Flat broke

I was up at the Emory Clinic this morning and I was getting ready to leave. I knew I’d have to pay for parking, so I opened my wallet for some cash or a debit card, and there was nothing there. It was as bare as a cooch dancer’s midriff, to quote Foghorn Leghorn.

Now, just two days ago, in addition to the debit card, there was $30 in cash in my wallet. I had not spent a red cent in the meantime. So, it should have still been there. But it wasn’t.

There are three other people who live at my house, plus my dog Lucky. All three humans have denied taking the money. Lucky was mum on the subject, but I don’t suspect her. She might steal a biscuit out of a grizzly bear’s mouth, but she has no use for money.

Apparently, the $30 just took wings and flew out of my wallet. I hope it found its way to somebody who needs it. As for the debit card, it somehow was in my wife’s possession. My debit card has my photo on it, so I don’t know what good it would do her. She’s never, to my knowledge, even sported a goatee.

Luckily, the nice people at Emory gave me a token for free parking when I explained my predicament. I’m glad they did, because I was going to have to go to Plan B, which was to say, “Wow, the doctor just told me I have two weeks to live, and now this happens.”

I should be used to money flying out of my wallet by now, as I have two kids in high school, and every day I’m shelling out money for something – senior dues, football dues, parking dues. Cheerleading is the worst – last year my daughter was a cheerleader, and it cost approximately $500,000. You could buy a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader for what I spent on cheerleading (trust me, I looked it up, but figured I didn’t have anywhere to put her).

Earlier this year, I had to buy an ad for my son for the football program, then join the booster club, and all this AFTER shelling about $400 just for him to have the privilege to play football. Maybe he’ll get a lot better and bigger and go somewhere where they’ll actually pay HIM to play, like Florida or Alabama.

Now I am told that I need to purchase an ad for the high school yearbook, since my daughter is a senior. This ad costs roughly the same as a new Buick. And I was made to believe that if I didn’t purchase this ad, I would be the worst father this side of MacKenzie Phillips’ dad.

My daughter informed me the other day that she was going shopping. Interesting, I said. For what?

A new outfit, she said.

Then I asked the most important question – with what? So she gave me that “daddy’s little girl” smile, and once again my wallet parted like the Red Sea.

I guess I’ve learned a valuable lesson. From now on, I’m inspecting my wallet before I leave the house, or maybe I’ll just start hiding money in the freezer, like my mom used to do. I always thought that was crazy, but now, I understand.

Sentimental journey

I just got back from the beach, and it made me realize that I have reached a few new stages in my life.

One of those is the “should no longer be seen in public without a shirt” stage. I’ve put on a few pounds since my last trip to the beach. Small children were standing under my stomach for shade. I think I heard somebody say, “You don’t often see humpbacks in the Gulf of Mexico.” Not very nice.

I also realized that I’m getting to be a sentimental old cuss. The older I get, the more nostalgia gets to me. I used to only cry when I watched “Old Yeller,” or when something hit me in the groin. Nowadays, I’ll get teary-eyed at the drop of a hat.

Case in point: As we were packing up the leave Orange Beach Wednesday morning, it got to me. And not because I was leaving an environment of crashing surf, sandy beaches and pleasant breezes to head back to one filled with traffic, unpaid doctors’ bills and nasty letters from credit card companies.

What made me emotional was realizing that it may have been one of our last family vacations together, at least of this kind. We’ve done the same thing for many years – when the kids are out of school for their fall break in September, we go down to the beach and spend a few days to a week.

It is always such a great time, in part because I get to spend time with the kids without all of the distractions that bombard us daily. We go for walks on the beach at night looking for crabs, and we ride the waves in the Gulf, and we go to the tacky arcade-amusement park where we try to win cheap prizes and always have a competitive game of putt-putt (I was dethroned this year for the first time ever, but that didn’t make me sad. I’ll get even). We eat every meal together, and for a few days, the kids even act as if they like each other.

But they are growing up, damn them. This time next year, my daughter will be in college somewhere. My son will be a junior in high school and probably won’t want to miss football practice. And as they get older, their interests in other things and other people will grow, and playing putt-putt and looking for crabs with Dad will just seem stupid. I know that, and I accept that, but it doesn’t mean I have to look forward to it.

I hope that the memories of the family vacations will be as special to the kids as they are for their mom and dad. I hope that someday when they take their families to the beach, or to the mountains, or wherever they go, they’ll smile and remember how much fun they used to have, and they’ll realize how much it meant to old Dad.

I’d better end this now, before somebody walks in on me, and I have to try to convince them that I’ve been watching “Old Yeller” on YouTube.

Welcome to Wal-Mart

You probably read or heard about the story recently concerning the old man here in Georgia who told a woman to make her 2-year-old stop crying or he would, and when she didn’t, he slapped the kid around a little bit.

This happened in a Wal-Mart. Well, of course it did. It is yet another example of why I avoid Wal-Mart like I avoid hard work.

Oh, and here’s another reason.

I refuse to go to Wal-Mart. There are three massive ones within 5 miles of my house. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one. How much cheap stuff can people buy?

I could tell you that my Wal-Mart boycott has to do with how they have ruined small-town America, and they import everything from China and screw American suppliers, and they have questionable employment practices, and their produce tastes like it was grown in the buttcrack of a buffalo.

But I’m not that high-minded. I just can’t stand seeing the people you see in your average Wal-Mart. Most of them look like they came there straight from a meth lab or a Tennessee football game.

Does this make me snotty? Maybe so. But here are a few tips I’d like to give Wal-Mart shoppers before they head to the store:

1. Bathe.
2. Make sure your clothes have been washed within the past month, and don’t have holes you could put a quarter through.
3. Don’t wear your T-shirts with obscene or vulgar words on them. That’s fine for the family reunion at the trailer park, but not for the public.
4. Shoes – wear them. Even your kids. Especially your kids.

I prefer K-Mart to Wal-Mart, but there aren’t many K-Marts left. I used to actually work at K-Mart, and it was fun, because the store was huge and I could hide for almost my entire shift.

I remember once, a guy got busted for crawling up above the ceiling and looking down into the women’s dressing rooms through the security mirror. I thought this was a very sick thing. I mean, at the time, I understood the urge to look at women undressing. But not women who were trying on clothes at K-Mart. It ain’t exactly Victoria’s Secret, is all I’m saying.

K-Mart was cooler, because they had blue-light specials, where they’d put a flashing blue light on somewhere and put something on sale for a limited time. My mother and father both bought a lot of useless junk because they were blue-light specials. Somewhere there’s a 10-pound barrel of cheese popcorn we never ate.

I don’t care if you go to Wal-Mart. If your conscience will let you, and you don’t mind swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool for a while, go right ahead. Just don’t buy me anything.

Rainy days and Fridays always get me down

I got up at 6:30 this morning and it was as dark as Mordor outside and bucketing rain, and I thought to myself (because who else would you think to?), “It should be against the law to have to go to work on a Friday like this.”

Your hear that, President Obama? Screw the health-care reform. You want my vote in 2012, you’ll make this happen.

I got in my car and began the torturous drive to work. As anybody who has driven to work in Atlanta knows, 99 percent of the other drivers act as if they have a closed head injury. This is magnified exponentially when there’s a drop of rain on the road, and today it was like God had out the hosepipe.

I often drive into a work via a route that includes Moreland Avenue, past quaint cute little neighborhoods with names like “Grant Park” and “Kirkwood” and my favorite, “The Ghetto.” There’s not much drainage in this area, perhaps because there are dead bodies clogging the drains, so when it rains hard Moreland Avenue becomes an aqueduct. I thought at any moment I would be sucked into a swirling eddy like Marshall, Will and Holly in “Land of the Lost.” Waves were breaking over the hood of the Impala. Scary stuff.

This marked two days in a row of a testy commute. The day before, I was driving home down a road cleverly named “Boulevard.” (I guess “Street” was taken.) This is a little bit of a shortcut, but it runs right past the federal penitentiary and some housing projects, so you have to know how to navigate this stretch safely. In other words, keep the doors locked, don’t get too close to the car in front of you in case somebody tries to carjack you and you need to make a quick getaway, and avoid making eye contact with the hookers in the parking lot of the convenience store. Do all of that and you’re perfectly safe.

But Thursday, I found the way blocked. I saw police cars and a school bus and flashing lights, so I had to take a detour. I think the street I turned on was called “Crackhouse Lane,” but I was driving too fast to read the signs. I got home and watched the local news and learned that a naked man had climbed on the school bus and some kids had jumped off and finally the bus had run into an empty field. The naked man was subdued, and nobody was hurt or impregnated.

I am hopeful that these misadventures will soon stop. I joined in with about 30 co-workers and we pooled together to buy a bunch of lottery tickets for tonight’s $325 million drawing. The odds of winning this are about 1 in 175 million. We have 150 chances to win, which increases our odds to about 1 in 174.99999 million.

Let me tell you something, if we win, this department will be a ghost town Monday morning, especially in the area of my cube. I’m never coming back. They can keep all my stuff, though I would like the Elvis magnet, for sentimental reasons. Everything else I can replace, and I will never get out of bed on a rainy Friday ever again.

Feet don't fail me now

My company brought in a podiatrist on Thursday to give free foot checkups to employees. I take my excitement where I can get it these days.

I have not traditionally paid much attention to my feet. As long as they don’t smell bad and it doesn’t hurt me to walk, I figure they’re ok.

I know a lot of guys these days go get pedicures, and my wife has told me that I should do so, as well. The answer is no. Why don’t you just buy me a poodle and a cardigan and make me watch Dancing With the Stars, while you’re at it.

I remember, as a kid, what my dad’s feet looked like. He didn’t get pedicures. His toenails looked like the trees in the petrified forest. He used a chainsaw to clip them. There were calluses that could stop a bullet. Those were men’s feet.

I subjected my feet to a lot of abuse when I was young, because I didn’t often wear shoes. I learned the art of walking on gravel (step very lightly and slowly), or across hot asphalt (run like somebody is chasing you). I learned it felt good to squish mud between my toes and walk across cool green grass, and it felt bad to step into a pile of fire ants or on a rusty nail.

Going barefoot led to a lot of stubbed toes, or as we called them, stumped toes. Well, whatever you called them, they hurt like crazy, and you always hoped your mama was nowhere near when you did it, because there is no way to stump your toe without immediately screaming a cuss word, or several.

Then there’s that little toe on the end – I believe the technical term is pinky toe, or the last little piggy – and that thing could find the corner of a piece of furniture like a divining rod. I’ve hit that little toe so hard on things before it, it’s a wonder it didn’t just pop right off.

My feet aren’t that bad, but that’s because I lead a cushy life with a soft desk job. And it doesn’t matter anyway. Nobody sees my feet unless I’m at home or at the beach. I don’t wear sandals.

But I needed to go see the podiatrist because I have these two little knots, one on the bottom of each foot, and about half the time it feels like I’m walking on nails. The podiatrist was a very cheerful fellow who told me, between giggles, that I have a corn on one foot, and a plantars wart on the other. He squeezed them, said “I bet this hurts,” and laughed. He needs to work on his stool-side manner.

I asked him if I could just get a pocket knife and cut them off, but he just laughed a little too loud and said, “It won’t do any good, but it will hurt.” While I’ve done many things in my life that fit that description, I think I’ll take his advice and go by the drugstore and see what Dr. Scholl can do for me.

Stop saying that!

I was in a meeting the other day and several times I heard people say, “I don’t disagree with that.”

I’m going to have to insist that this phrase be stricken from the language. It is pointless and idiotic. Just say, “I agree.” You save two syllables and a bunch of letters and in these tough economic times, I think it’s important to be frugal.

I am going to compile a list of phrases and words that should be stricken from the language, and then I am going to work tirelessly to see these new regulations implemented. The penalty for breaking these regulations will be death. No sense monkeying around.

Also on the list is “teachable moment.” After going 44 years without ever hearing this, I have now heard it 7,569 times in the past month. It was recently used to describe the case of the Harvard professor who got arrested. Well, first, a “moment” can’t be teachable. People can be teachable. Dogs can be teachable, though not mine. But a moment can’t be taught. And here’s what incident taught us: Cops can be jerks, so don’t talk back to them. I learned that the hard way one hot afternoon on the streets of Griffin, Ga.

People are now fond of saying, “It is what it is.” This has to be stopped. Now, while I admire “I yam what I yam” as one of the great quotes of all time, “It is what it is” is nonsense, is what it is.

The word “unbelievable” is used way too much, especially in sports. Sportscasters will deem anything even slightly out of the ordinary as “unbelievable.” I think that word should apply to something that is so extraordinary, we don’t believe it. Therefore, Albert Pujols hitting a grand slam is not “unbelievable.” He does it all the time. Now, Ryan O’Neal hitting on his own daughter at his ex-wife’s funeral – ok, that was pretty close to unbelievable.

Sportscasters also like to say, “You have got to be kidding me!” First, let’s drop the word “got” from all phrases like that. AOL helped popularize the misuse of “got” with its signature “You’ve got mail” sign-on, when it should be, “You have mail.” And second, it’s clear nobody’s kidding them. Now, if I were to walk up to you and say, “I’ve just been asked to play guitar with the E Street Band cause Little Steven is quitting,” you’d say, “You have got to be kidding me!” And then I’d admit that, yes, I was kidding you. But we’d get a good laugh out of it.

Finally, consider the phrase, “He wants to have his cake, and eat it too.” This is a stupid phrase. I guess it’s used to indicate that someone is greedy. But I don’t think it’s really over-reaching to expect to eat cake if you have it. Why else would you have it, anyway? What other purpose can cake possibly serve? Maybe it should be, “He wants to eat his cake, and some ice cream, too.” That would be more appropriate.

There are surely more words and phrases we should eliminate. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know. I’ll remember you and appoint you to my staff when Obama makes me “Unnecessary Words and Phrases” czar.

Alien vs. pancreas

After 6 months of tests and doctors visits to see why my stomach and back hurt, the doctor narrowed it down to a couple of possibilities – either chronic pancreatitis, or I have an extraterrestrial creature growing inside of me, like in “Alien.”

After the latest test, a most unpleasant thing called an endoscopic ultrasound, it looks like he’s settled on the pancreatitis. That’s disappointing, because it would be really cool to have an alien pop out of my belly. I was hoping to film it and get it on Youtube.

I hope this means the tests are over. I’ve had more things stuffed into my orifices this year than Madonna.

When they’re looking for things in your gastrointestinal system, there are two ways to get there. One is through the mouth and down the throat into the stomach. This was the method of my most recent test, and I guess it went fine, except when I woke up from the anesthesia I couldn’t breathe and my chest hurt. The nurse came in, took some readings and said something you never want to hear a medical professional say, “Well, I’ve never seen this happen before.”

They did an EKG and took an X-Ray and had me drink something that made me feel all warm inside, and after an hour said I was OK and ready to leave. My wife took me to a Folks restaurant, since I hadn’t been able to eat or drink all day, but I was cold and when I sat down to eat I started shivering and shuddering violently, like I was lying on a vibrating bed in a Panama City Beach motel. I opted to take my food with me, since the odds of my turnip greens actually hitting my mouth were pretty low.

The other way they check out your gastrointestinal system is they go through the service entrance, running some sort of device into your hindquarters. This is known as a colonoscopy. (I typed, then erased, several jokes here that were in poor taste).

The day before a colonoscopy is a lot of fun, as you go through a “cleaning out” process. I’ll spare you the details, but you wind up spending more time on the throne than Louis the 14th.

Through this process of probing, prodding and squeezing, I have lost all sense of shame and modesty. After the colonoscopy, I was in some pain, and the nurse told me that it was because they pumped gas inside me during the procedure. All I needed to do was break wind a few times. Hell, I thought, I’m good at that. But it still took about an hour.

Anyway, the colonoscopy was fine. The doctor said everything looked good back there. Well, tell me something I don’t know, doc. They send you home with pictures after these procedures, I guess as souvenirs. I’m thinking about doing a scrapbook.

I’m glad to finally have some of diagnosis, though I haven’t found out yet if anything can be done this, or how to treat it, etc. I’m not even sure what the pancreas does, but apparently you need it, so removing it is not an option. Unlike the alien, I’m stuck with it, for good or bad.