Shopping in a warehouse

The other day my wife and I found ourselves in the parking lot at the enormous warehouse store, Sam’s Club. We got out of the car and I looked at her and asked why we were there, and she said, “I don’t know.”

This was surely a sign that we should have gotten in the car and gone back home, but no, we forged ahead, with a pledge to each other not to spend too much money. An hour later we were $200 poorer and headed home with a carful of stuff, and I have no idea why we bought any of it.

When we first walked in, I was greeted by dozens of flat-screen TVs. It was Sunday, so there were football games on. I stood there, mesmerized, like a 15-year-old boy in a strip club, with my mouth watering almost as much.

Never mind that just last month I was contemplating putting my baseball card collection on EBay just so I could pay the cell phone bill. I was stricken with flat-screen TV fever, and found myself thinking things like, “You know, $2,500 is not really a bad deal for a TV like that. I mean, think how much use I’ll get out of it!” We’re probably the only people on our block who still have a round-screened TV, or whatever you call those old things.

Those warehouse stores are the devil’s workshop, I can tell you that. There are three people living in my house right now, so why would I need a package of 60 rolls of toilet paper? Yet we bought one. You go in those places thinking you’re just going to buy paper towels, and you walk out with a new living room set, a pressure washer and 27 pounds of frozen shrimp.

The most crowded part of the warehouse store is the food section, because of all the free samples. There were people lined up, 8 or 9 deep, at some of the sampling stations. I swear, some people come there for their Sunday dinner, which is fine, if you want to eat your entire Sunday dinner off of toothpicks.

I bought some interesting things on my most recent trip there. I got a new white dress shirt. Some men buy their clothes at Brooks Brothers, I get mine at Sam’s Club. It might explain why I’m not exactly shooting up the old corporate ladder.

I also bought an enormous collection of hot chocolate. There are, like, 8 different kinds of hot chocolate in there, which seems great, until you get home and realize that your favorite flavor of hot chocolate is, you know, chocolate. That, and I drink about 5 cups of it a year. So I’m covered when it comes to hot chocolate until 2021.

We grabbed a few other things we desperately needed while there – a box of pomegranates; 50 chicken wings; a pack of reading glasses; and enough laundry detergent to wash 212 loads. We chose this one over the laundry detergent that could only promise 210 loads. Since our daughter came home from college this weekend and brought her laundry, we’re already down to about 110 loads left.

I think I need to stay away from Sam’s for a while. I’ll go back when I run out of toilet paper, which should coincide with the next visit from Halley’s Comet, unless I actually need something from there in the meantime. You know, I could really use that pressure washer…..

Home remedies

I try not to do the “you kids don’t know how easy you have it” speech with my children very often, because I realize that each generation has its own set of problems and issues to deal with. For example, it is very hard for my son do his homework while playing a video game online with his friends and texting his girlfriend. I didn’t have these pressures. I just, you know, did my homework.

But I must say that there have been some improvements in medicine that have definitely worked to their advantage. For example, they have never had their skin burned by the compound of red death otherwise known as “merthiolate”, or “mercurochrome.”

My mother loved me, I am sure, but she did not miss an opportunity to put this stuff on me. It supposedly was some sort of antiseptic, and every time I had the smallest of scratches, she would drag me into the bathroom and get out the little dropper and put some merthiolate on me.

Words can’t describe how this stuff burned. She may as well have dipped a fireplace poker in the fire and branded me with it. And not only did it burn, it turned your skin bright red. How did anybody think this was a healing agent?

It got to where I would hide my injuries. I could have walked into a running chain saw, and I wouldn’t have told my mother, because I knew exactly what she would do. This got to be difficult, because I was a little boy and naturally got scratched and scraped up daily. But I would just put on long sleeves and long pants and a stocking cap until everything healed up.

I did some research on this and I’ve discovered that they don’t use merthiolate or mercurochrome much anymore because, for one, it doesn’t work, and for two, it’s TOXIC! Well, heck, I could have told you that when it was burning a hole in my skin.

Another favorite cure of hers was hydrogen peroxide. This wasn’t as bad; it didn’t burn, it just bubbled on your wound. Again, I’m not sure that something that causes a chemical reaction on your skin is doing you much good, but it’s good for a few minutes of fun if you’re sitting around the house bored. Wait, am I the only one who does that?

When I would get ulcers in my mouth, my mom had another homemade remedy – Goody powders. Ulcers are very painful, so I was willing to try anything to make it feel better when I had one. It was simple, you just poured a Goody powder directly onto the ulcer. For about five minutes after doing this, the pain was unbearable. I would literally drop to my knees, tears running down my face, as the throbbing pain coursed through my mouth. I remember looking at my mom the first time she had me do this and wanting to say, “Why do you hate me?”, but of course I didn’t say anything, because my mouth felt like I had swallowed burning charcoal.

But, before long, that pain went away and the ulcer didn’t hurt at all. I could eat and drink all I wanted without pain, until the Goody’s powder wore off in a couple of hours. I have since learned from a dentist that putting a headache powder on an ulcer like actually burns the skin and prolongs healing, and is a bad idea. I have to tell you, though, it brought me a lot of relief back then. I will neither recommend nor discourage this home remedy.

If I got a fever blister, which I often did, my mom had a special remedy that she got from a local pharmacist. This stuff wasn’t over-the-counter, it was under-the-counter, because it was a homemade concoction that the guy had come up with. It contained ether and was, apparently, illegal. But I have to tell you, it worked. That pharmacist either retired or got arrested, I’m not sure, but I know you can’t get his ether cure anymore.

Some of this sounds pretty bad in retrospect, but I survived it. My mother meant only the best for me, and even if her home remedies could have killed me, it would have all been out of love.

All's fair at the fair

The fall of the year, as my mother used to call it, is upon us, and that brings back memories of the old Griffin-Spalding County Fair. I remember being excited when the multi-colored billboards would start to appear around the county, promising the coming of the fair with its rides and games and incredibly unhealthy but delicious food.

I always loved going to the fair. I loved riding (some of) the rides. I loved eating corn dogs and cotton candy. I even loved going to see the livestock exhibit, which smelled to high heaven, but where else was I going to see goats and pigs and enormous piles of cow droppings?

As I look back on it now, though, the fair could be a pretty dangerous place. My parents, once I got old enough, used to drop me off, then come back and pick me up. We don’t do this anymore with our children, since we’re all over-protective, and we’ve seen episodes of Dateline on NBC.

The most dangerous aspect of the fair was, of course, the people who traveled with the carnival. Do you remember when, just before the invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein opened the doors to all of the prisons and insane asylums in Baghdad and let the inhabitants roam the streets? Well, that pretty much describes your average collection of carnival workers.

These dregs of society manned the rides and the carnival games. Here’s a fun guessing game – which does the guy running the game have more of, fingers, teeth or times arrested? Ok, it’s not really a fair game. “Times arrested” always wins.

Then there were the rides, which were rusty and creaky and probably hadn’t been inspected since FDR was president. I can remember excitedly climbing on those rides, paying no heed to the fact that they were being held together by Scotch tape and chewing gum.

There was one particularly insidious ride called the “Skydiver.” On this contraption, you were strapped into a metal cage which was attached to a big wheel, similar to a Ferris wheel. And as you went around in circles, the cage would roll over. You could control how much it rolled, if it all, with a steering wheel inside the cage of death. Why this appealed to anyone, I never knew.

I would never ride it as a kid, always making the excuse “that looks lame” or “it doesn’t go fast enough.” The truth was, the mere sight of it scared me to death. Who were these crazy people climbing on that thing and letting the winner of a Charles Manson look-alike contest pull a lever that controlled their fate?

So one year, when I was a little older and had a fancy job at the Food Giant grocery store and a 1968 Mustang with a white vinyl top and a little spending money in my pockets, I took a young lady to the fair. That’s a romantic scenario you see in a lot of movies, right? Young lovers, strolling down the midway hand in hand, the girl eating some cotton candy while clutching a stuffed unicorn the boy won for her at a carnival game; the boy, strutting on the sawdust, pulling his girl close and hoping to steal a kiss on the merry-go-round.

Well, I take this crazy chick to the fair, and the first thing she does is point to the Skydiver and say, “I want to ride that!” I pretended to not hear her, and instead steered her to the carnival games. “Let me win you a stuffed animal,” I said. She said OK, but I saw her cast one more glance filled with desire at the freaking Skydiver, and I knew I was in trouble.

The first game we went to required me to knock over some bottles with a softball. This, I thought, would be easy. I was a pretty fair country ball player and had a good arm. What I didn’t know was that the parolee running the game had filled the bottles with something like iron or kryptonite, and it would have taken a hydrogen bomb to knock one down.

Then we went to basketball shooting game. I was a good shot back in those days, but all three of my attempts clanked off the rim which, I’m guessing, was actually smaller in circumference than the basketball. I was running out of money and pride, and not impressing my date.

Finally, I found a game where you tossed softballs into a basket. This seemed pretty easy, so I stepped up and did it on the first try, and beamed at my date, and the chain gang escapee handed me, I’m not kidding, a small piece of shag carpet. Wait a minute, I said, pointing to colorful stuff elephants and giraffes, what about those? Oh, to win that you have to throw it in one of those, he said, pointing to a basket about as big around as a doughnut. I knew I had been defeated.

“Come on,” I said to my date, once I found her again, “let me buy you a corn dog or some cotton candy.”

“That stuff is gross,” she said. “Let’s go ride something.”

“OK,” I sighed, and before I could point her toward the Tilt-o-Whirl, she grabbed my hand and began sprinting toward the Skydiver. My fate was sealed. The only possible chance I had at even getting a peck on the cheek was to climb aboard that death machine and test my fate.

We got on the thing, and I tried to lean in close to her, but this maniac was already turning the steering wheel, trying to get us upside down before the ride even started. I took my arm from around and began to fight for control. I saw that I was losing this battle, and I decided right then and there that no kiss was worth this, and I tried to open the door and get out, but Cool Hand Luke hit the start button, and away we went.

Around and around we went, with Sybil beside me trying to make the cage spin, and me holding on for dear life. I may as well have not even been on the ride – she was in love with the thrill, and not me. After about 10 times around, we get to the top of the ride – and it stops. Dead. Apparently, there was a mechanical issue with the ride.

I look down, and the guy’s walking around with a screwdriver, trying to figure out how to get the ride going again. I was thinking of jumping out, but my date keep spinning the cage, and finally I told her, “If you do that one more time, I’m going to throw up on you.” I guess the greenish tint to my face convinced her that I was serious, so she stopped her foolishness, and sulked as I held the steering wheel steady, keeping us upright until the ride got going.

Finally, it started up again, and when I reached solid ground I bolted out of the door and began wobbling back up the midway, ready to go home. My date was walking behind me when she saw a group of her friends, and she said, “If you’re not feeling well, I’ll just hang out with my friends and have one of them take me home and you can leave.”

I nodded my head, mumbled something and left her in the sawdust. I glanced over my shoulder and all I saw was her blonde hair bouncing as she ran back toward the Skydiver, and we didn’t go on any more dates.
Oh, and I kept the piece of shag carpet.

It's in the bag

The other night I heard a cell phone ringing somewhere in the kitchen. I knew it wasn’t mine, because my ringtone is the opening riff from “Whole Lotta Love,” cause I’m just cool like that.

I figured it must be my wife’s, and I could hear that she was upstairs in the shower, so I decided to go get it and, depending on whose number showed up on caller ID, answer it and let whoever it was know that she wasn’t available, or just pretend I didn’t hear it ringing.

I finally traced the signal to somewhere on the kitchen table, then realized it was coming from the bowels of her purse. So I opened the purse, looked in and realized I would not be able to find an atomic device in that mess, let alone a small cell phone.

What is it with women and their purses? I actually dug in there a little bit to try and find the phone, and came up with all sort of stuff – receipts from the 1990s, emery boards, mysterious clumps of keys, makeup, tissue, and about $17 worth of pennies and nickels. It looked like a miniature recycling center in there.

A woman’s purse is a mysterious hinterland best left alone by men. My mother used to call hers a pocketbook, but I don’t hear that term much anymore. I can remember when I was a kid, she could reach in there and produce anything she needed. For example, she always seems to have a wet rag in a plastic bag, which she would use to wipe my face before we went into a store or somebody’s house. And if I needed a Band-aid or an aspirin or a cough drop, she’d reach in there like a magician and, voila, pull it out.

I have seen women around my office carrying purses that are as big as they are. And most of the women I see at work are not just carrying a purse, but also a couple of other bags draped around their body. I feel a little guilty sometimes when I get on the elevator in the morning, not carrying a thing, everything I need stuffed into my pants pockets, when some poor 100-pound woman gets on looking like a roadie for The Who, carrying twice her body weight in assorted purses, bags and satchels.

What is in all of these bags? Are these women carrying out secret company documents? Are they smuggling drugs? I just don’t see the purpose.

They like to change their purses a lot, too. I’ll carry a wallet around until it’s held together by duct tape, but they change purses like they change their underwear. My wife will say, “I need a new purse,” and I’ll say, “But you just got one,” and she just says “It’s a woman thing. You don’t understand” And since I’ve admitted that I don’t understand women, I’ve painted myself into a corner and I don’t have a defense.

I could deal with it until one day, she took me into a Coach purse store. Apparently, Coach is a brand of purse that’s not available at, say, Walgreens. I mean, I should have known what I was in for when a brand of purses has its own store.

Anyway, I got bored, as a straight man is bound to do in a store pull of women’s purses, and I decided to just look at a couple of the price tags, to see what this was going to set me back. Holy Moly! “Are we buying a purse or a Toyota?” I asked my wife. I mean, when you have to finance something that you just use to carry stuff around, you’re paying too much for it.

Maybe I exaggerate, but I don’t think anyone will think any less of my wife, or any women, if they carry the same purse around for more than two weeks at a time. Just get a shovel and clean it out once in a while, and it will last you a good long time.

Rock and roll!

I dropped my daughter off at the University of Georgia Wednesday, as we moved her into her dorm. I’ll give them credit at UGA – they’ve made the process of doing this so incredibly hot and difficult that you wind up being too tired to break into tears when you say your goodbyes.

Instead of going home and moping, my wife and I went to a concert at Philips Arena that night. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were the headliners and, let me tell you, they flat-out rocked the house. You can tell I’m old because I use phrases like “rocked the house.”

I had scored some last minute seats that became available for only $20 apiece. They were on the side of the stage, but very close, so we had a great view and didn’t need a second mortgage to buy the tickets, like the people right in front of the stage had to do.

The opening act was Crosby, Stills and Nash, as part of their “Can you believe we’re still alive?” tour. I’ve always said there were only three things I didn’t like about Crosby, Stills and Nash – Crosby, Stills and Nash. But, I reasoned, how bad can it be? At the worst, they’ll just come out and bore us to death with acoustic guitars.

Man, was I wrong about that one. They came out and bored me to death with electric guitars. At 7:30 sharp, David Crosby’s liver crawled out on stage, and the boys kicked into their version of “Woodstock.” The guy sitting next to me in a Woodstock 1969 t-shirt seemed to enjoy it, but that was probably just the acid flashbacks talking.

The sidestage view allowed me to notice some things I normally wouldn’t have seen. For instance, Stephen Stills has a bald spot the size of a manhole cover. David Crosby at one point turned his back to the audience, walked over near the drummer and very subtly, um, adjusted himself. As for Graham Nash – he was barefoot, and walked around with a glass of wine, and, well, I’m not entirely sure why he was even there.

I also noticed they had a monitor in front of the stage that was scrolling the lyrics to the songs. Really, guys, you don’t know “Teach Your Children” by now? Of course, I guess at their age, they probably can’t even remember if they put their teeth in that morning. I also saw a few young ladies on the front row throwing some fetching glances at CS&N, and dancing a little suggestively, though I’m not sure how you dance to those songs. Now, come on, girls. You’re going to need a case of Viagra and a defibrillator if you plan to hook up with these boys after the show.

All right, all right, I’m just kidding about the age thing. I sort of admire that men of advanced age can still get on stage and perform. It’s just that nobody ever thought rock and roll, and rock and roll musicians, would last this long. I remember seeing an old interview where a very young Paul McCartney said he’d feel silly, standing on stage at 30 years old singing “All My Loving.” He’s about 70 now and still doing it.

However, some of the concert attendees – well, they perhaps should make a concession or two to their age. Some of these women apparently have a magic mirror in their house, so when they look at themselves in their mini-dress and halter-top, they see how they looked in 1985. The rest of us, however, are subjected to how they look NOW, and it’s often not a pretty sight.

I used to think it was pathetic for old (over 30) people to go see old (over 30) rock stars play music, but now, what the heck? I’ll probably keep going even after the bands come onstage with a walker, and I’m hooked up to an oxygen tank. Long live rock and roll.

All grown up

It was the early morning hours of Jan. 2, 1992 in a small rental house in Milledgeville, Ga. I had just crawled into bed after watching the New Year’s Day football games. Miami had defeated Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, and I was tired after a hard day of eating Doritos and manning the remote control from the couch.

Not long after I got under the covers, my wife Susan said, “Mark, I think something is happening.” I muttered something along the lines of “arrgehhhummfff” and went back to sleep.

Then she stood up and she said, “I’m serious. My water just broke.”

“It’s ok,” I mumbled, half-asleep. “I’ll get you another one.”

Then recognition crept in, and I realized what she meant. I jumped out of bed and ran around the house like Ricky Ricardo, getting everything ready to drive 40 miles to a Macon hospital for my wife to give birth to our first child.

We got to the hospital and, a mere 18 hours later, our new baby came into the world, a daughter we named Alice Susan and decided to call Allie. She came in screaming her head off, which was a sign of things to come.

I was accused by other members of the family, specifically my mother-in-law, of monopolizing my little girl in her first few days of life, not letting anybody else hold her. Most photographic evidence from the time supports this, as she seems to be in my arms in every picture. Fine, guilty as charged. My message to the world was clear – she’s mine. You can’t have her.

We brought her home and her first night, a miracle happened, as snow fell softly outside during the night, something that almost never happened in Milledgeville. Little did we know, this would be our last peaceful moment for the next six months.

This child did not like to sleep. Well, not at night, anyway. Being a modern dad, I alternated with my wife getting up with the baby, to feed her or change or just listen to her scream for half an hour. We both began to dread the words, “It’s your turn.”
But we survived, and the beautiful little baby turned into a beautiful little girl, with an angelic face, and a healthy dose of attitude. One of my most vivid memories came when she was not even two years old, and was sitting in the living room watching “Barney”. She was very close to the TV set, so I said “Allie, honey, back up from the TV. You’re too close.” She ignored me, so I said “If you don’t move back, I’m going to turn the TV off.” So she scooted back a little, and I heard her say, under her breath, “Whatever.” I swear I’m not making this up.

Being a parent makes you go a little crazy. It makes you want to walk down the street and slap a 6-year-old girl who made your daughter cry. It makes you want to call for a federal investigation into the basketball coach who didn’t put her on the team. It makes you cry at kindergarten graduations and it makes you tremble in fear every time you hear a siren and your child is not at home.

There’s a line in a John Prine song, “Time don’t fly, it bounds and leaps.” That is so true. Because 18 years have leapt by me, and next week I am going to take my baby up to The University of Georgia – which, just last week, was declared the top “party school” in the United States. Well, that’s just great.

I know a lot of people who have had children go off to college, and when I talk to them about it, they give me this look of pity that says, “You don’t know what you’re in for.” Well, I know it’s not going to be easy. I can imagine that drive back from Athens is going to be a pretty quiet one.

But I also know that, at some point, you have to let them go. You have to let them become adults, even though they give you reasons daily to wonder how they’re going to survive in the world. But she’s a smart girl, and she’ll make her own mistakes, and she’ll figure it out.

I can only hope that all those times I’ve annoyed her by telling her what not to do, and all of those times I’ve treated her “like a baby”, and all of those words of advice that caused her to roll her eyes, are going to actually have a positive effect.

And even though she’s going to be on her own, my message is the same. She’s still mine. You still can’t have her.

Aging ungracefully

I don’t know how much I’m enjoying getting older.

Oh, wait, yes I do – not at all.

I’m sure you’ve heard all that crap about the advantages of getting older – wisdom, experience, maturity. It’s all overrated.

Do I know more things than I used to? Theoretically, yes. But I also forget things much more often. So knowledge may be flowing into my brain, but it’s flowing right back out, sweeping along with it all sorts of important information, like “Where did I park today?” and “Why did I walk into the bathroom?”

I mean, I am forgetting things immediately. This morning I had a headache, and I took down the bottle of pills, and 30 seconds later I looked at the pills and thought, “Wait. Did I just take two of those?” I honestly couldn’t remember. So to be safe, I took two more. The headache is gone, though my liver may now be damaged.

I will frequently go to google.com on my computer, and just sit there and stare at the screen, because I’ve already forgotten what I was searching for. Usually it’s something important, like “How old is Salma Hayek?”

Another not-so-fun part of aging is that I tend to repeat myself. And not only that, but I tend to repeat myself.

Then there are the physical ravages of time. I have a debit card with my photo on it. That photo is about 10 or 11 years old. In my mind’s eyes, that’s still the way I look – dashing, handsome, a little danger lurking behind the eyes. (Keep in the mind that I’m jacked up on headache meds as I type this).

Anyway, a friend sitting next to me saw my card and then looked at the real me and said, “Wow, all of that in only 10 years.” Meaning, Dude, you have gone downhill! Then to soften the blow, she said, “It happens to us all.” That was comforting. That’s like telling somebody, “Hey, you’re not the ugliest person I’ve ever seen.”

And the old body sure ain’t what it used to be. I used to run a lot. Less than two years ago, I did a half-marathon. But circumstances caused me to take a long break from running, and I’ve recently tried to get it going again. I’m not really sure you could what I’m doing “running.” Last time I ran, a turtle passed me. My legs felt like they were encased in cement, my lungs burned, and I was sweating like a Tennessee football player taking a drug test. And this was just walking from the car to the track.

I have hairs growing in new places and hair that’s turning gray. I had an MRI the other day and the doctor called to tell me that I have a fatty liver. So now, I’m on some liver-cleansing diet. It’s as wonderful as it sounds. The good news is, I’m bound to forget that I’m on it soon, and I’ll start eating real food again.

And yes, I know, getting old beats the alternative, and I should be thankful that I’m as healthy as I am, and I agree with all of that, I suppose. Wait, what was I talking about again?

Leaving the nest

As a parent of teenagers, I am starting to face the oncoming empty nest syndrome.

My daughter has a job now, and will soon be heading off to the University of Georgia. My son has a girlfriend, car and drivers’ license, so I see him about as often as Halley’s Comet. Sometimes I walk through a quiet house that once was full of life and I get a little sad, thinking of them being gone for good.

And then other times I think, “Bring it on!”

Sure, I’ll miss them. But there are a lot of things I won’t miss. I won’t miss, for example, having to move three cars every time I need to back out of the driveway. I won’t miss lathering up my face with shaving cream, then opening a drawer to discover my razor has been “borrowed.” And I won’t miss never getting a good night’s sleep.

The other night, my wife and I were lying in bed asleep, since it was after 11 p.m. and we’re old. The bedroom door burst open and in stormed my 18-year-old daughter. She is a very girly, pretty, sweet girl, but at night she walks around the house like a water buffalo. She slams doors and cabinets and makes enough noise to scare away the devil. I should have known something was up when she didn’t sleep through a single night the first six months of her life. It was a bad omen.

On the night in question, she stomped through the room, opened the bathroom door, flipped on a light, grabbed something, and walked back out. “Don’t mind us,” I called out as she slammed the door behind her. “We’re just sleeping.”

The next night, I had hope of actually getting some sleep. My son was off at a church camp about 30 miles away, and my daughter was working late and wouldn’t be home until midnight. I was hoping I could be sound asleep by the time she blew into the house like a hurricane, as is her style.

At about 11:30, the phone rang. Any parent with children of driving age knows the absolute terror that sound can cause. You answer the phone in fear, praying that you won’t be hearing a state trooper on the other end of the line, or that your child is not calling you from a pay phone in the county jail or a wedding chapel in Gatlinburg. My fear quickly subsided, though, when I heard, “Uh, dad, see, what happened was, my car keys jumped out my hand, and got stuck in the ignition, and then I panicked and accidentally hit the lock button and closed the door, and…”

Suddenly, feared turned to anger. At this point I was fully awake and I said, “You locked your keys in your car AGAIN?” Then, to make sure I didn’t say anything that would be used against me later in a child protective services’ hearing, I did the smart thing and handed the phone to his mother. I tried to fall back asleep as they worked out the details of how to get the spare key to him. I knew I was going to wind up getting screwed in this deal, so I figured I’d at least try to get rested before my early morning drive.

Of course, within a few minutes the phone rang again. It was my daughter, thoughtfully letting us know that instead of midnight, she might not get home until 12:15. I know, I know, I should count my lucky stars that she was thoughtful enough to call me. Yep, that’s exactly what I was thinking. I’m a lucky, lucky man.

Speaking of Lucky – I had just laid my head down on my pillow when she decided to add to the fracas with some poorly-timed and very loud barks. I went to the back door and put it to her straight – “Look, I can’t do this with the rest of them, but if you don’t shut up I will duct-tape your mouth closed and put you in the trunk of a car until the morning.” She’s not leaving the nest, so I have to be a little more proactive with her.

Before I know it, I’ll be getting a good night’s sleep, I’ll always know where my razor is, and I won’t have to drive 60 extra miles on the way to work to unlock somebody’s car. And I’ll probably hate it.

Cold hard cash

My daughter got her own debit card the other today. I haven’t read the Book of Revelation lately, but I’m pretty sure that’s one of the signs of the apocalypse.

I think my kids believe that debit cards are magic. They don’t fully comprehend the concept yet that without money in the bank account, the debit card is worthless. It’s like the old joke, I can’t be broke, I still have checks!

I was a full-grown adult by the time debit cards came into existence, and replaced cash in my wallet. You can buy just about anything anywhere with a debit card, but every now and then that dependence jumps up to bite me.

For example: I went to a CD store today to buy tickets to go see one of my favorite bands, Blue Rodeo, at Smith’s Olde Bar. I talked to the aging hippie who runs the store on the phone and, when the pot residue allowed him to make a complete sentence, he told me that if I got to the store by 2, I would be able to get my tickets.

So I drove all the way up Alpharetta, which is about halfway to the Yukon Territory from my house, and I went in the store, where Anglo-Cheech tried to sell me the tickets. After staring at the computer screen for a few minutes like the little girl watching TV in Poltergeist, he said, “Ok, there it is. That’ll be $34, dude.”

I pulled out my debit card, and he said, “Oh, it’s cash only for tickets.” Cash? What the heck is going on? Who outside of drug dealers, strippers and Congressmen demands to be paid only in cash?

As luck would have it, I did have some cash in my wallet, so I started counting out the bills, laid everything I had on the counter, and it came to – wait for it - $33. I looked at the guy pleadingly and I said, “I have $33 right here.” And he just stared back at me. He wasn’t having it.

“Hang on a sec,” I said, and I went out to my car, got on my hands and knees, scrounged between the seats and under the floor mats and I was able to come up with a quarter, six dimes and three nickels. I now had $34 on the button, so I went in the store, reminded the guy who I was and why I was there, then paid him and walked out with my tickets.

I got in the car, started heading back south, and it hit me – I had to go through the toll booth on Georgia 400, and that costs 50 cents, and I didn’t have it, cause mister dazed and confused wouldn’t cut me a break on the tickets! I got off at the next exit, found an ATM, withdrew some money, stopped in a convenience store for some gum so I wouldn’t have to break a $20 bill at the toll booth, and got back on the road.

I had always wondered what would happen to you if you got to the toll booth and you just flat-out did not have the 50 cents required to go through. Would they drag you out of your car and beat you? Would they impound your car and make you walk home? Do they take IOUs?

I was about to find out. I pulled up to the one of the booths with a cashier, since I didn’t have exact change, and noticed the brand-spanking-new sports car in front of me, which probably cost about $50,000, wasn’t moving, because the driver didn’t have 50 cents! He was talking to the toll-booth lady, who got out of the booth, walked behind his car, took a photograph of his license plate, went back into her booth, then handed him a slip of paper and lifted the gate. Ok, so THAT is what happens.

The moral of this story is, always keep a little cash on hand. You never know when you’re going to run into a toll booth or a Congressman.

Off the payroll

A friend of mine the other day said she gets sad when she hears that song “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin, which is about a dad growing melancholy when his kid grows up and doesn’t seem to have time for him anymore.

Well, yeah, I suppose that can be sad. But I don’t know if it’s as sad as the moment when you realize you’ve been stupid enough to let not one, but two, teenagers have access to your debit card and PIN number.

This is what I was going through the other day. Sometimes I get to feeling masochistic and I want to do bad things to myself, so I sign on to my online banking account and check to see much money has flown out the door the past few days. Here’s a financial tip for you – as long as the rest of my family has access to a debit card, you should invest heavily in Target, Wal-Mart, Kroger, Walgreens and all fast-food restaurants. We’re singlehandedly keeping those businesses in the black.

I joke all the time that I need to get my kids off the payroll. Oh, wait, those aren’t jokes at all. It’s just wishful thinking. Ever gotten a car insurance bill after adding two teen-aged drivers to your policy? I suggest you open it in a bean-bag chair with some smelling salts nearby.

I actually heard “Cat’s in the Cradle” the other day, and I came up with a new song that is sung to the same tune, called “Kid’s on the payroll.” Here it goes:

“Well, the kid’s on the payroll
And I’m always broke
Tell them to save
And they think it’s a joke

When you moving out?
Dad, I don’t know when
I’ll have some money then, son
You know I’ll have some money then.”

I think it could be a hit.

The other day my son went off to the grocery store, his mom’s debit card in hand, to pick up a few things for dinner. Somehow, a few unnecessary things seemed to have jumped into his shopping cart, like a box of cupcakes and a big bag of Doritos.

Later that evening, I took the bag of Doritos from the kitchen and headed out back to grill something for supper and spend some quality time with Lucky, who loves Doritos almost as much as she loves me. My son saw me and said, “Hey, what are you going with my Doritos?”

I looked at him and said, “Your Doritos?” “Yeah,” he said, “I bought them.”

“Oh, you bought them, did you? Tell me, how much did these Doritos cost you?”

“It was like four dollars and something,” he said. I could tell he wasn’t grasping the point, so I said, “No, how much” – and I pointed at his chest, for emphasis – “did they cost you?” Again, he said “Four dollars,” so I said, “Oh, so you paid for these with your own money, or did you use the debit card?”

He said he used the card, so I said, “Well, unless you have opened a secret checking account I don’t know about, you bought these Doritos with MY money.” At which point I opened the bag and ate about 30 of them right in front of him. I gave the rest to Lucky, who is the only one in the family without a debit card, and therefore my current favorite.

Stupid cats

I used to love to read the Peanuts’ comic strips. One of my favorite storylines was Snoopy’s ongoing battles with the cat next door, which he always referred to as “that stupid cat.”

I know how he feels. After I conquered the Chihuahuas owned by the rednecks renting the house next door to me, they’ve unleashed a new instrument of terror – stupid cats.

There are two and perhaps three orange cats at the house, and they let them roam freely. Which means, into my yard. Now, ordinarily, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Cats can’t do a lot of damage, right, and they don’t bark or chew up stuff. Sure, one of they may get run over because they tend to like to sleep under our cars, but things happen. They have eight more lives anyway, right.

But things have changed. See, I have a bare spot in my yard, and the other day I decided to fix it. I put out some seed, covered it with topsoil and fertilizer, and laid some straw on top. I could have gotten some sod, but that seems like cheating.

So I look out the front door the other day, and two orange cats are right there where I planted the seeds, rolling around and knocking the straw everywhere. I went outside, cursed them, yelled “Git!” at the top of my lungs, and they scurried away. What got into those stupid cats, I thought? But I tidied everything back up and went inside.

Next day I walk out, they’re doing it again, only this time it’s obvious they’ve been rooting around in there for a while. I yelled, and they just looked at me, so I picked up a football and fired it at them, and they skedaddled. I walked over to fix up their mess, and then it hit me – they had found a new litter box. They had left some, well, evidence. Those blankety-blanking cats were out there blankety-blanking in my blankety-blanking front yard!

This reminded me of why I don’t like cats in the first place. It took my mind back to when I dated a girl back in high school, and her family had some ridiculously pampered cats. It was rumored they paid $500 for them - $500 for a cat! – and I disliked them from the start.

I remember our first date. I dropped her off at the door. She stood there with the sliding glass door slightly ajar, and I told her that I had a good time, and I closed my eyes and leaned forward to do what teenage boys do at the end of a first date, and – whoosh. I felt something brush past my pants leg.

I opened my eyes to find my date not standing there expectantly with puckered lips, but instead looking past me, frantic and wide-eyed. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “The cat got out!” she screamed. “Oh, it will come back,” I said, and moved in again, but I wound up clutching air, because she was past me and headed toward the back yard.

Great, I thought. This stupid cat has ruined my date. I reluctantly followed the girl into the back yard, and learned that there was a creek back there. A creek with a very high bank. And that stupid cat was down by the creek, looking up at the high bank and meowing helplessly, since it was apparently not capable of climbing back up.

So you can guess what happened. I climbed down into that creek, I grabbed Fluffy or whatever the stupid thing’s name was, and I carried it back up the bank, slipping a time or two, and returned the expensive fur ball to my date. And did I get rewarded for my chivalry? No, I couldn’t even kiss her goodnight, because she was standing there holding and stroking the blankety-blanking cat.

With that memory coming back, as well as the sight of cat doo-doo in my front yard, I walked over to the neighbors’ house and rang the bell. A young lady with a blank look on her face came to the door and listened as I explained, politely, what was going on, and asked her to please figure out a way to keep the kitties out of my yard. She said she would talk to her mother about it.

I haven’t seen them since, which is good, because if I catch them doing number two in my yard again, I’m going to take them out in the back yard and introduce them to Lucky. She’d love to play with a couple of stupid cats.

Men vs. women

I was thinking this morning (a rare occurrence) about some of the ways men and women are different.

Of course, women are crazy – and I say that with affection - but I mean other than that. There is a great divide between the behavior of the genders.

The difference came up the other night, when I was at the grocery store with my wife and daughter, and I was pushing the shopping cart out to the car, when I did what any man would do – I jumped up on it and rode it part of the way across the parking lot, pretending I was Richard Petty, hopping off just before we reached our car.

My daughter was predictably embarrassed at this childish behavior, but my wife assured her that it was normal, and that my son does it too. It’s in our genes, like the urge to scratch inappropriate places in public settings. It’s what we do. It’s how we roll.

There are quite a few things men do that you never see women do. For example, you never see a woman walk into a room, then jump as high as she can and try to touch the ceiling. But most males do this, or at least we do until when we’re about 40, when such an activity would make our hamstrings pop like rubber bands stretched too tight.

We don’t just throw away used paper towels or crumpled up pieces of paper; we pretend the garbage can is a basketball goal, and we shoot. Sometimes we’ll do a hook shot, or a fadeaway jumper, or if nobody is looking, a vicious 360 dunk.

We pick up any long, slender object nearby (umbrella, yard stick) and we swing it like a golf club or a baseball bat, or, if you were one of those weird Dungeons and Dragon kids, pretend it’s a sword. This impulse never goes away.

I have never seen a woman kick a rock down the sidewalk as she walked, trying to keep it going for as long as she can, and pretending in her head that if she can get past three more driveways, she will have set a new world record.

I’ve never seen a woman try to catch pennies off of her elbow. I will still occasionally bend my arm back, stack up some pennies and then try to snag them without letting any hit the floor. My friends and I used to practice this all the time. My personal record is 37.

You very seldom see a woman play air guitar, and that’s good, because quite frankly, they don’t do it very well. But if you take any man of a certain age and crank out the opening to “Whole Lotta Love” or “Sweet Child O’Mine,” he will almost instantly drop his right hand to his side and pretend to hit the strings with his imaginary pick. Depending on the situation, he may soon start doing windmills, making funny faces and sliding across the floor on his knees.

A man cannot stand and simply hold a basketball or soccer ball or tennis ball. He must instinctively bounce it, and will do so until a woman screams in anguish for him to stop. They have these super-bouncy balls in Dick’s Sporting Goods, and when I was in there with my son recently he picked one up and bounced it, and it almost reached the ceiling. Of course, I got on to him and told him to stop, but inside I was thinking, “Dude. That is so cool.”

This is just a small list of some of the fun women are missing out on in life. They don’t make paper footballs or throw spitballs or thump each other on the ear or all sorts of other fun things, but I think they should give it a try. Might make them not so crazy.

The good, the bad and the ugly

I had a pretty interesting weekend, I must say. It consisted of the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good - I learned that my daughter Allie has been accepted into the University of Georgia. The bad - I got “Pete Best-ed” from the church band. And the ugly – I turned 46 years old Friday.

Let’s concentrate on the good. I was filled with elation upon learning that she’d gotten in to UGA. We were sweating it out, because it’s a lot harder to get in there now than I was when I attended. I think all I had to do was spell “UGA” and demonstrate that I knew which foot the proper shoe went on. For football players, they waived the spelling requirement.

But now they look at all sorts of crazy things like grade-point average and high school curriculum and test scores and what not, and it’s pretty competitive.

After the initial elation and pride that I felt, reality came barreling down the track and smacked me like it was Ike Turner and I didn’t have supper ready on time. The first blow was when I realized that college isn’t free, even with the HOPE scholarship. After getting word that she’d been admitted, my daughter asked me to buy her a new Georgia shirt as a reward. I pointed out that I was about to “reward” her for the next four years.

But the money can be raised, hopefully without me getting a second job or having to sell an organ on Craigslist. Now it’s the thought of turning my baby girl loose in Athens that’s giving me an ulcer the size of Lake Huron.

Of course, things have changed when I was a student there. Really, all I did was study, go to the library, attend the occasional Bible study and maybe play some Parcheesi with my friends, if I could find time after I finished up my work at the homeless center.

Okay, so that’s not exactly all 100 percent true. I lived in a house with four other guys for a year and prayed every time there was a knock on the door that it wasn’t a DEA agent. I wasn’t doing anything illegal, mind you (I’m being honest this time), but I’m pretty sure somebody in the house was at any given time.

The next year I moved into an apartment. I had a weirdo roommate who left town in the cover of night about halfway through the year, owing me and a bunch of other people quite a bit of money. They don’t put this sort of thing on the college brochures.

I only went to UGA for two years, after first graduating from a junior college. I never lived in the dorms or ate in the campus cafeterias, so my daughter will get to experience a side of college life that I never saw. She will meet new people, which is good, since I mostly hung around guys I already knew from high school and had also moved on to Athens. Two of them who lived in the house died before they reached 40, so in retrospect it was perhaps not the best decision.

But she will do great. She’s smart and ambitious and I know she will continue to make me proud. Just thinking about it makes me smile, and helps me get over the sting of being asked to hand over my drumsticks, and getting one year closer to 50.

Driving me crazy

My 16-year-old is driving now. Not just driving me crazy, but driving his own car. Well, it’s my car, but I’m letting him drive it.

Now we have four drivers at the house, which means my monthly car insurance costs are roughly equivalent to the Obamacare health reform bill. Car insurance is apparently so high because they spend $800 billion dollars a month on TV commercials. That should be your priority, mister president. Get Flo from Progressive off my TV.

The other day my son informed me that he was going over to some girl’s house. I asked him who all was going to be there, and he said two girls, and him, and another boy. Oh, he added, and her mother.

So as he was leaving, I said, “Can you leave me the mother’s phone number? You know, just in case I need to call her.” He looked at me kind of incredulously, and then he said, “Why, you don’t trust me?”

Well, that was an easy one. “No,” I said.

He wanted to know why I didn’t trust him. That’s another easy one. He’s a 16-year-old boy. I used to be one. I know what they do.

Now, in truth, other than mental anguish, my two teenagers have not caused me much trouble so far. No arrests, no lawsuits, no TV news crews on my front lawn or subpoenas or calls from the producers of the Maury Povich Show asking me to sign a waiver. But you have to keep an eye on them, especially boys.

They’re great when you’re teaching them to drive. They keep both hands on the wheel, they pay attention to what you say, they don’t turn the radio on, and they are very careful about everything they’re doing. But let this be a warning to all parents – it’s a lie. When you’re out of the picture, all bets are off.

I was standing in my driveway one day and I thought, why is a jet plane landing in my neighborhood? Then I realized it was my daughter coming down the road at Daytona 500 speed. I half-expected to see police cars chasing her and a TV news helicopter flying overhead. We had a “talk” and she doesn’t do that anymore, at least not when she thinks I might be able to see her.

We now have four cars at my house, none in the garage. We could do like our trashy neighbors and just park all over the lawn, but instead we have a game of musical chairs every night or morning trying to get us all lined up, like airplanes on a runway. The other morning I went out to my son’s car so I could get out, and when I put the key in the ignition I got quite a shock, as his stereo was turned up to 11 and I got blasted by an ear-splitting rap song. I looked like Wil E. Coyote after he accidentally electrocutes himself. Again, we had a “talk”, once I regained consciousness.

He has one key for his car, and I’ve suggested about, oh, a trillion times that he should go get an extra key made. When I say that, or pretty much anything, here’s what he hears: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. So of course, I was right in the way that dads inevitably are, and I got a phone call Sunday afternoon that he had locked his keys in his car. Luckily for him, he was at the church at the time, and my reaction when I got there was somewhat muted.

You can’t break into these newer cars as easily as you could back in my day, so I had to call a locksmith, who came right away because we were at our church and gave us a discount because, in his words, we were “good Christian people.” Luckily, he could not read my mind at the time, or he might have come to a different conclusion.

Talk talk

I find myself more and more talking to inanimate objects that are incapable of understanding what I am saying and answering back.

No, I don’t mean my children. I mean other things in life that have me questioning my sanity.

For example, I’ve gotten really bad about talking to the TV, especially during sporting events. This past Georgia football season, I had quite a few one-sided conversations with Bulldogs’ quarterback Joe Cox. Most of what I said cannot be repeated in mixed company nor near my preacher.

Talking to the TV can cause some confusion around the house. I’ll yell, “What the hell are you thinking?”, and my wife will yell back from the kitchen, “I’m unloading the dishwasher, is that a problem?” I have to explain that I was not talking to her, I was talking to Matt Ryan. So then I’ll say, hey, while you’re up, can you bring me something to drink? At which point she yells, “What the hell are you thinking?”

I also like to talk to golf balls. I’ll yell “Stop!” or “Go!” or “Don’t go in the woods, you stupid Q@#$@!#$^@#$!” Of course, the golf ball doesn’t listen and does what it wants anyway, but I guess it makes me feel better to say something. It’s a lot like writing a letter to your Congressman.

I talk to other drivers in traffic. It’s probably a good thing they can’t hear me, especially if they have a gun in the car, because I’m rarely complimenting their driving skills or saying top-o-the-morn-to-ya. If I ever get cut off by a lip-reader with a loaded gun and an itchy trigger finger, I’m probably in trouble.

I talk to my computer screen at work, saying stuff like “Yeah, right,” especially when I open an e-mail from somebody asking me to do something unreasonable, like extra work.

I have a lot of one-sided conversations with my dog. She is a pretty good listener, though I suspect she’s hoping that no matter what I’m saying, at some point I’ll get to “Come on, Lucky, time to eat.”

I talk to myself a good bit, too. I think a lot of us do that. But with me, it’s never positive in a Stuart Smalley kind of way. I don’t say, “Wow, Mark, you really look good today,” or “Hey, that was a good decision, buddy.” No, it’s usually “Wow, could you be a bigger idiot?” or “If you get any fatter, they’re going to be taking you out of the house with a crane as Oprah watches with empathy.”

This is probably pretty normal behavior, and I guess I should only be worried if the TV and the computer or the golf ball start talking back to me. Lucky doesn’t talk back, she just licks my toes. The children talk back, but it’s often unrelated to what I’ve said to them. And no, I don’t answer when I’m talking to myself. What the hell are you thinking?

Barking up the wrong tree

My next-door neighbors never come outside. I don’t know if it’s a Barnabas Collins deal or if they are allergic to the sun, but we never see them, which is fine, because I don’t want to have to remember their names and make small talk with them.

But we may be headed toward war, thanks to their dogs. Two things you don’t want in your life are neighbor trouble and in-law trouble, but I may not be able to avoid the former.

The other morning, Lucky, my dog, was in the back yard going crazy, growling and barking and making kamikaze runs at the fence. This meant that something was on the other side of the fence that was disturbing her. With Lucky, you never know – it could be a cat or a neighborhood kid or an al Qeada sleeper cell. Her reaction is the same.

So I went outside to investigate and saw the culprit – a rat was running around my front yard. I yelled at it to get out of there, and then it barked at me. Well, I’m no Marlin Perkins, but I know that rats don’t bark, so I looked more closely and realized it was the neighbor’s Chihuahua.

I despise that Chihuahua. Actually, my vampire neighbors have two of them, and they bark non-stop every second that they’re outside. The neighbors have a wooden swing set in their back yard, and the Chihuahuas find it entertaining to scurry to the top of it, which gives them a good vantage from which to look into my yard and bark their high-pitched incessant noise at Lucky. I can’t speak dog language, but I’m pretty sure whatever they’re saying is insulting.

This hurts Lucky’s feelings, since she’s never done anything to those yappy beasts, and so she naturally responds by barking back at them. I can’t blame her, but I don’t want to hear it, so then I have to go out back and curse at Lucky, which makes us both feel bad.

Anyway, on the morning I saw them running around – there’s a brown one and a black one – I went next door to tell the neighbors that their dogs had gotten out of the fence. I wasn’t really being nice; I just wanted them to get away from my fence before Lucky had a heart attack. Eventually a woman came to the door – I could only assume that she was the lady of the house, since I haven’t seen her outside in five years – and I told her that I believed her cute little dogs had gotten loose.

This woman looked like she’d just risen from a coma. She didn’t say a word to me, just said over her shoulder, “The Chihuahuas are out,” turned her back to me and crept back to her coffin. In a few seconds an older woman appeared, and she brushed past me out the door, looking for the miniature menaces.

I walked around to the side of the house and pointed to a spot where the dogs had dug out under her fence. She just grunted, then pointed to some boards that had been tossed into the ditch between your yards and said, “Are those your boards?” I said, “No, m’am, I don’t throw crap in the ditch and leave it.” She missed my sarcasm and went to get a board to seal up the hole. Nice people.

Sunday I took Lucky for a walk, and as we walked past the neighbor’s house, I heard the yapping again. The brown Chihuahua was again running free in the front yard, and it was coming toward us in a menacing manner. Lucky glanced at it with a look that said, “One step closer and I’m going to have an early supper,” and I told the dog, “Don’t make me step on you, Taco Bell.” It finally backed off, but never shut up.

In addition, there are other dogs added to the mix. From their back yard I often hear a deep, bellowing bark, coming from some sort of hound dog. And lately, in addition to the escaped Chihuahua, there is often another small dog in front of their house, tied to a bush, trailer-park style. That’s really going to help property values.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. Hopefully they’ll fix it so the Chihuahuas can’t get out of the fence, or maybe they’ll keep them in the house, or maybe they’ll just run away. I just hope I don’t get one of them on my shoe.

Call me Mark

At church Sunday, two separate people called me David. Granted, I’ve been called much worse than that, but it irritated me a little bit, because that’s not my name.

Well, OK, it IS my name, but it’s not the one I go by. I go by Mark. Don’t ask my why I go by my middle name. That was my parents’ doing. By the time I realized that, I was well-established as a Mark and there was no going back.

I probably had it coming to me, anyway, because last week I went to a music store in Griffin with my daughter, and introduced her to a guy who works there that I’ve known for about 20 years. “This is my friend, John,” I told her. I noticed John had a bit of a strange look on his face, and I realized why later in the car, when it occurred to me that his name is actually David.

And there’s another guy at church who called me David for years, which is all right, because I called him Bill all that time, and his name is David. Complicating matters as the fact that my son is also named David. What is it about that name?

I have a neighbor who lives across the street from me, and for many years we have stood outside in our yards and talk about football or golf or yard work and other important man-stuff. I would say, “Hey, Clay, how are you doing?”, or “See you later, Clay.”

One day my wife saw his wife in the grocery store, and the woman made a couple of references to somebody named “Thad.” Finally my wife said, “Is your husband named Thad?” Yes, she said, he is. I’d only been calling him Clay for, oh, eight years or so.

I wonder why he didn’t correct me? But then again, I didn’t correct anybody at church, and the guy in the music store didn’t correct me. I guess we don’t want to embarrass people.

I used to work for a guy, now retired, who would always pass me in the hall and say, “Hey there, buddy.” I thought, wow, isn’t that nice, he’s the head of the whole department and he thinks of me as his buddy. What a friendly guy.

As a couple of years passed, though, I noticed that he only called me buddy, never Mark. So I figured either he thought my name WAS Buddy, or that I was so low on the totem pole that he didn’t feel the need to waste any energy learning my real name. Turns out the latter assumption was correct.

Whenever I answer the phone and somebody asks to speak with David Williams, I hang up, because it’s generally somebody looking to sell me something I don’t want or collect money I don’t have.

I don’t know what to do about getting my name right at church. It’s not a big church, and I’ve been a member there for four years. Maybe I should just wear a nametag.

Work it out

I went to the gym the other day. When I signed in, I swiped a little key card, and my name came up on a computer screen, along with a little information about me. For example, it read “Number of visits this year – 1.” Well, it’s only January.

But underneath that it read, “Number of visits last year – 1.” Wow, now I’m getting mocked by a computer. It was a scene right out of 2001.

OK, so last year was a tough year, but this year I’m committed to at least tripling my workouts from the previous 12 months.

I went into the locker room and began changing clothes, and caught something out of the corner of my eye. “Whoa,” I said to myself, “when did they start letting women come in here? And ugly ones, at that!” Of course I soon realized I was looking in the mirror, and those breasts were mine. Now it made sense why that woman had a goatee.

I have to tell you, being this out of shape is making me miserable. I get winded changing the channel on the TV. I used to be in pretty good shape. Now I just have a pretty bad shape. I don’t have washboard abs, I have washtub abs. Babies look at my chest and lick their lips. I spotted myself, or at least my backside, on one of those TV news segments about how Americans are obese.

The tightness of my clothes has become an issue. When I wear blue jeans, I’m afraid that at any minute the button is going to pop and become a small missile. When I take them off, it looks I have tattooed the word “Levi’s” backwards just under my belly button.

My first workout of the year was not particularly strenuous. I got on the treadmill and put it on the “Old man walking to the front of the room to collect his bingo prize” setting. Then I bumped it up to “Teenager working in a retail store” speed. Pretty soon I was sweating like a Tennessee fan taking a drug test (they always worry that they didn’t study enough). Since I wasn’t sure anybody around me knew CPR, I cut the workout short at about 20 minutes.

Hey, it’s a start. I didn’t get this big overnight. I’m going to ramp up my workouts and cut back on my eating and before long I’ll be able to drive home without unbuttoning my pants, and I’ll be able to take my shirt off in the summer at the beach without somebody calling Sea World and reporting an escape. I may not look like Fabio, but I can at least stop looking like a slightly-hairy pregnant woman, and I’ll make that stupid ridiculing computer eat its words.

No rest for the weary

I was sitting on the couch the other night, wearing my colorful superhero pajama pants and a T-shirt. I had a fresh sleeve of soda crackers, a cold drink, a Georgia Bulldogs snuggie over my knees, something about Hitler playing on The History Channel, a fire in the fireplace, a book to read in case the show was boring, and a fat dog stretched out by the couch, snoring and farting in unison. It was 8:05 p.m., and I was settled in for the night.

Take it easy, ladies. I know that visual is making you hot.

There should be a rule. Once a man has settled in for the night, he should be expected to do nothing that requires any effort until the next day. It’s a cutoff point. This lane is closed. Come back tomorrow.

But, no. My reverie was shattered by groans and semi-curses from the kitchen. “There’s water everywhere under the sink,” my wife said, to nobody in particular, but loud enough for me to hear. I suspect that was on purpose. However, that did not prevent me from pretending I didn’t hear it.

“Oh, this is great,” I heard her say, a little louder. I was going to my offer my opinion that it was probably a short-term, one-time, minor leak, and I would look at it the following morning, when she said, “There’s water shooting out everywhere.” Well, now I had a dilemma. It was looking more and more like I was going to have to go check it out.

Look, I don’t mind doing things around the house, but once you’re settled in, if you break out of it, well, you’ll never get that comfortable feeling back. Once the spell is broken, it can’t be remade. But one more scream from the kitchen convinced me that I had better go check it out, or at least pretend to.

After unloading everything under the sink and drying up the water (the volume of which had been highly exaggerated, I might add), I crawled under there and found the issue – there’s a crack in the hose for the sprayer attachment. I instantly solved the problem: “Just don’t use the sprayer any more,” I said. But she told me that she uses it all the time, so I said OK, I’ll fix it. Just not tonight.

I got back to the couch, but as I’d feared, the thrill was gone. Hitler had invaded two more countries since I’d left the TV, Lucky wanted to go out (to escalate the farts, I assumed), my drink was flat, and the fire had almost died. Nevertheless, I gave it a shot and crawled back into my little slice of paradise.

Then I hear, “Dad!” Let me tell you something about kids. Once they reach a certain age, anytime you hear “Dad”, it is followed by something that is not good. When they’re little, it’s “Dad, I drew you a picture,” or “Dad, can you read me a story?” In the teen years, they either want something or they’ve broken something.

My son says, “You need to come check out the sink in my bathroom.” What is with the sinks? Why, I asked. Well, he explained it, but by now he was speaking Teenagese, which sort of sounds like a drunk person with cotton in their mouth speaking Mandarin Chinese underwater, so I went up to check it out myself. It turns out the stopper was stuck down in the drain, and the sink was full of water which would not go down. I’m not going to claim I fixed the problem, but using a plastic cup and a Swiss Army knife, I at least got rid of the water.

So now, I have at least two minor plumbing jobs ahead of me this weekend, assuming nothing else breaks before then. I finally made it to back to the couch, but by then it was close to bedtime, so I didn’t get to enjoy it. I closed my eyes and dreamed of a better day ahead.

No such luck. This morning involved a screaming match, a frantic search for a lost inhaler and a car with a dead battery. I wonder what joys tonight holds in store?

Snow day

It snowed a bit here last night, just enough to make us go crazy and to make all the transplanted Yankees make fun of us for closing school due to a half-inch of snow.

Well, anybody complaining about our snow excitement can do what Jerry Lee Lewis told England to do back in the ’50s. If we want to go insane over a few flakes, that’s our right. We ain’t hurtin’ nobody.

I can remember as a child getting so excited at the prospect of snow. My mother would look up at the sky some times on cold winter days and pronounce authoritatively, “Those are snow clouds.” Now, my mother was born in Hawkinsville, Ga., and never lived outside of central Georgia her whole life. So she wouldn’t know a “snow cloud” from a snow pea, but I believed her back then.

She would also say sometimes, “It’s too cold to snow.” I guess maybe she was just saying that to help me deal with my disappointment, in case nothing happened. It didn’t strike me until years later that it snows quite a lot at the North Pole, for example, and it gets pretty stinking cold up there. Colder than it ever got in Hawkinsville.

The prospect of playing in the snow was always better than the reality. Because once you got out into it, you realized that this stuff was cold and wet and pretty much unpleasant. I’d be good for about 15 minutes, and then I’d be banging on the door to come back in and drink some hot chocolate.

The reason we didn’t have much fun playing in the snow is we weren’t equipped. We didn’t have big heavy coats and galoshes and gloves. There was no need for them. So my mom would send me outside with empty plastic bread wrappers tied over my tennis shoes. Instead of gloves, she would put socks on my hands, and I would be wearing my dad’s too-big coat and a stocking cap. I looked like something out of a Dickens’ novel.

I can only remember a couple of really major snow events in my life. In 1982, a snowstorm hit in the middle of the afternoon unexpectedly, and it was followed by several days of sub-freezing temps, so the roads could never get passable. I was stranded at a friend’s place and spent three days in a small house with five people and a surly Chihuahua. There was no Internet or cell phones or Playstation then, and most people didn’t have a satellite dish, so we ate Little Debbie snacks and watched re-runs of “Meadowlark Lemon and the Bucketeers” on cable TV. Good times.

The other big snowstorm happened in March of 1993, part of a major storm that affected the entire Eastern United States. That one wasn’t much fun because I had a baby, a pregnant wife and no electricity, so we had to stay at my brother’s house for a while. At least he didn’t have a Chihuahua.

I guess we’re about due for a good, old-fashioned snow event that shuts down the whole state for a few days. All it will take is maybe two inches of snow. Well, bring it on. I have firewood, a supply of Little Debbies and a big dog with a good disposition to ride it out with.

Not off to a flying start

This new year has begun, but I want a do-over.

Oh, it started out all right. The first few days were fine. My daughter turned 18 and to celebrate, we took her to a nice restaurant in Atlanta, where I dropped a couple of benjamins on dinner. It sort of made me miss the days of Chuck E Cheese.

Then, Monday came, the first day back at work of the new year, a time of promise, and renewal, and rededication, and what the hell am I talking about? It was a miserable day.

First off, I woke up and it was 18 degrees outside. Hello, I live in Georgia. I don’t function in cold weather. If I wanted this, I’d move to Saskatoon. I was promised there would be global warming, but no. I get 18 degrees. There’s an inconvenient truth for you.

I went and cranked up my car and let it sit in the driveway for about 10 minutes, so it could warm up and wouldn’t feel like the inside of a refrigerator when I got in to go to work. Well, I climbed in, and it didn’t feel like a refrigerator, it felt like a freezer. I had the heat on maximum, but it was blowing out air colder than Hitler’s heart. My fingers froze to the steering wheel. Note to self: get car’s heater fixed.

I drove on to work, and after about 30 minutes, the air changed from frigid to tepid, so I didn’t become the first person to ever freeze to death on I-75 in a 2002 Chevy Impala. But, it being Monday, and in Atlanta, and the first day back to work, traffic was a nightmare because there was ice on the highway.

So I took a detour and rode through a lovely stretch of Atlanta called Metropolitan Parkway, formerly known as Stewart Avenue. Let’s just say this is not the part of the city that the chamber of commerce puts on its brochures. Luckily, it was so cold that even the hookers and pimps stayed indoors.

At this point I looked down and noticed that the car’s fuel gauge was on “less than empty.” Well, now I was faced with the prospect of running out of gas in a sketchy part of town – oh, and did I mention it was 18 degrees? Finally I located a gas station in the shadow of the Georgia Dome, and breathed a sigh of relief, until I noticed that every single pump was covered by a black garbage bag, the universal sign of, “We ain’t got no gas.”

I held my breath and decided to risk it, and I made it to work without running out. That’s when I realized I had left my employee badge at home. If you work in a big company, you are nothing without your employee badge. You can’t even get into the bathrooms. This was foretold in the Book of Revelation.

So instead of getting to park in the employee deck, I was forced to park in the visitor’s lot, which is conveniently located about 10 miles from the building’s entrance. After walking into a freezing 40-mph wind, leaning forward at a 45-degree angle so I wouldn’t get blown away, I got to the building, picked up a temporary badge and began to eagerly do my work.

By noon I felt like I had the Black Plague (trust me, it’s bad), so I went home and flirted with death for a couple of hours. I fell asleep, only to have my daughter enter the bedroom and say, “Dad?” “What?” I moaned. “Nothing,” she said. “I just wanted to see if you were alive.” Yes, I told her, I was alive, and now, unfortunately, awake.

I made it through the rest of the day without incident, all the while silently hoping that the year was only going to get better from here. This morning, I awoke a new man, ready to start again. I had my badge with me, I heard on the TV that traffic was light, and I was going to drive the Mustang I bought for my son to work so I wouldn’t freeze during the commute.

I showered, got dressed, and went outside to warm up his Mustang before I left for work. That was when I discovered that he had a dead battery, as he had left the headlights on all night. So now, I had to drive to work in mostly-heaterless Impala yet again. Did I mention that it was again 18 degrees outside?

This is gonna be a long year.