Shows / Knee Deep
Knee Deep
Welcome to Knee Deep, a five-minute story in a cup. It’s light, not too deep, with just enough of the tide washing in to reset your day and help you get back on your feet. Wade in with me. Hear a funny tale, or my observations on life under the surface. I’m Jeff Bender, author and artist, thinker of Knee Deep thoughts. So, you’ve rushed out of the house and spilt your coffee down the front of your shirt. The news cycle is heavy, the traffic's honking and, well, you just want to stick your feet…
Episodes
- Knee Deep
Catching a Ride On the Solar Express
When the moon and the sun align for peculiar and stunning effects this coming week, we will observe a rare solar eclipse, but in the tiny town of NIbula…
- Knee Deep
Coming Down Hard on the High C
The organ resounds, the choir bellows, and my father held the final note way too long at church every Easter Sunday. By contrast, the years my parents invested…
- Knee Deep
Deep, Deep Down In a Crawdad Hole
At its heyday, when a thousand ancient Indians farmed at nearby Angel Mounds, they might have escaped the rising waters of the Ohio every Spring by climbing up…
- Knee Deep
It's A Great Life, Dad, But the Jury's Still Out
When my 101-year-old father was called up for jury duty, he had a thing or two to tell the court system, and about the last century in general. Although the…
- Knee Deep
Scanning the Horizon for Mr. Tally
Healthy food choices can be a nightmare. Labels on food items are long and full of complicated words. Print is small or even in other languages! What are we to…
- Knee Deep
Celebrating National Finger Food Day
Want to eat healthy? Just cross your fingers, say an organic prayer and you’ll have taken the first nutritional step towards a new diet and a new, healthier…
- Knee Deep
By the Waterfall of Psalm 23
In the leading us besides still waters, God does not turnaround and lead us out on thin ice. How do we measure God’s goodness and mercy? We can look, as the…
- Knee Deep
Half Pints and Short Stacks
We tend to grow into the name we are given, even if it is not that flattering. It may sound endearing or cute at first when we are young. It may make us feel…
- Knee Deep
A Case of the Tale Wagging the Service Dog
Have you read the latest issue of Dogue Magazine? Dogs are now capable of doing things like keeping pace with a Tesla, sniffing out milk products that have…
- Knee Deep
In The End He Died the Way He Wanted, Talking
Normally, when the subject of doorknobs comes up, it is because someone has locked themselves in a gas station bathroom and can’t get out without screaming…
- Knee Deep
I Found Myself Under "Befuddle" In My Address Book
There is absolutely no connection between pirates and cement contractors, but when you keep an address book like mine, logic goes right over the railing and…
- Knee Deep
I Wish All My Friends Knew Each Other
There is no finding any extra degrees outdoors this last week but when you are in a crowd of people singing It Is Well With My Soul, things seem to be as warm…
- Knee Deep
Place in Oven, Bake at 350° for Twenty Years
Sometimes we can get stuck on the simplest of resolution in a new year. In our case, what is stuck is in our oven amount to an embarrassing culinary disaster…
- Knee Deep
The Six Most Important Words
The average person will speak some 5.8 million words in the coming year of 2024. No wonder they say your mouth is the strongest muscle in the human body! And…
- Knee Deep
Big Slappy Stew (A Christmas Recipe for Sixty-Two)
If you’re at a loss for what dishes to serve to all those relatives that are starving and blue, snuggle in with your kids and listen to how the uproarious Slap…
- Knee Deep
Yuletide Aisle Dis-Ease
Going back into the archives of Knee Deep to play an old favorite from a past Christmas... The holiday season is creeping up on us like the second hand in a…
- Knee Deep
Ten Tidings I Give to You and Your Kin: The Sequel
Start the countdown! It's twelve days til Christmas, and if you feel like you are on thin ice, I've come up with another Ten Tidings to help you skate smoothly…
- Knee Deep
Parking Myself In a Corner
We get attached to some of the most ridiculous things in life, and one of them is our parking spots. We like to think we are a generous lot, but our cars are…
- Knee Deep
The Blessing in the Backstory
All of our hustle and bustle becomes a backstory during the holidays. That isn't exactly what Solomon had in mind when he used the word trust. In his wise…
- Knee Deep
Lighting a Torch in the Land of Zoysia: Part Three
Zoysia, oh Zoysia, where has your blazing grass gone? It's gone to Hell in a handbasket, that is where it has gone, as our entire neighborhood appeared to be…
- Knee Deep
Lighting a Torch in the Land of Zoysia: Part Two
In November, the street I grew up on turned into a corridor of fire as leaf fires lined the curbs and sirens could be heard across the city. Amidst the chaos…
- Knee Deep
Lighting a Torch in the Land of Zoysia
As smoke trails rise above the fire pits in the Fall, neighborhood used to be filled not only with lit pumpkins but raked leaf piles burning iin the street…
- Knee Deep
Bewitching the Zinnias
You've got your Lone Ranger Suit on and headed through the last vestiges of the neighbors innocent begonias, greaniums and zinnias that have blossomed through…
- Knee Deep
As Vast and Blue as the Day Before
Some things never change in spite of what the world is doing out there in the wild. Wars, like the one in the Middle East, will unfold before our eyes as…
- Knee Deep
Making Way for Other Toys
Poems take license to transcend those kinds of endearing moments, to use our language in ways that our prose is not well suited. How do you write about your…
- Knee Deep
A Frog and a Leap of Faith
What we call safety is only another name for holding onto what's close. Our pond ecosystem is constantly changing, and the changes are what makes the pond a…
- Knee Deep
Ducking Behind the Sushi
They say you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family. A lot of people have left me out of either category because, admittedly, I don't care…
- Knee Deep
The Scream Heard 'Round the Table
Neither my mother or my father were the screaming types around our house when I grew up. They had cause to be, as we kids were handfuls. Like all children we…
- Knee Deep
A TV By Any Other Name
We've now made the plunge into the world of the flat screen television. My wife and I are two decades behind everyone else and are lost and alone against the…
- Knee Deep
"C" is for Complimentary Compliment!
Giving compliments is one of those skills that don't come that natural to us as adults. We like to get them of course, but giving them out takes a little…
- Knee Deep
Wash, Rinse, Scream, Then Repeat
This episode is the first of our second year of Knee Deep together, and we'll be putting our toes in the water with more enticing, if not oddball stories from…
- Knee Deep
Surfer Sam's Into-the-Void World Tour
You've heard the saying, "wherever you go, there you are." Our surfer toy, Sammy, was the true embodiment of that sentiment, returning to us on shore time…
- Knee Deep
Hitting an All-time Low(note)
It's a gorgeous day out, there isn't a cloud in the sky, kids are out of school, the pools are open and I've got a a summer cold. Rude. But...I'm finding some…
- Knee Deep
The Monsters In Our Room
A child cries out in the night for her parents. She has heard something under her bed, a monster that is scaring her. With assurance, the grown up calms her…
- Knee Deep
Am I Getting Paid for This?
The truth is, I don't know how to act on vacation. While HR hasn't done my background check yet, I may get promoted at this resort from guest to Towel Folder…
- Knee Deep
A Trip to Planet Eyeball
You are setting foot on Planet Eyeball, and immediately attacked by the dreaded Sudsy Slime! Never-before-seen creatures are at foot, and overhead, starships…
- Knee Deep
You Just Gotta Be – A Tribute to Gord
This past week we paid our last respects to one of the greatest songwriters of our times, Gordon Lightfoot. He died in his Canadian homeland at the age of…
- Knee Deep
The Catch (Part 3)
Well, baseball, turns out, is a lot like love. You can't hide anything when you're playing the field and trying to make a catch. Excuses and begging won't…
- Knee Deep
The Catch (Part Two)
With a C in science keeping me home afte school, my only hope was catching one of Mr. Dadburny's pop-ups at recess, flies that were hit so high they disppeared…
- Knee Deep
The Catch (Part One)
I couldn't wait for the ground to dry up and head out to the baseball field first thing in the Spring. Spitting on our hands, the chatter at the plate and…
- Knee Deep
Grace That Brought Us Safe Thus Far
It is always interesting to ask a Christian about their salvation story, especially this time of year. There is never one of those stories that is boring, and…
- Knee Deep
What Comes Softly Calling in the Morning
Some people find the call of the mourning dove sorrowful, perhaps because its low and tender tone. I am just waking up myself, allowing my thoughts from the…
- Knee Deep
Ducknically, We Can Call It Spring
Enter Maude and Claude, a cute little mallard couple that waddles across our driveway, like they do every year, and invited themselves to be our pond Airbnb…
- Knee Deep
In the Presence of Profound
Our life lessons are here and gone each day, but sometimes they hit pay dirt and register deeper in our consciousness. I saw one of those snippets come to life…
- Knee Deep
The Truth Is My Luggage Dances Better Than I Do
It was not long after I began the first leg of a get-a-way to Arizona that my suitcase took control. My own luggage made it clear that if we were going to…
- Knee Deep
Save Your Pennies! Better Yet, Save Your Breath!
Everyone had that professor. Yes, that one. He had taught all his life and his lectures, while on point, only needed a spark to set off the powder keg. We…
- Knee Deep
(Part 3) Now Showing: 20,000 Leagues Under the Living Room
While we thought we had clearly established our boundaries in our sunken rec room, subtle changes were in the air. Our once loyal toy poodle seemed suddenly…
- Knee Deep
Now Showing: Part Two: 20,000 Leagues Under the Living Room
The rec room and its replenishing oxygen was starting to take on personal meaning for us and had slowly evolved from a depressing lower umbilical to the rest…
- Knee Deep
Now Showing: 20,000 Leagues Under the Living Room
When my parents bought out first house, they loved the big back yard, the friendly neighborhood and the proximity to a good school. My brother and I, on the…
- Knee Deep
Behind Every Shoe There is a Great Slipper
If bears had slippers they might never come out of hibernation. Why? Because slippers automatically turn off the alarm clocks inside us. Our circadian rhythms…
- Knee Deep
A Dream in Full Swing
We all are products of those voices who took a chance on us, those that saw something bright in our future and taught us what becoming better looked like. In…
- Knee Deep
I'll Take a Pink Horse, and a Side Order of Fries
If you had an art teacher when you were a kid that didn't like your creations, you might be inspired after you read this to get out the old paint set and pick…
- Knee Deep
2023: Well Within Walking Distance
I'm a list maker. So, when it comes to making my New Year's resolutions, out come the 3 X 5 cards. Several authors, however, suggested an alternative to the…
- Knee Deep
A Christmas Like Nobody's Business
Processing Christmas in families is... well...a lot like processing any other day of the year. And yet, some of our most important Christmas moments, the ones…
- Knee Deep
Two Angels from Ketchum (Part Two)
Last week I began a story set in Ketchum, Idaho, where several of my buddies and I had taken a leave of absence from college, cowboy hats and all. Living out…
Knee DeepTwo Angels from Ketchum
We didn't want college. We wanted adventure. An Idaho ski resort sounded like the ticket for one semester, but as tourists flew in to party for Christmas, we…
Knee DeepTen Tidings I Give to You and Your Kin
Not in the mood this year for all the holiday hoopla? How about adding some fig newton to your pancake recipe or wearing an oversized Christmas band aid on…
- Knee Deep
Big Wheels Keep On Turning
Feeling handicapped by a fear of failure? Like Matt Damon said in We Bought A Zoo, "sometimes all it takes is just twenty seconds of insane courage." We…
- Knee Deep
Yuletide Aisle Disease
The holiday season is creeping up on us like the second hand in a scary movie. No one hears the ticking sound until the camera zeroes in on the gothic clock on…
- Knee Deep
Hello Darkness, My Pumpkin Friend
A sleuth figure slips through the night, and all evidence points to a return of Mr. Pumpkin, the vigilante gourd representing Pumpkin Nation. Math and science…