken typewriter. He fiddled with it for a few minutes before he heard the first loud bang. He set down the typewriter and his tools and walked out of the office to see what it was. At first, he thought maybe somebody a few floors up dropped a safe. No, he told himself, it was too loud.

Seconds later, a second bang. The building shook beneath his feet. The ceiling began to fall. The emergency lights turned on. Cement chalk filled the air.

Caleb started shaking. He mentally checked himself for any injuries. None. He remained calm and immediately thought of his mother. He hoped she was OK, but at this point, there was nothing he could do to help her. The aftershock of the bomb that contacted the embassy—the second band he heard—had forced the doors in the building shut, and they couldn’t be opened from the inside. Each door, though, could be opened with a five-digit code. He walked six feet across the carpeted hall and took a quick left. His manager’s office was in a corner, and she was trapped inside. As he tried to get the PIN from his boss, some Africans who were in the travel agency next to the commissary were screaming frantically. Caleb told them to be quiet so he could get the code. Successful. He opened the door and removed Giddy Shaw from the office. Then, he went back and grabbed the Africans. He maneuvered Shaw and the four Africans down the hallway. The restaurant and mail room at the other end was in sight.

The fake tile ceiling had fallen to the ground. The carpet was a mess. The fluorescent light fixtures were hanging tenuously. They swallowed chalk as they walked.

“The chalk fills your mouth like peanut butter, or like eating sand,” Caleb said. “Afterwards, you could tell who was in the building because they had a black ring around their mouth. It was hard to breath.”

The six-person convoy got half way down the hallway. Caleb ran into a Marine who had fallen three stories down an elevator shaft. Caleb told him to come with them, but the Marine declined. He said he needed some time. His ribs were broken. The Marine told Caleb to take the stairs. Caleb opened the door to the stairwell, craned his neck and noticed it was all clear. They got up one flight but could go no further. They left the stairwell and headed for a side door. The six exited through the parking garage. At the time, they didn’t know that’s where the bomb had exploded.

About 10 minutes after leaving his basement post, Caleb reached the top of the garage and ran into the in-house doctor. She was carrying a woman out of the building. The doctor handed the woman off to Caleb and told him to carry her the rest of the way. Caleb’s party had increased by one. The doctor headed back into the building, and Caleb, holding the woman and leading five others, was back in the paradoxically pleasant Nairobi weather.

“It was chaos,” Caleb said.

Eventually, someone took the woman from Caleb. Buses and cars were on fire. The school across the street had collapsed. The woman was replaced in Caleb’s arm with some classified information. Marines at the scene were running back and forth into the building to remove some of the important classified documents and making sure no one entered. Caleb delivered the papers. He hopped in a car and was taken to the U.S. Information Services building .
He was out. He was safe. He had never run. He had never panicked. He heard within moments of leaving the building that his mother was fine. It was an intense day. He had saved six lives – seven including his own.

He was 15.

Just a normal day

When Caleb left for work early the morning of August 17, 1998, he had no reason to think anything would go wrong. And why should he? Nothing had in the preceding summer months. His mother, Judy Pike – she worked for the embassy, greeting new employees and helping them get acclimated to the city – also had felt no need to worry. In fact, no one who worked in the building at the time expected a bombing. There were no previous intelligence reports that would suggest such a thing would happen. It surprised everyone.

“You hear different rumors and threats, letter bombs and things that might [happen],” Judy said. “I got too familiar and too relaxed. I was too comfortable.”

Judy pulled into the embassy. The building sat at the corner of a busy intersection, right on the sidewalk. Embassies these days must be built away from the street. They have to be set back for security reasons. But five years ago, that wasn’t the case.

“The people who actually go overseas and work over there have the understanding that there is some sort of risk,” Caleb said. “People know that now more than before, though.”

To be sure, Caleb was no stranger to living overseas. Aside from Nairobi, he has lived in Botswana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Niger, Liberia and the United States. At the time of the bombing, his father, Col. Dan Pike, was serving as a defense attaché. It was his job to understand the military capabilities of the surrounding nations. When the bombs exploded, his father was traveling abroad.

Shortly before 10:30 a.m., as Caleb worked with the typewriter, the guards outside the embassy had their first encounter with the terrorist bombers.

Lucky twice over

The first explosion wasn’t the one that inflicted the damage. The bombers, working for al-Qaede leader and mastermind Osama bin Laden, had thrown a grenade into the guards shack to create a diversion. The real bang, which would come only seconds later, could’ve been worse.

The intention of the bombers was to drive their truck into the bowels of the parking garage. If the bomb had been set off down there, the whole building would have collapsed. But the Marines standing duty gave their lives to ensure that didn’t happen. They distracted the driver. One Marine reached through the truck’s window and grabbed the wheel. As the driver and Marine struggled, the car veered off course and crashed into the side of the building. That set the bomb off, but the blast only went up the building. It didn’t cripple the building’s infrastructure at all. It blew out windows and doors, but the building still stood.

Caleb was working in the basement after the grenade exploded. Like most people in the embassy, he was overwhelmed with curiosity after he heard the sound. He walked out of the commissary to find out what happened. In the basement, though, there are no windows, so he couldn’t see what had happened. The people on the floors above him were not as fortunate. They left their desks to look out the windows. When the second explosion occurred – the real bomb – the windows shattered inward.

“People walked towards the windows, which was a problem,” Caleb said. “It blew all the windows and shredded people. Luckily, with my curiosity, I was below ground.”

Judy remained unharmed because 20 minutes before the explosion, she had left her office to meet a new employee. After she picked up the newcomer, she headed back to the embassy. She, too, heard a thundering noise. But there was construction going on in the area, so she thought nothing of it.

“I heard it, and didn’t put two and two together,” Judy said.

Soon enough, though, she noticed the destruction and mayhem.

“Someone told me that embassy had just been bombed, and I saw the ambassador, and she had some injuries,” Judy said. “I stopped and was numb because I realized Caleb was in building. I was kind of frozen. I couldn’t move for a little bit. I was shocked, because it hit me that it really happened, and I knew he was there.

“It might’ve been about five minutes, but it seemed like forever, [until] someone saw me and yelled out to me that they had seen Caleb leave the building.”

Mother and son reunited several minutes later at home. A total of 213 people were killed – 12 of whom were Americans and the bulk of whom were Kenyan civilians and bystanders – and more than 4,000 had been wounded.

Caleb, the hero

Caleb had no military training. He worked in the commissary. He sold food. He fixed things that needed fixing. The, curly blond-haired, blue-eyed kid from Fort Bragg, N.C., was studying geometry and algebra in his high school in Kenya. Roundly shaped, but built solidly like a wrestler, his large, round head sat on his broad shoulders – a neck conspicuously missing. What did he know about emergency rescue situations?

But instinct took over for Caleb.

“I don’t mean to sound cocky, but you either have it or you don’t,” Caleb said. “I didn’t have any training, it had to be instinct.”

Certainly, fear was present. But in the anxiousness of the situation, he never acknowledged it.
“Mostly it was just confusion, like what the heck had just happened,” he said. “A lot of it was still worrying about my mom. That was about it. Maybe that’s why I stayed calm because I wasn’t thinking about too much. I’m sure I was scared.”

Judy didn’t learn of her son’s heroics until the next day. She ran into a couple of the people he had rescued. They hugged her and told her Caleb was their hero.

“I was just very proud he could handle himself despite of what he was seeing: fires, death, ruin,” she said.

Caleb’s father also had him write down everything that had happened to him. Soon after, Caleb received the Department of State Award for Heroism, one of the more distinguished awards given to a civilian.

Now a junior at Elon University, he recalls his actions proudly, but infrequently. His unassuming manner and modesty belies the strength of character he displayed on that August day. And to think, he almost called into work that day.

A couple of months ago (maybe more, who can remember), I bought Pearl Jam’s “rearviewmirror (Greatest Hits 1991-2003).” Sure, I’m a little late to the game if my first Pearl Jam purchase came in 2008. They were obviously a formative band, from the Seattle grunge scene, while I was in middle and high school. But I had no real interest in their music. I can’t really say why. I guess I was more enamored at the time with groups like Steely Dan, the Beatles, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the hip-hop scene.

(An aside: The first hip-hop album I ever bought was Notorious B.I.G’s “Life After Death,” a historic double album at the time. Then I moved on to Puff Daddy’s “No Way Out.” My tastes in rap were not so well cultivated then. Still, as I moved through all the Biggie, Puffy, Busta albums, I started to gravitate toward Nas, Common, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, the Roots, a Tribe Called Quest, Lupe Fiasco, Eric B. and Rakim and De La Soul. I yearned for the socially conscious hip-hop, the kind of stuff that required a sharp tongue and a deep intellect. They were rapping about SOMETHING, which was important to me. Too much radio/club hip-hop is diluted garbage that combines a pulsating beat with repetitive, catchy lyrics. It’s a sure formula to make some quick cash, but it’s so shallow that its lasting impact is minimal or, usually, non-existent. So I found the soulful tones and understated, yet still good, beats of guys like Common and Mos Def, the musical acumen of the Roots and the lyrical prowess of people like Nas and Talib Kweli. Those are real rappers. The guys you hear on the radio? Well, they’re just parodies of themselves and stereotypes of the hip-hop scene. They add nothing substantive to rap music.)

I was always behind the curve musically. I never paid any mind to the indie rock scene. I was never at the vanguard of any musical movement. I knew what I liked, and that’s what I listened to. I usually relied on others to hip me to new bands and acts. Now, I had always known about Pearl Jam. Who didn’t back then? In fact, my high school journalism teacher had a love for Pearl Jam that he probably will never have for any other living person. (He has a wife and kid now, so he may resent that statement. But I’ll stand by it.) He would often force us to listen to the fivesome during class while we worked. I think because it was pushed on me so aggressively, I began to despise the band. I had the you-can’t-tell-me-who-to-like attitude, so I avoided Pearl Jam’s music. My shortsightedness led to my loss.

But I bring all this up now because I haven’t been able to stop listening to “rearviewmirror” for the past two months, at least. It has stayed in my car’s CD player almost exclusively, and I tear through the same 30+ tracks over and over and over again. Making up for lost time, I guess. At first, it was hard for me to pinpoint what I loved about this band so much. I guess on the first couple of listens, it was just the nostalgia of some of the songs. It was listening to Dissident, Even Flow, Jeremy and Alive one more time and 10 years out. Then after a few listens, I just enjoyed the rock ‘n’ roll, which was catchy and good. But when you listen to the same band for months at a time, you start to realize some of the deeper connections you make with the music. You learn why they were (and are) successful. And so you develop a greater appreciation for everything they did. And that brings me to the song Spin the Black Circle. Of all the songs on “rearviewmirror,” it’s one of my least favorite. But it was also the one song that really made me acknowledge the genius of Pearl Jam’s entire catalog.

Spin the Black Circle is a hard rock song, certainly harder than anything else they produced, from the album “Vitalogy.” In fact, Pearl Jam won its one and only Grammy Award in 1996 in the Best Hard Rock category for Spin. (It was a meaningless awards, according to lead singer Eddie Vedder.) And because it’s such a hard rock song, I never enjoyed it. I like rock ‘n’ roll, but when it reaches a point of crossing over into metal (or metal lite) territory, I turn away. Because at that point, the music devolves into noise. And I thought Spin dove head first into metal lite. Maybe it had more of a punk feel, but I don’t think so. So the first time I heard it, I moved past it. But a couple of weeks ago, it came around again, and instead of skipping, I stayed put to listen to it finally after weeks of skipping. And I came away impressed by how Pearl Jam constructed the song.

Everything Pearl Jam does is intentional. It’s not just about intertwining the guitar, bass, drums, etc. That’s obviously important. But a simple combination of every element that goes into making a song is only a start. What instrument should be featured prominently? How should the leader singer sing the song? When should the bass enter? When should the drums fade to back? Would a keyboard add an extra element to the piece? All these questions and more go into the total decision making process for a song. And some artists just toss things together, use that magic radio formula and produce a hit single that will make them a ton of money. More power to them, but again, does that music have any worth? No. Everything a band does has to have meaning. What’s the raison d’etre, as it were? And what impresses me about Pearl Jam is that they seem to think thoughtfully through all their decisions.

Spin the Black Circle starts fast and ends faster. It’s frenzied, frantic and frenetic. Nothing about that song should make your comfortable. The lyrics are about addiction, not to drugs, but to vinyl records. (Hence the title, Spin the Black Circle.) The first lyric is, “See this needle … a see my hand …” So you might think, as a listener, that it’s about shooting heroin. Not the case. But still, the song does center on addiction to music and vinyl records, and so the music pulsates and tries to pull you into a helpless world. It’s all power chords, so there’s nothing too intricate there. But isn’t that part of the point? Addiction is powerful, nothing subtle about it. So the song should be powerful, too.

Vedder sings aggressively throughout the entire piece, but he seems to get madder and madder as the song continues. And at the end, there’s a beautiful devolution into anarchy. Vedder enters as he pleases and screams “spin.” The other band members seem to play their instruments with no regard for pace or tone or timing. No one is in synch at all. It’s a completely frenzied situation. It makes you feel like there’s no release, nothing you can do. And, of course, that symbolizes addiction, particularly when addicts hit the bottom.

Al Weisel of Rolling Stone called the song a “revvedup thrash tribute to vinyl.” David Browne of Entertainment Weekly said that it sounds “a little flabby, like dinosaur rockers trying to prove they’re into Green Day.” But I get the sense that Weisel and Browne didn’t really listen to the song, the same mistake I made early on. To understand the true beauty of the piece is to listen to the music and lyrics together and to comprehend how everything fits together nicely. It may sound anarchistic, but unlike true anarchy, there’s reason and structure behind it.