Category: Not Quite Zen Thoughts

The Zombies Have My Boys

This is how my boys spend their computer time.

My house has been taken over by Creepers, Zombies, and Endermen. Just three months after the Skylanders invaded our home, they are out and Minecraft is in. Our neighbor’s son, helpful kid that he is, turned our boys onto Minecraft just two weeks ago. Now, they are obsessed. (Minecraft, in case you are not game savvy, is one of the hottest games out there right now with over 41 million registered users and about 7.5 million games sold.) In just two weeks, we’ve already threatened to take the game away from them no less than 10 times. It’s that powerful.

When Joe convinced me to download it to his iPad using the last little bit of the iTunes gift card he got for his birthday back in June, I had no idea that this would become the new “thing” in our house. But, sure enough, the $7 app for his iPad became the $27 computer version so both boys could play. The first night Joe tried out the online game on his Mac, he made me sit and watch.

“What do you do in this game?” I asked.

“You try to survive,” Joe said. “See? Look…I am swimming. It’s daytime. When night falls, the Zombies come out. They can kill you so I have to try to find a village for safety. I’m looking for land so I can find a house.”

“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. When you told me about this game, you told me it was a game where you build stuff in another world. Now suddenly you’re killing Zombies?”

“And Creepers too,” he went on.

“So, if you’re in a house, the Zombies can’t get you?”

“No. They can break down the door. Then you have to find a way to kill them,” he said.

“Oh, holy hell,” I said under my breath to no one in particular since he was already absorbed back into the game.

Just hearing about Minecraft began to stress me out. Fearing I might start dreaming about killing Zombies, I stopped asking. Today though, after weeks of denial, I finally accepted that it is not going away. I asked Luke to describe it to me so I could better understand their new favorite activity. This is what I found out. The Creepers can’t really kill you, but for some reason they can explode so if you’re near them when they explode you die. There are four game modes (Creative, Adventure, Survival, and Hardcore), but Joe only likes Survival and Luke only likes Creative. According to Luke, at night the Creepers are “highly aggressive” and in the day they are “semi-aggressive.” You cannot kill Endermen with a bow and arrow because they “just teleport away.” You can revive Endermen, Creepers, and Zombies, although I have no idea why you would want to revive something that is trying to kill you. In Creative mode you can’t die and in Survival mode you can revive yourself if you are killed, but in Hardcore mode when you die you’re done. Creepers and Zombies are both green but Endermen are black with pink eyes. You can keep Creepers in a zoo. There are all kinds of animals in this world, including cows that grow mushrooms out of their backs. (Somebody was tripping when they came up with that animal.)

Luke confidently and competently explained to me how he was able to build a fortress that included rollercoaster tracks that run right through the house. He described how you survive your first night in the game. He told me how you can smash bricks and turn them into other things. My 9 year old son talked for 7 minutes to the Voice Memos app on my iPhone, explaining this new obsession in ridiculous detail. When he was done talking, I asked him how to spell “blare,” one of the words on his spelling list that he has written down no less than 16 times in the past four days. He got it wrong. I shook my head. Apparently, the Minecraft Zombies have already eaten my sons’ brains.

Posted on by Me 1

The Cricket That Judged Me

An approximation of tonight’s judge…enlarged to show detail

Tonight I watched a tiny cricket crawling along the floor next to the baseboard. A teeny, tiny cricket. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it was slightly less than a quarter inch long. When I was a kid, I hated crickets. They lived in droves in our unfinished basement, and they would chirp all night long. I could hear them from two floors up in my bedroom. Occasionally, I would wake up in the middle of the night and hear one a bit louder than the others and wonder if one had (as they occasionally did) made the perilous journey up the wooden basement steps to our living room.

When my mom would send us to the basement to retrieve something from the freezer, I feared that one would jump at me. It happened once and, apparently, the post-traumatic stress disorder sent me over the edge. Jumping bugs are the worst. You just never know where they’re going to go. With a nervous eye, I would glance downward as I weaved my way through the clotheslines full of my mom’s drip-dry lingerie on my way to the freezer for a container of lemonade or Cool Whip, praying the entire time that I would not see one. Ridiculous, but those small musicians freaked me out.

Then, one day a friend told me that crickets are good luck. What? This was news to me. If I had known that, I would have thought we were the luckiest family in the world. I certainly never would have killed one. Since the day that my friend told me about the fortuitous nature of crickets, I have been superstitious and unable to kill one. This is not to imply that I like them. I don’t. And I never liked killing them. (They are crunchy when you step on them.) After my friend’s suggestion, however, I began a new tradition. When I find a cricket in my home, I pick it up and carry it outside alive because heaven knows I need all the good luck I can get. Still, the 13 year old girl inside of me squeals every time I do it.

When I went off to college, my then boyfriend gave me a Jiminy Cricket plush toy from Disney. I thought it was odd given my sketchy relationship with crickets, and my expression must have betrayed me because he then felt the need to explain the gift. He told me that Jiminy Cricket was Pinocchio’s conscience. This cricket was to sit in my room and keep an eye on me while I was away to make sure I was being good. I can’t tell you how much I hated that cricket toy. That damn thing sat there judging me all through my freshman and sophomore years of college. I would hide it in the corner of my room and when my boyfriend came to visit he would again move it someplace prominent. It was downright creepy how that cricket kept an eye on me. One night toward the end of my sophomore year, I tossed that stuffed cricket into a pile for Goodwill and cheated on the aforementioned boyfriend. Oddly enough, I’ve felt pretty good about myself ever since.

Tonight when I saw that teeny cricket, I got out of bed, picked him up, and carried him downstairs. I opened the patio door and set him carefully on the back porch so he could go watch someone else. The last thing I need is another critter monitoring my actions and checking my conscience. Crickets in the home may bring good luck, but I’m a lot more at ease when they’re outside where they belong.

Posted on by Me 2

Apple Isn’t A Cult…It Just Seems That Way Until You Drink The Kool-Aid

Bonding with my iPhone in the Galapagos

A couple days ago, Steve told me we could pre-order the iPhone 5 starting tomorrow. I rolled my eyes at him. It’s not that I wouldn’t appreciate a new phone. After all, I missed out on the 4s altogether, so I’ve never had the chance to torture Siri with questions about the best places to bury a body, which I guess is okay because I don’t actually need that information just yet. But, I don’t want to hear about the latest, greatest new gadget that I can’t get my hands on. That’s just cruel and unusual punishment. I told him that we could wait until it was available in stores to get it. No need to pre-order. End of story.

Then tonight, two nights after Steve’s original announcement about the phone, curiosity got the best of me and I made a very real, first-world mistake. I watched Apple’s introduction to the new iPhone 5. Five minutes into the video presentation, I paused it. I walked downstairs to look for Steve. He wasn’t there. I walked outside to look for Steve. I couldn’t find him. I walked out onto the open space behind our house, and there I found him taking his photo of the day.

“I walked all the way downstairs, all the way out here to find you for one reason. I need an iPhone 5. Yesterday,” came my announcement.

“Why are you saying this?” he asked, remembering my disinterest a couple days ago.

“I watched a product video. The only thing Apple is better at than making products I need is showing me why I need them immediately,” I replied. “If I was in Guyana with Apple and they asked me to drink some kool-aid, I totally would. Just saying. We need to order it tonight,” I told him.

“You’re awesome,” was all he said, a sure sign that he was pleased to have turned his wife into the Apple cult follower he is.

And, cult follower I am. My iPhone is rarely more than 5 feet away from me at any given moment. I don’t always answer it because like many iPhone users I use it less as a phone and more as a personal assistant. But, I always have it. If someone asked me to choose between Joe and Luke and my iPhone, I might pause for a minute to weigh my options. (I’d pick my sons, of course, but not without careful consideration.) Say what you will about Apple, but they continually innovate products that make my life better, easier, more fun, and more connected. I know there are those who are not Apple fans. They say their products are too simply designed, too basic, too easy to use. I get it. Some people like complicated. I used to think I did too. Then, I drank the kool-aid. Now it’s all sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns.

 

 

Posted on by Me 3

Is “Old Old” The Same As “Older Than Dirt”?

I *might* have a Smiths issue.

“Coyness is nice, and coyness can stop you from saying all the things in life you’d like to.” ~The Smiths

Around 2:30 p.m. today, you likely heard an unfathomably loud cracking sound. Perhaps you wondered briefly from whence it came before you went on with the rest of your busy day. I am here to let you know that the sound you heard was nothing other than the sound of my heart breaking. Yep. It was obliterated in the middle of a shoe store mid-afternoon today just before I was about to leave to pick up my boys from school.

What epic occurrence caused my heart to rupture in the DSW warehouse store? Well…it went something like this. I was in there quietly hoping I would find some reasonably priced pumps to wear with a new dress when Sweet Disposition by The Temper Trap comes over the store’s music speakers. Immediately, that song reminds me of one of my favorite movies, (500) Days of Summer. That particular song plays during a lovely montage scene in the movie. Anyway, I have loved it from the first time I heard it when I saw the film with my friend, Lisa, three summers ago. As the song is playing in the store and I am happily wallowing in my pleasant reverie, I overhear two store clerks near me strike up a conversation.

“Ooooh…I love this song,” says Store Clerk #1.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before,” says Store Clerk #2.

“Really? It’s in this great movie, (500) Days of Summer,” says Store Clerk #1 who has just won me over because she has good taste in movies.

“What’s it about?” asks Store Clerk #2.

“About a guy and a girl. It’s got Zooey Deschanel in it. Anyway, I liked the song so much I almost bought the soundtrack, but then I didn’t buy it because I didn’t really like the other songs on it,” confesses Store Clerk #1.

“Like what?” queries Store Clerk #2.

“Well…there were a few songs by that old, old rock band called The Smiths,” says no-longer-likable Store Clerk #1.

And that was the exact moment when my heart exploded, splintering into a million pieces, the shards of it falling onto the dull tan carpeting next to a silica gel packet separated from its shoe box container.

That old, old rock band called The Smiths. The words swirled around in my head. Dizzy and sick to my stomach, I headed for the door. Even if the store housed the world’s most darling pair of shoes and they were hand created by Jimmy Choo just for me and they were giving them to me along with a newly minted $1000 bill, I still would not have taken them from a store clerk who didn’t have the good sense to appreciate the brilliant, melancholic lyrics dredged from the depths of the tortured soul of Steven Patrick Morrissey. And, seriously, how could you overlook Johnny Marr’s artistry with a guitar (hearing How Soon Is Now in my head as I write this), which won him the 26th spot in Spin Magazine‘s list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. That chick was plain, old, garden-variety, bat-shit crazy. I don’t accept gifts from crazy strangers.

When I got outside, I tried to regain my composure. Then I realized that, despite the fresh air and the change of scenery, I still felt nauseous. I suspected it might have something to do with the “old, old rock band” phrase uttered by that vapid store clerk. If I listened to The Smiths in high school and college and if they are considered “old old,” then by the transitive property of equality I am old old. Sigh. You know…it’s bad enough knowing you are middle age, but having a young person confirm it is soul crushing. I try to remind myself that, even if I am old enough to have spent endless hours locked in my childhood bedroom listening to That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore while creating imaginary voodoo dolls of the oh-so-cute boy who had recently stomped on my heart, I am not a completely lost cause. These days I spend the vast majority of my iTunes dollars on new alternative and indie rock tunes that I discover while listening to my XM stereo in the car. I like new things and try not to spend too much of my present living in the past. I think that may mean that although I am old, I am not old old…yet.

Posted on by Me 8

Tonight’s Bedtime Story: Mama Bear And The Bully

Joe and his best buddies doing the sack race

Our son Joe is a sweet kid. Everyone who knows him tells us this. He’s sensitive, open, and honest. He wears his heart on his sleeve. He shares too much. In other words, he’s bully meat. While he hasn’t yet come home with a black eye as a result of some attack, he does get pushed around. Literally. Of the fourteen children in his small class, he is one of nine boys, the quietest one. He is the one who likes science and who doesn’t catch a football well. He’s a bully’s favorite meal.

There are several boys in his class who regularly give him a hard time. I watch these boys with a wary eye every time I pull up in my car in the pick up lane. I scan the group of kids waiting to be picked up, and I look to see how Joe is faring. I’ve gone out of my way not to rush to pick him up because I think he needs to learn to stand his ground. Two of the boys who pick on him simply do so because he’s different. I understand that mentality even though I dislike it. The third boy, the one who bullies Joe the most, pesters him just because he can. I don’t believe that he dislikes Joe. I think he bullies Joe to fit in and try to be popular. He’s a kid who hasn’t had the best of situations in his life. While that doesn’t excuse his behavior, I remind myself and Joe that it does explain it.

Tonight we were at the Back-To-School barbeque at a local park. The boy in question was relentlessly chasing Joe. When he’d catch up with him, he would roughly drag Joe around by his shirt. He was also doing “boy” things to him, like trying to put a crawdad on him because he knows that would not sit well with Joe. It’s hard to watch this as it’s happening but, I know that because he’s 11, Joe is quite sensitive to parental embarrassment. I have stood back and not intervened so far because I’ve been respecting Joe’s wish that I not get involved. He’s afraid that if I stand up for him he will just get teased more. I understand that, so I’ve bitten my tongue.

As we were leaving the barbecue as a family, this bully came up to Joe right in front of us and began shoving him around. I thought he had lost his mind. Does he not see us right here? This went on for about ten seconds. Then the kid looked over his shoulder and directly at me, a challenge. I stared him down. He kept hold of Joe’s shirt and taunted him verbally. Finally, I’d had enough.

“That is not cool, Mike (not his real name). Knock it off,” I said using my Big Voice.

He acquiesced and released Joe. Then he ran off to join the other boys. Joe came running up to us and as soon as he was away from Mike I could see he was holding back tears. When we got to the car, Joe was full on upset.

“Why did you tell me it was time to leave? He was grabbing my arm, and I was about to pop him in the face before you stopped me. Why did you stop me when I was finally going to pop him?” he asked.

“I didn’t think you were really getting ready to pop him,” I replied. “If I had known that, since we’re off school property, I most certainly would have let you done it. In fact, if I had known that was a possibility, I might have videotaped it so we could relive the moment later,” I joked.

“Everyone picks on me because they think I’m a weakling,” he said. At not quite 70 pounds and 11 years of age, Joe is the oldest and the smallest boy in the class.

“No, Joe. First of all, not everyone picks on you. There are only a few boys who are rough. Beyond that, I don’t think Mike picks on you because you’re a weakling. He picks on you to feel important and brave and in control. I don’t think it has anything to do with your weakness. It has everything, however, to do with his weakness. Listen…I saw the fist you made. Mike has no idea how close you came to popping him in the nose. You are not weak at all. You are strong because you have self-control and you haven’t popped him yet even though you really wanted to.”

Joe thought about this for a moment.

“Well…I still wish I would have had a chance to pop him,” he said.

“Maybe next time.”

After tonight’s display, though, I’m pretty sure there won’t be a next time. I talked to Joe about it and I’m going to visit with the principal about what I have seen and what happened tonight. I’m going to leave Joe out of it, but I’m going to be a tattletale because it’s time for this behavior to stop. If it doesn’t, I’m positive that Joe will eventually deck this kid, and I’m not quite ready to home school Joe once he’s expelled. Now, I’m not generally an advocate of violence, especially between kids. Truth is, though, that Mike is lucky that there were other parents around tonight. Joe wasn’t the only person who wanted to pop him. And, unlike Joe, I’m bigger than him, stronger than him, and I wear metal rings. I would have made an impact. You don’t mess with a cub when Mama Bear is around.

Posted on by Me 5

Social Media Manages To Make Politics Even More Distasteful

Here’s a good place for politics…a rally.

I dislike elections for many reasons. The flyers from candidates litter my mailbox. The cold calls from campaign offices soliciting my vote always interrupt dinner. The non-stop political advertising on television makes me do the unthinkable…turn off my television. The constant barrage of information, disinformation, and misinformation create an epic cacophony in my brain. In the six months directly preceding any election, I completely understand why some people are driven down the rabbit hole only to reemerge in outhouse-sized shacks in the chilly environs of isolated Montana where they can quietly stew in their hatred whilst planning attacks on the misguided government. If the founding fathers were here today to witness the degradation of a political process they so highly esteemed, they would determine that they should have spent less time drafting a thoughtful constitution and more time drinking and fondling barmaids.

And, just when I thought that my distaste for the election process could not be amplified, Facebook and Twitter came along to prove me wrong. Now, in addition to the aforementioned flyers, cold calls, and television ads, I get to endure the rantings and ravings of people I once considered sane enough to befriend via social media. Of course, all these friends are convinced they are posting facts (and not bastardizations of information that once held a modicum of legitimacy). The links to articles from often dubious sources are usually chock full of erroneous factoids. If the links themselves weren’t bad enough, they are nearly always accompanied by a personal diatribe so vitriolic that I wish I could wash my brain out with soap. Sometimes it’s like seeing a display of their ugly nakedness that is now burned into my brain; I will never look at them the same way. It’s disturbing.

So, why do people who appear normal on most days suddenly become rabid political junkies who feel the need to express themselves endlessly before an election? I used to think it was because they thought they might be able to change a misguided mind (and by “misguided mind” I’m referring to the mind of someone whose political views differ from their own, clearly correct views). But, seriously…when does that ever work? Not to get all pop music on you, but John Mayer’s lyrics seem so apropos here: “Is there anyone who ever remembers changing their mind from the paint on a sign? Is there anyone who clearly recalls ever breaking rank at all for something someone yelled real loud one time?” It doesn’t happen. By the time we are adults, most of us have more or less determined the things that are important to us. Plus, we’re stubborn and don’t like to be told what to believe. So, when you post something in an attempt to discredit or belittle another viewpoint, people immediately go into childish “la la la” mode with their fingers in their ears. You will not persuade them no matter what you say because they stopped listening the minute you implied they were too stupid to know what is “right.” Your lack of respect for their views garnered nothing but an immediate lack of respect for yours.

Years ago, my well-meaning husband told me he wanted to form a new political party called the Manners Party. It’s his assertion that people in this nation have lost their ability to treat others with respect and common decency. People are no longer capable of holding their tongues and listening with open minds or holding a door open for a stranger or even giving up a seat for someone who needs it more. We’ve become a nation of individuals with little or no concern for anyone or anything but ourselves. We’re the only ones who matter, the only ones who know anything. We’re a nation of people who feel we deserve something whether or not we’ve earned it. Just because we have rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press does not mean we should use our rights to chastise, attack, or otherwise denigrate those with whom we do not agree. The media attacks on political candidates are only worsened through the use of social media. Blatant untruths about political candidates are bandied about on Facebook as if they were hand delivered by God. Anyone can say anything, and they usually do.

When I was younger, I looked forward to elections because they gave me the opportunity to learn more about the candidates and the political process. Now elections only offer me the opportunity to learn more about the self-righteous political views of my friends and associates, as presented through whatever biased, self-promotional media outlet they’ve chosen to revere. Oh…I still try to look forward to elections. But now I look forward to them in the knowledge that as soon as they’re over my social media news feeds will go back to being filled with random quotes from cute kids and clever ideas reposted from Pinterest that remind me that, underneath our political posturing and self-serving rants, we aren’t that different after all. We all enjoy a good lolcats once in a while.

Posted on by Me 4

Smarter Than The Average Camper

20120902-090619.jpg
There are black bears in Colorado. Lots of them. In many mountain towns, Aspen and Crested Butte come to mind, bear-proof trash containers are mandatory. Campgrounds post signs with proper bear etiquette and food storage information. Bear stories populate the news, and nearly anyone you meet can relate a bear tale or two. Even in our suburban neighborhood, we have watched a bear cross the divided main thoroughfare. They are ubiquitous.

Still, they scare the crap out of people. Every time I tell someone we’re heading out for a camping trip, someone will ask: “Aren’t you afraid of the bears?” I am not afraid of black bears. A mountain lion might cause me near undergarment spoilage, but a bear? Not so much. You see, I know something that most bears don’t. I have a can of bear spray.

Truth is though, even without the bear spray, I don’t have to be afraid of bears because the camping world is chock full of people who are either unable or unwilling to read posted signs. So, my camping philosophy has largely centered around this one thought: “I don’t have to outwit the bears. I just have to outwit the dummy in the camping site next to mine.” It’s the universal law of the lowest common denominator. As long as I am a more careful camper than the guy next to me, as long as my food is more securely stored, the bear will skip right past me and go visit the ignorant dude in the next site. Guaranteed.

This morning at precisely 6:38 a.m., I heard the tell-tale sound of a bear in the campground. Some numb nuts was yelling at the top of his lungs in his Papa Bear voice.

“HEY!”

Twenty second pause.

“HEY!”

Then, I heard a diesel truck engine start, followed by a prolonged horn honk. In quick succession, I heard a second blast of the horn. I shook my head. Definitely a bear sighting. Was I worried? No. Our food was properly stored in our locked car and not left outside in its cooler. Our table had been wiped clean. We don’t have to be the most immaculate campers. We just have to be more clever than the next guy.

We did see the bear. It was a young and small, perhaps 200 pounds. It crossed the camp loop road about forty feet ahead of us, nose up in the air sniffing, as it was being chased off by a man knocking some large wooden blocks together. I felt sorry for the bear, thwarted from its easy meal by the same dope who had provided it. How frustrating! Nope. I am definitely not afraid of black bears. Ignorant humans, on the other hand, scare the bejesus out of me.

Posted on by Me

File It Under “Typical”

The license in question…and, yes..the info on it is correct. Well, all of it except the vision restriction.

I spend most of my life in a perpetual eye roll. It’s probably not the best look for me, yet the habit persists. I used to be able to control it, or at least curb it during inappropriate situations, but now it’s second nature much like breathing or sucking my stomach in when I get out of a swimming pool. Just a bit ago, I found myself in an eye roll that was likely visible from space. The magnitude of my annoyance was so great that astronauts aboard the International Space Station could have seen the whites of my eyes if they had been looking.

Last Friday morning, I decided that my exercise du jour would be an inline skate. It was cool when I left the house, so I donned a light jacket with a pocket. When I got to the parking lot near the path, I loaded the jacket pocket with all the usual necessities….chapstick, my ever-present iPhone, my Nano (which has all my best music on it because I save the memory on my iPhone for apps), and my driver’s license because you never know when you’re going to be exercising alone, become the victim of some completely bizarre tragedy, and need to have your body identified. I skated a bit longer than usual, so halfway through my skate the temperatures had climbed and I didn’t need the jacket anymore. I wrapped it around my waist to transport it back to the car. When I got back to the car, I had just one thing on my mind. A venti Cool Lime Refresher from Starbucks. So, I peeled off my skates, slipped back into my flip-flops, and headed off to Starbucks in mental turmoil about whether I’d use my expired gold star card or not.

On Friday night, I was digging through my wallet looking for something and realized my driver’s license wasn’t there. I remembered I had taken it out for my skate, so I checked the back pocket of the jacket. The license wasn’t there. Curious. I then thought I remembered putting it in my purse (and not in my wallet where it belonged), so I began rifling through my bag. Not there either. I searched my car, the garage, the kitchen counter. I mentally retraced my steps. I scoured both the purse and the wallet again. It appeared to be gone. I told myself that I would give it the weekend to turn up and then call it quits and face the dreaded line at the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles.

Well, the dang thing did not miraculously hop back into my wallet over the weekend, so this morning it was time to face the executioner. Armed with my passport, a current credit card bill, and our checkbook, I prepared myself for the misery that is Driver’s License Hell. Amazingly, there were only 6 people ahead of me when I arrived. When I was able to approach my surly clerk (from what I could tell while I waited, there were 4 surly clerks and 1 pleasant one), I handed over my identification, took the vision test which I passed with flying colors sans corrective lenses courtesy of LASIK 6 years ago, and shelled out $21 for a replacement license. When I was finished, the clerk informed me that my license “should arrive via mail in 30 days.” This comment induced another epic eye roll. I have to wait 30 days to discover what hideous portrait the camera dude was able to come up with? Sigh. I took my temporary license (a flimsy 8″ x 4″ piece of paper) and went home annoyed at myself for losing the real thing. The photo on the license I lost was taken in 1999 when I was 31 years old. I liked that license because I looked, oh, about 13 years younger in it.

Well, I’m sure you know where this is going. This afternoon I got the mail. I opened an envelope addressed to me and guess what I found there. Yep. My original license, the one I lost, the one that wasn’t due for replacement for another two years. (This is when the eye roll visible from space occurred.) Some kind soul had found it along the path where it had fallen from my pocket and mailed it back to me. Typical. What does today’s experience teach me? It teaches me not to be so timely when I replace lost items. It also teaches me that the next time I skate I leave my license in my car. If some horrific tragedy befalls me while I’m skating, let the coroner ID my body. That’s his job anyway.

Posted on by Me 1

Hope I Die Before I Get Old

Have you ever noticed that sometimes you can go months without thinking about something and then, suddenly, circumstances present that idea to you repeatedly within a short time span, bringing it back to the forefront of your mind? Well, that happened to me this weekend with the idea of growing old. After my 44th birthday at the end of May, I’d kind of drop kicked the getting old concept right out of my head. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. It was too depressing. This weekend, however, I had several conversations about how people are living to be reasonably old these days. Elderly people can live long enough that they, like my grandmother, wonder when they will ever die.

When I was a kid, way back in the 1970s, people talked about wanting to live to a “ripe, old age.” Now that many more people are living well into and beyond their late 80s and early 90s, though, that song and dance about aging has changed. Recently I more often hear people saying they hope they don’t live to be too old. It’s the whole retirement thing. People look forward to retirement, so they retire early. You could very easily retire at 65 today, though, live to be 95, and run out of your retirement savings. That’s a grim prospect.

My grandfathers retired at 65. Neither of them lived to be 75. They didn’t have a lot of time to enjoy their “golden years,” but they also didn’t outlive their pensions either. My grandmothers lived to be 93. They both ended up penniless in less than idyllic nursing homes (not that I think any nursing home situation is idyllic but you know what I mean). When I think about those two options, I have to believe that my grandfathers ended up with the better part of the deal. I’m not entirely sure I want to live to be 98 like the woman who shared a nursing home room with my grandmother during her last six weeks on earth. That poor woman had outlived everyone. She had one relative, and he lived in another state. She was alone and bedridden in a nursing home. No. Thank. You.

Although I seem to be getting older at a rate faster than I would prefer, living to a ripe old age doesn’t appeal to me. What is the benefit in living thirty years beyond your retirement party if you can never afford to party again? I’m not looking to die young (or, in my case, young-ish), but I’m not sure that living to 100 is the greatest bargain either. When I was in college working at the campus movie theater, I got to see Harold and Maude, which is a quirky cult film about a young man obsessed with death. He meets a robust 79 year old woman who believes in living every day to its fullest. It’s Maude’s assertion that 80 is the perfect age to die. When I was 20, I thought Maude had the right idea. Now as I dance ever closer to her magical number, I still find myself thinking she was onto something. But, you might want to ask me about it again when I’m 79 years and 11 months and see if I’ve changed my mind.

Posted on by Me 105

I Just Discovered The Job I Was Meant To Do…Airport Security

If you can’t travel for a living, then work where you can torture those who do.

So, all this recent air travel (I’m writing this from a hotel room right now) has prompted me to make an important and potentially life-changing discovery. I have uncovered the job I was meant to do in this life. For most of my adult life, I felt that my introverted orientation would best suit me for a career as a writer or researcher, solitary jobs where I could work with limited human contact. I once even entered library school to pursue a master’s degree in library and information science because libraries, above all else, are quiet places…peaceful places where no one is allowed to yell or run around or disturb anyone else. You see, I don’t generally care for human interaction. It exhausts me and, unfortunately, most jobs require you to interact with other people. Finding a job where you rarely have to deal with people at all is difficult because most of those jobs are already being done by other introverts who got there first. Sigh.

Well, I’ve spent a lot of time in the airport recently and what I’ve realized is that I was meant to be a TSA employee. Yes. I know. Airport TSA agents encounter oodles of people each and every day. But, you know what? They don’t have to be nice to them. Most TSA agents are sarcastic, bossy, and standoffish. You know what? So am I! You know what else? The government pays them to be that way every single day on the job. Have you spent any time watching an airport TSA agent? They have complete and utter disdain for humanity. Why shouldn’t they? Have you met people? Most people are confused. They don’t read signs. They can’t follow directions. They’re completely bewildered in the airport. They’re unwilling and unable to adapt. Even now, nearly 11 years into a post 9/11 world, people still don’t know how to get through this enhanced airport security. They remain unhinged.

Oh. They mean well. They try. But, TSA agents shout so many instructions and there are always newfangled scanning machines and it’s all so darn confusing to the average person who only occasionally travels. The problem is that there are A LOT of those type of travelers in the airports slowing down the screening process and annoying the living crap out of the poor, beleaguered TSA agents. This is why, I believe, they are belligerent. We’re mucking it all up and making it nearly impossible for them to get to their well-earned coffee break.

My mother-in-law who, by all accounts, has traveled a great deal got caught up in the security nightmare last week at the Miami airport as we were going through U.S. screening after returning from Ecuador. They asked her to walk into one of those large millimeter wave scanners where you stand with your feet spread wide and place your hands above your head like you’re being robbed while the machine’s arm scans you down to your birthday suit. Apparently, Marlene did it wrong because the TSA agent yelled at her as she exited the scanner.

“Do you have something in your pockets?” the hefty and thoroughly frustrated agent bellowed.

“Just some Kleenex,” my mother-in-law replied quietly.

“You are supposed to empty your pockets,” the agent reprimanded. Then, in a shrill voice she yelled right over the top of my mother-in-law’s 5′ tall head. “RECALIBRATE!”

This forced another TSA employee to roll their eyes, get up from their stool, and reset the machine that my mother-in-law had obviously disturbed. Now, most of us would not think twice to leave a piece of paper in our pockets because with the traditional metal detectors we’ve been used to for years, a mere piece of paper would not be an issue. “Empty your pockets” used to mean take the metal out of them. Now, it means take everything out…hence, the need for flippant comments when explaining in excruciating and obnoxious detail what the term “empty” means. Having carefully watched this scanning process while waiting in endless lines at the airport, I noted that approximately 1 in every 5 scans may end in a recalibration because someone either touched something or left something in their pockets. That’s a fairly high percentage of people messing with the process and, consequently, a fairly lucrative opportunity for overt sarcasm and disdain for humanity. Where else could I get paid to show how much people annoy me?

So, you see, I might have found a better alternative career for myself. I’d thought about writing some sort of book or something, but a job with the TSA might be more therapeutic and beneficial. I could take out my endless frustrations with clueless humans in a public setting. Then, when I was depressed by the sheer number of perplexed and befuddled individuals wandering through this great nation, I could retire from the TSA and write a book about my experiences. Seems as if I’ve finally found both my calling and my book opportunity. Hallelujah!

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