Father's Day

As I’ve mentioned before, I am essentially a reserved Finlander at heart, and by this I mean that an extreme show of emotion for me would be the slight narrowing of my eyes when I’m angry, or the allowance of the smallest snicker when somebody walks into a pole while texting.

Now, while I’m generally happy with this genetic disposition, it does put me in a bind on certain occasions, such as Father’s day, where emotions are typically required that go beyond being slightly annoyed by everybody around me.

I mean, let’s face it: guys don’t do feelings well, especially when they’re reserved Finlanders at heart, and when you come upon a day where a son is supposed to show his appreciation to his father, the options become severely limited. For me, it usually means a phone call that lasts for about three minutes, during which time the most heartfelt phrase used is, “I’ll talk to you later.” (It’s heartfelt because it implies future communication, which is a form of commitment, and thus, Guy Kryptonite.)

In a good communication-less father/son relationship, the act of assuming is paramount, despite what they always say happens when you assume. (“A sumo wrestler might squash you.”) In particular, the following assumptions are critical:

• Despite never hearing verbal confirmation, the father assumes that the son appreciates him.
• Despite never giving his father verbal confirmation, the son assumes that the father knows he’s appreciated.

Personally, I can’t think of a more beautiful system! Words never even have to be exchanged, and, as a bonus, the Hallmark Corporation doesn’t get to dip into anybody’s pocket! All is right with the world!

However, being a son who likes to do more than is required, I have also implemented a system where I try to express my gratitude through the act of not doing things that could potentially lead a parental unit into thinking they failed in their job of child-rearing, such as:

• Not moving back in with them.
• Not getting arrested. (As far as they know.)
• Not going on a reality television singing show.
• Not being the guy who wanders around with a sandwich board that says the world will end tomorrow.
• Not becoming a politician.

I don’t know about you, but I really think that’s going the extra mile. Bonus points for me!

Now, you may be thinking, but here’s your chance! You have a blog with upwards of three regular readers where you could finally express your true feelings! Through the wonderful median of the internet, you could finally say what’s really on your mind! There’s never been a better opportunity! Take advantage of it!

And to that I say, are you crazy? Sharing feelings? It gives me shivers to even think about. Personally, I’d much rather go with the assumption route. It’s so much more elegant.

A Good Reason

One of the main differences between being an adult and being a kid, besides the influx of nose hair and lower back problems, is that as an adult you need a good reason for everything.

This came to mind one day when I saw a kid pedal past my house on his bike twice in a relatively short time frame, at which point I determined that he was going around in circles, which he continued to do for well over an hour.

 

Now, if you were to ask him why he was doing it, he’d probably just shrug his shoulders and say something like, “I dunno,” at which point you’d send him on his way, figuring it was better than him setting off firecrackers in the front seat of somebody’s car.

 

However, if I were to jump on a bike and ride circles around my neighborhood and say “I dunno” when asked why I was doing it, the response would probably be, “That’s weird. I’m calling the cops.”

 

You see? Adults need a good reason for everything, and even worse, they have to plan and schedule it all out in advance: “I’m working until five, then I’ll have road-rage until six, followed by a terribly unhealthy dinner and complaining about work and my commute, after which I’ll try to fix the washing machine that keeps trying to eat me whenever I walk by. Boy, I sure wish I could squeeze in some time to drive my bike around in circles, but I’d better not, because I haven’t yet filed the proper paperwork with the county. I guess I’ll just go to bed instead.”

 

Even worse, our fun must also be pre-planned and jammed into our schedules well in advance: “I can fit you in for racquetball in three weeks, from 7:30 to 8:30, assuming nothing else comes up. After that, it doesn’t look like I have any room for fun until November. Of 2017. Beyond that, my plan is to keel over from a massive stress-induced coronary, so you’ll have to look me up in the afterlife. Check with my secretary, first, though. I might be busy.”

 

However, if you’re a kid and you decide you want to spend a Saturday poking at a dead raccoon with a stick for eight hours straight, it’s completely acceptable, and even possibly encouraged: “I don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t fill up everybody’s mailboxes with pudding again.”

 

So what’s my point? That every adult should shirk their responsibilities and just do whatever they want, regardless of the possibilities? That we should live in a chaotic world of pudding-filled mailboxes and dead-raccoon-poking?

 

Heck no. Nobody wants that, even if it is chocolate pudding. All I’m saying is that we slightly relax our obsession with making people have a good reason for everything. For example, I believe that the following should be considered perfectly acceptable explanations for an adult to have done something:

 

“It was either this or finish my taxes.”

“I got sick of cleaning the fireplace.”

“I wanted to see how big of an explosion it would make.”

“I saw it once in a movie and I wanted to see if it’d work in real life.”

“Don’t worry. It’s chocolate pudding.”

 

And now, even though I don’t have a good reason, I’m going to finish with a poem that has nothing to do with anything else:

 

Roses are red

Oranges are orange

Dang, I just remembered

That nothing rhymes with "orange"

Self-Checkout

I guess this gets filed under the “live and learn” category of life.

You see, I used to be adamantly against self-checkout at the grocery store. The reasons for my stubbornness were threefold:

1.) Doing the work of the store’s employees sets a dangerous precedent.

Sure, checking yourself out is convenient and fast, but how long until that concept is stretched even further? At what point will we customers be forced to stock the shelves, unload the trucks, and perform the dreaded “cleanup in aisle five,” all while the employees lounge around in hammocks and eat grapes that we’ve peeled and brought to them on silver platters? The whole thing is a slippery slope, and I, for one, am looking at the "big picture," by which I mean I don’t eventually want to be made to pick the apples from the fields before buying them. I mean, what do I look like, a pioneer?

2.) Doing the work of somebody else robs them of important life lessons.

If everybody were to check themselves out, how would the store employees ever learn that most people are complete jerks, or at least unbelievably inconsiderate? They’d never have to put up with the individual trying to use coupons that expired in 1982 for a product that hasn’t existed in decades, or the creepy guy batting his eyebrows and using creepy pick-up lines (“Your eyes are as blue as window cleaner!”), or the businessman with a stick concealed somewhere in their anatomy who believes they are so vital to their line of work that they have to talk – and by this I mean bellow - on their phone via bluetooth the entire time? (“Let’s close the Johnson account now! I know there’s no Johnson account! I just wanted to say that, because it makes me sound important!”)

3.) Only having a twofold excuse would be pretty lame.

Threefold just sounds so much better.

**********

Pretty solid reasoning, right? However, a recent experience has changed my tune. In fact, you could even call me a self-checkout convert.

It happened one day when each and every manned checkout line was absolutely stacked, to the point where it looked like I was in the DMV, except there was bread. Weighing my principles against my urge to wait in line for eight hours, I decided to go the self-checkout route. I bumbled around a bit, but I still managed to get it done in a fairly timely fashion, at which point the light bulb went on: That wasn’t half-bad! In fact, there were some advantages to it that I’d never previously considered:

1.) No cashier to make awkward conversation with.

I’m one of those guys who doesn’t want to talk to the cashier, no matter how nice they are. That’s just my nature, right or wrong. (Probably wrong.) It just seems like every time they force conversation upon me, it ends up awkward:

Cashier: Five packages of Oreos? Are you having a party?
Me: No.

or…

Cashier: Did you find everything you were looking for?
Me: Your eyes are as blue as window cleaner.

2.) You get to make the machine beep

I’ll admit it: scanning stuff is kinda fun.

3.) Nobody will bruise your apples

This is what finally did it for me. As I gently placed my apples down on the scanner, I swear I heard a heavenly chorus break out from above.

On The Other Hand

Life is full of tough decisions, and I’m currently in the midst of making one that would probably cause all of my hair to fall out if it hadn’t already happened because of the Great Do-You-Want-Fries-With-That? decision of ’03.

On one hand, I’m sort of a mature responsible adult, and so it would make sense to upgrade. On the other hand (cue Randy Travis), loyalty is one of my strongest characteristics, and if I abandoned that now, I wouldn’t even know who I was anymore. Talk about pressure!

What I'm referring to, by the way, is my watch.

It’s a Timex Ironman, and over the decade or so that I’ve owned it – and there’s no way I can resist using the phrase – it’s taken a lickin’ and kept on tickin’.

You see, these watches are made for males in their late teens and early twenties, where the entire point of their existence is to constantly do stupid stuff, which results in their bodies, and thus their watches, absorbing a terrific amount of punishment. (“Bet you can’t run through that wall!” “Oh yeah? You’re on!”)

Now, I was no different during that stage of my life, and my watch has the scars to prove it: The Indiglo light has long since stopped working, one of the buttons has fallen off, along with a screw that helps hold on the plastic facing, and the display is scratched to the point where it’s sometimes hard to actually make out the time. (“It’s scratch o’clock. Apparently.”)

But despite its cosmetic degradation, it still runs great, and I don’t see it giving up the ghost anytime soon.

So on one hand, it feels like I should keep it as a tribute to the fact that it’s still running after all these years. Why punish something for doing its job?

But on the other hand, it’s a Timex Ironman! Does anybody even wear those things anymore? I mean, it has a digital readout! How tacky is that? I just feel that I’m at the stage of my life where I should have a nice analog watch that will help me perpetuate the notion that I’m somehow a productive member of society.

However, if I haven’t yet given up on my clock radio, why would I give up on my watch? I mean, what would it say about me if I got rid of it just to upgrade to something a little nicer and more sophisticated? Would it say, “Hey, that guy knew when it was time to move on,” or would it say, “That jerk! He'd probably upgrade his mother if it were at all possible!” (It’s not, Mom! Promise! Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day! Hopefully I remember to call!)

So, as you can see, the decision is going to be a tough one. However, I've racked my brain on the matter for several long hours, and I've come up with several possible compromises:

·        I get the new watch, and I put the old one on my mantel in the place of honor that’s currently being taken by the trinket banjo I got in Nashville.

·        I get the new watch, but I continue to wear the old one until it or me dies. (So I’d either be wearing one on each arm or doubling up. What are the chances that's currently in style?)

·        Out of respect for my old watch, I don’t get the new one, but I draw a nice analog watch on my wrist in permanent marker.

Are there any other good compromises I haven't yet thought of?

Anyway, I'm going to have to end it here. It is, after all, scratch-thirty, and everybody knows that means it's time for bed.

Excising "Like"

Recently, I bought a self-help book.

However, it’s not what you're thinking, assuming, of course, that you’re thinking it’s something along the lines of: Get Rock Hard Abs In Fifteen Minutes A Day While Sitting On The Couch Drinking Bottomless Chocolate Shakes And Eating Massive Quantities Of Buffalo Wings. (Unfortunately, that one was sold out.)

No, what I bought is titled: The Curmudgeon’s Guide To Getting Ahead. (Dos and Don’t of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life)

As far as I can tell, I bought it for two reasons:

• It has the word “curmudgeon” in it, which is one of my absolute favorite words, one that I simply can’t resist. (For example, if “The Bachelor” was renamed “The Curmudgeon,” I’d have to watch it.)
• It was being promoted by the author, Charles Murray, on the Jason Lewis Show, and it seemed like it might be an interesting read.

This book is directed at helping people who are just starting their careers out of college and have no idea what a corporate work environment is like. Now, those of you who know me will be quick to point out that “fresh out of college” is a term that hasn’t applied to me in several presidential administrations. However, in my defense, I haven’t really been paying much attention to my career as of ever, and in fact, a couple of times I’ve even misplaced it and had a heck of time just finding it again. So I figured it might be a useful read, or perhaps make a good shim if I ever have to level out a coffee table or something.

I haven’t gotten very far into it yet, but there is one section that I found very interesting. In it, the author says you should “excise the word like from your spoken English.” So you shouldn’t, like, use it for, like, no apparent reason in your, like, everyday speech, because your boss, who’s probably a curmudgeon, will think you’re, like, a moron.

And I agree. “Like” has been creeping into our collective vernacular for quite some time now. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where I just heard it being used in a (shudder) Luke Bryan country song, and it sounded absolutely terrible: (“She was like, oh my…”)

I mean, why wouldn’t you just use “and she said” instead of “she was like”?? What earthly reason is there to use “like” in that context? It's not even a shortcut, as it's the same amount of words as the grammatically superior alternative!! AARRRGHH!!!!!

(Another reason why I’m fond of the word “curmudgeon” is because I’m quickly turning into one.)

And so, based on a book and a terrible line in a song, I’ve decided to excise like from my spoken English.

It’s probably not going to be easy; I think I use it a lot without even realizing it. But still, it’s a good goal, and plus, I need something to do until that rock hard abs book gets off of back order.

Wish me, like, luck!

From Point A To Point B (or How To End Up Sharing A Roy Rogers Video)

Today, I’d like to discuss the phenomenon of how two seemingly unrelated points of a person’s life, let’s call them Point A and Point B, are actually tightly coupled, with the key to understanding the relationship being a series of in-between linking points.

Here’s an example:

Point A: My buddy Lurch shows up.
Point B: I share a Roy Rogers music video.

Now, you may ask, how could these two points possibly be related? Also, does Lurch know that you’re writing about him? And who in the world is Roy Rogers, anyway?

Well, continue reading, friend, and all will be revealed:

Let’s begin with Point A: My buddy Lurch was in town for the weekend, and I was charged with the task of trying to keep us entertained. Since we’re guys, and we hadn’t seen each other in months, we were able to spend the better part of three whole sentences getting caught up on each other’s lives:

“What’s new?”
“Nothing.
“Same here.”

After that, there was nothing left to talk about, so we fell back on several tried-and-true activities, including dart gun baseball, reading books while not acknowledging the other person’s existence, and Nintendo R.B.I. Baseball.

Eventually, however, even that lost some of its luster (especially since I’m terrible at dart gun baseball), and I had to come up with something else.

And so, that’s how we found ourselves at Goodwill, perusing the books in hopes of finding some good reading material. This turned out to be an excellent decision, as I scored several paperbacks, not to mention it ate up a lot of time looking through them all.

Once we’d exhausted the reading section, we then turned to the CDs, where I found many that appeared to be elaborate jokes. (“WWF The Music, Vol. 3”, for example, which is a collection of wrestler entrance music.) One album, however, caught my eye: a tribute album to the Eagles by various country artists, which includes Clint Black’s studio version of “Desperado.” I’d been looking for a studio version of that song for a long time, as the album isn’t available digitally, so I snapped it up.

And so, a few days later, that’s how I found myself wondering if there were any other Clint Black songs I should be listening to, which led to me perusing his back catalog on iTunes.

And so, that’s how I found myself being reacquainted with a duet he’d done with Roy Rogers that I’d long since forgotten about, titled “Hold on Partner.”

And so, that’s how I found myself remembering I’d once seen a video of that song, and also that it was purposely incredibly cheesy, which made it utterly fantastic.

And so, we finally arrive at Point B, which is me watching the video on YouTube and deciding to share it in a blog post:

See, it all makes perfect sense now! (Unless you’re still trying to figure out what dart gun baseball is.) Thanks Lurch! I couldn’t have done it without you!

What Was That Number Again?

As I looked at the keypad in front of me like I had hundreds of times before without ever experiencing a problem, I began to wonder if I’d suddenly aged thirty years overnight. This was because the following was happening in my head:

Me: All right brain, what’s my PIN?
Brain: Excuse me?
Me: My PIN? What’s my PIN? I’m trying to get some cash here.
Brain: Why should I know what your PIN is? Sheesh, you woke me up for this?
Me: But you always know my PIN! Why wouldn’t you know now?
Brain: Maybe because you’ve gotten so annoying, what with all of the continual asking for things over the years without so much as a thanks, that I just got sick of it all and sort of lost it? Ever think of that, smart guy?
Me: Um, no.
Brain: Then maybe you should. Now leave me alone. “Ice Road Truckers” is on.

And so, I walked back to my car empty-handed, having forgotten my ATM PIN for the first time in my life.

This is not a fun experience for anybody, because it’s a reminder that eventually you’ll become one of those old, forgetful people who constantly finds themselves asking their brain for information that it refuses to yield, such as:

“Where are my glasses?”
“Where are my keys?”
“Where are my pants?”
“Why am I standing in a carwash in a state that until moments before I’d believed I’d never been to?”

So, as I drove away, I was understandably feeling pretty low. However, before I’d gotten too far, a string of numbers popped into my head! My PIN! That was it! I gleefully turned around and went back to the ATM. Feeling very relieved, I confidently put in my card and typed in the code, which was immediately rejected.

Me: Um, I thought this was my PIN.
Brain: Maybe I just decided to give you your locker combination from middle school.
Me: You’re a jerk.
Brain: Pretty much.

When I got home, yet another string of numbers popped into my head, which I was certain was my actual PIN this time. I wrote them down, and even though they looked a little strange, I still felt pretty confident about it.

Now, you probably don’t need me to tell you that when I tried it the next day, it also got rejected, which basically turned me into a sobbing wreck who could do nothing but stare at the ATM, wondering why life was so unfair.

With nothing left to lose, I decided to try one more time. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, reached out my hand, and allowed my fingers to be guided by what I hoped was The Force, or at least some watered-down derivation thereof.

Suddenly, the screen changed, and I was in.

HALLELLUJA!!! TAKE THAT, STUPID BRAIN!

Anyway, it was a good feeling, and I’m pretty sure that my PIN has been burned so deep into my memory by this experience that I’ll never forget it, no matter how ornery my brain becomes.

The other good news is that I’m pretty sure the reason I forgot it in the first place wasn’t because I’d turned into an old man, but because of simple disuse. Lately, I’ve been using cash less and less – despite anything I may have said in any of my previous postings – which means that my trips to the ATM have become further and further apart, which would easily explain why my PIN had dropped significantly in the priority queue of my memory.

And so, all’s well that ends well, especially when I get a blog entry out of it.

Except I think it’s probably time to change my PIN. The website says I should do so every six months for security purposes.

{Sigh.}