Our Road to Building a Family - A Lesson Learned

To make a long story short, the foster-to-adopt placement with the three children I've written about previously in this blog series did not work out the way we'd hoped it would.

The children came to our home for a weekend visit August 9 and were taken back to their previous foster home the morning of August 11. This was part of the plan as we wanted to get a sense of what having them around our house would be like prior to them moving in for what we assumed at that time would be a permanent arrangement. The visit went well, as we had a cookout that weekend and spent a majority of it trying to acclimate to one another while also working towards establishing rules, boundaries, expectations, and something of a routine. They came back to us on August 13 and got fully moved in over the course of the next few days. My wife took that time off from work to spend with them, to get them better acquainted with their new surroundings, and to handle a variety of errands.

If I've never told you how strong of a woman my wife is allow me to do so right now. During those three days, she took the children for eye exams and hair cuts. She did every bit of the leg work involved with getting them enrolled in school. She made Lord only knows how many phone calls in an attempt to get them seen by a local pediatrician as we wound up in something of an emergency situation seeing as how by the time they got to us they were each in need of refills on their ADHD medication. (This was one of the first bits of evidence we would uncover that their previous foster home was inconceivably inept at providing adequate care.) She wound up having to take them to a facility at which they'd been seen previously (in a town 90 minutes away from where we live, mind you) to make sure they wouldn't run out. All this on top of making sure we were fed a hot meal at supper time every day - yes, I include myself in that category because while I do cook she's always been the primary preparer of sustenance around our house, and a damn good one at that.

We began to face challenges with the children almost immediately in terms of their behavior. This wasn't unexpected obviously as they're children after all; as a parent, they're going to test you to see how far they can get with whatever it is they're up to in the moment. Our friends and family who are parents kept reminding us of this and I can't say they steered us wrong as these three were certainly excited and lively. In hindsight (I'm going to use that phrase repeatedly in this entry), I think those were labels my wife & I used as blinders early on to make it seem as though things were going to get better.

The first few days we had the children in our home were full of revelations. We didn't have a lot to offer them in the way of toys as we were expecting them to have had some items of that sort. We were surprised as we unpacked their belongings to find out they were sent to us with not much more than a few stuffed animals. Some friends of our family had been kind enough to give us a basketball goal and we had gotten a few outside toys as we thought they'd enjoy being able to play together. That idea went out the window when they realized this new house they were in was stocked with things like an Xbox, tablets, cable TV, and the Internet.

My wife & I had gone through the paces of trying to shore up our multimedia devices to do the best we could at making sure the kids wouldn't have access to questionable content. (I've had my share of fits with Time Warner but I will say that their parental controls are quite good.) We let them use our tablets as it seemed like they were pacified when they were each individually engaged in a singular activity. They would watch programs on TV or Netflix, and I believe they managed to download more games than I knew existed from the Android marketplace. We allowed them to use YouTube (which, in hindsight, wasn't a good idea) but this became an issue as we noticed they weren't watching what either of us would consider kid-appropriate content. (YouTube's content ratings are looser than a Zeta Tau Alpha pledge during rush.) They wanted to watch videos by Rhianna, Nicki Minaj, Chris Brown, and other artists whose material isn't exactly PG.

This would turn out to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of our learning what kinds of material to which they'd been exposed in their previous foster home. We found out through casual conversation one evening at dinner that they'd seen Django Unchained. It came up as a result of our talking about the buildings that are near our home and how they're used by a cotton ginning operation; the topic of cotton brought up a question about slavery and that lead to them saying they'd seen a movie about a slave. I thought they might have seen something historically relevant like Roots or Glory - nope, Django Unchained. Quinton Tarantino. Blood, guts, violence, nudity, harsh language, and more. They also had some knowledge of the Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween films as they knew who Freddy Kruger and Michael Meyers are.

Keep in mind these kids are 10, 8, and 7 years old. And yet the people who were caring for them before they got to us couldn't figure out why they were afraid of the dark and had nightmares?

Seeing as how the weekend of August 16 presented the kids' last real opportunity at having a good time while still out of school, we decided it would be nice to take them to Chuck E. Cheese's for an afternoon of fun and games. For about $100, the three of them got 3 and a half hours of all the games they could play - Jill & I got a chance to sit around, eat horrible pizza (in hindsight, the salad bar would've been a much better option), and drink soda. I had never been to Chuck E. Cheese's before so the whole experience was new to me. It's about the same as the midway games at any given state or county fair in terms of its gimmick; huge prizes get dangled out in front of the kids as they walk in the door and they spend every ounce of energy they have trying to get the giant panda (that being a metaphor in this instance for a Nerf gun that the 10 year old had his sights on) only to be disappointed when they find out they have earned enough tickets to get a plastic slinky and some glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth. Toys that will last about as long as the drive home, in other words. But hey, they enjoyed themselves and got to interact with other children, and that made it worthwhile in our minds.

Bed time wasn't the most difficult thing with these three as it seemed like they enjoyed sleeping, particularly the 8 year old. We put them to bed around 8:30 PM the Sunday evening before their first day of school and story time followed. My wife would read Diary of a Wimpy Kid to the boys meanwhile I read a Junie B. Jones book to the girl.

The boys would usually stay up for 30 minutes to an hour after their story, just talking to one another about gosh knows what. The girl was a real talker as well - always asking questions and chiming in with her two cents, never with any sense of a filter or consideration for how what she was saying might affect others. Of course it's not unusual for a child (especially a little girl) to be chatty, so I don't want that comment to come off as me complaining. It's just that the kind of things she would say often caught me off guard. It dawned on me in the days to come that what we had been told about the boys being in a sibling rivalry was exacerbated by their sister as she would say things to them that would send them into a fit of rage. I don't know that she understood what she was doing but the fact of the matter was that she was most certainly a trigger to their minor behavioral issues becoming a much more profound problem. The anger they exhibited during those moments was startling to me, and there were many of them over the course of time that we had them in our home. This is why I began to feel as though I wasn't being a parent to them so much as I was a referee in a mixed martial arts fight, only in this particular arena the fighters sometimes hit the ref simply because they feel like it.

Monday morning rolled around and my wife & I were forced to come to grips with the fact that our schedule would consist of getting up at 6 AM for the foreseeable future. That said, the school day routine never became an issue for us because I feel as though we knew what we had to do to get everyone ready for the day. Make sure everyone is up by 6:45 AM, teeth brushed and dressed by 7:15, and ready to go out the door by 7:40 as my wife would be dropping them off on her way to work (it was a perfect fit as she kicks off her work day at 8 AM). The first day was slightly different in that we had them there earlier than normal seeing as how we wanted to walk them to their classrooms and hopefully meet their teachers (we hadn't had a chance to do that yet seeing as how open house wasn't scheduled until some time in September). Once we had them at school we were sure that the pacing of the day would lead to breakthroughs for the group. They'd make friends, get into the swing of things, adapt to this new culture and surroundings, and we'd be off and running as a family, onwards and upwards.

In hindsight, that was wishful thinking.

My Mom was a blessing to us as she was willing to pick up the children from school, bring them back home, and then begin doing whatever was needed with them in the afternoons (homework or what have you) so that our work schedules wouldn't get disrupted. I knew this was going to be a tough assignment for my Mom but I also knew she could handle it - she taught children their age for 30+ years, for crying out loud. If anyone we knew was up to the task, it was her!

It seemed as though frustration set in for the kids the very first day of school. The oldest boy in particular had a tough time because I don't think he was quite ready - academically, socially, etc. - for the experience or the fact that he'd have homework. The after-school period became a trial each day as none of them wanted to do their homework, rather they just wanted to play with the tablets or video games. My Mom did what she could to keep some sense of structure for them, to no avail.

Before I go further, I want to make sure that I don't make our home life or the way we were trying to parent these children come off as though we were running a military operation. We were not expecting them to be perfect children. We were very keen to the idea of "picking our battles" in that we knew we didn't need to call them out for everything. We were trying our best to instill in them things like respect and consideration as these were qualities they'd been introduced to at church and we wanted to further re-enforce them at home. Simple concepts, but clearly ones that they had never been asked to take on before now.

The challenge we faced with these three in terms of trying to correct their behavior was that there wasn't much we could do realistically. We tried to establish a points system whereby they could earn points for positive behavior. These points could then be cashed in for things like bonus electronics time (we set them all at a limit of 1 hour per day), a movie night, or even money. The points could also be taken away for bad behavior. I hate to say this but none of them had a chance to cash in their points because they couldn't maintain any long enough to have earned anything of "value" in our system. When the taking away of points didn't work, it became a matter of having to take away privileges like toys, electronics or TV time. All this did was to make them more defiant.

They repeatedly called my wife "mean Mama" and said that they wanted to go back to where they'd been previously. We tried to press on in spite of this because we still wanted this to work. In my mind, they were like wild horses; I felt like it might take them being "broken" before they would realize that there's a right way and a wrong way to conduct yourself (because clearly wherever it was they had been before never tried to put over such things to them). The difference being wild horses don't scream, yell, kick walls, slam doors, and tell you how much they hate you.

I feel like the moment when my wife began to have doubts about our relationship with these three working out came one evening during supper. My wife has a recipe for shepherd's pie that is from her mother and it's a favorite of ours because it's a hearty meal that's easy to put together. If you don't know what shepherd's pie is, it's a dish that consists of layers of mashed potatoes, seasoned ground beef, and cheese that's baked to a warm and bubbly consistency. We thought it was something the kids would enjoy seeing as how it is what it is - potatoes, meat, and cheese. My wife served us all up a helping and I began to dig in. The kids took one bite and they all began to make noises and faces as if they were going to vomit on the table. (This is an example of how none of them had a sense of gratitude about anything we tried to do for them.) You would have to know my wife to know why that action in particular was so troubling but I think that was when the dam began to crack, for lack of a better phrase.

So long as they were on an individual task the boys weren't that difficult to deal with. The moment you inserted them into a situation where they were in any form of competition was when their attitudes shifted. (This dynamic of how they were fine on their own but problematic when put together verified what we had been told in regard to reasons why their previous adoptive placements didn't work out as those families tried to adopt one or two of the group but not all three.) It didn't matter if it was us throwing around a football in the back yard or playing video games, if they could have a disagreement over what was going on they were going to wind up in an argument. And since I know you're probably wondering, the games we had for them were intended for children. No Call of Duty, Gears of War, or anything of the sort - just titles like the Lego games, a few old Super Mario selections, and Just Dance. They did have a WWE game but it quickly "went missing" after they repeatedly got into shouting matches, usually over the fact that one wouldn't let the other win, no less. The Lego games are fun and actually quite challenging, even for an old gamer like me. To them, they became frustrating. One would blame the other for their not being able to complete a task and it was all down hill from there. The shouting would ensue, then one would draw back as if he was going to hit the other in an apparent act of intimidation (the girl would argue with her brothers and she, too, would draw back her arm as if she was going to strike them).

The girl's behavior became progressively worse throughout the week. She would not listen to us, refused to take direction, and acted in a way that was so blatantly defiant that it boggled my mind. (A learned behavior, in her case; all kids act out but what she was doing had to have gotten in her mind from another source, likely from watching people she had been around previously.) When we would attempt to correct her she would turn it around on us as if she were in charge. Concepts like restriction or being grounded prompted an "I don't care" sort of response, as if to say I'm going to do whatever I want in spite of you. At one point when we were trying to play outside she became upset and tried to lock us out of the house. On another evening she walked out of the house saying that she was running away (she got about as far as the stop sign at the corner of our property before coming back). Again, this wasn't a response to any kind of difficult request from us, rather it seemed to be because she felt as though she wasn't getting her way 100% of the time. All the while we were trying to plan a birthday party for her as she turned 7 while she was in our care. We threatened to cancel the birthday party if her behavior didn't improve and in hindsight we probably should have gone ahead and canceled it because she was a true terror to deal with.

I mentioned how our hands were mostly tied when it came to discipline. It goes without saying that spanking wasn't an option, so we did what we could in trying to show them that if their behavior was unacceptable they would lose privileges. First off the list was access to things like tablets, TV, video games, etc. The boys seemed to get the idea as they would become apologetic and try to get back on our good sides, whereas the girl just plain went into a massive fit. She continued to be disrespectful so we began taking away her toys. The same attitude persisted and we were to a point where there was nothing left in her room but her bed. She wailed as if she were crying but she wasn't genuinely upset as my wife saw her smirk at her at one point, as if to say "I know if I do this long enough you're going to cave." We never did and she kept at it until she finally went to sleep. To their credit, her brothers tried to calm her down, telling her that all she had to do was "act right" and she'd get her things back.

We had her birthday party on Saturday, August 23. We invited a number of our friends and family over for the occasion, all with children roughly the same age as the three for whom we were caring. The goal was for each of them to see that they were surrounded by loving, kind folks who are concerned about their well being and who want to be involved in their lives. The events of the day wound up being the final straw in our decision to officially disassociate ourselves from the children.

The party went off well, for the most part. Jill's Mom was staying with us and she had organized a painting activity for the children to do. The youngest boy had slept most of the day and his demeanor reflected this as he was grumpy, especially when the other boys at the party went outside and began playing with some of the balls and sports equipment. I tried to encourage him to share and be friendly, he acted like they'd disrespected his territory. The oldest boy was the opposite, seemingly overjoyed at the fact he suddenly had a whole bunch of new playmates. He could be the most docile, innocent kid - he really was the most agreeable of the three as he would often try to take the role of parent in trying to get the other two to settle down when they would fight. The girl was a whirlwind of activity and emotions, excited one minute, disappointed another, outgoing then suddenly shy. Through it all the underlying attitude she exhibited was one of ungratefulness. Nothing seemed to be good enough for her, which was in stark contrast to the theme of the event as she was dressed in a Cinderella costume.

A couple who are close friends with my wife's family had graciously given us money to use to purchase a new bicycle for each of the children. They enjoyed riding their bikes and we, of course, tried to keep an eye on them at all times while they were riding them. They went out for a ride that evening after the party was over and all our guests were gone. My mother-in-law was outside watching them play and my wife had gone into Orangeburg to pick up a pizza for supper as we were going to eat then watch Frozen together. I didn't see the incident but something happened that lead to an argument between the girl and the youngest boy. My mother-in-law tried to get them to settle down and come inside; before she could, they began tossing around each others bikes. This lead the youngest boy to say to his sister "I wish you were 16 so you could die in a car accident."

At that moment, this family we had tried so hard to keep together fell apart. We called one of the adoption workers we'd been assigned and made arrangements for them to be picked up the next morning. I had it in mind before then that there were two reasons why I would pull the plug on this effort: 1) If they hurt our dog Roddy (he was "on vacation" during this as he was in recovery from being neutered), and 2) if they did damage to property. I didn't think that the third option would wind up being us just plain having had enough. My wife and I decided we couldn't do this any longer as we had had 10 days of almost non-stop fighting and unruly behavior with no sign of things changing.

I know some people will say we didn't do enough or that we didn't give it enough time. The fact of the matter is that until you've lived with children like this you have no idea how difficult our lives became. I was to a point where I did not want to come home from work because I knew that they were there waiting for me. My nerves were shot because I felt powerless to try and remedy the situation. (Truth be told, I left most of the attitude adjusting to my wife, opting instead to keep up with the logistics of keeping the house in order. Why? Because I'm good at that sort of thing and I'm also the type who would just as soon drop a proverbial nuclear warhead on a situation and walk away as opposed to trying to handle the matter constructively.) Our bedroom became the only sanctuary we had as we'd retreat to it each night in the hope that things would get better the next day. I'm sad to say that they never did. We could not allow them to ruin our home, our relationships, and certainly not our marriage.

They were picked up the morning after the birthday party. Not wanting to out and out make it known they wouldn't be coming back, we told them that we had some things we needed to work on before going forward and that they'd be going away for a few days.

I know that I've levied some harsh criticism at these children in this blog entry but the truth of the matter is that I do not blame them for being who they are. These children have been in the foster system for better than 4 years now. They are a product of that system's failure to cultivate a network of supportive, nurturing homes throughout the state of South Carolina. They are the unfortunate victims of predatory adults who see foster children as a means of earning a paycheck instead of an opportunity to help raise a well-adjusted, productive member of society.

To all the people who donated time, effort, clothing, prayers, or whatever else to the children, you have my most sincere gratitude and thanks. You are each examples of the fact that agape love exists and that goodness will always outshine the darkness of the world. Anything that was given to the children while they were with us will be staying with them. Hopefully they will someday be able to appreciate those gifts and the people who cared enough to give.

So where are we now? We're hurt, deeply, and we all need time to heal from this. But we will use this as a lesson learned and try again someday because our goal is still the same - to build a family of our own.

The Sudden Proliferation of Bad Wrestling Posters - Part 3

I may have developed a personal problem via this series of blogs. (If you'd like to get caught up, you can find part 1 here and part 2 here.) I find myself browsing random wrestling-related Facebook groups and pages specifically looking for horrible posters promoting independent professional wrestling events. Trust me when I say that there are plenty of examples out there. So many in fact that in gathering material for this post I had to create a directory on my hard drive especially for bad wrestling posters, going so far as to then create sub-folders. (Make fun of me for my organizational skills all you want, at least I know where my stuff is.) I'm doing my best to not acknowledge those actions as being detrimental to myself or my well-being; instead I persist in the notion that I'm doing a good deed here by alerting the rest of the world to the fact that not all posters are created equal. The goal here, after all, is to make the world a better place filled with high-quality posters that do justice in representing the men, women, and companies with which they are associated.

Our first poster this go-round is from Premiere Wrestling Xperience. Unfortunately this event wound up being cancelled (from what I saw there were concerns about the venue and its location), but despite that the poster is certainly top notch. I love the color scheme, the graphics are beautiful, and the stock photos of the talent featured make them all look like superstars. Since I started this series, PWX posters have been the precedent for which all others have been compared and so long as they're publishing material as good as this they will continue to be.

Up next is an offering from Champions With Attitude Pro Wrestling, a company that will celebrate a decade of running shows at the event promoted on the poster below. Not many indie wrestling promotions make it past year 2 much less year 10, so the fact that CWA has been around for as long as it has is a real testament to the folks working behind the scenes there.

Champions With Attitude has long been known for production value as their events feature staging, lights, custom entrance videos, and other elements that you just don't see on the independents. Their posters fall into that category as well as they are always vivid pieces that deliver information while being eye-catching. The only problem I have with CWA's posters is that they could be described as repetitive. The layout you see here is what they seem to use month to month, the only variation being the talent featured. Even so, theirs are still better than 98% of what's out there.

If you've been following this blog series and some of the other content I produce (Rasslin' with Redbeard, specifically), you'll know that I frequent WrestleForce shows because I enjoy them very much. I would go so far as to say that if they're not the best promotion in South Carolina they're at least in the top 2. With that in mind, this poster for their "FULL THROTTLE" event coming up in September is by far the best they've produced in quite some time. It would be gosh-darn near perfect if not for two things.

1) Lack of any discernible logo - no, "WrestleForce presents" is not a logo. This goes along with what I've preached before about branding, marketing, and how it's important to establish an identity.

2) The stock photos look great, but I take umbrage with the fact that Cedric Alexander (middle-right) isn't at the forefront of the featured wrestlers. Why? He's the current WrestleForce champion, that's why - John Skyler's talented, don't get me wrong, but if he's not the champ he shouldn't get top billing over the man who is.

Speaking of brand identity issues, I hate to say this but I have no idea what company the following poster is for - all I know is that there was apparently an event called Summer Smackdown 2. It bothers me that a group could put together a poster with graphics like those but then not try and establish themselves with a logo or even a name. That's just odd, quite frankly. There's a guy with a belt (albeit a replica belt): What belt is that? What division does he command? Or did he just wander in with it when photos were being taken and insist he be able to hold it?

Also, there are 16 members of the roster featured on this poster, 17 if you count the fellow with a question mark where his face should be. That's about 10 too many in my opinion as they could have certainly gotten by in making the event appear desirable by way of presenting a core group of attractive athletes.

Anarchy Wrestling in Cornelia, GA has seen more than a few stars come through the confines of their arena over the years. (If you didn't know, Anarchy Wrestling began as NWA Wildside and later transformed into NWA Anarchy before eventually settling as Anarchy Wrestling.) They are one of the most successful promotions in the southeast and yet their posters have consistently gotten on my nerves because of the fact that they are usually overcrowded with talent. Such is the case with this poster for their "HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT" event. For the life of me, I do not see the point in trying to get your entire roster on the poster. Draw people in with 6-8 of your best looking talent, men and women that will sell people on your event and make them want to pay money to be there.

Of course I say that then I have no choice but to refer back to my comment about the success of Anarchy Wrestling over the years. A great poster helps but it's icing on the cake if people already know they're going to have a great time at a show because of past experiences.

Ultimate Combat Wrestling in Union City, TN isn't a promotion that I've ever had the chance to see in person. Be that as it may, judging by this recent poster, I'm going to hazard a guess that they are a company with means and ideas but that may need a little bit of a boost to get them onto the next rung. This poster is of the sort that screams to me "I want to make something more interesting, I just don't have the tools to get what's in my brain onto paper". The stock photos look good. The information fans need is all there. The fonts and letter spacing could be better but I would much sooner look at a poster like this that's clean and minimal in what it's doing than something that's bloated with unnecessary material.

As the final example of a "tweener" for this entry, I present to you a recent poster published by Southern Wrestling Association operating out of Forest City, NC. For starters, I have no idea what's going on in the background. I'm guessing here but I think it's a trio of images from horror films (the top third looks like it could be from Let the Right One In/Let Me In, and the bottom third might be something from The Ring, and the middle could be anything). The title of the event is "HALLOWED GROUNDS", but even so the horror film imagery doesn't make sense - all it does is create a muddy palette. The talent stock photos are mostly suspect and they're much too small to be effective at selling the athletes as being the reason why a fan would want to come to the show. (Again, when making a poster you have to sell the talent; graphics and fonts are great but people aren't paying to see your juiced up copy of Photoshop, they're paying to see wrestling.) This isn't a good poster by any means but it's not awful either. With some edits it could actually be a solid piece of work but as it is it's mostly displeasing to look at and, to me, it doesn't do a good job of making me want to come to the event.

You may have noticed that this image is actually a photo someone took of the poster. For the record, I don't think I've never seen a pure digital copy of an SWA poster. Needless to say, that is rather odd.

Have you ever encountered something that you want to dislike but can't for whatever reason? Pickled ginger comes to mind; it tastes like Pine-Sol smells yet I enjoy it immensely! As another example of that, I give you the following item from Milestone Wrestling's July 2014 event. A poster that has so much patriotism and American pride going on that it's a Ronald Regan reference away from being perfect - perfectly insane, that is. The artist must be a fan of westerns because he stuck John Wayne in there. Was John Wayne a fan of professional wrestling? Could you imagine John Wayne in a wrestling match, especially in one against any of the guys on this poster? He'd probably whip the lot of them all at once then say something like "You boys rassle about as well as a one-legged horse trots...How 'bout you do yourselves a favor and learn from that critter by staying on the ground."

I know I harp a lot about stock photos and the importance of having good ones. I persist that if you're going to be in this line of work you've got to do your best to make the talent look desirable, and you can't do that with stock photos of your roster that look like images printed from a cell phone photo on an inkjet printer then scanned on low resolution settings. Even as a stylistic choice where filters could be used to create certain looks it's still a bad idea to me to do something to make your talent - who are hopefully guys & girls who look like athletes - come off poorly. In that regard, take a look at what South Carolina Wrestling has done for their "STILL STANDING" event. The graphics aren't bad but here again they're there for the purpose of accentuating the talent. Do any of those guys look like wrestlers you would pay money to see perform? If the answer is no, then I'm afraid I've got some bad news (get well soon, Wade)!

The poster below from Southeastern Pro Wrestling in Double Springs, AL is an awful wrestling poster because it, like seemingly so many others I've torn to shreds in this entry, has way more text on it than it does vivid imagery of professional wrestlers. I don't know how many more different ways I'll be able to say the same thing - it makes no sense to me that the folks who design these things don't consider the fact that WRESTLERS are the reason why fans come to pro WRESTLING events. As a fan, I don't really care about "special challenge" matches. And for that matter, I don't think I've ever in my life seen a promotion point out what the "opening match" will be. It's as if to say, "Yes, the show starts at 8 PM but Douche Haven and Chris McCantwrestle are on first so you've got til 8:20!"

Perhaps more offensive than the poster itself is the fact that SEPW is using a replica of the World Wrestling Entertainment intercontinental title as their intercontinental title as well as replicas of the World Championship Wrestling tag team titles as their tag team titles. Nevermind the fact that an indie company having an intercontinental title is silly to begin with. Does no one know the etymology of the word "intercontinental"? Does anyone know what etymology is, for that matter?

I must preface my comments about this next poster with the fact that I did, in fact, attend the event it promotes. It was a fun show with some great talent from the region featured on the card. (It was a bit bizarre in the fact that Gangrel - a vampire - and Dr. Creo - a voodoo practitioner - who work together as the tag team "The Sons of Midnight" were fan favorites. Seriously, children were cheering for a guy with fangs & blood dripping from his mouth and a guy who brings a smoking skull to the ring.) Plus, any reason to go to Charleston, SC is a good reason because Charleston is awesome regardless. Niceties out of the way, Old School Championship Wrestling needs a lot of help when it comes to their posters. I've followed them for years and I can tell you that this is more or less what you get with their promotional materials - weird, solid colors for the background and stock photos that often make the wrestlers look dumpy and somewhat misshapen. OSCW has been around for a long time and they've never gotten better than this. It makes me think the hamster is asleep in the wheel, as in someone cares enough to keep it alive but doesn't care so much that they want it to be more than it is.

Southern Fried Championship Wrestling. Do I really need to say anything else? The guy in the upper-right looks like he doesn't eat anything unless it's dipped in batter and deep fried. And is it me or does has he have bits of processed cheese slices wrapped around his fist? As for the guy in the top-left, I can't decide if that's an obscene hand-gesture he's making or not. I'm leaning towards it is because his presentation of being half Jeff Hardy mark/half Juggalo is an obscenity in and of itself.

Operating out of the upstate of South Carolina in Gaffney, 3CW - which is short for Carolina Christian Championship Wrestling (that name is something of a mouthful) - has drawn my ire previously and I'm sad to say that matters have not improved since the last time I saw one of their posters. This looks like it was put together by an infant, or possibly a grown-up with an infantile sense of what a wrestling poster should look like. If it had been put together by an infant, I'd probably compliment the child on the fact that they could make this because their skills will hopefully continue to develop. Since that more than likely wasn't the case I'm just going to sit here and shake my head for a moment because I don't know how else to react to a wrestling promotion that bothers to add its referees to their posters.

Before I get into commentary on this next poster, I feel as though I should shed light on two acronyms that are present here. First, AIWF, which stands for Allied Independent Wrestling Federations. It's something of a facsimile of the National Wrestling Alliance in that member promotions share talent and there are championships sanctioned by the AIWF that may be defended at events falling under the AIWF banner. Second, EDGE Wrestling, short for Extremely Dangerous Grappling Entertainment. Sounds kind of like someone might have borrowed from GOUGE (Gimmicks Only Underground Grappling Entertainment) or even OMEGA (Organization of Modern Extreme Grappling Arts) on the name, but I digress.

As for the poster itself, your guess is as good as mine as to what's going on here. The talent featured on the poster appear to be guys who take their craft seriously as from their builds they do look like athletes. Even so, the photos are too small and so poor quality that I can't make out much about them. There appears to be a planetoid in the upper third of the poster, which may or may not be the moon, and to its immediate right there's a tiny graphic of the continents of planet Earth. There could be some message of world domination in there but you'd have a hard time convincing me of it. But hey, at least they have a logo!

I have to point out that I'm fairly depressed right now. Having written this post in mostly one sitting and thereby having forced myself to dwell on the subject matter herein for a fairly lengthy amount of time, I will tell you that my mind is in a place where I feel as though I could benefit from certain types of pharmacology. And grain alcohol. Do they make whiskey flavored anti-depressants? No? Darn.

In wrapping up this entry to my Sudden Proliferation of Bad Wrestling Posters series, I bring you this poster from C4W Xplosive Wrestling from Myrtle Beach, SC. From my perspective, this is an example of how to do everything wrong in regards to a pro wrestling poster.

The text at the top of the poster states that C4W is "Myrtle Beach's #1 professional wrestling attraction". I'm somewhat offended that they chose to refer to their product as an "attraction" because the term plays into the tourist vibe of that area and in so doing cheapens the product. Also, to my knowledge, they are the ONLY pro wrestling company operating in Myrtle Beach. Is there a point to telling people you're number one when there isn't a number two, three, four, five, etc.? The text goes on to tout their having been voted the "Best New Promotion in the Carolinas" in 2011. That's cute, but that was three years ago. What have you done since then?

I've preached about the importance of logos in terms of an emblem being a great way to market a brand. In contrast, I never thought I would have to preach moderation in regard to logos but here I am about to do exactly that. There are 5 logos on this poster - three that have to do with C4W, one for AIWF, and I'm counting "The Civil War" graphic as one as well. The asinine nature of the name "C4W Xplosive Wrestling" aside (I can only imagine the creative process in picking that name had something to do with the fact that it would allow for the usage of words like "xplosion" and "xplosive", because of course any word that starts with an X is edgy), why use three of your own logos? Did whoever designed this think people were going to get lost while viewing it and forget they were looking at a C4W poster? "What, where am I? OH, C4W...I like potatoes!"

Let me take a moment to criticize "The Civil War" logo. I don't want to come off as a person who's easily offended by this sort of thing but I feel like using the phrase "the civil war" in relation to something like promoting a wrestling event is absolutely classless and in horribly poor taste. As if we don't have enough reminders of that bloody, tragic era of American history still being flamboyantly displayed here in South Carolina, I can't think of any good reasoning why a company would choose that as the title for one of their events. Use some other reference to warfare if you really have to, but not that - especially not here.

If you look closely at the ribbon running behind "The Civil War" logo you can see that the dates 1992 and 2010 are on either side of it. Refer back to the text at the top of the poster; "2011's Best New Promotion in the Carolinas". Either that logo is a piece of stock clip art someone at C4W found and decided to use without thorough inspection or an attempt at modification, or someone's timeline doesn't make sense. Could be a little of both in this scenario, but I digress.

Finally, I cannot leave out from my criticism the most inane aspect of this entire poster. The text beginning with "Battle Lines" and down from there is printed in a font called Comic Sans. Comic Sans is a font that was originally created for use in speech bubbles for help assistants in programs like Microsoft Office. (Remember Clippy the paperclip? Comic Sans is his native tongue.) Because of its cartoony, somewhat goofy nature, these days it is widely regarded as a font that should be reserved for use only by people who are 10 years old and under. People who don't know any better, in other words. The reason for that is because it looks silly and unprofessional, "silly" and "unprofessional" being two things one should try to avoid at all costs in the realm of professional wrestling.

I'm tapping out from this entry - I've had enough for now, but trust me when I say there will be more to come in the future.

Our Road to Building a Family - Supervised Visits, New Furniture, and Zone Defense

I think I've said this previously when I've written about our experiences in navigating our way through the adoption process, but my wife Jill has done an extraordinary job of keeping a running narrative going of all that we've been through over in her blog, The Truesdale Times. People have made me quite bashful over the years by pointing out how well I write but I will be the first to tell you that my wife's writing style captures a range of emotions that I know I've only rarely, if ever, been able to convey with any substance. That said, if you would like more frequent updates about our journey, please stay tuned to her blog. She adds entries quite frequently, which is another ability she has that I don't when it comes to writing; it might take me a week to write a blog; she wrote one while we were driving home from dinner a few days ago.

To catch you up on things from where we were since I last added a submission to my "Our Road to Building a Family" series, I'll begin by saying that a lot has changed for us! In my previous entry, I relayed how we were at a point of frustration with the process as it seemed that we weren't getting anywhere. Despite my wife's best efforts at being an advocate for us, it didn't feel as though we were being kept in the loop about the goings on of what may or may not have been happening on behind the scenes with the various organizations with which we'd been working. Then came the afternoon of June 19, 2014.

My wife and I were on our annual vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and we were making our first visit to WonderWorks. (As an aside to this, I will say I'm not a fan of WonderWorks - it could be fun, but it was way too busy when we were there. The crowd made for a scene that was chaotic, and it was made worse by the fact that there's not enough guidance or direction to how the whole thing is laid out.) I was in line for one of the attractions when my wife & I received phone calls, one after the other, from the same number but one that neither of us recognized. As it would turn out, the call was from an adoption specialist contacting us about the fact that we'd been selected as a potential match for a sibling group of three children.

Yes, you read that right - three children, ages 6, 8, and 10. Two boys and one girl.

The rest of our vacation was a blur, and to be honest the time since that phone call has been a constant whirlwind of activity. We have gone through the paces of learning more about the children, their individual histories, their background, and essentially everything a prospective parent could hope to know - on paper, anyway. I point that out because one of my recent frustrations has been the fact that my first knowledge of these children came in the form of a 3-ring binder as thick as a soda can is tall filled with documentation. I understand that the paperwork is there for a reason as it unveils every facet of their lives, and it is most certainly an effort towards the organization we're working with covering their butts as they'll be able to say "Well, we told you so..." But as I have told my wife and many others, I truly wish the process was reversed so that you could meet these little people first, then be handed their details.

As you might gather from how I worded that last paragraph, yes, after pouring over literally hundreds of pages worth of records we did decide to go forward in trying to make a connection with this group. And yes, we realize that to go from no children to three children is a lot in a short period of time. Trust me when I say that I've grown tired and a bit annoyed by the fact that more than a few folks have seemingly gone to great lengths to remind us of the fact that life's about to change if this works out the way we're hoping it does.

Really? Life's about to change? You don't say! Like when life changed when I moved away from home, got married, bought a house, and started a new job? It feels like the last decade of my life has been nothing but change.

Ever since we've been together, Jill and I have always said we wanted 2 or 3 kids. In my eyes, this is no different than when people become parents via more traditional methods. What if Jill and I had been able to have kids naturally and we'd wound up pregnant with triplets? Or if we'd staggered the births of our children over the course of a couple years yet still wound up with three? Would we still be getting told "Life's about to change!" in a way that makes it seem like the person voicing that comment is telling us we're about to make a mistake? Some folks need to work on thinking before they speak and learning that when you apply inflection to a statement the connotation of those words changes significantly.

My frustrations aside, I have to say the process has gone quite well for us, and quickly at that. We were able to meet the children for the first time during a supervised visit that involved having lunch at Mellow Mushroom Pizza then going to EdVenture, a children's museum and activity center. It goes without saying that I learned a lot that day, both about myself and these kids. First and foremost, kids don't care that a pizza is artisanal - there is no point in paying $20 for a pie that, to them, is no different than a $5 from somewhere like Little Caesars. (That's not a knock on Little Caesars, their pizza is quite good to be as cheap as it is.) Second, when visiting an attraction like EdVenture with three kids who are full of pepperoni and soda, you'd best be wearing good shoes and be ready to play the finest zone defense of your life.

What I mean by that is this: I understand now that supervising children as a parent isn't so much about keeping your kids from doing things as it is keeping track of where they are when they're doing things. Sure, you don't want "doing things" to involve stuff like jumping off a balcony or drinking water out of an unsanitary basin, but so long as they're not destroying property or hurting others whatever they're doing is probably alright.

EdVenture is an expansive facility filled with activity stations that are spread out across several floors. Keeping track of these three quickly became a test of our skills of being able to read & recognize their movements, tendencies, and preferences. I truly am convinced that being a parent is about being able to understand the concept of zone defense. When the play begins, everyone on defense (read, myself and Jill; in this instance, we had a third member of our squad, that being the kid's adoption worker) has a zone of the playing field to cover. It's an effective strategy, so long as everyone does their job. I'd say we did pretty well that first outing - at the end of the day, everyone was still alive and still equipped with all their fingers & toes.

That's how I'm measuring success now as a prospective father: Limit property damage to a minimum while keeping everyone alive and as intact as possible.

We have had a second "play date" with these kids since that first outing and it involved lunch at Zaxby's as well as bowling. Things learned from that get together include the fact that not all grilled cheese sandwiches are created equal and that bowling isn't as appealing as the bright, blinking lights of arcade games. I can't say as I disagree much with the second part of that statement because only God knows how many quarters I plunked into arcade games when I was their age. Despite my former fascination with them, nowadays my opinion of arcade games is that they are essentially wooden boxes filled with strobe lights and MP3 players loaded with bad music that require a person to connect the business end of a shop-vac directly to their wallet in order for them to work. And by "work" I mean kick off a game that's configured in such a way that you'd have to be the 1972 Miami Dolphins of video gaming in order to get past level 1, stage 1. Seriously, I don't remember games being this difficult when I was a kid. I watched these three play and it was like they were getting beaten about the head by a technological behemoth.

The kids came to our house for the first time this past Friday, August 1. We were able to have lunch together - everyone made their own personal pizza, pizza being a recurring theme with this group as if you couldn't tell - and spend a few hours roaming around the house, allowing them to learn the ins & outs of what up until now had been the personal, exclusive space of my wife and I. I think that may be the biggest hurdle I have to get over, the fact that suddenly there will be three small people living with us. Not just living with us but depending on us for everything.

At this particular juncture, we have decided to change our outlook on adoption when it comes to these children. Up until now we had been working under the pretense that we were hoping to adopt children instead of being involved in a foster-to-adopt scenario or serving as a foster home . In order to speed up the process of them being placed in our home, we have opted to get on a foster-to-adopt path specifically with these children. What that will mean for us is that they will be moved from their current foster home and placed with us. (We will not be a traditional foster home in that we could be contacted to provide shelter for kids in need at a moments notice.) At that point we will be functioning as foster parents with the ultimate goal still being adoption. This changes a few parts of the process but it will be beneficial to all involved seeing as how the kids will be with us, we'll get to build our relationships, and they'll be in a stable environment where they'll be able to move forward with their education and development.

I have long believed that if the opportunity presents itself for you to shop local, you definitely should. People get attracted by big national ads for chains and they forget about the fact that there's probably a Mom & Pop establishment not far from where they live that would be able to get the same or comparable wares and for less money. That's exactly what we did when it came time to refit two rooms in our house so that they could become proper bedrooms for kids. Grubb's Furniture in Saint Matthews, SC is a fantastic purveyor of furniture as we were able to get exactly what we needed at a real bargain price and delivered quickly.

From here, the timetable is tentative in terms of what happens next. The plan is for them to have a weekend visit with us in the near future and then they will be able to move in on a date soon thereafter. At that point, we'll officially be their foster parents. I don't know how long it will take but their becoming our children will come sometime thereafter, depending on the swiftness of how things go once they're placed with us.

Jill and I have the great fortune of having a tremendous support structure around us. We couldn't do this if not for our parents and our families. It means the world to us that everyone has opened up their arms to these kids because they are great kids. They are not broken. They are not damaged goods. They are normal, vivacious, energetic kids. I can't wait to see them flourish once they can be in a stable environment that I believe we'll be able to provide.