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?