by Randall Allen Dunn

Some images are hard to shake. People can label you as a slacker, a snob, a bully, a fool, or a phony, and that image can stick to you for years, until it feels like part of your skin. That is, to the point that you start to believe it yourself.

In the film, “Lady and the Tramp”, a lovely dog named Lady is enjoying domestic life with her owners, whom she knows only by the names they call each other: “Jim Dear” and “Darling”. Until “Darling” becomes pregnant and the couple seems to be less inclined to play with her than they used to be. Lady’s dog neighbors assure her that she has nothing to worry about, that nothing will change her owners’ affection toward her.

Then another dog, known as the Tramp, wanders into their yard, having overheard their conversation. He insists that Lady’s life will soon become miserable, as her owners fawn over the baby and leave her out in the cold. The other dogs chase off the Tramp, irritated that he is needlessly upsetting Lady.

But when Jim Dear and Darling take for a few days’ vacation, leaving Aunt Sarah in charge, the woman’s diabolical Siamese cats make a mess of the house, while making it look like Lady is to blame. What’s worse, they sing about it the entire time, in a shrill off-key pitch.

Aunt Sarah soon puts a muzzle on Lady, who escapes her and flees into the street. Fortunately, she is discovered by the Tramp, who chases off some local dogs threatening her. He then cons a beaver into biting off the muzzle to release her, and he takes her out for a romantic dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, amid the garbage cans in the back alley of an Italian restaurant. (For dogs, this is about as romantic as it gets.)

While the Tramp isn’t looking, a dog catcher snatches Lady and she ends up in the dog pound. There, she learns from other dogs about what the Tramp is really like. According to them, he’s a major player who can never get caught by the dog catchers, or by any lady dog, since he’s run around with quite a few.

When Lady is returned home and leashed to an outside doghouse by the aunt, the Tramp returns to see her. He tries to apologize for losing track of her, but she is no longer interested in his version of events. Especially when it comes to the long list of past lady friends he has had. She sends him packing, too angry and hurt to want to have anything more to do with him.

But when a rat sneaks into the yard, out of Lady’s leash range, and up to the baby’s room, she calls for the Tramp to help. He sneaks upstairs and faces off against the rat, finally killing it, though he knocks over the baby’s cradle in the process. Lady arrives, grateful to the Tramp.

But Aunt Sarah is less so. Seeing the two dogs and the overturned cradle, she chases the Tramp out and locks him in a room, then calls the dog catchers to collect him. When Jim Dear and Darling finally return home that evening, Lady shows them the dead rat that the Tramp had killed. The neighbor dogs, Jock and Trusty, overhear this, and feel ashamed at having judged the Tramp so poorly. They chase after the dog catcher’s carriage to stop it and set the Tramp free, as Jim Dear and Darling arrive to clear up the whole matter.

Soon, the Tramp is wearing something he never thought he would wear: a collar. Having lived as a drifter for so long, he had started to believe his own reputation, as someone who could never settle down. But just as others misjudged his character, he had misjudged his own.

Don’t let others tell you whether a person can be trusted as a friend. Instead of judging people by their reputations, give them a chance to prove themselves by their actions.

The way you choose to see someone can help determine what kind of person they become.

Find more reviews of “Lady and the Tramp” at amazon.com!

by Randall Allen Dunn

I’m not gung ho about recycling.

I don’t mean that I don’t recycle, or that I don’t like to recycle. I’m just not interested in the politically correct aspect of it. It often seems that people who talk about recycling are focused on “guilting” other people into hopping on the recycling bandwagon. They warn others against the evils of “killing trees” by using extra paper. Or a company announces that it is “going green”, and their focus seems to be on presenting a positive, politically correct image. After all, no one wants to be seen as a wasteful person who doesn’t care about how they affect future generations. And they certainly don’t want to be labeled as a villain who refuses to help “save the Earth”.

I’m not gung ho about recycling because when people talk about “recycling”, they usually are talking about doing things to win the approval of others – others who are watching you like a hawk to make sure you recycle things the right way.

I realize that sounds a little extreme. But it’s no more extreme than telling people to “save the planet”. As if their recycling of paper and plastic in their own home will solve a global problem, and if they don’t do their part, it’s akin to detonating a nuclear bomb.

Nor is it more extreme than telling people to “stop killing trees.” As if printing off unnecessary pages of copy is the same as chopping down a tree somewhere, and that the sad tree is wailing and moaning all the way to the ground, all because someone used an extra piece of paper. I like to save paper, and have done so ever since I was a kid in the 1970’s, long before the big recycling craze sprang to life. The difference is that I refer to this process of saving paper as, “saving paper”.

Recycling is a great thing to do. The political pressure to recycle is not. For most people in today’s society, the choice to recycle is not based on whether it is right, but whether it is perceived as right. Which gives me little hope for “saving the Earth”, when too many people have the wrong motivation.

In the Disney/Pixar film, “WALL-E”, a lovable robot named WALL-E is busy at work, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. He’s been busy cleaning for years. Decades even. After all, no one else is left on Earth to do it. They all evacuated, leaving WALL-E to clean up the mess they left behind.

He also passes the time by collecting interesting knick-knacks here and there. He is fascinated one day by the discovery of a tiny seedling plant, something he has never seen before, which works in a way he can’t begin to understand.

Having become sentient, WALL-E is starting to learn that there’s more to life than just following his programmed cleaning routine and being curious. Seeing old movies of couples in love, he realizes that he has no one with whom he can share his experiences.

So he is naturally delighted when a beautiful robot named EVE lands on the planet and begins searching about. Until she notices him and tries to obliterate him with her laser. Over time, however, WALL-E befriends EVE and shows her his greatest treasure: the mysterious seedling.

Upon seeing it, EVE takes the seedling and leaves, as a spaceship arrives to escort her away. WALL-E hitches a ride on its hull to follow her, and winds up aboard the Axiom, another spaceship that houses Earth’s survivors, now bloated and dependent on the Axiom’s machines for almost all physical tasks. They’ve abandoned Earth, long ago deemed uninhabitable by their government, and have been waiting for the chance to return. All they needed was some report of life growing again … Like the seedling that EVE brought back. The ship’s captain realizes that they simply need to scan the plant seedling with the ship’s holo-detector to make the ship return to Earth.

However, the ship’s auto-pilot system, Auto, has the plant stolen away, following its programming that stated Earth will never be habitable. Once the captain realizes that Auto is trying to prevent them from returning to Earth – and that the Earth simply needed someone to care for it – he decides that he must take action. As difficult as it is for him to even move much, he forces himself to fight Auto, with the help of WALL-E and EVE. Finally returning to a world filled with piles of garbage and waste that WALL-E was left to manage, the humans enter the Earth like they’re slowly waking from a heavy dream. Despite the monumental task ahead of them, they now realize they’re the only ones who can really clean up the mess, one piece at a time. And by doing so, they can bring life back to their planet.

Over time, perhaps the current fad of “recycling” in order to look good will fade away. Or at least, we can end the habit of pointing fingers at people who “kill trees” and who don’t “save the Earth”. Hopefully, sensible people will continue to recycle and save resources, even when they are no longer forced to do so. But it will be their choice.

You simply can’t keep pressuring people to recycle with outlandish phrases like “killing trees” or “saving the Earth”. People must choose to preserve their resources in practical ways, out of a sincere concern.

How often do you leave the lights on after walking out of a room? Or leave the TV or radio blaring? How much paper, plastic or cardboard do you throw away without using it to its fullest potential? Is it really better to throw a piece of used paper into the recycle bin, instead of re-using it yourself as scrap paper, to make to-do lists or let your kids doodle on?

More to the point, how well do you clean up your own mess? Do you put grocery carts into the parking lot corral, or just leave it blocking the space so that the next person can’t park there? If your frozen dinner splatters the inside of the office microwave, do you wipe it clean, or just assume someone else can deal with it? How often do you walk by a paper wad or aluminum can on the floor instead of throwing it away, refusing to clean up trash because you weren’t the one who dropped it?

If we can’t clean up our own messes, we have little hope of “saving the earth”. And we have no business criticizing others about their “recycling” habits.

I’m not gung ho about recycling. I just do it because it makes sense to preserve our resources, and to create a nice environment for the people arriving after me. Whether it’s the next generation inhabiting the Earth, or the next person in line at the office or the grocery store. I recycle and save and clean up my own mess so that the next person won’t have to do it.

Whether or not anyone tells me I should.

Happy Earth Day!

Find more reviews of “WALL-E” at amazon.com!

by Randall Allen Dunn

I started to panic the other week. Nicki had texted me during her first visitation meeting with the birth mother of our foster child, Noah (not his real name). The text read:

So far so good. I think he’ll end up going back.

This surprised and startled me. It also angered me. As foster parents, we know the ultimate goal is to see a child reunited with his birth parents. The secondary goal is to ensure that the child is being raised in a safe environment. If a birth parent can address the safety concerns that caused their child to be placed in foster care, DCFS can happily return the child to their home.

So I knew that we might not end up adopting Noah. But everything I had heard about Noah’s family situation up to that point, I couldn’t imagine him being safe back at home. There were no signs of direct abuse, just serious neglect. Those issues could be corrected, but every indication told us that they would not be.

Of course, the bottom line was that I had come to love Noah. I didn’t want to have to let him go.

Any more than his birth mother did.

In the film, “A Simple Twist of Fate”, Michael McCann (Steve Martin) is eagerly preparing for the birth of his first child, even building a wooden cradle. Only to discover that his wife’s child actually belongs to the man she had an affair with. Michael leaves his wife, retreating into bitter solitude. His only comfort comes from his growing collection of valuable gold coins and a liquor bottle.

One night, he loses all of his wealth as well, when a thief steals all of his coins while Michael is drunk.

The thief is Tanny (Stephen Baldwin), the no-account brother of local politician John Newland (Gabriel Byrne). Focused on his budding career, John distances himself from Tanny’s activities, providing him enough money to get by, to party himself sick if he chooses … and to keep his mouth shut while keeping out of the public eye.

He also encourages Tanny to keep quiet about another dirty little secret – one that’s more personal. John has an illegitimate daughter, through a heroin-addicted woman (Anne Heche) whom he also supplies with money to care for their daughter … so long as she also keeps quiet.

Sadly, that money often goes to support the woman’s drug habit instead of stocking her refrigerator. Her daughter watches from her crib as the young mother shoots up in front of her.

Tanny takes the woman out for a drive while they’re both high, with her daughter in the back seat. After they crash in the woods, Tanny sneaks into Michael’s house and finds the golden coins. He carries them off and is never heard from again.

Which cuts off the supply of money from John Newland, since he would never risk delivering the funds to his mistress himself. When she drives toward Newland’s mansion home to demand justice, she ends up too sick to continue. She rests on the side of the road in a snowstorm, not noticing as her little girl toddles away … into Michael’s open front door. A simple twist of fate has caused Michael to exchange his fabulous wealth for the opportunity to care for a little blond girl.

Being a single father – and a longtime loner – Michael has no idea what to do. He enlists the help of a local shopkeeper, April (Catherine O’Hara), to figure out how to take care of the girl, whom he names Mathilda. For years, he endures the trials, errors, and fears of parenting a child, never knowing who her real parents are. Meanwhile, John Newland keeps a watchful eye on Michael and Mathilda from a distance, to ensure that she is provided for, while protecting his own secret.

Until his wife, Nancy (Laura Linney), learns she is infertile. When John privately reveals to her that Michael’s ten-year old daughter, Mathilda (Alana Austin), is his biological child, they start a custody trial.

Hearing the horrific news, Michael marches to the Newlands’ front lawn. “You are not getting her,” he announces, a clear threat in his tone.

The Newlands insist that Mathilda will surely choose to live with her own father, especially considering all that they can provide for her.

Michael is not convinced. “If you love her so much, then why did you turn your back on her ten years ago? You might want her now, but it’s me she’s been calling ‘Daddy’ ever since she could say the word!”

Michael doesn’t realize that Mathilda has followed him on her bike, and now stands on the Newlands’ lawn, hearing their conversation. She is even more stunned to learn that Mister Newland, a man she has trusted as a kind adult friend, is really her birth father. Shaken and confused, she rides away from them all, heading home.

Before leaving, Michael tells the Newlands, “When you turn a gift away from your door, it goes to the one that takes it in.”

The trial exposes all of Michael’s flaws, both for his common parenting mistakes with Mathilda when she was younger, and for his abandonment of his own marriage when he learned of his wife’s affair. The prosecuting attorney lists off Michael’s problems that followed, when he developed a reputation as an angry, unfriendly miser. By the end of the trial, the judge is ready to award custody to the Newlands, based solely on their ability to provide for Mathilda’s future.

At that point, Michael and Mathilda are saved by the discovery of Tanny Newland’s body, along with all of Michael’s stolen gold coins. Michael has his fortune back. But now its only value is in helping him keep his daughter.

By the end of Nicki’s visitation with the birth mother, things seemed less certain. Other questions arose, to the point that Noah’s living situation could go either way. By then, I had resolved that I would be all right with Noah returning home, so long as his mother could truly care for him. I just wanted him to be safe. If that meant caring for him as a foster parent until his birth mother could care for him herself, I was still happy to do that. Though it would break our hearts to see him go.

Of course, this is my perspective, as a foster parent caring for little Noah for less than a month. What must his mother be feeling, knowing she risks the loss of her own child?

Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has hang-ups and problems to address. When a child comes into your life, the need to correct those bad habits or influences becomes all the more glaring. But some people continue to hold onto bad habits that they should be letting go.

Don’t let your poor choices rob you of one of the greatest joys you can experience in life. The Bible says, “Where your heart is, there your treasure will be.”

Treasure your children, and do whatever it takes to hold onto them.

Find more reviews of “A Simple Twist of Fate” at amazon.com!

by Randall Allen Dunn

Being a mother means making sacrifices. Giving up your own personal time, personal space, and sometimes a sense of your own personal identity. I know all this because my wife was ill this week, and I filled in – partly – on some of her many daily duties.

I am so tired.

After waking at 5:45 AM to the sounds of foster child Noah (not his real name) crying in his crib, Nicki and I rolled out of bed. She got a bottle ready while I cuddled Noah to calm him down. Then I changed his diaper, got him dressed and fed him his bottle. After a rough night, Nicki realized she was too sick to watch the kids she normally babysits during the day, and I quickly determined she would need me to stay home to help watch our own children.

After feeding the kids breakfast, combing through Noah’s thick hair, spending some playtime with Abby, putting Noah down for a nap, feeding the kids lunch, running errands, letting the kids play for thirty minutes at the mall, taking them to the bathroom, buying groceries, putting Noah down for another all-too-brief nap, doing a few chores, feeding the kids dinner, changing Noah back into pajamas and a new diaper, and feeding him another nighttime bottle, and then drying the dishes Nicki had washed … I’m exhausted. And this didn’t even include washing or folding any laundry, or giving the children a bath. And, yes, I changed more than two diapers that day.

There were a couple of moments when I wished for the time to write, or even read a book, or a paragraph of a book. But there’s not much time for that in a mother’s day. Instead, it’s filled with meeting the needs of small children, to the point that moms can start to feel that they exist only for their kids.

Some people, having had no such parenting experience, don’t consider this “real work”.

In “Mr. Mom” – the movie that created the slang term for a stay-at-home dad – Jack Butler (Michael Keaton) is laid off from his job as an auto engineer. His wife, Caroline (Teri Garr), searches for work and ends up finding a new job at an ad agency – before Jack manages to find a new job. So Caroline heads off to her new office job, leaving Jack to care for their three small children.

Jack insists that he’ll have no problems, but he soon discovers that being a full-time “mom” isn’t so easy as he assumed it would be. After dealing with diapers and formula, breaking up fights, figuring out recipes, cleaning messy clothes, and wrestling with the unwieldy vacuum cleaner that Caroline nicknamed “Jaws”, Jack starts to feel trapped in domestic life. He becomes defensive when Caroline asks about how he’s managing everything, taking every suggestion as a personal attack.

After Caroline tells him that she went through the same struggles, and advises him to figure out a routine that works for him, Jack gets back on his feet. Soon he’s got the whole stay-at-home parenting thing down, managing the house and kids with amazing efficiency.

But once Jack gets comfortable with his routine at home, Caroline begins to feels resentful that he’s gotten distracted playing poker with the neighborhood moms instead of having dinner ready when she gets home. They’re starting to realize the ways they’ve taken each other for granted, before their roles were reversed. It’s easy for husbands and wives to misunderstand how difficult their jobs can be. More often than not, people imagine that stay-at-home moms – or dads – have plenty of free time on their hands. They can’t grasp how the bills or laundry or dishes could ever be left untouched by the end of the day.

I assure you, that stay-at-home day is long and tiring, and there are never enough hours in it to complete all the tasks at hand.

Being a mom is a full-time job with little recognition.

However, it certainly has its rewards. Our own reward comes in seeing how kind and helpful Abby is becoming, on top of how clever and funny she is. It’s in watching Noah make huge strides in just one month, learning to trust and enjoy us more, and to wait for his needs to be met instead of screaming for attention. It’s in seeing them and the children Nicki babysits, as they all learn to play and work well together.

Stay-at-home moms don’t get a paycheck for their never-ending job. Sometimes they don’t even get a thank-you. Sometimes they get criticism and insensitive remarks from people who don’t understand what’s involved in a mother’s daily routine.

But seeing the way children mature in responsibility and concern for others makes a mother proud of what she is instilling in her kids.

Sometimes that’s all a mom gets to see. But it’s a nice hint of the return she will get on her investment, which will continue to pay out down the road.

For several generations to come.

To all mothers, I and my fatigue salute you.

Happy Mother’s Day!

P.S. My wife feels better, and is managing all four kids again today as I type this. After breaking up a fight, she joked to me, “I feel like a zookeeper.” A few minutes later, she told me about the latest antics of the ‘animals’ out in the living room.

Find more reviews of “Mr. Mom” at amazon.com!