Born to run

I’m running the Peachtree Road Race this year for the 12th time on July 4. Please don’t snicker, it’s kind of rude.

I remember once, many years ago, when I was training for a marathon. A co-worker overheard me telling somebody about one of my training runs and said “You’re doing a marathon? You don’t look like a runner.” What she meant was, “Do you think a guy your size should risk a heart attack?”

But I did run the race, and I finished it standing up, somewhat. Then I went home, collapsed in the bed and hardly moved for 72 hours. If I could have talked my wife into getting me a slop jar, I wouldn’t have even gotten up to go to the bathroom. I lost three toenails and rubbed Vaseline on 75 percent of my body.

Training for the marathon was difficult. There was a guy in my neighborhood who had run several of them, and he offered to help me train. Which was nice. The guy, who I’ll call Al, since that’s his name, helped me a lot, but he was a little odd. He liked to run wearing a tank top and those really tight biker shorts. I tried to never, under any circumstances, look below his waist.

Al and I would do long runs on weekend mornings, and we would often run on the side of the road, and we drew quite a number of curious stares. I really don’t know why anybody found it unusual for two men to be out getting hot and sweaty together on a Sunday morning, with one of them wearing skin-tight, light blue crotch-chokers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Did I mention we were both wearing Band-Aids on our nipples, so they wouldn’t bleed?

Anyway, now I concentrate on shorter races, like the Peachtree, which is just a 10-K. It’s a lot of fun, and I find it comforting that most of the people don’t look like athletes, they look like me – or worse. You see some people wearing Spandex who shouldn’t, and then there are the old men with hair growing crazily on their shoulders. Seriously, can we pass a “no tank top” law for men with hairy shoulders?

I’m not a blazing fast runner, though if I had been over 80 last year, I would have finished in the top 20 in my age group with the time I registered. So this year I lied about my age.

One of the fastest races I ever ran was a 5-k several years ago in Griffin. With about half a mile to go, a runner passed me, and so I turned it into a little personal race, though we were well behind the actual leaders. I would zip ahead, then the other runner would pass me, and we were neck and neck for the longest time. But I’m a pretty determined athlete, so I kicked it in down the stretch and got to the finish line first, and I turned and gave a triumphant “don’t-mess-with-me” look, and that loser could only look at me with envy. Though, I have to admit, she was pretty fast for a 12-year-old.

Now, though, I just run for the enjoyment. I don’t try to win. I couldn’t pass those Kenyans up front if I was on a motorcycle. If I survive the race with all my toenails intact, I consider it a victory.

Don't get above your raisin'

Memoirs are a big thing in the literary world now.

A memoir is an autobiography written by somebody who isn’t famous yet. The author often recounts his or her painful childhood and battle with addictions and self-discovery and blah-de-freaking-blah.

Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris have been very successful doing this. They get rave reviews and sell lots of books and make lots of money, so I guess it’s not my place to criticize them, since I do none of those things. But I don’t think it’s right to say bad things about your family, especially when they can't really defend themselves. It’s a big bowl of wrong, as Jeff Garlin would say.

Burroughs portrays his mother as a monster and his father as a brutal alcoholic. Sedaris reveals that his mother was an alcoholic. Beside the fact that people around them have questioned the truthfulness of their tales, it’s just not right to be airing your family’s dirty laundry like that. As my teetotalling not-a-monster mama would say, it ain’t a bit of nobody’s bidness.

Can you feel good about yourself if you make money exploiting your family? I don’t think so. Nobody’s family is perfect and everybody goes through hard times, some worse than others. But don’t throw your family under the bus just to make a few dollars.

I could never imagine doing that. For one thing, my parents didn’t drink, didn’t subject me to mental cruelty, and didn’t beat me when I didn’t deserve it. About the worst thing my mama did was to wash my hair in the sink, and use those bony knuckles of hers to scrub my head until I was nearly unconscious. This should replace waterboarding as a way to interrogate terrorists. To this day, I won’t let them wash my hair when I go to the barber shop cut because it brings back bad memories.

So overall, I had a pretty good childhood. But if I really think about it, maybe I do have some legitimate complaints. For one thing, there was a woman named Nell Opal who would come to our house and keep me in the summertime, when I was out of school and my parents were at work. Nell Opal was an older black woman who could cook and clean like Martha Stewart, and exert authority like Idi Amin.

My mother granted her full disciplinary control over me, which meant she would thwack me on the back of the leg with the fly-swatter when the mood struck. But the worst thing was, every day during the summer, she would lock me out of the house at 12:30. She would fix me lunch, and then I was to be out the door, and not to come back and disturb her until after 3.

That was because, from 12:30 to 3, Nell Opal watched her “stories,” which is what she called soap operas. Oh, she would work the whole time, folding clothes or dusting or shelling butterbeans, but she didn’t want to be bothered by some 10-year-old boy. So I stayed outside. If I got thirsty, I knew where the water faucet was. If I needed to go to the bathroom, the woods weren’t far away. If I got hungry – well, I held on until 3, when I could come in and get a snack. And yes, she actually locked the door.

This was, of course, a different era, when children were expected to entertain themselves. I didn’t go off to camp in the summer, or take tennis lessons, or have a math tutor come in to work with me. No, I went out in the yard and did safe things, like jumping ramps on my bicycle and stirring up fire-ant beds and blowing up army men with firecrackers.

I was reminding my daddy the other day about Nell Opal locking me out of the house, and at first he claimed to have no memory of that, and then he laughed about it! He’s going to be sorry when he gets to Chapter 7 of my memoir.

Anyway, here’s my advice to burgeoning memoir writers. Don’t talk bad about your mama and daddy, or your brother or your sister or your grandmamma. As Bruce Springsteen once sang, “Man turns his back on his family, well he just ain’t no good.”

Acting squirrelly

An evil squirrel is bedeviling Lucky, my back yard beast.

The athletic rodent delights in taunting the poor mutt with its acrobatics, jumping from limb to limb like some sort of flea-ridden Chinese acrobat, all the time mocking Lucky with a sneering arrogance. I believe I saw the squirrel do a touchdown dance the other day after flying from an oak tree to a sycamore, as my Earth-bound dog looked on in helpless despair.

The squirrel does this on purpose, I have no doubt. I have watched his antics and he clearly has no valid reason to be in my trees. There is no nest there, no fetching female squirrels with which to mate. There are no acorns to gather in my back yard, since Lucky eats anything smaller than she is.

Particularly evil is the squirrel's practice of running back forth along the top of the fence, somehow balancing itself on a 2-inch wide board and swishing its tail at Lucky like some sort of animal gang sign. If dogs could pray, I bet every night Lucky would ask the Lord to please, just once, let that furry SOB slip off the fence and break his leg. That's really her only shot.

I have no illusions about Lucky's intent - she wants to kill the squirrel. And I am solidly in her corner.

Squirrels are a menace. They chew through power lines, they get in your attic, they die in the wall and stink up the whole house because the only way to get them out is to punch a big hole in the wall. Trust me on this one.

And did you know that they have twice caused NASDAQ to crash? I'm not making that up. Al Qaeda is probably training them to help in their next terrorist attack.

Astonishingly, in Georgia, they are considered protected animals. Why are we protecting these pests? There are millions of them running around. I don't think they're in danger of extinction. You may as well protect mosquitoes.

You have to get a permit to kill squirrels. I found this out years ago when I was a newspaper columnist and I recounted a story about randomly shooting my shotgun into squirrels' nests when I was a teenager. A guy from the Department of Natural Resources saw the column, and called me to tell me that I broke the law, and to not do it again. And I never even killed a squirrel that way, though I did once kill a possum who was catching a nap in a squirrel's nest. That'll teach him to trespass.

Well, the government can protect these rabid vessels of disease all they want. Lucky doesn't have a squirrel-killing permit, and I'm not turning her in if she ever executes the vermin. I'll probably have the squirrel stuffed and display it on Lucky's doghouse as a trophy - unless she eats it first.

Old-time religion

Have you been to church lately? It has really changed.

I grew up going to a Nazarene Church, which is sort of like the Baptist Church without money. My parents believed in going every time they opened the church doors, which meant Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, and revivals.

I can't say I always went willingly. I'm not sure I can say I EVER went willingly, come of think of it. But go I did, and I guess it didn't do me any harm, except I missed seeing the endings of a few football games.

These days, I go to a Methodist church. Some things I like more about church now than I did then. For one thing, the preacher never mentions hell, or the devil, and this is a good thing, cause those Nazarene preachers used to scare me to death.

Hell never really sounded like the place to be. Any little sin would get you there – lying, stealing, impure thoughts. I didn’t lie unless it was necessary, and I never stole, but you’re talking about a teen-aged boy here. I pretty much did that last one about every 5 minutes.

Things were especially bad during revivals, when evangelists would come in and preach for a week. For one thing, you had to go to church every night during a revival, and these preachers acted like they got paid according to how many people they go to go down to the altar. Sometimes I was tempted to go myself just to avoid hearing another verse of Just As I Am.

I’ve seen evangelists wade into the congregation and grab people by the arm to try and force them to the altar. This wasn’t one of those Oral Roberts pretending-to-heal-people deals, either. The people being singled out were not in on the gag. More than once, I saw somebody shake the preacher off. I’m surprised none of those preachers ever got punched out. If they ever came for me, I was prepared to fake a heart attack.

The Nazarene Church isn’t that well-known. I remember taking a girl one time to church with me, and she had never heard of the Nazarene Church, and I could tell she was a little nervous. She kept asking me on the way to church what it was like, and what they did during the service. I tried to reassure her and told her it was just like any other church, there was nothing to worry about.

Then, just as we were getting out of the car, I looked at her solemnly and said, “Now, listen, if they try to hand you a snake, and you don’t feel comfortable taking it, just politely say no, thanks. Nobody will hold it against you.” Her eyes got as big as Frisbees and it took me about 10 minutes to convince her I was kidding and get her out of the car.

The music has changed drastically in church. Now there are “praise bands,” and they play something called “praise music,” which is basically just light-rock songs, but instead of saying “I love you, baby,” they say “I love you, Jesus.” Well, whatever floats your boat. These praise bands have electric guitars and bass and even drums. My mama would roll over in her grave at the thought of drums in church.

I must say, I prefer the old hymns. My mama and my brother, who’s gone now, too, and my father used to get up and sing some Sundays as a trio. They would sing old hymns like I’ll Fly Away, and Love Lifted Me, and Victory In Jesus.

I don’t hear those kinds of songs enough in church anymore, but every now and then we’ll sing one, and I get a tear in my eye every time. What I wouldn’t give to hear that Williams trio harmonize one more time on those old songs. That would be the sweetest music I could ever hear.

Get over it

I think we all need to a little bit more thick-skinned.

I read today that an ESPN columnist got in trouble and has been suspended for using a reference to Hitler in a column about the Boston Celtics.

Columnist Jemele Hill was trying to be funny when she wrote recently that rooting “for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It's like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan.” People got upset, she had to apologize, ESPN apologized, and now she’s suspended.

Come on. There’s nothing wrong with what she wrote, except that it’s not funny. But being unfunny is hardly an actionable offense. If it were, Dane Cook would have been in jail long ago.

She was making a joke. She didn’t say that anybody on the Celtics looked like Hitler, or was as despicable as Hitler, or sought to exterminate an entire race of people and invaded Poland under flimsy circumstances. That would be different.

And I know, nothing Hitler did was amusing, and he probably wasn’t a particularly funny guy. I doubt he started his meetings with Goebbels and Himmler and Speer by saying, “Hey, did you hear the one about the priest, the midget and the librarian at the book burning?” Though I bet if he ever did tell a joke, they all laughed like it was the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. The same thing happens in CEO’s offices all across America.

I’ve used the occasional Hitler reference, and I don’t think it’s inappropriate. For example, if somebody is trying to point out something good about somebody who’s done something bad, I retort with “Well, Hitler made the trains run on time,” or, “Even Hitler had a puppy.”

By the way, that always disturbs me the most about Hitler. Ever seen those color films of him up there at his nice house in the Alps, and he’s relaxing with the beautiful scenery in the background, and a dog comes up to him and he’s leaning down, petting the dog on his head. There’s no sound on these films, and I’ve always wondered if he was down there saying stuff to the dog like, “Hey, boy, you’re a good dog, aren’t you boy?” Then he looks over his shoulder to one of his henchmen and says, “Is the plan progressing?” Then he goes back to the dog and scratches him under the neck and says “Oh, my puppy likes that, don’t you boy?” Then he looks back over his shoulder and snaps to the Nazi officer, “You will execute the plan or you will be shot!” Then the dog licks his funny moustache. Creepy.

I digress, but I just think we all need to relax. If you don’t like what Jemele Hill writes, don’t read it. If you don’t like what Don Imus says, don’t listen. If you’re bothered by Rush Limbaugh, change the radio channel. If you can’t stomach Keith Olbermann, watch a different TV show.

People are just too eager to be offended. How boring will life be if nobody ever says or writes anything controversial? Abraham Lincoln said controversial things. So did George Washington and Winston Churchill. Even Jesus rankled a few folks in his day. Like he said, sometimes you just have to turn the other cheek – and get over yourself.

Foreign invasion

There is a growing problem in and around where I live, and I’m not sure what can be done about it.

These people keep moving here from a foreign land, and they’re really not welcome. They speak with strange accents that we cannot understand, they observe odd rituals and customs, and they absolutely refuse to assimilate to the culture.

I’m talking, of course, about Yankees.

Where in the world do they come from? I mean, I know where they come from – New York, Minnesota, Ohio. Any place where they call a Co-Cola “pop.”

I guess what I mean is, why do they keep coming here from these places? Actually, that’s a silly question. I have been to Detroit, and Toledo, and Pittsburgh, and Newark, and Providence. So it’s pretty obvious why they come down here.

Martin Luther King Jr. said we should judge people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I’m cool with that. But he said nothing about where they come from.

One thing they do really annoys me - they wear jerseys in support of their favorite professional sports teams. I’m talking about grown men and women here. I turned on the Celtics-Lakers game from Boston the other night, and at least half the men were wearing a basketball jersey. With somebody else’s name on it. What’s that about? Is it because they have a man-crush on the player? Are they trying to fool us? Are we supposed to think the rotund 5-foot-8 guy with the porn star moustache is actually Kevin Garnett?

People make a big deal out of it when the Cubs or Red Sox are in Atlanta playing the Braves, and a good part of the crowd is cheering for the visitors. All wearing their jerseys. But this is easily explained. See, nobody moves FROM Atlanta TO Chicago or Boston.

We are mainly college sports fans down here, and we do sensible like things to show our support, such as barking like dogs and painting our chests. Mostly it’s the men who do that, except at LSU.

It's irritating when Yankees move down South and make fun of everything. We talk funny, we move too slowly, we like to shoot things, we drink sweet tea, and we marry close relatives. This really offends me. I have never even kissed a cousin on the lips. Not a first cousin, anyway.

I’m sort of kidding here. Some of my best friends are Yankees. Or they’re from Florida, anyway. Same thing. And as long as they don’t try to tell me how to do something, we’ll get along fine.

Us and Them

One of the interesting things about working in corporate America, if you are the creative type, is that you frequently don't know what the hell people are talking about.

I go to a lot of meetings, about 95 percent of which are a waste of time (they have food at the other 5 percent). In the non-food meetings, I generally pass the time by pretending to take notes but actually making lists, like my favorite 100 albums of all time, or all the big cities I’ve visited, or all the famous people I’ve met. If anybody ever asks to borrow my notes, they’ll wonder what Highway 61 Revisited and Pete Rose have to do with the latest supply chain communication plan.

I can't tell you how many times I've been in a meeting, and somebody is up there talking or giving a presentation, and I don't have the foggiest notion what they're talking about. This is in part because I have the attention span of a 4-year-old, and in part because I'm not one of "Them."

In big companies, especially mine, the employee base is divided into those who are just trying to get through each week without getting fired (Us), and the true believers who take all of the BS that flows from the executive suite and swallow it like a big bite of banana pudding (Them).

It can be confusing. Sometimes you think somebody is one of Us, but then you go into a meeting and they are talking about stakeholders and initiatives and branding, and you think, Oh my God. He's one of Them!

This is troubling to the rest of Us, because now we don't know if he has changed sides, or if we just read him wrong, or if he was one of Them all along and has been spying on us! This is such an important topic that I am breaking my long-standing boycott of exclamation marks!

I saw this on a flyer in an elevator in my office building: "Internal brand building is the organization development process to create alignment between an individual's personal brand and the values of the organization." Clearly, that was written by one of Them, because none of Us can understand it.

Seriously, what does that mean? What is an individual brand? Is it like what you put on a cow?

I guess it means self-promotion, which is the fuel that drives success in the corporate world. I hope I don't sound bitter, and I really don't want to leave the impression that being a shameless huckster for yourself is the only way to get ahead. It also helps a lot if you're related to an executive.

Even writers need to be self-promoters, and my lack of such a skill has hampered me in that field, just as it does in the corporate world. I only half-heartedly tried to get my novel published. It didn't help that my cover letters went something like, "Look, I know you're busy, and I hate to be a bother, but if you have a few minutes to kill, you may want to read this and see what you think. You know, no pressure, and I'll understand perfectly if you don't want to publish it. It's really not a big deal. As a matter of fact, forget the whole thing. Sincerely, Mark Williams."

Maybe I should try again, and this time I'll get one of Them to write my cover letter.

School daze

My kids shocked me the other night.

No, they didn’t clean their rooms without being asked, or say, “Wow, dad, you listen to some really cool music.” But they both insisted to me that they were not required to learn state capitals or the presidents when they were in elementary school.

At first, I thought, this can’t be true. After all, they’re teenagers, and their brains are frequently shrouded in hormonal fog, so their recollections may not always be clear. But then I considered the state of education in the country, and particularly in my home state, and it seems like there are a lot things kids aren’t being taught, including that it’s not polite to show your underwear in public.

When I went to elementary school, it was called grammar school, and I knew all of my state capitals in the first grade. I would show off for adults by rattling off the capital of any state they could throw at me. If you think this skill didn’t get me chicks when I got older – well, you’d be right. That didn’t start happening until I won the regional spelling bee in the 10th grade. Had to beat them off with a stick after that.

My very first crush on an older woman occurred when Miss Neal, my second-grade teacher, brought her guitar to school one day and sang “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” I thought she was so pretty, and her voice was like that of an angel. I still get a little chill when I hear that song on the radio, though Levon Helm’s voice is not nearly as sexy.

Miss Neal’s beauty and grace did not stop her, however, from paddling my butt about every other day. I guess if I was some sort of freak that would have added to her appeal, but all I remember is it hurt. Every teacher at that school in those days had a paddle, and they weren’t afraid to use it. The more sadistic ones would get them specially made, and display the pain-maker prominently in the classroom. One day I’m going to write one of those tortured-soul memoirs that are so popular now and blame all of my problems on the culture of corporal punishment at Beaverbrook Elementary School.

The principal had a leather strap in his office, cementing his position as the head ass-whooper. Miss Roberts, my fourth-grade teacher, would walk down the hallway and grab misbehaving boys by the ear, and twist it in her powerful hands with the Kung-fu grip. And you never saw it coming. One minute, you’re putting a cricket down Winnie Darsey’s pants, and the next you’re on your knees, begging for the sweet release of death.

Another form of cruelty I recall from the sixth grade (there were no middle schools then) was when the math teacher divided her class into two sections, one group on one side of the room, one on the other. It didn’t take long to figure out that it was smart kids on one side, stupid kids on the other. I sort of felt sorry for the stupid kids, and I could see them eyeing me with burning anger, especially after I wiped the floor with them in the flash-card game. I could tell you the answer to “nine times six” in lightning speed. Go ahead, test me.

I’m pretty sure none of this stuff would be allowed today, and it’s probably for the best. The ACLU would come sweeping in, Al Sharpton would organize a march, and Keith Olbermann would call the teachers the “worst persons in the world.” And I don’t want teachers beating my kids with paddles and leather straps. That’s my job.

But would it kill them to learn a little bit about Chester B. Arthur?

Bang the drum slowly

“Say you’re going to put your old band back together again,
Just gotta find a drummer who understands” – Blue Rodeo, Rage.

So there was a great story on CNN.com the other day (http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/07/alabama.drummer.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch) about the members of the country group Alabama suing their drummer, because he was overpaid. Without knowing the facts of the case, let me state for the record that I am on their side. If the guy got paid $1, he was overpaid.

The guy probably not only got overpaid, he probably drank so much beer backstage that he owes them money. They should probably check their wallets and get their wives and girlfriends test for infectious diseases.

I guess it is obvious I’m not a big fan of drummers. I will stipulate for the record there are some pretty good ones – Charlie Watts, Pete Thomas, Max Weinberg, Ringo, etc. But really, for the most part, they are an insufferable lot.

I had a band few years ago and it basically fell apart because the drummer was down to about 20 working brain cells, which I realize is a lot for a drummer, and he had trouble remembering little things, like when we were practicing, or how to play the songs.

During my last failed attempt at getting a band together, the main obstacle was not being able to find a drummer. I would place an ad on a musicians’ Web site, stating that we were a country-rock band, we liked people such as Merle Haggard, Steve Earle, etc., and we were looking for a drummer who played in a simple, basic style.

The typical drummer’s response went something like this: “Yo! I am a kick-ass!! drummer. I have ben in bands befour, I play funk, classic rock, moetown, jazz, ANYTHING THAT ROCKS! I havent played country muzic but will try. I have pro gear and attitude.” I nearly wore out the delete button on my computer responding to these ads.

One night, the other two guys and I went to try out a drummer named Greg. The house was in a neighborhood that I believe was named “Cars Up On Cement Blocks In Every Front Yard.” I was met at the front door by this scrawny creature with stringy blonde hair, chain smoking and drinking white zinfandel from a plastic cup. This must be the wife, I thought, probably number four or five.

Greg greeted me by saying, “When did you get out of prison?” He wore a muscle shirt and sported a mullet and some tattoos that looked to have been drawn by Satanic school children. We explained to him our style of music, and he nodded, and proceeded to make everything sound like a faster version of “When the Levee Breaks.” After two songs I was legally deaf.

After a while his cell phone rang, and he got a serious look on his face. I noticed his wife had disappeared, and then I picked up on what he was saying on the phone. The phrase that particularly caught my ear was, “Well, officer, how much money am I going to need to get her out of jail?”

Greg got off the phone and explained that his wife had slipped away, and had been pulled over for an expired tag, and the officers had discovered that she had an outstanding warrant for a bad check charge. Oh, and the reason they had spotted her in the first place was because she was pulling out of a CRACK HOUSE they had under surveillance. All this had happened in less than 30 minutes.

Seems that old Greg’s woman had some trouble with the rock, and he had spent thousands of dollars on her in rehab, and she had a habit of sneaking off and doing crack, and I guess I should have felt empathy but I just thought, “What the hell am I doing here?”

I left and never found out what happened to her, but I had finally learned a lesson: If I ever want to play music again, I’ll invest in a drum machine.

Hands off my cheese

I used to work for this great, big bank, and I won’t give its name, but I will tell you that it was in America.

I was not really a great match there, personality-wise. I fit in about like Jeremiah Wright at a John Birch Society meeting.

I remember one day, we were on a conference call. They love conference calls in corporate America. The secret to surviving them is to make sure you’re sitting in your own office or cubicle, have a mute button on your phone, and play computer Solitaire until it’s your turn to speak. Then just say some nonsense, throwing in words like “synergies” and “leveraging” and “benchmarking”, and you’re cool.

So on this day, my boss told us we would all be getting something special in the mail in a day or two, and we would have another conference call the next week to discuss it. She was very excited and said we were all going to like it. Great, I thought. Maybe it’s a bonus check, or a nice golf shirt with the new logo on it, or at least a coozie.

The package arrived, and I eagerly tore it open (I was not that far removed from my newspaper days, so the thought of getting anything free still sent me into an orgasmic frenzy.)

It was a book. The name of this book was Who Moved My Cheese? I turned it over a couple of times in my hand and wondered why she had sent us a children’s book. There were little mice on the cover. Well, at least I can take it home and read it to the kids, I thought.

But it was no children’s book. It was some sort of stupid motivational book and the cheese was supposed to represent happiness or success, and it helped you deal with “change.” By the way, in the corporate world, “change” is a code word for massive layoffs.

I walked around the office with the book in my hands doing my best Nigel Tufnel impression – “Is this a joke? Excuse me, is this a joke?” The next week, when we had the follow-up conference call, EVERYBODY ELSE HAD READ THE BOOK. Then they discussed it. They found it really helpful. Apparently, it was the best mouse-related book since “Of Mice and Men.” I never made it past page three, when the mice started talking. Rodents creep me out anyway.

The most eager fan of the book was this guy named Brad. Brad and I weren’t really that close. I worked with him for two years and never bothered to learn his last name. For a while I just referred to him as that “pasty-faced fella.” Brad was the kind of guy who would go antiquing with his wife on a Sunday and not only not complain that he was missing the last round of The Masters, but not even care! I have no use for a guy like that.

Once, on an interminable conference call, Brad was going on and on about some program to “incent” employees. My boss, who suspected I was playing Solitaire (I was) and not listening (I wasn’t) tried to trip me up by saying into the phone “Mark, what do you think about what Brad had to say?”

I scrambled to un-mute the phone and I said, “Well, first of all, Brad, I’m not really sure that ‘incent’ is actually a word.” Dead silence. You’d have thought I’d told a dead baby joke or something.

Not long after that, they had a big corporate re-organization, and they moved me and my cheese right out of there. I wonder what old Brad is up to these days? Probably out there somewhere incenting people.

Watch what you say

Do you remember after Sept. 11, 2001, when comedian Bill Maher made a comment that was interpreted by some as being supportive of the terrorists, and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said people should “watch what they say?”

I think old Ari was right, but I don’t mean in a political sense. I mean, more specifically, people should watch what they say to me. Here’s an example.

The other night I was in Savannah, for work, alone, and I went down to River Street to grab something to eat. I was out early, around 5, the time when the senior citizens usually start descending on restaurants. I found a little place and decided to eat at the bar, and for some reason I felt compelled to explain to the waitress why I was eating dinner so early. And alone.

“I’m starved. I had to get up at 5:30 this morning, and then I didn’t get to eat lunch. I think I’ll get a steak.” There, I thought. Now she understands that the reason I’m eating so early is not because I am a loser. Clearly, I am not a loser, and it’s important that this anonymous waitress, whom I will never see again in my life, understands that.

The place was kind of empty, so she didn’t have much to do. As I ate, she worked furiously on a USA Today crossword puzzle, and was stuck on a couple of the clues and needed my help. One was the name of a Led Zeppelin song, ____ Maker. I told her it was D’yer, but didn’t bother to explain that it was supposed to be pronounced “Jer Maker” in honor of Jamaica, because it has a reggae feel to it. Just say no to drugs, kids.

Then she was stumped by another clue: Actress Barbara ____ (four letters). Streisand was all she could come up with, but she quickly divined that to be more than four letters. So I said, “I think it’s Barbara Eden. You know, from I Dream of Jeannie.” (Man, did I used to dream of Jeannie!) She looked at me blankly, like I was making it up, but she filled in the puzzle.

She gave me the old line, “That was on before I was born.” Apparently, people think they should only know about things that happened after they were born. For this girl, that would rule out all knowledge of Creation, the life of Jesus, Columbus’ voyage to America, the Revolutionary War, the assassination of President Kennedy and disco music. There’s more, but I’m just hitting the highlights in a Billy Joel sort of way.

I helped her out with a couple more clues and she was done. “These puzzles are usually easy, but I don’t know what was up with this one today,” she said. “It’s like they did it so only old people would know the answers.”

Ouch! I wanted to scream, “I’m not old!” I’m only 44, but often mistaken for a man of 43. I’m still virile! I play sports. Sure, it’s church league, coed softball, but I play it at a very high level, unless I’m battling a pulled muscle or an attack of the gout. I have all my hair, even though it’s turning gray faster than the polar ice caps are melting. And sure, my bones creak and pop so much that when I walk up the stairs at night I sound like a bag of microwave popcorn. But to a 25-year-old, I guess I’m old.

I paid my bill and got up to leave, and she asked me to hang on a second. Then she walked up to me and asked me my name, and I thought “Oh, no. This poor young thing must like older men. She’s going to ask me to come back when she gets off work, or try to find out what hotel I’m staying in. I’m going to have to tell her that I’m married and I can’t see her. I hope it doesn’t upset her too much.”

Anyway, she reached out her hand and said “It was nice to meet you, Mark. Now, go get yourself some sleep.”

It was 6:15 p.m. I walked out indignantly into the late afternoon Savannah heat, flipped on my stylish Panama Jack sunglasses, breathed in the river air and strode confidently back to my hotel. That bed really did feel good.

And if you’re reading this, little miss waitress, I didn’t fall asleep until well past 9.

Getting lucky

Out behind my house, in a fenced-in area with a terrain resembling that of the moon, resides a fat, filthy, ill-mannered beast named Lucky.

Lucky is some sort of mongrel dog. I suspect she is mostly Labrador retriever, and part Tasmanian devil. If you’ve ever seen the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, you know what I mean.

I must say that all of Lucky’s havoc-wreaking is good-natured, unless you are a small animal like a squirrel, chipmunk, rat, frog or bird, all of which have died by her hand – er, paws. She patrols the back yard like a hairy sentry, defending her home and her family against all intruders. Except people. She loves people.

In other words, she’s not a watchdog. If Charles Manson came over the fence carrying a machete, she’d run up and lick that swastika on his forehead. When Lucky sees somebody new, she does not consider them a danger. I believe she asks herself two questions: Does this person have food? Will this person pet me?

If the answer to both is no, then she shamelessly begs for attention, reaching out her paw, or flopping down on the ground in anticipation.

I brought her home from a pet store about four years ago. We went to adopt a puppy, and they had all sorts of fancy breeds, but the people from our local humane society had a number of rules and regulations you had to meet before they’d let you adopt. There was a waiting period, they had to come check out your home, make sure you weren’t in the Communist party, didn’t hang out with Michael Vick, etc. I’m not one for such scrutiny. I won’t even give my phone number out to the hapless cashiers at Best Buy.

After bristling at the adoption Gestapo, my attention was drawn to a little pen in the middle of the store, where several mangy looking dogs were hanging out, courtesy of the Jasper County Humane Society. I went to take a look and this happy-looking white dog, about 6 months old, came immediately up and began to lick me. This began a pattern that has not abated.

Her name was Cissy. We brought her home, and changed her name to Lucky, because Cissy reminded me of Family Affair, and as I recall that girl came to a bad end. Or maybe it was Buffy. Anyway, we bought her a dog house, which she refused to go in for three years. We got her a water dish, and she splashed all the water out every time we filled it. Nobody warned me the dog had mental problems.

The first thing she did was destroy the nice flower bed we had around a crepe myrtle bush. She decided that was a better place to sleep than the dog house. Then she ate an azalea bush, part of a plum tree, and a good three inches of siding from the back of the house. And then came the digging. Indiana Jones never dug holes like this dog did. I don’t stop her because I’m hoping one day she’ll strike oil.

Every now and then, she bolts out of the gate and tears around the neighborhood like a demon spirit, and I have to chase her down and guide her back home, even as she digs in and bows up and refuses to move. I’m sure the neighbors who have seen these encounters have called the Humane Society and reported me for inflicting emotional distress on the dog, but they never tried to drag an 80-pound hairball down the sidewalk, either.

And besides, all is forgiven when we get in the back yard, and I slip her some cheese, and she licks me until every inch of my exposed skin is covered with slobber. Ain’t love grand?