When I was a young adult, I saw many of today’s young adults as babies and one of those is Trent Ashcraft, son of Phil and Denise (Holbrook), college friends. Trent’s parents, like my wife Tanga and I, met as a result of attending the Baptist Student Union (BSU) at Morehead State University. Our class of BSUers produced at least a dozen marriages and now Trent and his brother Jason have added two new sets of marriages from the next generation to that list: Jason Ashcraft/Jessica Gabbard and Trent Ashcraft/Erin Nowak.
Funny smart people are fortunate since humor makes their intelligence easier to tolerate. Trent Ashcraft is a funny smart person, gifted at the art of lively conversation and full of opinions, but always on the lookout for ways to keep from offending others, by employing his favorite conciliatory device - humor.
Trent is also cool. The coolest people are the least likely to be fawned over, because fawning is uncool and the cool person frowns on it, so the way to tell the cool how cool they are, is to pay them the respect they are due; which of course, means by coming right out and saying Trent is cool, I am officially, uncool.
I mean if you got on an elevator and there stood Chris Rock, would you blurt out, "Chris Rock, you are so cool?" Hopefully not right? To me, the cool person seems to always keep his balance, no matter the situation. If you put Trent on stage, as many of his friends know, and ask him to stand there and be funny, he will figure out a way to do it. I am sure he is a serious teacher, but I have a feeling his students get a pretty good dose of entertainment as well.
I have to admit, the way I think of Trent is based on recollections of him as a comic prodigy. Trent was born into the first generation to have VHS recordings made of their childhood and I hope someday, we can get our old tapes digitized; and when we do, we are going to shock the world with video clips of a five-year old Trent Ashcraft doing standup at parties where he had the adults rolling in the aisles. His specialty was telling stories originally told by Jerry Clower. When you see him next, just say: “I just want to make sure he knows I’m a bull too” and see if Trent smiles. Or say: “Pastor you’re kneeling on my oxygen hose, back up.” Or: “When I first saw that dog, I thought it was a lion too.”
One thing I've noticed about building people up in your imagination is that; sometimes when you are finally with them, you can think of nothing to say. It's as if the pressure is too much; you have often wished them to be near so you could trade witticisms and now you are together there is this stone cold silence.
It's sometimes that way when we all get together. We will be sitting on the couch, me and this boy I treasured watching grow up, now a grown man of his own; and the only thing I manage is: "How bout them Reds?"
But ever once in a while things will flow, someone will say something like: "How long did people think Lindsay Lohan could stay clean, anyway; it's no surprise to me." ...and Trent comes up with the perfect clip, such as: "I don't know, about anyone else but there are some people, and she's one of them, that just about never cross my mind, unless someone mentions her or something."
And I'm thinking, is nobody writing this stuff down? He speaks lines that should be in a Broadway play and we sit here shelling peanuts or yawning or looking at our watch or scratching our itches. The rest of us could no more speak English as craftily as he does than we could speak one of Africa's click languages.
Trent would be the counterexample I would offer to anyone of my generation who produced a Humvee full of frat boys as evidence of how the next generation of young men leave a lot to be desired, with their high regard for self and anything money can buy. Trent, like hundreds of other young people dedicated to learning and transmitting it to the next generation, followed his lifelong dream to do what his father did – teach young people history, social studies and what it means to be a citizen of the United States. These young people are the best hope to “keep our Republic”.
I read somewhere that a modern urban person is hit with as much information in a day as someone 100 years ago was in a lifetime. Of course we know being hit with information is different from absorbing and assimilating it. The young person of today, who seeks, processes and makes sense of the world; is potentially more knowledgeable than Thomas Jefferson and wiser than Ben Franklin. Trent is one of these young people, so not only is he cool like Chris Rock, he is Jefferson and Franklin rolled into one.
In Virginia Woolf's "To the lighthouse", Mrs. Ramsey is watching rooks (sort of like crows) she had named Joseph and Mary, cavorting in the air outside the window and brings them to her daughter Rose's attention, because: "One's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forwards." I agree with Mrs. Woolf, it is the primary purpose of the young to give your “perceptions a little thrust forwards”. But that is not all they do.
Here are some more things young people like Trent do for me:
They laugh at the things I still find funny but am not supposed to. They invent word play that makes everyone involved feel smarter. You can trust their instincts for what is cool when you can't trust your own. Their thinking is attractive and efficient, making others try to think like them and solve problems quickly, leaving time for fun.
And when you see them enjoy something you find childish or less than sophisticated, you indulge them, gaining insight into how the most patient and admired adults in your life must have felt when they abided your youthful fun and games. So with that in mind, let’s all think of the tune: “Pomp and circumstance”, and give Trent a hearty “Oh Yeeaaah”, in honor of his recently fallen hero Macho Man, and of course, his 26th birthday. Happy Birthday, Trent.
