03.31.08
Dallas Morning News Story
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03.12.08
Random thought
They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but do you know what’s mightier than either one? A pen and a sword. Boo yah.
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02.29.08
how to be a terrible mover
So you’ve decided to move to another address? There is nothing like a change of residence that puts you in the mood to call in a favor from your closest friends and family and ruin their weekend. This is also the perfect opportunity to publicly exhibit your lack of planning and self-discipline!
How to be a Terrible Mover
1. Don’t have anything packed ahead of time
When your movers show up early on moving day, they’ve already given up time on their precious free day off… so why not take the whole day? The best way to do this is to appear surprised and frantic as they ring on your doorbell. If you plan it just right, you might not have to take a single thing out of the building.
While they’re developing hernias dragging your junk across your front yard, you should casually sit on the carpet behind your desk and roll up computer cables.
2. The less the merrier
Although it would be faster and easier on everybody if you also commissioned your able-bodied significant other, large hunky brothers, or well-meaning neighbors, inviting them won’t give your one mover friend the attention they deserve. Instead, let your mover show up alone and then move your whole house by themselves.
Or even better, while they drag your crap out to the truck, you should hang out on the phone with other people who aren’t there. This will tell your mover that, Hey, my friendship options are wide open, but I want to spend this special day with you and only you.
3. Plan everything at the last minute
People love spontaneity. If you already had the key to the new place in your pocket, that would send a bad message to your mover friend – that you are a boring, responsible person. Instead, after a day of packing and heavy lifting, casually mention to them on the way over that you’re not really sure if there is going to be an open door to be able to unload this stuff. You can either leave the key to the new place at the old place or leave some loose details open (like signing the lease – oopsie). They will respect your impulsiveness and you can have a nice laugh together.
To add a little spice to the day, let them hold your angry dog on the way over to the new place.
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when in Rome…
Before I arrived, I wasn’t sure what to expect at the clothes-optional beach. I’d like to say that I went into it with an open mind, although I’ll be honest to admit here that I considered the possibility that I’d be the only guy in a sea of frolicking, gorgeous humans of the opposite gender. Before I went, I made some personal promises: To not stare awkwardly, to pretend like this wasn’t my first nude beach experience, and most importantly – to remember sunscreen.
As I approached the beach, my mind raced with questions. What is the proper etiquette for taking off one’s clothes? Is it going to ruin somebody’s lunch if I start stripping down in their view of the ocean while they have sandwich in hand? Or what if I’m the only one there and I accidentally strip down at the wrong beach? What if my clothes blow away and I have to drive home nude?
Immediately upon entering, all preconceptions were tossed out the window. Imagine the people you see at the mall near your house… very old people, rolls of fat, moles, stretch marks, hairy rears, scars that tell painful stories – now transport all these imperfect people from the mall to a beach in some kind of Terminator-type travel system that makes you show up naked upon arrival. Those are the people at the nude beach… casually walking around, chatting, merrily toasting their bits in the sun.
It was much like walking into a lamp store. Holy crap, look at all these lamps in one place. There’s another lamp. And another. Okay, this lamp store is boring the bejeepers out of me – where’s my sunscreen?
It was during this initial walkaround through the beach that I experienced one of the most ironic moments of my life. I saw one very lovely-constructed female who had tan lines where she had obviously spent time at one of the regular beaches. As I noticed her tan lines traveling around her skin in the shape of what had previously been a tiny bikini, I thought I bet she looks pretty great in that outfit.
I found the spot on the beach that was the farthest possible place from any other beachgoers, casually and quickly pulled off my clothes, then stacked them into a neat pile under my shoes. Every 3.4 seconds, I checked to make sure they were still there – and in between those moments, I worried about them blowing away. For the first hour, I cleverly hid my manbits by laying on my stomach.
After realizing that I was just as imperfect as all the other folks walking around, I finally felt brave enough to walk around and explore the world of nude community interaction. A pair of cute girls my age approached me and one asked “Is this your first time at one of these places?”
Panicked, I did a quick mental skim — I’ve been making eye contact, right? What have I done to show I’m new at this?! Are all my seat backs and tray tables still in the reclined position?
“Yes. How’d you know?” I casually asked.
She pointed behind me. “Your rear end has obviously never seen sunlight. You should really put on some sunscreen.”
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Dallas Morning News column: Driving Quiz
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insult to injuwii
I loudly woo-hooed as I held the Wii console over my head in the Best Buy, happy to have finally found one of the elusive video game units. Through the holiday rush, I had watched as the Wii became the hottest Christmas ticket item and saw the current eBay prices spike to double or triple the normal price. Slowly and secretively, I bought into the hype.
Later, I thought back to that woo hoo moment as I lay on the ground in my brother’s duplex, writhing in pain from my first injuwii.
For those of you who have been living in a cave (implying that caves probably don’t have the Nintendo Wii, but you never know), the system’s remote can sense acceleration in several directions. This means you can wave the wireless controller around in the real world and the game will interact similarly. To the player, it represents an all-new way to interact with the virtual world. To any cats who are watching you, you are simply dancing around in your living room like an idiot, waving around a plastic stick that doesn’t seem edible to them.
Unfortunately, however, the real world has stuff in the way. Your little onscreen tennis guy has plenty of room for a good backswing, but oops, there goes the Christmas tree. Your special blend of bowling may require a good windup, but yikes, sorry dude about your lamp. About 30 minutes after I got the Wii out of the box, I found out exactly how hard my brother can swing a tiny plastic bat. The answer was: Not quite enough force to break my arm, but plenty enough to drop me to the ground.
To boot up one of the Wii Sports games, you are bombarded with little pictures and screens begging you not to hurt yourself. In simple pictorial language, the diagrams all have the same general theme: PLEASE STOP HURTING YOURSELVES AND BREAKING CRAP IN YOUR HOUSE AND THEN SUING US! HELP US HELP YOU!
I initially scoffed at the wrist strap (because as a basic principle, I’m against safety and I’m known to scoff at things), but I later started asking people to wear theirs after my friend launched one of the Wiimotes high in the air during bowling. As peeved as I was to see her hit my ceiling fan with my precious new toy, I was more irritated that her wacky bowling style always outscores mine. One of my brothers consistently accidentally whacks his own leg while bowling, and his score is even better.
At first I considered the likelihood that Nintendo may have to face litigation for people who will hurt themselves, others, property, family pets, or tiny infants during game play. But then I thought How is this any different than real sports equipment? You don’t sue the manufacturer when you accidentally smash your future sister-in-law in the neck with a tennis racquet. Instead, you blame the genius who was wildly swiping it around the room. I hope the inevitable first personal injuwii lawsuits against Nintendo get laughed out of court.
On the same note, this might be a controversial stance on the topic, but I think the mark of a good toy is if it is somewhat dangerous. If there isn’t some level of danger, those toys are going to collect dust while people seek more intriguing ways to interact with the world. Trust me, when I was a kid, you’d much rather have sent me loose to terrorize the world with a little virtual plastic controller instead of matches and fireworks, or a bicycle and an aluminum bat, or a bag of rocksalt and a fertilizer spreader. I’d share more details, but I’m not sure what the statutes of limitation are on my childhood hooligan shenanigans. If you have nice yard art or manicured landscaping, you might make an investment in buying all the neighborhood teenagers a Wii so they can break stuff in their living room instead of your yard.
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New Year’s Resolutions 2008 (but not for me)
When I decided last year that all my New Year’s Resolutions would be for other people, and not for me, I wasn’t sure how it would work out. To my surprise, it was a hit. My next door neighbor read my article about his lunatic habit of leaving his trash bags in my yard, and sure enough, I didn’t have to throw all those bags on his roof like I promised. It was a success!
So as we pass that annual moment when we all start writing the wrong year on our checks, here are my:
2008 New Year’s Resolutions, But Not for Me
- I resolve that nobody gets to join my gym in January. I hate showing up on January 2nd to find the place packed shoulder to shoulder with well-intentioned-but-ultimately-doomed-to-quit newcomers. I love to see all the people stop sitting around watching the Biggest Loser (ironically, while sitting on couches, consuming millions of calories and watching the show) and getting their padded rears to the gym. But come on, people – if you’re going to join and quit, let’s not all do it at once. Get your big butts in there at some other arbitrary time.
- I resolve that nobody is allowed to go under the speed limit in the fast lane. If we’re on Loop 820 and I realize that you’re the bottleneck because you’re texting your best friend about a sale at Kohl’s, I’m going to motion at your car and mouth “There is something wrong with your car! One of your wheels fell off!”. Then, when you pull over to inspect, all the other motorists will happily resume our preferred driving speeds, and you can text your friend all about it.
- I resolve that all the people who try to quit smoking will stop telling about their achievements. You don’t get credit for a habit you shouldn’t have started in the first place.
“It’s been a whole month since I had a cigarette!”
“Whoopty doo. It’s been two years since I poked myself in the eye with a fishing rod.”
- I resolve that restaurants will stop requiring their waiters to do stuff that nobody wants them to do anyway. I don’t want to hear a 10 minute filibuster describing the special of the day. I like that they take the time to use phrases like “succulent crabmeat” and “hint of a spicy glaze” and “nobody sneezed on it,” but we all know you’re describing the most expensive item on the menu. Along the same topic, nobody wants to hear a group of strangers sing badly to their company’s rhyming birthday song. I also resolve that people I know will quit randomly initiating these impromptu choirs throughout the year for me when it’s not my birthday. It was funny the first time.
- And finally, I resolve that the network programmers set limits on the number of times a commercial may air during a program. If I see that Dr Pepper commercial where the guy pulls a DP from his sock and does a front flip bellyflop off the field goal one more time during a football game, I’m going to write a strongly worded letter to the networks. Then, on the way to pick up a stamp, I might accidentally purchase a Dr Pepper.
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wedding crashers
We aren’t invited to many high-class weddings. I’d like to think it’s out of coincidence, but it also might be because I’m the kind of guy who pages fictional characters at Walmart. “Hamburglar, you are needed in Jewelry. Keep your hands where we can see them.”
We were very excited about being invited by one of my wife’s friends to a fancy wedding with a reception at the Marquis downtown. Because it was Amy’s friend, I left her in charge of our schedule and navigational responsibilities. She didn’t give enough time to get across town, so by the time we got to the mansion where the wedding was held, everybody was already seated, with the bride about to enter the front door. The proper decorum is probably to not enter late, but instead Amy darted for the front door, saying “Let’s run in past the bridesmaids, I see people do this all the time.” Yeah, but that all the time is at weddings where the food is served potluck and the wedding party leaves in a pickup truck decorated with condoms and trailing beer cans behind it. We were kindly diverted away from our attempt to interrupt the wedding party entrance, and instead we found a side door. This allowed us to stumble loudly to our seats in front of the remainder of the crowd that we didn’t draw attention to before.
During the wedding, my wife spent the time waving at people and loudly asking “What did he say?” I was able to stop her from opening a noisy tissue wrapper during the prayer, but I couldn’t stop her from motioning to the people outside the window near where we sat. She was waving them in, showing them open seats near us, trying to get them to be the new Last People to Show Up instead of us. The outsiders kept their distance outside of the building and seemed to be scared of us.
The wedding was beautiful and classy, and our unfashionably late entrance was soon forgotten. We made our way over to the Marquis on a secret-coded invitation paper. The directions were printed in gold on dark brown paper, making them nearly illegible at night. This may have been designed to deter any riffraff from showing up, but somehow I made it through the barrier.
The reception was brilliantly decorated and catered, and it had a fun casino-theme with an open bar. Throughout the night, as my designated driver/ wife looked on with alarm, I managed to outdo her previous embarrassing indiscretions. At one point, the wife’s brother sang a sentimental song from a musical, and everybody clapped politely and got back to the festivities. Later, I said “You know what would crank this wedding up a notch? Another song from Fiddler on the Roof — Where’s that guy from earlier?” not realizing that he was seated right behind us.
I tipped the casino employees with funny money, flirted shamelessly with my wife’s girlfriends, and while the best man was up there, I said “Wow, this is the longest toast ever” and got an elbow in the ribs from Amy. I didn’t compute that only specific portions of the plate she handed me were for me, and after enduring a long lecture about how she doesn’t like strawberries, I responded sassy with “You know what? You should throw a big fit about it right here in front of everybody.” By the end of the night, I had enough glasses of wine that when the DJ stood on the stage to give announcements, I went up there and stood next to him. As I smiled at the crowd, I thought, wow, this is a classy wedding. Except that I’m here.
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yelps in the night
There is something special about the late-night rendezvous with the baby. It’s like a bonus stage on a video game, an extra little bit of time doing something you didn’t expect. Of course all new parents complain about the awakenings – they’re part of the standard set of questions that every acquaintance will use to torture you. “Getting any sleep?!? Eh?!?” (followed by an elbow to your side and a forced chuckle) “Eh?!?”. People are turds. But truly, I love the chance to see my 8-month-old unexpectedly.
When I get up to 2am yelps from the nursery, I get one of three kinds of receptions from her:
The sweetie: She grabs both my ears and plants a huge slobbery gummy kiss on the mouth, then wants to be cuddled and given a bottle.
The party animal: She headbangs her little bald head and laughs, bouncing around, indicating that she’s in no mood to sleep. We’ll have a 30-minute impromptu playtime, then she’ll suddenly fall over asleep on the carpet like a tranquilized bear.
The Stinky One: She points at her diaper and gives me the Something is amiss face, indicating that something is indeed amiss under the Huggies. We’re lucky if the Huggies are the only place we find it.
I’ll back up and explain that Mommy, or as she is called these days, “Nuh-nuh,” is the usual latenight caretaker. I have awoken many a bright and sunny morning to her explaining how Jules got up every 17 minutes all night, managed to sneak out of her crib and catch the house on fire, and somehow crapped a whole elephant. I always feel a mixed sense of Yikes, good thing she was here - I would have slept right through all that and Thank God I slept right through all that.
But occasionally, I’ll either wake up on my own or the wife will plop down next to me, face grimacing, and say “Go… get the girl… up all night…. She’s dead to me now.”
Then “Dah-dah” springs into action. Last night, as I watched Jules yank the bottle out of my hand and feed herself (I didn’t have the angle right – when I went to try to hold the bottle again, she swatted at my hand with hers), I reflected on my own development from tiny bald person to large person with hair.
I look forward to the years ahead with Jules, and I wonder if my childhood will be anything like that of my parents. You see, I didn’t have any late-night spells of climbing into bed with Mom and Dad. This was because I wasn’t nearly scared of the boogeyman as I was of Mom. She used to take separate cars when we went places, just so when we got back, she could drive ahead and then leap out of the bushes and scare the bejeezus out of us.
The word on the playground was that some kids saw a monster under their bed. They seemed very serious about this, and I gave the kids some credibility because they had much cooler shoes. I contemplated it for the remainder of recess, thought about it through the rest of the schoolday, then through dinner and bathtime. By the time that bedtime rolled around, I had worked my 6-year-old brain into an absolute tizzy about the possibility of there being some sort of monstrous creature under my bed. After the lights went out, I called out to the folks, who poked their heads back in reluctantly while buttoning shirts and pants back up, interrupted from late night shenanigans.
“What?”
“There’s a monster under my bed. I think.”
My parents shared a knowing glance. Then my Dad crawled down to his hands and knees to inspect under the bed. “Let’s see if there are any…. Holy crap!” He yelled, “There IS a monster under here! Run for it!” He scrambled past my mom and they both raced down the hall and slammed the door to their room. After I sat on the bed in a paralyzing moment of fear, they came back, crying from laughing so hard. “That was fun, Jeff – Let’s do that every night.”
And I never bugged them again.
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10.21.07
big news
I was selected as a Dallas Morning News “Voices” columnist this week. I’ll keep you updated with links to stories as they are published.
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loving the mango
Among the many parenting mistakes I’ve already made or am sure to make in the coming years, I realized the hard way that you’re supposed to start the baby out on vegetables first, then go to fruits. Somehow we ended up with a ton of mango baby food, so we started Jules on that, and that’s all she had for a month. Life was good, and she was a mango-lovin’ kid. She’d yank that spoon out of your hand and jab herself in the eye when she could, she’d hop up and down in her little seat with a huge grin and sling mango bits on you, or she’d glance over your shoulder, only to make a lunge for the bowl when you were fooled into looking backwards … all kinds of mango love.
We eventually ran out of the mango, so we considered our other options. The beets looked gross (really… who eats beets?) The carrots are probably good, but had a weird ooky color. The green beans looked like puréed barf. So I decided to give the butternut squash a shot. The little baby food label showed wholesome-looking squashes and an ecstatic baby. I half-considered the possibility that this kid on the label wasn’t laughing like a little gummy hyena after having eaten this exact flavor – they probably use the same picture for all their flavors, even the tragic beets. But being an optimist, I moved forward with the notion that his smile was an endorsement for this particular flavor.
Jules wasn’t as ecstatic as the baby on the label. As I loaded her first spoonful into her mouth, her eyes bugged wide open and she gave me a deeply concerned look to tell me Daddy, there is something seriously wrong with my mango. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue to show me the grossness that was still sitting there. I tried to make light of the situation, saying “It’s different, Jules – but look, it’s still good!” taking large mock bites of it and feigning interest. I’m a terrible actor, and she didn’t buy it. She scooped the first spoonful off her tongue with her tiny hand and then shook it wildly, flinging squash bits all over both of us.
As a footnote, I also made a mistake regarding diet sodas. I thought it would be adorable one time to let her have a little sip, and now we have to hide our diet cokes or she crawls over us to lunge at them like a little crackhead. From her point of view, the metallic cans are way more interesting than her boring plastic bottles or mommy’s dispensing units. I’m not sure what kinds of toxic evils reside in diet cokes – perhaps some kind of villainous medical condition that we’ll all find out about in 30 years – and she’ll have started earlier than anybody. If Jules turns out to be as strange as Daddy, I’m blaming it on the diet cokes.
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waterboy
I haven’t yet arrived at the office-with-a-door part of my career, but I love my cubicle area. It’s bigger than my dorm room was in college. I have a variety of plants, a high wall of windows, and a lava lamp to draw me into a slack-jawed, globule-staring episode from time to time.
The open side of the cubicle doesn’t face anybody, but it does face the little hallway where the water cooler resides. This gives me privacy for tunnel-vision productivity immersion at my desk, except of course whenever my coworkers stop by to refill their water containers.
I have found over time that people act pretty strangely when they think nobody’s looking. It has become a fascinating daily study of human behavior. In the average 9.2 seconds it takes to fill up their containers, every person has some kind of water-filling ritual. The R&D director fills his bottle for a while, stops and spaces out while he looks around the office, then fills up the rest. The V.P. of Operations fills up the bottle with one hand while she strikes a runway pose and taps an impatient foot. Our regulatory associate crouches and watches the water-to-bottle dispensing process very closely, from like 4 inches away. A guy from the lab bends sharply at the waist to fill his thermos, pointing his rear directly at me. Our company lawyer looks back over his shoulder while he’s filling his bottle to see what I’m up to. He named me “Twinkletoes” because I ran like a girl one time during an office putting match, so I throw out random new nicknames for him during his 9.2 seconds at the cooler. I’m leaning towards “Z- Licious,” since his name is Zach, or “Mayor of Nosey-town” because he wishes he was omnipotent.
My boss fills up his big thermos cup while he’s directly facing the cooler, puts his other hand on his hip, and relaxes his head back. From my angle, it looks and sounds like he’s peeing.
The V.P. of Scientific Affairs caught on that I was taking notes on everybody’s dispensing rituals and he started changing his routine. One day he put a foot up on a nearby shelf. The next day, he did a hilarious between-the-legs maneuver. I’m waiting on him to one day pull the 5 gallon jug off the top of the cooler and start drinking right out of it.
In addition to my other work duties, my station near the water makes me the waterboy. I’m happy to do it, except people gawk at the operation with much more fascination than it deserves. All I’m doing is taking off the old water jug and tilting the new jug back on top, but people stare at the process like I’m giving birth to a giraffe.
I’ve noticed that people get incredibly thirsty in the last 30 minutes of the regular workday. People crowd the water cooler, draining about half the big Ozarka jug before they head out for the day. Maybe some of my coworkers don’t drink anything all day, and only realize at the end of the day that they’ve become dehydrated. Or maybe my coworkers don’t have water at home. I can picture them bringing home a thermos of water to their families. “Look, kids, I brought home water! Whose turn is it for a shower today?”
At least once a week, somebody will notice the red knob on the cooler for the first time and give it a little burst to see what it does. Every time, they strike a surprised expression, turn to me, and say “Ow, I burned myself! That water is hot!” Since my nearby location implies that I’m the expert on all water dispensing operations, I usually try to offer some kind of explanation. They look at me expectantly while they wave their hand in pain, and I say “I think only the first little bit is super hot. Try it again.”
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07.09.07
Goodbye to Dreamworld
Just as Tony the Tiger and Scarlett Johansson were about to show me how to make a crème brûlée in my Mema’s kitchen, a shrieking alarm punched me in the face. When I came to, an irritating pitch was sounding off downstairs, filling the whole house with EENK-EENK-EENK-EENK! Before jumping out of bed, I did the traditional suddenly-awoken-and-confused conversation with myself.
We’re in danger!
No, we’re not. Go back to sleep.
Yes we are! That’s a fire alarm or something. We should freak out.
Settle down, buddy — that’s not the sound the fire alarms make.
I think you’re right. Hey, let’s eat a frozen burrito for breakfast today.
You always have the best ideas, Me.
I turned to look at the alarm clock next to the bed: 5:15 am. Crap, just long enough before my wakeup time that it wasn’t worth it to try to go back to sleep. Or was it? I remember my man Tony showing me something, and it had to do with Mema’s kitchen… what was it? I could probably sneak back into Dreamworld if I could just hurry back out of this one.
I turned over and shook the wife — “Hey, get up, I think the house is on fire. Go check it out.” She pulled the covers up and said through muffled fabric “That’s your cell phone, you go get it.” I shook her again, but this time she just growled, and then the dog lying at our feet growled at me too. Dreamworld would have to go on without me.
I went downstairs, squinting my eyes as I sought out the EENK-EENK-EENK-EENK noise. I’m not sure why I instinctively squint my eyes with loud noises — I also turn down the car radio when I’m looking for a street address. Apparently the visual and auditory portions of my brain do not work simultaneously.
When I found the source, imagine how peeved I was – It was the wife’s cell phone alarm! I pushed random buttons until it stopped, stormed back up the stairs, called her a “big dummy”, bounced her phone off her rear, and went back to sleep. The dog growled at me again.
For the next 30 minutes, I slept restlessly, dreaming about alarm clocks, until my wife shook me awake. What now?!? I still had 30 minutes of sweet, sweet sleep until I had to get up. She was holding our baby and nudging me. She said “I’ve been trying to wake her up to play with you but she’s really crashed out.” I barked at her “Of course she is! Even at three months old, she realizes it’s dark outside! Begone, woman!” As I drifted off into angry slumber, the dog jumped off the bed to finish her Doggie Dreamworld elsewhere in the house.
I blinked my eyes and it was 7:15, the time I normally leave for work. After cursing alarm clocks all morning, I found I suddenly missed mine when it didn’t go off! This meant that for me to get to work by 8 am, I’d have to skip breakfast and start off today with questionable hygiene habits. I compromised and did the 4-minute shower version, just the pits and bits.
After some driving behavior that I wouldn’t be proud to repeat here, I barely made it to work on time. Walking into the building, a forgotten voice reminded me where my morning went all wrong:
Hey! Where’s my damn burrito?
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03.26.07
childbirth classes
“I’m just here for the hot pregnant chicks. Let’s have a hand for all these glowing beautiful women!” After the applause and laughter in the room at the Women’s Center finally settled down, I realized I had not made the best first impression on our instructor. She glared at me with one raised eyebrow while continuing around the room, asking each couple what the best and worst parts are to being pregnant so far.
If there was ever a need for an icebreaker, I think it’s when you’re asked to sprawl out on a mat in a crowded room of strangers and give your spouse a neck and back massage in front of everybody. It might have been a little less uncomfortable if we weren’t packed into the room with everybody’s elbows and knees touching. At various points in the class there wasn’t any instruction going on, just the sounds of the shuffling of hands on clothes, which was kinda creepy in the large setting. Crawling around on the floor giving our spouses massages is what got most of us there in the first place.
At the first class, we didn’t bring our Focal Point, the designated object (a baby sock, sonogram picture, etc) that the mom in labor is supposed to focus on instead of her convulsing uterus. So we improvised with an Ozarka bottle. During our first simulated contraction, we stared and focused hard at the Ozarka bottle, doing heavy timed breathing in the crowded, quiet room with 20 other couples. Not one to allow an awkward moment to go unannounced, I whispered loudly into my wife’s ear during the next long breath. “Ohhhhhh zahrrrrrr kahhh.” It got the desired effect of making her laugh and elbow me, but I didn’t expect to completely derail the class. In my haste to be silly, I forgot that we were jammed in next to 20 other couples who heard me too, and I also forgot how pregnant women will spontaneously tinkle while laughing. As the class went nuts with chuckling and women running for the bathroom, the instructor glared at me again. She told the class (and I quote) “See, class, Jeff and Amy are what we call a disruption. You will face many disruptions like them during your real labor. With good focus, you can ignore them.”
One night, our instructor Miss Glarey von Glarenstein was out of town and we had a substitute instructor, a different nurse from the Women’s Center. I’m not sure if she did this normally in her own classes, or if it was just because we weren’t her students, but the substitute teacher went out of her way to tell us every labor horror story she’s ever experienced. Every mild question was met with some frightening story of a baby that almost didn’t make it for some reason, followed by audible gasps around the room.
“Yes, I was wondering… what percentage of women need episiotomies?”
“I’ll tell you one thing, you don’t want to just let yourself tear down there. Don’t try to be a hero — I’ve seen some ugly blowouts you can’t imagine.”
(More audible gasps around the room)
After hearing about the baby who was born with three legs while part of the hospital was on fire, we were happy to see a different, third instructor the following evening at our Breastfeeding class. I understand that breastfeeding is optional, so I wondered how intense this nurse was about making this choice. The nurse/ instructor opened up the class with “I’m glad to see you all here learning about Breastfeeding. You are the ones who love your babies. The only ones.”
The instructor went on to explain all the great benefits of breastfeeding, talking about what great bonding it is for the mother and child, how the milk is always clean and the right temperature, and so on. Then she told us about studies that showed how breastfed babies have higher IQs and less eating disorders later in life. Then she made wild claims about how every U.S. president was breastfed until eight years old, how breastmilk is the antidote for every poisonous snake on the planet, and how babies who don’t breastfeed have a 87% chance of growing up to become the teenagers who wear black makeup and noserings and hang out at mall food courts.
We were reminded no less than 23 times that there is a Breastfeeding Center next door to the Women’s Center, and we were encouraged to stop by for regular visits to make sure she’s doing it right. I can’t imagine what they do there that would require a whole building. I imagine a group of nurses crowded around the baby, chanting Chug! Chug! Chug! like a kegstand at a frat party.
I giggled during the powerpoint presentation of differences in breast shapes, which drew another elbow from my wife and instigated additional giggling around the room. At the end of the class, during the Q+A portion, my wife saw the smirk on my face as I raised my hand, and she managed to successfully stop me from asking the instructor why men have nipples.
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gimme five
With the passage of time, many things in this world proliferate successfully for a given period, only to eventually subside into extinction. We look upon these dying species and reflect upon the glory they once beheld. I’m talking about the rise and fall of High Fives. When was the last time you put a hand up in the air and smacked another person’s hand to express glee? Not often enough, I’ll say.
The High Five originated in the 1920’s with its subdued predecessor, the Low Five, in swing and jazz venues. Then, while watching baseball one evening in November of 1955, brothers Tim and Tom Thompson, simultaneously decided to smack each other on the forehead as was the family custom while drinking heavily. However, on this fateful night, they accidentally clapped hands in the air. And the High Five was born.
The new celebratory gesture took many years to gain momentum, as the High Five requires mutual participation between the two participants. During the early awkward years, many individuals were “left hanging”, standing with a lingering, unclapped hand in the air while the other party flinched, thinking he was about to be struck in the forehead.
However, over time, the popularity of the High Five gathered momentum, reaching its pinnacle of coolness with the release of the blockbuster hit Top Gun. All over the country, if they weren’t busy rushing out to join the Navy or Air Force, teenagers were practicing complicated High Five maneuvers. Up high, followed with the no-look clap on the downside. No longer considered a threatening gesture, a hand coming thrust towards one’s face was now universally met with a return clap. The sole exception to this was that highly-intelligent males, having exhausted their brain capacities for more-nerdy endeavors, would often miss their High Five to the great bemusement of normal folks everywhere.
The High Five worked its way into nursery rhymes with the popular childhood interaction: High Five / Now down low / Put it in the hole / Oops you’re too slow, or the alternative ending: You just put your finger in my toilet bowl.
It is still debated in international symposiums on the subject, but the decline of the High Five may have begun with the introduction of its many derivatives and competing gestures. The handshake, for instance, remained the timeless staple for greetings in the corporate environment. In the hip-hop community, the High Five couldn’t compete with the highly complicated and choreographed hand-contact gestures that could carry on for upwards of seven minutes. The Wink and a Point has become a staple gesture by smarmy men everywhere, replacing the Mock Punch to the Abdomen that held a small amount of popularity in the late 1980s.
The Jumping Double- High Five with Belly Bump Maneuver, thought to become the heir and revitalizing successor to High Five fame, was unexpectedly replaced with the more simple Jumping Belly Bump. In more recent years, the High Five has been replaced in the NFL with the Leaping Interlocking Elbows Maneuver. Newly published studies from world-renowned behavioral sociologists that indicate the High Five could be phased out entirely by the year 2021. In its place, popular culture may soon witness the rise of other new gestures, such as the One Handed Shark Fin Wave and the Double Middle Fingers in the Ears Maneuver.
Not everybody, however, is content to sit back and watch the steady demise of the High Five. The sixth annual High Five Day will be held this year on April 19th, on the customary third Thursday of April. The festivities will take place in open areas with good lighting to ensure good midair hand connections. Judges will be on hand to judge clapping decibels and judge the High Five Speed Round competitions. A compilation of some of the greatest movie and sports moments featuring High Fives will be shared, along with a keynote address by Borat. As is the customary practice, at the conclusion of the ceremonies, with puffy and sore palms, each participant will make a solemn promise to carry on the rich and distinguished practice of the High Five, then High Five each other in the parking on the way out.
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mister right
There is probably a much better-sounding medical term for the specific diagnostic procedure I was performing, but the honest version is that I was sitting on my couch one Saturday morning last year, watching cartoons and mindlessly playing with my marbles. When sprawled out on the couch, watching Spongebob Squarepants, it never seems like you’re on the verge of your world spiraling out of control. Until suddenly…
I found a bump on one of my boys.
I quickly checked the other one. Maybe this was a previously unexplored feature of my anatomy. How could I have missed it all this time? Unfortunately, Mister Left didn’t have a matching bump. I was doomed. By my best estimation, the bump was about the size of a BB, but in my mind it was a seven pound watermelon that was going to destroy me, and also take the lives of whoever happened to be standing nearby when it exploded. My life was over.
In a panic, I called my doctor’s office, which uses a strange and frustrating system for logging in appointments. There is a triage of sorts, whereby if your symptoms are interesting and compelling, you have to repeatedly explain the gruesome details on the phone to several different people. By the fourth person, I was pleading “Just let me see my doctor! I have ball cancer!”
My doctor must have missed that medical school class where they show how to feign coolheadedness when examining a bodily anomaly. Instead, he gave a surprised expression with an audible gasp, very similar to the one I had on the couch just the day before. His mouth said “Let’s send you to an imaging center to get this looked at” but his eyes said “Oh my God! You are going to die right now!”
A few nervous and anxiety-ridden days later, I went to the medical center’s sonogram center to get an ultrasound on my man-bits. I sat in the waiting room with five women, all pregnant, all giving me the same What’s this guy doing here? look. As my name was called, I patted my belly and said to them “I’m hoping for a boy.”
The imaging technician was very professional. She instructed me to lie on my back and arrange towels around so that only my Easter eggs were showing, like an optical illusion. Then she covered the whole region with about a gallon of that purple sonogram goo and started probing me with the electric wand thingy. To add to the awkwardness in the room, two more random women in scrubs joined her and whispered while they pointed out things on the monitor. For like thirty minutes. I tried to break the awkward silence, “So, we doing lunch after this or what?” Looking at the monitor, without skipping a beat, the lead technician said “Awww… he has your eyes.”
After several more nervous and anxiety-ridden days, a random doctor called and said it was some kind of non-cancerous cyst, nothing to be worried about, but I should continue getting checked every couple years. I said “Are you sure?” to which he responded with a thick accent “In Russia, the horse rides you.” Not very comforting, getting the weird analogy I don’t understand from some guy I never met.
But here I am — still alive, still paranoid about it, still keeping a close eye on things, and still watching cartoons on the couch.
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my best exit
How often do you hear of a person retiring at the same company that they first started working? Chances are, we all leave our jobs to work elsewhere at some point in our careers. For some people, leaving a job is a mundane task: a resignation letter, some handshakes and goodbyes, and a smooth exit. Others, however, prefer to inject a little character into their final days of employment.
“Knock, knock!”
“Who’s there?”
“Not me anymore. See ya!”
My first job out of college was a bulldozer salesman. Over a few months of training, I learned that the best way to make sales was to genuinely make friends with these folks. If you dress like them and speak with the same accent, they’ll warm up to you. After you’ve bonded over stories about fishing, trucks, and dirty jokes, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling — they’ll buy it. After a few months of this, I started raking in the sales. But the more I sold, the angrier my tiny hotheaded boss got. He had the Napoleon complex going. He walked with his elbows out from his sides and would complain when you stood too close because it made him feel small. When he was in a bad mood, he used to make his mechanics sweep all the sunshine off the driveway.
After my monthly sales figures started outperforming his, my boss started actively trying to kill my progress. Even though he owned the company and directly benefited financially from my sales, his small-man ego couldn’t handle the competition. When people came in to buy spare parts, he’d insult their mothers and start fights. One time, after telling my biggest customer that we had a three month wait-time on new dozers (which we actually had sitting behind the shop), the guy called him a “little peckerhead” and stormed out of the dealership. My boss yelled after him “If you can’t hunt with the big dogs, you stay on the porch! With the pups!” He ran outside and yelled again “With the pups!”
He threw a wrench at one of his maintenance guys. Then, to “teach me patience,” he drove me out into the middle of a ranch and left me there for an afternoon. He ordered me to reorganize the parts inventory instead of making sales calls for a week. He made me pick up lunch for him and then called me fat when my order was bigger than his. One day, on the way home from installing a company-bought treadmill at his mistress’s house, I decided it was time to go. The next day I asked the boss to step into his office.
“There isn’t any nice way to say this. I’m going to have to fire you from being my boss.”
“What?!”
I flicked a resignation letter onto his desk. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, but I don’t see any way around it. I’m going to need my desk clean by the end of the day.”
“What the?! You can’t… I don’t…. You’re not the…”
“You did not meet my performance standards. I think it’ll be better if you just learn from this and move on. I wish you all the best.”
I thought his round little head was going to pop. On the way out of his office, I said “Have a good life, Shorty” and turned off the lights.
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02.07.07
shadow lurker
stalk`er n. (stôk er)
2. One who pursues stealthfully or observes (a person) persistently, especially out of obsession or derangement.
I was kinda disappointed to find out that my stalker was an overweight,
older bald guy. I’m not sure what I expected, but in retrospect, I guess
there aren’t many gorgeous twenty-something, bikini-clad redheads out there
following guys like me around. I guess stalkers are kinda like family –
you just kinda get stuck with one.
During college, I was working up to 40 hours a week as a waiter and I was on
the newspaper staff, on the archery team, and in the band for the basketball
team at the University of Texas. Between all the running around, and
general delirium from chronic lack of sleep, I guess I just didn’t notice
him. I was chewing through another busy semester, completely unaware that a
grown man knew my whereabouts at all times. It was shocking at first, of
course. By the time I started receiving the “admiration letters,” as he
called them, he already had my whole schedule down. He left notes for me in
my gym locker, at my apartment, at the school newspaper offices, and in one
of my classes. It was a sobering thought that this guy was better organized
at finding where I was going than I was.
It’s amazing how much a stalker can find out about you through digging
through your garbage. For example, my stalker probably saw wrappers from
Jack in the Box tacos on one weekend, followed by guilt-inspired containers
of Slim Fast the following week. I’m sure it seemed odd to find receipts
for Legos from Toys R’ Us and a Grad school-level Genetics textbook on the
same day. If he really admired me, he would have popped out of the shadows
at the grocery store to point out that I was buying cereal but was currently
low on milk, and saved me another trip.
My stalker never made any threatening gestures, like leaving death threats
or slashing the tires on my car. Instead, he was your gentle, respectful
stalker-type. His letters started “Dear Jeffery (How he knew the correct
spelling of my name is beyond me — my stepmom even spelled it wrong on my
Social Security card), I hope you don’t mind that I am writing you. I just
wanted to tell you how great I think you are.” As much of a clear violation
this was, and how eerie it was to have to look over your shoulder all the
time, I was lucky that he never became dangerous. That might be the
definition of the blind optimist: you find a creepy guy going through your
gym locker and leaving letters for you, but you stop to reflect on how
flattering it is.
I found myself referring to my stalker with distinction, like I was talking
about a butler. “My stalker left me a note today in my Botany book. What
did yours leave you? Oh yeah, I forgot, you don’t have one.”
One day I was walking to class and I had that being-followed feeling. I
stopped around a corner, and in the reflection of windows on the building
across the street I saw this guy break out of a walking stride to run to
catch up. I caught him at the corner and he jumped back, surprised. He was
red-faced and out of breath from his short sprint. He started to run but I
grabbed his shirt and pulled him back and said “Hey buddy, let’s have a
little chat.”
He started to explain that he’s been going through some personal stuff and
didn’t mean me any harm. I cut him off, reached in my bag and pulled out
one of his “admiration letters,” and showed it to him.
“Do you see right here where you misspelled ‘Forlorn’? Why on Earth would
that be spelled like the number four? Also, you’ve got its and it’s
confused all through this whole darn thing. And it isn’t even consistent.
Look, you have it both ways. I know you’re dying to stick that apostrophe
in there when you’re talking about the possessive, but those are the rules,
man. I see you’ve taken all the time to handwrite it on this flowery paper,
but I’d really rather that you use spellcheck. Do you have a pen? Here,
I’ll give you my email address.”
“Oh. I, uh. I have it already.”
“Of course you do. I appreciate all this attention, but you’re going to
have to bring your grammar and spelling up a notch. Otherwise, I’m halfway
through this thing, and no offense to you, but I’m like ‘Geez man, is my
stalker in high school or something?’ After I get hung up on a couple
misspellings, I’m all turned off and I’ve lost interest. Here, I made some
edits on the other letters.”
“No thanks, I.. I gotta go.”
And I never saw him again.
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