My First Ski Trip

I was in the army. Fortunately, I was assigned to an engineering battalion in Germany rather than Viet Nam. Although I had already been trained in explosives and land mines, I was sent to Garmisch for advanced training in land mine warfare. It seemed strange to be studying something so awful in a place that was so beautiful. Just south of Garmisch is the tallest mountain in Germany. It is the Zugspitze, and it straddles the border between Austria and Germany. Upon completing my training, I was rewarded with a two days pass. The ski slopes on the Austrian side of the border are probably more famous, but the ones on German side of the border are notable. I had never skied before, and I decided this was the perfect time to try it.

I took a bus to a nice little ski lodge. I then checked into a room and rented the ski equipment. Since it was still early in the morning I boarded a shuttle bus to the slopes. A very attractive young lady sat down next to me. This was Angela. She was only an inch shorter than I am, which made her five feet eight inches tall. She had a slim, athletic body. She removed her dark glasses to reveal clear, blue eyes. We were having such a pleasant conversation that I was almost disappointed when we reached the ski area. We disembarked. We then waited for the bus driver to unload the skis. I am sure the wait was even longer than Angela had anticipated because I did not retrieve my skis until most of the other skiers had retrieved theirs.

“You have to be the most patient man I’ve ever met,” she said.

“I’m afraid you’re such a pleasant distraction that I couldn’t remember which skis I rented.”

She laughed. “I’ve been here before,” she said. “Come on! I’ll take you to the best slopes.”

For some reason my inexperience as a skier never came up during our conversation. We took a chair lift that deposited us at the top of a very steep slope. I thought it was so steep that they could have held the Olympic downhill competition on it. She smoothly and easily began her descent. I shot off the top of the hill. I fell, I tumbled, and I scattered my equipment along a large portion of the trail. Another skier was kind enough to pick up my equipment and bring it to me. I fell two more times before I made it to the bottom. By then I was a wreck. There was snow in places I never thought snow could reach.

Angela took one look at me and started laughing. “Are you all right?”

“Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Most parts haven’t frozen, and the ones that have will thaw out eventually. I guess I should have told you I haven’t skied before.”

“Yes, you should’ve.” She reached up and gently brushed some snow off my collar. “I think we should do the rest of our skiing in the lodge,” she said.

What we did in the lodge was a lot more fun than skiing. It was quite a day and quite a night. When we talked, we kept the conversation light. She told me she was a ski instructor who occasionally traveled to Europe to write about the ski facilities there. I told her I was a student who had just earned a bachelor’s degree in history before being drafted into the army. But that was all that was said about the army, and we did not discuss the war. Instead, we joked and laughed and talked about the things that made us happy.

I really wanted to spend more time with her, but I could not do it. Because of the bus and train schedules, I had to leave the next morning. We had breakfast together at the lodge.
She looked at me from across the table.

“You’re a very gentle person,” she said.

“And you’re a very beautiful person.”

She smiled, but I could see that she was concerned about something.

“Are you in danger of them sending you to Viet Nam?” she asked.

“No, they want soldiers to serve there for at least a year, and I have just under a year left to go.”

“Thank God!”

“Yes, I was lucky enough to dodge that bullet. I wish I could say the same thing about all of my friends who were killed there.”

“I wish we could say the same thing about all of the people killed there.”

The army does not like it when soldiers express anti-war views. The problem was that I agreed with her, and I said so. She took my hand, and we walked down to the bus stop.

“I’d like to see you again,” I said.

“I’d like to see you too, but I’m going back to Canada when I leave here.”

“California’s on the same continent.”

“I don’t think we should make promises we can’t keep.” She prevented any reply by throwing her arms around my neck and kissing me on the lips. The bus pulled up and the doors opened.

“Take care of yourself. Okay?”

“Okay,” I replied.

I looked back at her as I took the last step onto the bus. She flashed me the peace sign, and I responded in kind.

I know people will say this was just a one night stand, but I was a lonely soldier in a strange place during a terrible war. What Angela shared with me was more than casual sex. It was an affirmation of how wonderful life can be. I will always have fond memories of her. I hope she feels the same way about me.

First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on Jun. 24, 2009

Kiss My Cliché

Ralph used the expression “hearty laugh” in an essay he wrote for his English composition class. His professor circled “hearty laugh” with her blue pen and wrote “Cliché” above it. He also used the expression “all in all,” and she marked it as a cliché as well. This raised the questions in his mind: are all frequently used expressions clichés? If not, why are only some of them considered clichés? Those questions inspired a new hobby. Ralph was now collecting clichés, and he was becoming quite pedantic about them. He thought that people using them should get them right.

He looked over at Lorna. Her lovely face was turned away from him because she was looking out of the passenger’s window. Her family called her Lorie. It sounded like the British word for a truck. He doubted that her parents were aware of that. Nicknames used by family members and lovers were supposed to be affectionate. In many ways, those names were like terms of endearment. Calling this slim, attractive girl a truck would not be endearing.

“Do you suppose terms of endearment, such as sugar and honey, are clichés?” he asked.

“They probably are, but people who try to get too creative about terms of endearment usually come up with things that are pretty ghastly.”

She reached over and turned on the radio. She searched through the frequencies, but all she found was static. She turned the radio off.

“Just as well,” she said. “I don’t care for country-western music anyhow.”

Ralph smiled. “Rock and Roll’s boisterous, like the city. Country music reflects the hard life and isolation of the farm. I don’t like the work or the isolation, but the music’s okay.”

“And here I thought you enrolled at UCLA to get away form the yeehaws and twangy music?”

“No, but I like your comment about people creating ghastly terms of endearment. It sounds like a pretty good defense of clichés.”

“Do people actually use clichés because they think they’re true?”

“That’s an interesting question. Why don’t we have some fun with it?”

“A new game!”

“We’ll call it, ‘Is It Really Darkest Before The Dawn?’”

The game had barely started when all the air was let out of it. Which is to say that the right, front tire of the car blew out. At sixty miles per hour this was a problem. The car fishtailed violently. Ralph fought the steering wheel until he was able to regain control. He brought the car to a stop on the right shoulder of the road and looked over at Lorie.

“Are you all right?”

“It almost made me add some weight to my panties, but I’ll be okay now that I feel safe enough to unpucker a bit.”

Ralph laughed. Leave it to Lorie. She was always prim and proper around strangers, but she could come up with some real doozies when she was with close friends. He got out of the car and walked around to the right side to look at the tire. He wondered why he automatically did that. He already knew what a blown out tire looks like. He shrugged, walked to the back of the car, and opened the trunk.

“Damn it!”

“What’s wrong?”

“The spare’s flat!”

He saw a truck approaching, and he waved his arms at it. It pulled up in front of his car and stopped. A teenage boy was in the passenger’s seat, and a middle age man was behind the wheel. Ralph walked over to the driver’s side.

“Don’t tell me a strapping young man like you can’t change a tire,” the man said.

“I can, but it wouldn’t do me much good. The spare’s flat.”

“Well, I’m going into town. You might as well get both tires fixed there. Give him a hand Arnold!”

When both of the tires were in the back of the truck, the man told Arnold to sit in the bed so their guests could sit in the cab. This was a polite thing to do, and Ralph thanked him. Ralph climbed into the cab first. It was usually polite to let the lady go first, but, as his daddy said, “when accepting a ride from a stranger the man sits next to the stranger.”

The man did not say anything. He just pulled out onto the road and brought the truck up to highway speed. There were a few strands of straw in the bed of the truck. Arnold was picking them up one at a time. He was throwing them into the air, trying to catch the swirl of wind that would make the straw return to the bed of the truck. He removed his hat and looked very much like he was thinking of tossing it in the air as well. The man pounded on the back window. Then he stuck his head out of the side window and yelled.

“Don’t toss your hat, Arnold.”

“I won’t, Oh-man.”

“The boy’s a bit slow, but he’s a good worker.”

“Does he always call you ol’ man?” Lorie asked.

“It should be ol’ man, but it isn’t. It’s Oh-man, like the expression folks use when something goes wrong.”

“Odd thing to call a man,” Ralph said, hoping that Oh-man would not consider the comment rude.

“Yeah, but there’s nothing I can do about it. The hands I hired used to call me the old man, like I was a sea captain or something. Arnold was just a little tyke at the time. He thought they were saying Oh-man. So he started calling me that and so did everyone else. Now I’m stuck with it.”

“We could use your name if you’d prefer,” Lorie said.

“My Christian name’s Charley, but you might as well call me what everyone else does. I’d take it kindly if you minded the inflection in your voice, though.”

Ralph and Lorie laughed. “I’m Ralph and this is Lorie.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Is Arnold your son?” Lorie asked.

“Like it, but no. His mother was unwed and an outcast. My Misses took pity on her, and we took her and Arnold in. By the time he was four it was pretty obvious that he was slow. I guess that bothered his mama because she took off with a drummer and left the kid behind.”

“So you raised him like your own,” Ralph said.
 
“He’s no bother. As I said, he’s a good worker.”

“How like a farmer, long on affection and short on the expression of it,” Ralph thought.

They entered the town and Oh-man pulled into a gas station. “Got some tire work for you, Fred.”

Fred examined the spare. “It’s awful worn. I can put a plug in it, but I wouldn’t trust it to get you very far.” There was no reason to discuss the one that blew out. It would have to be replaced.

“The least expensive tires I have are these retreads. They aren’t too bad. At least I haven’t heard anything about the treads coming off, and folks around here aren’t too shy to complain about such things.”

The price of the retreaded tire was reasonable, but it was going to leave Ralph and Lorie short on cash.

“Maybe we can find some work,” she said.

“I’m afraid I can’t give you credit.”

“We can pay for the tires,” Ralph replied. “It just leaves us a little short of what we need to make it home.”

“Where you from?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Long ways from here.”

"Yes."

“If you knew something about farming, I could pay you more than I would pay a beginner,” Oh-man said.

“I was raised on a farm.”

“Know anything about bucking and stacking bales?”

This was exactly the type of work Ralph was trying to get away from, but he needed the money. “Sure do,” he replied.

“Room and board are included, and you get paid when the harvest is done.”

The deal was struck. Ralph put the retread on his car, threw the repaired spare in the trunk, and followed Oh-man to the farm.

Oh-man introduced them to his wife, Sally, and to the farmhand, Bob. Sally walked them to a little cabin near the main house and opened the door for them to enter. There was a pot bellied stove in the center of the room. The bed was off to one side. A wash-basin and a large pitcher were on the other side. There was no running water.

“This is a guest cabin,” Sally said. “Sorry, but I wasn’t expecting guests. I’ll bring you some fresh bedding and cleaning supplies. Your man can split some stove wood while you clean.”

“Does it get that cold at night?” Lorie asked.

Sally smiled to indicate that it did. After Lorie cleaned the cabin and Ralph stacked enough wood next to the stove, they went to the main house for dinner.

“Are you settled in okay?” Sally asked as she served the meal.

Ralph was tempted to use the "snug as a bug in a rug" cliché, but Lorie prevented that by saying yes.

Oh-man said the prayer.

Sally waited until all of the dishes had been passed around. “You can use the bathroom in here,” she said.

“Ralph can save himself a few trips by peeing in the bushes,” Oh-man said.

Sally gave him a disapproving look. “Behave yourself!”

“We all do it,” Bob said.

“But we don’t talk about it!”

The men laughed. One thing Ralph noticed during the course of the meal was that Arnold did not participate in the conversations and rarely showed any reaction to what was being said unless he was directly addressed.

The next morning Ralph went to help Arnold in the barn, and Lorie went to help Sally in the kitchen. Arnold and Ralph finished milking the cows, and Arnold opened the barn door. The cows made a dash for it. The dog was on the other side of the door. There was no need for him to herd the cows. They were more than eager to get to the sweet grass in the pasture. The dog’s job was to make sure they went through the gate two at a time rather than crowding the gate and damaging the fence. Arnold closed the gate behind them.

That is when Ralph heard Lorie. “Ouch! Damn it! Ouch! Oh, Shit! That hurts!” She was in the chicken coop, and it did not take much imagination for him to picture the hens pecking her.

He walked to the chicken coop. “You have to spread out some feed.”

“What?”

He opened the top of the bin, scooped up some corn, and spread it out on the floor. The hens abandoned their roosts to get the corn. “It distracts them enough for you to gather the eggs.”

“Now you tell me!”

He laughed and walked back to the barn to help Arnold muck it out. Bob placed a powerful fan facing the door of the barn and turned it on. “It should help with the smell and the flies,” he said. Arnold moved a wheel barrel into a position where both he and Ralph could use it. Bob went to the structure where the tractors and such were housed.

When the wheel barrel was as full as Arnold wanted it, he started to wheel it out of the barn. The fan was in his way. So Arnold turned it off and set it where the wheel barrel had been. The fan was now facing Ralph. Ralph’s back was turned to it, and he was so busy using the shovel to rake the muck into a pile that he did not notice what Arnold was doing.

Arnold was leaving the barn with the wheel barrel as Lorie approached. She told him breakfast was almost ready, and she entered the barn. For some reason, she turned on the fan just as Ralph threw a shovel full of muck where he thought the wheel barrel was. She jumped out of the way. The blades caught the muck and threw it all over Ralph. He spun around. Lorie was out of his line of sight. What he saw was Arnold entering the barn with the empty wheel barrel.

Much to Ralph’s credit, he did not swear at Arnold. Instead, he said: “Little man, so spick and span, where were you when the shit hit the fan?”

This quotation of an old joke, which had become a cliché, made Lorie laugh.

“That’s funny,” Arnold said.

“Not when you’re on the receiving end,” Ralph replied.

“Sorry,” Lorie said. “I’m the one who turned it on.”

“Why?”

“A fan doesn’t do you much good when it’s off.”

“As you can see, it didn’t do me a hell of lot of good when it was on,” Ralph said, inspiring more laughter.

“I’ll help you clean up,” Lorie said.

Arnold waited for them. When they were leaving the barn they heard an engine start and then stall. This was followed by: “Son of a bitch! Piece of shit truck!”

Lorie walked over to the door of the structure Bob was in. “Breakfast is ready,” she announced.

“About time,” he growled.

She made a hasty retreat.

Oh-man walked into the dining room and sat at the table. Sally poured some castor oil into a glass. She then added some orange juice to sweeten it. She set the horrible concoction in front of Oh-man.

“That ought to fix what ails you,” she said.

Arnold, Ralph, and Lorie now entered. They had just sat down at the table when Bob stormed in. “We’re up shit creek!” he shouted.

Ralph should not have said it, but he did. “It could be worse.”

“How?”

“We could be downstream, trying to work our way up the creek without a paddle.”

“Smart ass!”

“He always sees the glass as half full,” Lorie said.

“You think that’s good?” Bob asked.

“Yes, it’s a positive, cheerful attitude.”

Oh-man looked at the glass in front of him. “Not if the glass is half full of castor oil, it isn’t.”

Bob laughed, and the laughter caused him to spill some of the hot coffee in his lap.

“Shit!”

“If I could, I wouldn’t have to drink this terrible stuff.”

Everyone, except for Sally, laughed. “Stop bellyaching and take your medicine,” she said.

“It makes my belly ache.”

“Only until it passes through.”

He raised his glass high enough to hide his lips from her, and he mouthed: “Easy for you to say.” Everyone expected him to drink the stuff, but he lowered the glass to ask a question first. “Why’re we up shit creek?”

“The damn truck has a loose wire somewhere. It starts all right, but the slightest vibration shuts it down.”

“I can give you a temporary fix,” Ralph said.

“How temporary?”

“Well, I wouldn’t trust it to get you through the harvest, but it should get you to town. A good mechanic can probably replace the wire in an hour or so.”

Oh-man decided that Ralph would take the truck to get it fixed. “We need someone who can get it running again if it conks out on the way,” Oh-man said.

Sally told Lorie to go with Ralph. She gave Lorie a list of five items to pick up and a small amount of cash. When Lorie asked if there was a particular store Sally preferred Sally said, “I’ll trust your judgment.”

The truck was quickly repaired. They then went to pick up the items on Sally’s list.

“No wonder she trusted my judgment about where to buy them. There’s only one store,” Lorie said.

Ralph laughed.

“Man is she good! Do you know how much change I got back? One nickel.”

“Never underestimate a farmer when it comes to money.”

“I won’t now.”

They pulled up in front of the barn and got out of the truck. Arnold was standing in the doorway of the barn, contentedly eating an apple.

“How’re you doing?” Ralph asked.

“Happier ‘n pig shit!”

“You mean happier than a pig in shit,” Ralph corrected.

“What?”

“He was correcting your diction,” Lorie said.

Arnold looked down at the fly of his trousers. “My what?”

“Your diction.”

“It’s happier than a pig in shit,” Ralph explained.

Arnold was still looking down at his fly. “How do you know?”

“Because that’s how the cliché goes.”

“That’s right, it’s a cliché. So if you correct someone misquoting a cliché, is it still a matter of diction?” Lorie asked.

Arnold answered before Ralph could. “Don’t know. I thought we was talking ‘bout pig shit.”

“Pigs in shit!”

“You think they like that?” Arnold asked. “I seen ‘em rolling in mud. They liked that okay, but I don’t know ‘bout being dipped in shit. Bob sure didn’t like it.”

“Bob was dipped in shit?” Lorie asked.

“Yeah. We went to West line, to the cabin there. We was supposed to move the outhouse and clean out the hole. Bob was saying how he didn’t want to lift the outhouse, but Oh-man come along with that fork machine he uses to lift bales.”

“You mean a fork lift?” Ralph asked.

“Yeah. Oh-man stuck them forks under the outhouse and lifted it easy. Bob smiled and said he’d be dipped in shit. That’s when the door of the outhouse swung open and knocked him in the hole. Oh-man stopped the machine and walked over to the hole. ‘Damned if you wasn’t,’ he said. ‘You been dipped, sure ‘nough. Gotta be more careful ‘bout what you wish for, Bob.’”

“What did Bob say?”

“He cussed him a storm.”

“Cussed…” Ralph was about to say, “cussed up a storm.” Fortunately, he saw Lorie shake her head, and he stopped himself.

“He sure did,” Arnold said, as if Ralph had asked him a question. “He cussed something fierce.”

“How’d he get out of the hole?” Lorie asked.

“Oh-man had me pull him out.”

“You get all the fun jobs,” Ralph joked.

“That one was kinda shitty,” Arnold replied.

The harvest started the next morning. Bucking the bales up onto the truck bed was heavy, physically demanding work. Ralph started out as one of the buckers. The job that took the most knowledge and concentration was stacking. A shifting load was very dangerous, and having to reload the truck was considered somewhat of a disaster. Oh-man always started out as the stacker. The women were given the lighter jobs of driving and marking the rows and such.

You can always tell an experienced bucker because he knows how to position his body to get the best leverage and conserve his energy. It was a skill Ralph had learned well. So had Arnold. After two and half hours Oh-man told Arnold to stack. “Arnold can’t be that slow if Oh-man is willing to let him stack,” Ralph thought. But that was the thing about Arnold. His language and social skills were not quite what they should be, and his mind frequently seemed to wonder off to God knows where during conversations. When it came to farm work, however, he was quite competent. He was obviously someone who learned by watching, and he was probably a lot brighter than anyone realized.

Another two hours went by. Oh-man then shifted Ralph up to the stacker position. A pattern was beginning to emerge. Oh-man was a good manager. He would not put you in a position you could not handle, but he did his best to rotate his personnel. Shifting people to and from the more physically demanding jobs kept them fresh and allowed the entire crew to work at a quicker pace. Members of harvest crews depend on each other, and Ralph could see that they were bonding well. Everybody did their best, and they tried to help each other.

Anyone who has been around hay will tell you that it makes you itch. At the end of the day the men walked around to the back of the barn. There they stripped down and used the garden hose to wash off before putting on fresh clothes. The women used the shower in the house.

“You don’t have to freeze them off,” Sally said, “but if the water’s too warm, it’ll make the itching worse.”

Lorie was smart enough to heed Sally’s advice. In spite of the itching and the sore muscles, Lorie felt about as good as she had ever felt.

The harvest was over in two weeks. Oh-man paid Ralph and Lorie in cash. Sally made up a picnic basket full of fried chicken and biscuits for the trip. She also gave them a large jar of freshly made lemonade.

“Your good workers,” Oh-man said. “I’m glad I got to know you. If you come this way again, pay us a visit.”

“It would be our pleasure,” Ralph replied.

“I’ll miss you,” Sally said, and she hugged Lorie.

This goodbye was about as emotional as a farmer will allow. Ralph and Lorie drove in silence for the first few miles. Then Lorie spoke up.

“I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’m glad the stupid tire blew out. The harvest was quite an experience, and I really like the people there, particularly Sally.”

“It’s easy to forget how decent farm people are,” Ralph said. “It makes me think that I might want to buy a place in the country when I retire. We could have some chickens and a nice little truck garden.”

“No cows?”

“Too much work. Remember, I said when I retire.”

“Do you realize you said we could have chickens and a truck garden?”

“Well, we can. That is, if you’ll marry me?”

“Are you asking me to marry you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you have another semester to go, and I have a whole year. Why don’t we do it after I graduate.”

“I take it that’s a yes.”

“Yes.”

“A year’s a long time. You’re not going to change your mind on me, are you?”

“No way.” She could not resist adding, “You know what they say about a bird in the hand.”

“You have one of the traits of a good farmer.”

“Which one?”

“You’re long on affection and short on verbal expressions of it.”

“There are some things the man should say first.”

“Haven’t I told you I love you?”

“No.”

“Well, I love you.”

“I love you too."

"Is ‘I love you’ a cliché?”

“Who the hell cares?”

“Professor Stein.”
First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on Jun. 17, 2009

SATIRE AND SARCASM

A self-help book I once read warned against satire. It said satire implied a lack of control and was bad for self-image. That may be, but I have found satire to be useful and, at times, beneficial. I do not remember exactly, but I think the serenity prayer goes something like this:

God grant me:
The patience to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I should not accept
And the wisdom to know the difference

The short form is “fuck it.” And that is satire. Many times satire is a way of coping with the things we cannot change or accept. An exercise of futility? Not necessarily. Laughter has a leveling effect. It decreases the importance of the things we cannot control and allows us to focus on what we can control. By laughing at an ineffectual attempt to do something we are often able to see where we made our mistakes. We are then ready to try again. We are then ready to look for a way to get around the seemingly insurmountable obstacles we cannot remove.

The other beneficial thing about satire is that it makes people laugh, and people like to laugh. There are times when conventional complaints have not worked, and I have achieved the desired results through satire. The thing to remember when writing a satirical letter of complaint is that satire is not the same as sarcasm. Sarcasm is a bitter laugh, a biting or cutting remark. Satire, on the other hand, holds up follies or vices to ridicule. Although the line between satire and sarcasm can be very thin, the difference is significant. Satire is more general and does not need to be directed at an individual, whereas sarcasm is more personal and is usually seen as an attack.

When I owned a bookstore I frequently placed special orders for books my customers requested. One of my customers wanted a book entitled Hydroponics: Gardening Without Soil. The publisher from whom I ordered the book was in the U.S., but the publisher who printed the book was in South Africa. Apparently, the U.S. publisher did not have enough copies of the book on hand and had to back order it from the publisher in South Africa. The problem was that I was not informed of this. After forty days went by, I sent a letter to the U.S. publisher inquiring about the status of my order. Twenty days later I still had not heard from the publisher. Furthermore, my customer was putting considerable pressure on me by insisting that I find out when he could expect the book. It seemed to me that this called for an unconventional approach. So I sent the U.S. publisher the following letter:

“Since you did not reply to my inquiry of November fifteenth I was forced tell my customer that some wayward errand boy, who was trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by balancing Hydroponics: Gardening Without Soil on his nose, inadvertently dropped the book down an abandoned diamond mine shaft, and that a giant python then seized the book and squeezed it down to the size of a three by five card.

I went on to explain that the English and the Afrikaners are now arguing about whether the book is in Dutch, and that the Bantus could give less of a damn than you seem to.

My customer, however, refused to accept this excuse, and he is waiting with baited but soil-less breath for some word, or, better yet, his book.”

Within several days of sending this letter I received a telephone call from a very pleasant lady who worked for the publisher. She told me the letter made her day and thanked me for sending it.

“I managed to find a copy of the book in the office,” she told me. “I have just placed it in the mail along with a reply to your letter.”

She was good to her word. The book promptly arrived at my bookstore along with her letter and a three by five card on which she had very neatly printed:

“HYDROPONICS:
GARDENING
WITHOUT
SOIL
(The 3 x 5 version – condensed)”

Her letter read as follows:

“My goodness: We certainly don’t want to implant in your mind a seedy image of our company. We also don’t want you to believe that HYDROPONICS is all washed up.

So, fortunately, after much – uh – soil – searching, we were able to dig up a copy of HYDROPONICS from our office. It is en ‘root’ to you right now.

Please accept our deep-rooted apologies.”

This exchange of letters happened so long ago that I did not try to obtain the lady’s permission to include her name or the name of the publisher she worked for. Perhaps I should have made an effort to locate her. She certainly deserves a lot of credit. Although I softened the satire a bit by fictionalizing it, my letter was a complaint that demanded a response. She did not take offense. Instead, she laughed. She then replied in kind and greatly expedited the delivery of the book. My customer and I really enjoyed her clever response.

While a sarcastic comment will frequently inspire a clever reply, it rarely inspires such a favorable response. As I stated earlier, sarcasm is a personal attack, and this can result in exchanges that become increasingly ruder and cruder.

Don was a person with a very sarcastic sense of humor, and his favorite target was John. Several years had passed since John and Don had seen each other. When they met again it was obvious that Don had put on a considerable amount of weight. John thought about the many sarcastic barbs Don had hurled at him, and he decided to use Don’s weight gain as an opportunity to get even.

“Jesus Christ, Don. When was the last time you were able to see your dick?” John asked.

Unfazed by the question, Don calmly replied: “Oh, about a year.”

“Well, don’t you think it’s time to diet?”

“Why, what color is it now?”

John did the same thing that many of you are probably doing; he laughed.

I know the exchange I just recounted is crude, but I included it because it illustrates something about human nature. Don deflected John’s attack with self-depreciating humor, and this made John set aside the sting of the sarcasm he had endured over the years. I suppose there is a self-help book out there somewhere stating that self-depreciating humor is very bad for your self-image. I would not know. I stopped reading advice columns and self-help books a long time ago. They usually state the obvious and frequently exaggerate the dangers of traits that can be useful. If you are looking for advice about when to use satire, self-depreciating humor and/or sarcasm, all I can say is that I do not have the answer. The best I have to offer is a cliché. (Oh, goody! I get to use a cliché.) “There is a time and a place for everything,” but it is often difficult to determine when and where that is. Our interactions with other individuals are far too complicated and interesting to provide us with easy answers.

First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on Jun. 11, 2009

A Great Time To Be

It was sizzling hot when Rob quit his summer job to enjoy the last two weeks of summer vacation. He stepped out of the lumber yard with his last paycheck in hand. He had just enough time to get to the bank and cash the check. He rushed to get there ahead of the other workers who crowded the bank on the first and fifteenth of the month. The smog backed up against the hills and covered the valley in a gray, eye-burning haze. Although it was four o’clock in the afternoon, shimmering waves of heat still danced off the pavement and rose to blend in with the smog. He walked out of the bank and looked up at the sky. The ocean breeze should start up any time now. It would clear out the smog and cool the place down. The forecast for tomorrow promised more heat and more smog. But Rob had an automobile and more than enough cash to pay for gasoline. He stopped at a gas station on his way home. All of his thoughts were on tomorrow. The ocean was only an hour away. He would call his friend, Jim, and they would go there. It was more than the cool sea air and lively surf that made the beach such a paradise. Beautiful girls in bathing suits lounged on the sand there. “What more could a guy want?” It was a great time to be seventeen.

He woke up early in the morning and called Jim. “Surfs up! I’m free. Let’s go,” Rob said.

“Great,” Jim replied, “but Ron and Al want to meet some chicks at the state beach.”

Of all of Rob’s friends, Jim came the closest to being a surfer. He was the one with the sun bleached hair and dark tan. Ron and Al were jocks who spent so much time in organized sports that they did not have the time to become surfers. Ron was just over six feet tall and weighed in at a slim one hundred and seventy pounds. He was a quarterback and a pitcher. He was also the lady’s man of the group. Al was six feet four inches tall and weighed close to two hundred and thirty pounds. Although he played football, his favorite sport was water polo. In the pool he was a real terror who seemed intent on drowning at least half of the other team. Out of the water he was like a big, friendly puppy. Rob thought Al was the perfect example of a boy who suffered from stereotyping because people who first met him were always surprised when they found out how bright he was.

“Who are the chicks?” Rob asked.

“Marcy, Anne, Fran, and Marsha. Linda might also come.”

Marcy was a surfer chick. She was one of the few girls who would get out there on a board with the guys, and they tended to treat her like a pal. Anne was the generic girl. She was not unattractive, but she did not stand out in the crowd. Rob thought she was too vivacious, but that was because she had a crush on him. She wondered if he was too dense to pick up on her hints or too shy to follow up, or if he did not find her that attractive. It was a little of all of the above. She was not going to give up at this point, but she was beginning to think she had gone about as far as she was willing to go. Fran was a small, dark, pretty girl with a sweet personality. Marsha had a graceful figure and good features, but she was so quiet that she frequently faded into the background. Ron had a real thing for her. Then there was Linda. She was a blond who stood five feet five inches tall, and she had a figure that stopped traffic. The prospect of seeing her in a bikini was enough to make anyone leave his surfboard behind.

“Did you say Linda? Beautiful body Linda?”

“That would be her.”

“State beach it is,” Rob said.

So Rob soon found himself in Jim’s station wagon. They were racing past the bean fields and strawberry fields at ninety miles per hour. The wind coming in through the open windows was like a mini-tornado. It combined with the blare of Rock and Roll to drowned out the roar of the engine and sounds of the road. But even at full volume the radio was no match for teenage voices trying to mimic the high, falsetto harmonies of the Beach Boys. This incredibly noisy burst of adolescent energy was blasting through time and space. The workers in the fields looked up from their work to catch a blurry glimpse of it blowing by.

The beach traffic was fairly light on weekdays, and the boys were able to find a parking space close to the sand. It was a good thing they did because it was a hot day. It was also late enough in the morning to have given the asphalt time to collect a considerable amount of heat. Which is to say that a leisurely stroll across the rough surface was likely to raise blisters on bare feet. Years of experience, however, had taught the boys how to deal with this. One foot went from car to asphalt while the other foot was in full stride, and an arm swung out to slam the car door shut. In a few bounding steps they were on the sand. They dug in their feet to reach the relatively cooler temperature beneath the surface. They then stood there looking for the girls.

Fran saw them and waved. As they approached her they saw Linda’s blond hair and well-rounded rump. She had unfastened her top to get an even tan, and they were all hoping she would fall asleep and roll over. Instead, she refastened the strap to her top, rolled over, and sat up to greet them. Jim spread his towel out next to her, and Ron settled in next to Marsha. Rob and Al nonchalantly tossed their towels on the sand as they exchanged greetings with everyone. Once the greetings were out of the way they both walked down to the water. Red flags were flying from the lifeguard towers and the surf was looking angry.

“Doesn’t look that bad,” Al said.

“I’ve been in worse,” Rob agreed.

With that they took to plunge. They both caught a couple of large waves and were feeling fairly confident. Then a huge wave walled up in front of them. They dove under it, but the force of the crashing water was incredible. They came up sputtering.

“Holy Shit!” Al gasped.

“Pounding sand!” Rob said.

What Rob meant was that there was very little water under the wall when it collapsed. The waves were breaking straight down, which meant that anyone trying to ride them would go over the falls. The boys had enough experience to realize they had to get out of the impact zone. They dove under the next wave and swam out beyond the break.

“What now?” Al asked.

“We wait for a smaller set.”

Unfortunately, the waves in the succeeding sets were as large or larger then the waves in the preceding sets, and the boys had to use the swells to swim toward the shore often enough to keep from getting pulled out to sea.

“The hell with it,” Rob finally said.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m fighting my in while I still have the energy.”

“Not me. I’ll tread water all night if I have to.”

“I’ll have them send a boat.”

Rob used the swells to move in closer to the shore. His body was not a buoyant as a surfboard, and he had no edge to dig into the face of the wall. There was no way for him to avoid being pitched over the falls. His only chance was to do a summersault and land on his feet rather than his head. The wave he was in slammed him down so hard that his knees hit his chest and knocked the wind out of him. He was now tumbling under water with no air in his lungs. He did know which way was up. He clamped his hand over his nose and mouth to keep from inhaling the brine. He almost blacked out. He gasped mightily when he broke the surface. He had just enough time for two quick breaths before he had to dive under the next wave.

“Wow, is he good!” Ron said. “You should’ve seen that. Rob did a summersault in that wave and came to the surface as pretty as you please.”

Everyone was now watching, but no one realized that Rob was fighting for his life. Oddly enough, they also missed the fact that Al was not in sight.

For the first time in his life, Rob was really afraid of the surf. The physical exertion was causing an oxygen debt, and that was making it increasingly more difficult for him to hold his breath. He was still fighting like hell to get out of the impact zone. “Stay calm,” he told himself. “If you panic, you die! Move laterally. Find some water you can work.”

“Man, can Rob stay under water a long time!” Anne said.

Ron started timing him. “Almost a minute and a half! There he is.”

“Did you loose track of him?” Marcy asked. “Or was he really under that long?”

“No, he was really under that long.”

“Rob can do that,” Jim agreed, but Jim was becoming concerned.

Rob was using every technique he knew, but he was making very little progress. He was also getting the hell beat out him. He had been fighting the surf for what seemed like an eternity. He could taste and smell the brine that had invaded his nose and mouth. He coughed and blew and drew in the precious air when he rose to the surface. The next wave raked him over the sand and shells on the ocean floor. He flattened out and tried to let the torrent move him closer to the shore. He was now taking on the white water. He tried to move laterally as the water gathered to form another crashing wall. He was desperately searching for a sweet spot where the water was less turbulent. The water retreated enough so that he could stand with his head above it. He planted his feet in the sand to resist being yanked back into the impact zone. He flattened out in the prone position just before the next wave slammed into him. It tossed him about like a cork, and he went where the water took him. It moved him toward the shore. It paused ever so briefly before it pulled him back away from the shore. Rob then lost much of the distance he had gained. There was no time to mourn the loss. He took a couple quick breaths and flattened out to lessen the impact of the next blow.

The movement of the surf was a brutal, relentless pattern varying only slightly in its intensity. It gave him no time to rest. Unlike him, its energy showed no signs of flagging. His lungs were demanding more oxygen, and every muscle in his body ached from the pounding and the fatigue. He could not give up. No matter how much his body ached or how tired he was, he had to keep fighting. He was afraid, so very afraid. At this point that was a good thing. That is what gave him the burst of adrenaline he needed to keep his muscles working.

The people on the shore thought Rob was slowly and methodically working his way in. Everyone, except for Jim, stopped watching him. Another fifteen minutes went by. Rob was now knee deep in water. That last burst of adrenaline had been spent. All of the energy had been drained out him, and he was staggering like a drunk. He collapsed and started crawling. He was struggling to keep moving and to keep from vomiting. He was almost there. He was almost safe. It would be a terrible thing to drown in such shallow water.

Jim walked out and helped Rob to his feet. “Where’s Al?” Rob gasped. “He still out there?” It took an incredible amount of Rob’s remaining energy just to ask the questions.

“Yeah.”

They now reached the dry sand. Jim let go of him and Rob collapsed. Rob had never felt so cold or so exhausted in his life, but he was finally safe. A lifeguard sprinted past him. The lifeguard was only five feet nine inches tall and weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. He tossed the float over the white water and dove under. When he tried to toss the float over the next wave the float did not make it. The wave took a hold of it and towed the embarrassed lifeguard halfway back to the shore.

Rob was lying in the prone position with his head turned to the left. He was just beyond the water’s reach. He was still sucking wind like a bellows. Anne and Fran were gathered around him. Both girls looked lost because there was nothing they could do to help him. He rolled over. It took some effort, but he managed to sit up. The dizziness was subsiding somewhat, and he tried to focus on the ocean. He was looking for Al.

“The life guard’s making another run at it,” Jim announced.

The lifeguard pulled out every trick in his arsenal, and he needed every one of them to make it out beyond the breakers. Using the lifeguard as his point of reference, Rob was finally able to see a dot on the surface of the water. The dot was Al’s head. Al had been treading water for almost an hour, occasionally swimming in with the swells to stay close enough to the shore to make a rescue possible. The lifeguard tossed him the float.

“Put it on!” he ordered.

Al noticed the lifeguard was out of breath. “I’m fine if you want to hang onto it for a while.”

“Put it on,” the lifeguard repeated. “I just need to tread water for a minute to catch my breath.” Several minutes went by, then the lifeguard said: “Okay, on the next swell swim like hell!”

There were two things the lifeguard did not realize. The first thing was that Al was so well conditioned that he had almost a full store of energy to draw upon. The second thing was that Al was a very strong swimmer. In spite of the float or perhaps because of it, Al jumped out to a big lead. The lifeguard felt the rope that attached him to the float go taught just before Al went over the falls. It was as though the lifeguard was a pebble on a teeter-totter when someone dropped a boulder on the other end. He shot through the air and landed head first in the white water. The float kept Al on the surface. He raced past the submerged lifeguard and dragged him along the bottom like an anchor.

Al realized the lifeguard was probably in trouble. So he planted both feet and reeled the lifeguard in like a trout.

“I’m all right,” the lifeguard said, but he was glad Al had a hold of him. Even with the float, it took them ten minutes to work their way in.

Al and the lifeguard walked over to Rob. They were smiling over the fact that they were both all right. The lifeguard sat down in the sand and looked at Rob.

“If I hadn’t seen the way you were staggering when you came in, I would have thought both of you were okay.”

“I guess it doesn’t pay to be too good.”

The lifeguard laughed. “Do I need to tell you not to go in the water again?”

“No, sir.”

The lifeguard stood up. “Good, because I’m not going out there again unless it’s in a boat.”

Rob was old enough to know that bad things happen, but he was young enough to think they would not happen to him. This was a wake up call. Today he had almost drowned. He did not want to think about it.

Al grinned at him. “I guess old Poseidon decided to teach us some respect.”

“He’s a crotchety old fart!” Rob managed say it with bravado.

Both boys laughed. The bravado was funny because they knew this was a lesson they would remember. Rob looked at the beautiful girls and listened to the pound of the surf. He delighted in the sight and the sound. Tonight he and his friends would build a fire in one of the fire pits. They would have a weenie roast, and they would try to make out with the girls. It was a great time to be seventeen. I was a great time to be alive!

First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on Jun. 3, 2009

Damn Gophers

The California Pocket Gopher is the king of burrowing pests. Voles, rabbits, ground squirrels, and moles do not even compare with it. That is what John would tell you. The first battle began right in his own front yard. Since he had a dog he did what so many people do with dog feces. He stuffed it into the gopher holes. Although this gave him some place to dispose of the obnoxious material, it did not seem to bother the gophers at all. They either did not mind digging through it or they worked around it. He did not know which. The next time-honored remedy he tried was flooding. He jammed his garden hose into a hole and turned the water on full blast. It was Saturday and he went into his house to watch a ballgame on television as the water ran. Two and a half hours later he went out to inspect his yard. He expected to see water bubbling out of the gopher holes, but it was not happening. Where was the water going? It was a mystery. He thought that the holes must be very deep and the tunnels extensive. He turned off the water, consoling himself with the thought that he had probably drowned at least some of the creatures in their holes.

The next morning he pulled out the lawn mower. When he finished mowing the front yard he took the mower into his back yard. There he discovered several new gopher holes. He also discovered that the veracious creatures were destroying his flower garden. Actually, they were destroying his flower gardens. The flowers in his front yard had also become gopher food. This was disheartening because he had put a lot of time and effort into planting those flowerbeds. There was no getting around it. This was war, and he was determined to win it. Unfortunately, the next battle would have to wait until he got off work tomorrow.

He drove to the high school on Monday morning. He was one of the physical education teachers there. He was trying to put his war with the gophers out of his mind, but it was impossible. The moment he stepped out onto the baseball diamond he saw several gopher holes in the outfield. The grounds keeper walked over to him.

“Looks like we have gophers,” the grounds keeper said.

“I have them at home too, and they’ve nearly destroyed my flower garden.”

“Try putting wire mesh around the root balls.”

“Thanks, that’s a good idea.”

“I’d love to poison the little bastards, but I’m afraid the district won’t allow it.”

The thought of poison gave John a brief glimmer of hope, but he quickly dismissed the idea. He did not want to risk poisoning his dog or the birds.

“I’m afraid they’re right about that,” he said.

John waited until the weekend to continue his struggle against the gophers. On Saturday morning he went to the garden shop and bought replacements for the flowers the gophers had eaten. He also bought wire mesh to fold around the roots of his new plants. He spent all morning planting them. On Sunday afternoon he stepped out onto his back porch just in time to see a gopher emerge from a fresh hole in the flowerbed. The gopher climbed up above the wire mesh and bit a new flower off at the stem. John dashed over there, but the gopher darted back into the hole before he could reach it. Obviously, the wire mesh was not protecting the plants, but it was making the gophers attack the plants above ground. John thought this would allow him to spray the vulnerable part of the plants with something gophers might find intolerable. He whipped up several concoctions, including dish soap with cayenne pepper. He then sprayed the different concoctions onto different plants in order to test their gopher repellent properties.

The gophers ignored all of John’s repellents and absolutely devastated his new plants over the coarse of the week. Many new gopher holes were also appearing in his lawn and in the grass of the baseball field. He saw Ben, the grounds keeper, kneeling down in the outfield. John walked over to Ben to see if he had any more ideas for thwarting the beasts. Ben was planting a particularly nasty looking trap in one of the gopher holes.

“What’s that?” John asked.

“A rat trap, but it should do the job. It slams the rodent into a spike that skewers it.”

John was not vindictive by nature, but skewering gophers certainly had its appeal.

“Let me know how it works.”

“Will do.”

As John turned onto his street that night he saw a gopher scurrying across the road. He swerved in an effort to run over the creature, but a car coming from the opposite direction made him get back on his own side of the road before he could get his wheels lined up on the varmint. He glanced in his rear view mirror and saw that the gopher had escaped the other car as well. John was not a man to use profanity, but he could not help uttering a very heartfelt “damn it!”

“How do you kill a gopher? Poison!” he thought. His heart, his soul, every fiber of his being was telling him to poison the sons of bitches. He told himself it did not have to be a poison they would ingest. It could be a gas. “That’s it. Gas them! Bug bombs ought to do the trick.” He could keep his dog and his children out of the yard long enough to accomplish that.

He bought four bug bombs. He enlarged a gopher hole in his front yard, pointed a bomb at it, set the bomb off and stuffed it into the hole. He repeated this process until two bombs were spewing gas into holes in his front yard and two bombs were spewing gas into holes in his back yard. He then took his children and his dog to the park where he waited until the bombs were empty. He threw the expired bombs into the trash when he returned to his home. He was feeling pretty confident the next morning. He pulled his car out of the garage and glanced over at the flower garden in his front yard. Much to his chagrin, he saw a gopher pulling one of the few remaining flowers down into its hole.

“The gophers might eventually die from exposure to the gas of the bug bombs I tried, but they’re very much alive at this time,” he told Ben. “How’d your traps work?”

“The little bastards nudged them out of the holes without setting them off.”

“It looks like we have a war on our hands.”

“No doubt about it.”

“What’s the first rule of war?”

“Kick the crap out of the enemy before he kicks the crap out of you!”

“Ah, but you have to get to know him to do that. You have to know his favorite thing to do and his least favorite thing to do. You have to find out his weaknesses and use them against him.”

“Research?”

“Research.”

That night John went on the inter net to find out everything he could about gophers. They are very talented subterranean engineers. You cannot gas them because they use water traps to protect their nests. You cannot flood them because they construct dams with spillways. It is very difficult to trap them because they are very cautious and quick. The article he was reading said they had one weakness. “A gopher will not tolerate any breach of his main tunnel.” The author recommended placing a box trap in the gopher’s main tunnel. “The trap is cylindrical in shape and has a small hole at the business end to let in a beam of light. The gopher will climb into the trap from the other end, and it will be so intent on investigating the light that it will not notice the spring-loaded mechanism until it is too late.” The author also said: “Gophers are solitary creatures. A gopher will defend its territory and drive away all other gophers. In other words, you should not have to kill that many to get rid of them.”

At long last, John had found his weapon. He bought four traps. One should be sufficient for each of his yards, but he would use the other two to compensate for any error he might make in regard to finding the main tunnels. Using the traps would mean digging holes in his lawns, but that was a small price considering the holes the gophers were already digging. The next day John found a gopher in one of the traps in his front yard. That night he found a gopher in one of the traps in his back yard. He killed both gophers and buried them in the holes as the author recommended. Now this was progress!

He and Ben then set similar traps at the school. Those traps also caught gophers. The problem was that new gophers replaced the old gophers within a few days. This happened both at the school and John’s home.
 
“Solitary, my ass!” Ben said.

This rapidly turned into a war of attrition, and the other side seemed to have an ample supply of troops. It was beginning to resemble a scene from the movie “Caddy Shack.” If these were new gophers rather than a family of gophers that already lived there, there were bound to be new main tunnels. So the men and the gophers were constantly excavating. To say this was frustrating for the men would be an understatement.

John was almost at his wits end when he went to his other job that Saturday night. Baseball season had started at the park, and John worked as an umpire there. This night he was the first base umpire. The pitcher had just finished warming up. The first batter was walking to the plate when it happened. A gopher popped out of its hole on the infield grass between the pitcher and the second baseman. It was confused by all of the people on the field, and it stood frozen in place.

“Time out!” John yelled. “Get the gopher!”

Everyone just stood there looking at him.

“Kill the damn gopher!”

No one moved. John walked over to the gopher and delivered a kick that sent the hairy eating machine sailing halfway across the infield. There was a collective gasp from the stands, and the fans booed him with all their might. War is never pretty, but he could not believe that people would actually boo him for attacking the enemy. Furthermore, the spectators continued to heckle him throughout the entire game.

As he was leaving the field after the game he was approached by a man who was wearing a parks and recreation department shirt.

“Good kick, Ump!”

This was not something John wanted to hear after suffering so much abuse from the fans.

“Yeah. Well, don’t judge a man until you’ve tripped in the gopher holes of his lawn,” he said.

“That wasn’t a criticism. I’ve been trying like hell to get rid of those pests, and it really was a good kick!”

Both men smiled and shook hands. This helped some, but John was still smarting over the way the fans’ had reacted to him kicking the gopher.

At last he reached his home, his refuge, far away from the judgmental people who could not seem to understand just how much grief the damn gophers were causing him. He took a beer out of the refrigerator. He then walked into the living room and turned on the television to watch the late news. His timing could not have been worse. There he was, on the screen, kicking the gopher and getting booed for doing it. This made him more determined than ever to win his war against the gophers.

“You can’t tell me they wouldn’t have done the same thing if they were going through what I’m going through,” he told his wife.

“They probably would have done much worse,” she said.

First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on May 20, 2009

Tony's Ride

Tony Banty bent over to start his power lawn mower and felt his trousers straining to contain his middle-age bulge. The thought that middle-age was a real son of a bitch crossed his mind, but he quickly dismissed the thought. "It's not my age causing this pot belly," he concluded. "It's caused by the damn sedentary routine I've fallen into over the years," and he gave the cord on the mower a yank as if to emphasis the point. The old mower wheezed, coughed, sputtered, broke wind and chugged along for a few moments before it caught its stride and began to run smoothly. It was a pretty fair imitation of the way Tony started up in the morning, except his wife was no longer inclined to yank his cord at that hour. It was a pity too, because she had always made him feel so desirable when she initiated the contact. Now that he thought about it though, he realized it was not his wife who used to wake him that way. Perhaps it was because had married her when he was so young, but he often found it difficult to remember dating anyone else.

He smiled when the image of the young lady who had aroused him in the morning finally came to mind. What he and this young lady had shared was a brief sexual interlude rather than a long affair, but her image brought back memories of a time when his passion and sense of discovery had made his world a very exciting place. "Ah, but those were the days," he mused, "and what I wouldn't give to be in that kind of shape again."

Tony guided the mower down the steep slope of his lawn. When he reached the sidewalk, he made a sharp turn and started pushing the mower up the slope. He was now thinking of starting on an exercise program. He could feel his bare toes digging into soft turf and his large leg muscles propelling him up the hill. Sure, the cigarettes had shortened his breath a bit, and the extra weight had slowed him down a step or two, but he felt as powerful and agile as ever. "There's no reason why a man my age can't get into good shape," he told himself.

He was on his way back down the hill when he saw his teenage neighbor's '69 chevy backing down the driveway that paralleled the slope of Tony's lawn. At the front of the car was a steep, wooden ramp. Jimmy and his friends had placed a skateboard under each corner of the ramp, tied an old tire to the front of the car, and were now using the car to ease the ramp down the driveway.

"Clever," Tony concluded as he made his turn at the sidewalk. The ramp was now out of this view, but he could hear those brash, teenage voices as the boys strained to pull the boards out from under the ramp.

"Lift, you wus!" one of them screeched.

"Get your ass into it," Jimmy exhorted.

Tony believed "get your back into it" would have been more accurate, but he also knew boys that age would think it was more manly to use the word "ass."

By the time Tony was heading down the slope the boys had retrieved their skateboards and were heading up the slope. He exchanged greetings with Jimmy without breaking stride and made his turn at the sidewalk in time to see one of the boys speeding down the driveway on a skateboard. The boy rose to the top of the ramp, spun the skateboard around and headed down the ramp. It looked like fun. It also took Tony back to the time when he was that age.

Since Tony's birthday fell on the day after school let out for summer vacation, his mother had not enrolled him until the following year. This made him a little older than most of his class mates, and he was able apply for the most prized of possessions, a California driver's license, before any of his friends were old enough to get one. His sister made things even better for Tony by giving him her old '47 Ford when she got married. That car meant everything to him. It was freedom, status, dates, and trips to the beach. Having to take a part time job during the school year in order to pay for the registration and insurance on the car only added to his anticipation as he waited for his sixteenth birthday to roll around. When his birthday finally arrived, he re-registered the car in his name and passed his drivers test. He proudly picked up his friends the same afternoon, and they went cruising.

Being the best at what you did was emphasized in those days, and mediocre became a pejorative term. The world was there to be conquered and everyone was encouraged to do great things. As they started down Colorado Boulevard, Tony boldly announced that he would set a world record tomorrow or the next day.

"Sure!" his friends derisively chided.

"No, I've checked it out," he assured them. "The Guinness Book of World Records has no mention of a skateboard. So whoever is timed over a distance on a skateboard will hold the speed record on a skateboard for that distance."

"Why should you be the one who sets it?" John asked.

Tony was tempted to say, "because I thought of it, asshole," but he decided against it. "All right," he agreed, "we'll have a contest. We'll pick the steepest road we can find in the hills above Pasadena, and we'll time everyone in the mile. We'll then do a four-forty, a two-twenty, and a hundred yards. Anyone winning one event will be eliminated from competing in the other events. That way each of us will hold a record, and since we'll pick a steep hill our records should last for a while."

The idea that each of them could set a record was so appealing they agreed to do it without giving a second thought to the competitive ethic of the time. Creativity and a ride did count for something, however, so Tony was allowed to make the first run.

Ron got out of the car with a stopwatch at the first telephone pole above the bottom of the hill. They then measured a mile from that pole on the car's odometer. John and Tony stepped out in the street, and John raised his hand. A car crested the hill as John gave the command to get set. He waited for it to pass. Then he yelled, "Go!" and dropped his hand. Tony pushed off and assumed a firm stance on the board. The noise of the skateboard's metal wheels rolling over the rough asphalt roared in Tony's ears and his lower legs tingled from the vibration as his speed rapidly increased. He was almost half way to the bottom of the hill when he passed the car John had waited for. Tony was now going so fast that he would have gladly jumped off the board if he could have done it without killing himself.

As he approached the intersection a very slow truck coming from the opposite direction made a left turn and the traffic light turned red. Tony could not turn right without running into the back of the truck, and he could not stop. He held his breath, hunched down a bit and prayed. Miraculously, he sailed through the intersection without mishap.

"Crazy bastard!" the cop hiding on the far corner of the intersection muttered as he started his motorcycle.

Tony could faintly hear what he thought was a horn, but he had other worries. The high speed and foot numbing vibration were tearing up the wheels, the bearings, and any bolts still holding the wheel assemblies in place. His legs were shaking from fear and fatigue, and he could feel the board becoming increasingly unsteady. He now heard the sharp, short burst of a siren. He glanced back into the flashing red lights of the motorcycle, and he could see the cop emphatically motioning for him to pull over.

"I can't!" Tony yelled, but it came out as a mere whisper, buried beneath the roar of the metal wheels. He could see the road flattening out in front of him and gently rising in the distance.

"Hold together!" he cried. "Please, God! Just let it hold together long enough for that rise to slow me down."

The cop turned on his siren again, and he accelerated to move along side of Tony. As he did so, the front wheel assembly of the Skateboard shifted, causing the board to swerve directly into the path of the motorcycle. The cop slammed on his brakes and slid to the other side of the street.

Tony had just slowed down enough so that he thought he could dismount when the cop came charging up behind him again. The skateboard was now shimmying so badly that all Tony could think about was getting off of it. He dismounted the only way you can dismount a moving skateboard. He kicked it out behind him and ran like hell. The board shot into the air, and there was the sound of screeching rubber as the cop swerved to avoid it. This was followed by a dull thud as the board struck motorcycle on its gas tank. The cop fishtailed his motorcycle to a stop, kicked it into first, and twisted the throttle on full to pursue Tony, who was running to keep from falling on this face. Tony took several more long, slow strides, and pulled up, causing the cop to zoom past him. Now feeling cheated out of his opportunity to run the little bastard down, the cop spun the bike around and glided up to where Tony was standing.

It did not take much in the way of observation to know that this was one furious cop. The vein in his neck bulged and throbbed, and his knuckles stood out as white knobs at the end of tan hands held stiffly at his sides. "Do you have a driver's license?" he growled through clenched teeth.

Tony's heart was still pounding from his frightening ride. "Yes, sir," he gasped. He was shaking so much that he had a hard time getting the license out of his wallet.

"What the hell did you think you were doing? You damn near killed me!" The cop shouted as he tore the license out of Tony's hand.

"I almost killed myself too, sir," Tony said, trying to console him.

"Can you think of any reason why I shouldn't arrest you?"

"I won't do it again. I promise," Tony pleaded.

"I'm sure you won't, not after the judge is done with you," the cop threatened. He then started writing furiously in his ticket book. When he was done he handed the book to Tony and said "sign it," which Tony did. The cop then snatched the book from Tony, ripped off the original ticket and handed it to him. "Since you're a juvenile your parents will have to call the court and set a date for your appearance. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good, and you can bet your ass I'll be there," the cop said. He then did an abrupt about face and stomped off.

In spite of the cop's ominous tone, Tony was not too worried about the court. He thought it would just fine him. His parents were another matter. This was his first ticked, and he did not know how they would react. "Ah, but the ticket was not for anything I did in a car," he reminded himself. That was a relief because his parents always tried to make the punishment fit the crime, and he would rather do without his skateboard than his car.

The court turned out to be a real circus -- complete with clowns, the biggest of which was the boy who was standing before the judge when Tony entered the court room. The judge was an old gentleman who wore half glasses which were constantly sliding down his nose. He pushed his glasses up and began to read.

"It says here you were urinating in a public place, on a public highway to be more precise. Is that what you were doing?" he asked, peering over his glasses at the boy.

"Not exactly, Your Honor."

"What do mean by 'not exactly?' You were either urinating or you weren't."

"Well, I really hadn't started going yet. So I guess you could say I was just sort of waving it around in the breeze."

The court room burst into laughter, and Tony could swear there was a slight twitching at each corner of the judge's mouth as he banged his gavel for order.

"Son," the judge said in a very fatherly way, "I'm not your attorney, and I wouldn't presume to give you legal advice, but it seems to me that urinating in a public place would be preferable to bearing the stigma attached to indecent exposure. Don't you agree?"

"Yes, sir."

"May I accept that as a guilty plea?"

"Uh... Yes, sir."

"Good. Now comes the hard part. You see, I have to find an appropriate sentence or punishment for you. What I would like to do is make you pick up weewee," he said, surveying all the laughing faces. Tony could appreciate someone who was playing it for laughs, and the judge seemed to be playing it well. He waited until all of the laughter had died down. "Unfortunately, that's impossible given the nature of the substance," he then added with a little smile. The gallery greeted this comment with polite titters rather than boisterous laughter, and the judge seemed disappointed. "This will take some thought," he said. "Call the next case while I think about it."

It was at this point that Tony found himself standing in front of the judge. "It says here you were going fifty-five in a twenty-five. Were you?" the judge asked.

"I don't know, sir," Tony answered.

"I'm always getting, 'I don't know.' Why don't you know?"

"Skateboards don't have speedometers, sir."

This brought a laugh, which seemed to annoy the judge. "A what?" he asked. "This doesn't say... Officer?"

"It was a skateboard, Your Honor," the cop replied.

"Fifty-five miles per hour?" the judge asked.

"It was a steep hill," the cop explained.

"It must have been," the judge agreed. "But what about the red light? Why did you go through a red light?"

"Well, sir," Tony answered. "I was going so fast I couldn't stop."

"Aha! So you admit that you could have been going fifty-five?"

"Perhaps."

"And you admit that you went through a red light?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you fail to pull over for the officer for the same reason you failed to stop for the red light?"

"Yes, sir."

The judge took off his glasses and shook his head. "I had no idea those things were so dangerous," he said. "Young man, I'm afraid I'm going to have to make an example out of you."

"Example" set off an alarm in Tony's mind. "Your Honor," he pleaded.

"Quiet!" the judge shouted. "I'm going to suspend your drivers license for... When does school start again? You may start driving again on the first day of school."

"Your Honor, may I say something?" Tony asked.

"Make it fast," the judge responded.

"What I did on the skateboard has nothing to do with the way I drive a car. Besides, I'd never do it again... I mean, you might as well suspend my license for falling out of a tree on an apple."

"If you rode an apple in a horizontal direction at fifty-five miles per hour and through a red light, I would still suspend your license," the judge replied. "Next case!"

Tony was still smarting over the suspension of his driver's license when he received a letter form the Guinness Book of World Records. The letter explained that they could not recognize Tony's record because he had broken the law in setting it. The only bright side Tony could find to this episode stemmed from the fact that his friends repeated and embellished the story of his ride often enough to make it a local legend.

It had been many years since Tony had thought about his legendary ride, and he was actually smiling over the memory of it when he finished mowing the last little patch of grass. The slight fatigue and honest sweat from his physical exertion made him feel good, and he thought a cigarette and a cold beer would make him feel even better. He retrieved those items from his house and stood on his front porch, watching the boys as he caught his breath. They seemed to be having so much fun that he could not resist walking over to their starting point on the driveway.

"May I see that thing," he asked Jimmy.

"Sure," Jimmy answered, handing Tony the skateboard.

Tony examined the modern, plastic wheels and the lamination of the board. It was really sophisticated when compared with the ones he and his friends had made.

"You know, I used to be a legend on one of these things," he told Jimmy. Tony then thought about the materials used in making both the board and its wheels, and he could not resist adding the cliché. "Of course, that was in the days of wooden boards and iron men," he said.

The cliche turned out to be a big mistake because one of Jimmy's friends said he could not understand, "why you guys put those ridiculous boxes on the front of 'em." This comment implied that Tony was five or six years older than he actually was, and that he had ridden a skate scooter rather than a skateboard.

"My generation didn't put those ridiculous boxes on them," Tony said, almost snarling. "In fact," he added, "I'll bet I can still take that ramp."

"I don't know," Jimmy said. "It's probably been a lot of years since you've done it," Mr. Banty.

That did it. Now Tony would have to show the little shits. "Watch me," he said, setting down his cigarette and beer.

In an effort to go faster than the boys had been going, Tony pushed off a little harder than he thought he had. As a consequence, he reached the top of the ramp sooner than he expected, and this caused him to start his turn a little late. The board shot straight into the air, and Tony turned about one hundred and sixty degrees in the air before his bare toes slammed against the top of the ramp. The result was a belly flop on the ramp and a head first slide to the bottom.

"Oh, shit!" Jimmy screeched.

"Rad," several of Jimmy's friends intoned.

Jimmy raced over to Tony and asked if he was okay.

"Yeah," Tony responded as he climbed to his feet.

"Whoa dude," one of Jimmy's friends observed, "your toe is wasted."

Tony did not need anyone to tell him he had injured his toe, but he did not expect to see it bent at such a funny angle either. "I guess I should have said iron wheels and wooden men," he said, trying to gain in cool what he had lost in athletic accomplishment.

"Do you want me to tell your wife to take you to the hospital?" Jimmy asked.

"Don't you dare!" Tony snapped as he started hobbling off toward his house.

He knew his wife would not only ask how it happened but also why he did it. It was obvious to Tony that every man reaches a point where he can feel the sands of time begin to bury his youth and erode his virility. Many men try to hang onto their youth by cheating on their wives. Other men get involved in absurd athletic activities, such as riding a skateboard. This, however, is not something you can explain to your wife -- not if you are Tony Banty. God, how he dreaded the inevitable question of why? He really did feel like a kid in that respect and he always would.

First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on May 6, 2009

Doing It Now

I have heard that our ability to learn and remember begins to slip as early as thirty years of age, but that our judgment starts to improve at that age. Allegedly, our judgment continues to improve until we reach our seventies when it begins to slip. I guess I am fast approaching the age where I will not be able tell you all of the experiences that cause me to do what I do, but that you had better believe my reasons for doing those things are sound. I am also at an age where I had better do as much as I can before my loss of judgment tries to keep pace with my loss of memory. Shifting into this hyperactive gear is not easy for me because I have always been a procrastinator.

Active people are moving targets. We procrastinators are static targets. Perhaps that is why we so often find ourselves taking it in the shorts. At the risk of being called a dumb ass, I have to admit that getting us moving is a bit like lighting a fire under a donkey. To those of you who sprint out of the blocks early, it must seem as though we are contemplating Zeno’s Paradox and are infinitely dividing the distance each step will cover, but we eventually get moving. In the meantime, we enjoy the shade and the sight of all you people who are trying to get things done before someone lights a fire under you. At the moment, I am responding to the fire I have lit under myself.

I have been rummaging through the mind clutter on my back porch. As this missive indicates, I have also been adding to it. I have been doing this while trying to learn about the inter net and blogs. All of which takes some time, too much time. I quickly realized that if I did not present my writings until after I finished the rummaging and learning about blogging and such, those writings might never be presented. Particularly since I keep adding to them. So I created this blog, and I started posting some of the things I have written. Damn the complexities, full speed ahead! Throwing this or that bit of writing into the vast blogosphere might not show the best judgment, but at least I am not procrastinating.

I cannot help fantasizing a bit as I set about my tasks. Yes, people my age still do that. I am picturing a cyberspace explorer. The keys on the keyboard are clicking as search after patient search probes cyberspace. Our explorer points and clicks the mouse numerous times, bringing up sundry websites and blogs. “Eureka!” There is a wonderful feeling of anticipation as our explorer clicks on “Mac’s Back Porch.” Who knows what entertainment, what insights, what pearls of wisdom are contained in this blog. I am afraid I can’t tell you. A person my age has had the opportunity to experience a lot more things than a younger person has. What a person has experienced, however, depends on how he or she has lived. Furthermore, what a person learns from those experiences depends on how much thought he or she has put into analyzing what has transpired. Similarly, what you find entertaining, insightful or wise depends on what you have experienced and how much thought you have put into analyzing what has transpired. I am shooting at a moving target here, folks! And my aim might not be that good.

I offer you this example. I have literally gone from main frames and punch cards to networks and servers. I wrote the following when I was still using a mainframe terminal at work:

The first spread sheet I ever used was Lotus 123, and it was on a mainframe. At some point I must have pushed the wrong button because the program thought I wanted to create a new dataset, which was the farthest thing from my mind. I tried pushing escape, and cancel, but that did work. I tried several other things as well, but the program kept insisting that I give it a name for the new dataset. Finally, in frustration, I said: “All right, you want a name. I’ll give you a name. How about asshole?” And I typed in “asshole.” A computer, of course, cannot be insulted. It had a name for the new dataset and that was all it wanted. Since it released me to get back to the work I was trying to complete I was also satisfied.
 
What I did not realize was that the mainframe had a program that checked to see when you last used a dataset. If a month went by without you using a dataset, the program automatically sent you a memorandum. Some clever programmer even went to the trouble of having the program insert the name of the dataset into the appropriate sentence of the memorandum. The memorandum I received was as follows:

“FROM: MAINFRAME ADMINISTRATION 
TO: USER STEPHEN MC KEAND (SCM)
RE: ARCHIVING
Due to inactivity, your dataset ‘asshole’ has been archived. If you wish to use it again, please notify us. We will be happy to reload it for you, but please bear in mind that it takes twenty-four hours to reload.”

Loading was not the problem. Elimination was the problem. My wasteful move at the keyboard was preserved. It was filed in an archive, and it was given a name that was bound to raise a few eyebrows.

What I learned from this is that computers amplify your mistakes, and that the results can be unexpected and sometimes amusing. What I did not learn is why the program thought I wanted to create a new dataset. I was too busy doing other tasks to learn about that function. If you are looking for insights into how a computer works or how to program one, this is not the right blog for you. A computer is a wonderful tool, and that is how I have always regarded it. I take the time to learn how to use the software well enough to do what I want to do, but that is about the extent of my computer knowledge.

During the time period of the memo I just described desktop computers rapidly progressed from 64K boxes to XT’s that had hard drives capable of holding twenty mega bites. I put a word processing program, with spell check, and Lotus 123 on my new XT. There was still more than enough room for any files I would create. I can remember wondering how anyone could use up all the space on such a large hard drive. Microsoft even published a letter from a gentleman who claimed he had his entire office backed up on a floppy disk! Who could want more? Well, there were desktop publishers, paintbrush programs, and business graphics programs. I eagerly added them to my hard drive. Fortunately, the progression of affordable computers was fast enough to keep up with my discovery of the affordable software I wanted, such as a database and a photo editor. The technological advances were coming at a far greater pace than I ever anticipated, and those advances were another one of life’s wonderful lessons. People who reject new ideas without testing them are acting like the man who advocated closing the patent office in nineteen hundred because everything had already been invented. Very bright people are unraveling age old mysteries every day, and they are inventing very useful and often life saving items and procedures. The inter net is making information about new discoveries and inventions increasingly available to laymen like me. Even as I approach my dotage, I continue to learn, and I still have far more questions than answers. I am grateful for that. A healthy curiosity and a child like delight in each new discovery are what make life so interesting!

First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on Apr. 29, 2009

Weird Relativity

The law firm Max worked for occupied three floors of one of the tallest buildings in downtown Los Angeles. It was thirty-two stories high and was considered somewhat of a novelty when it was new. The elevators in the parking complex took you to an area that was below ground level. This area contained several fast food places, a large bookstore, a barbershop, a shoeshine stand, an optometrist, and some small, retail establishments. At ground level there was an enclosed plaza. The plaza was like an artificial canyon that was surrounded by the soaring walls of the building, and it had skylights that allowed the sun to bath it in a warm glow. To the south of the plaza was a large department store. To the east was a hotel belonging to one of the major chains. The fine restaurants at the hotel were considered a good place for the power lunches favored by the business executives and the lawyers who occupied the offices to the west of the plaza. The corporation that owned this building boasted about it being like a small town. “It contains just about everything a person needs,” its spokesman said. This made it a good location for the offices of the attorneys who practically lived at their firms. But, as Max would soon learn, the building had a bad reputation for unexpected events.

Max and another associate of the law firm, Gini, were sitting in his office. They had just finished discussing a motion they were collaborating on. She stood up to leave. He expected her to turn toward the door, but she hesitated.

“Something weird is going to happen,” she announced.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because something weird happens about once a year, and we’re overdue.”

“What do you expect to happen?”

“I don’t know. It varies from year to year.”

“Are you thinking of something like the earthquake that trapped all those people in the elevators last year?”

“Yes. The quake itself wasn’t that weird. What was weird was that it struck at four- twenty on a Friday, and everyone who was capable of restarting the elevators had left work early. Those poor people were stuck in the elevators for over four hours!”

“That must have seemed terrible and weird to the people who were stuck,” Max said.

“I’m sure it did.” She turned and started walking to the door. She tossed the words over her shoulder at him. “Be careful, Max!”

Max laughed and said he would, but he could help thinking that she was making too much of this once a year thing. Several hours later he got up to go to the men’s room. He was walking past the receptionist when a small earthquake struck. Since the quake was nothing of consequence he ignored it and kept walking. He was returning to his office when he looked over at the receptionist. She seemed to be very concerned about something.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I was just sitting here when the whole building started shaking!”

“It was an earthquake.”

“There was an earthquake?”

“A little one. Nothing to be afraid of.”  

“Oh, thank God! I thought I was having a stroke or something, and you’re the reason why.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You showed no reaction at all. You just kept strolling along as though nothing was happening. So I thought it must be me.”

“Well, you get used to those little bumps after a while.”

“Maybe you’re that used to them, but normal people react to them.”

Max laughed. He thought weird was a relative thing. What some people find weird can seem perfectly normal to other people. What Gini thought of as weird had to be more monumental than the little bump of an earthquake, it had to be something that would have a greater impact on people.

It began with the arrival of a small woman with fire red hair. Her name was Trudy. She was a secretary. A temporary agency sent Trudy to the firm to fill in for Gwen, who was on maternity leave. Trudy was wearing a navy blue skirt and a matching jacket that covered an austere white blouse. The outfit resembled the dress uniform of a female sailor. Reinforcing this image was the purse she carried. It could have easily served as a sea bag.

The office manager, Vera, escorted Trudy to the cubical where Gwen worked. Trudy set the heavy sea bag on the floor. She then sat down in the chair and began fiddling with the lever and knobs in an effort to adjust the chair to her liking.

“I’ll let you get settled,” Vera said. “Call me if you need anything.”

“I need something now. This chair won’t do. It’s too uncomfortable, and I can’t adjust it to the proper height for the keyboard.”

Vera rolled her eyes and hailed her assistant. “Try to make her comfortable,” she told the assistant.

Vera walked off, leaving the poor assistant to her task. The assistant hauled five chairs down to the work station from the storage area. She brought one chair at a time, and Trudy complained about each and every one of them.

“Sorry, but that’s all we have.”

“I don’t know about this. It’s going to make my job very difficult. Are you sure you don’t have any suitable chairs?”

The assistant resisted the temptation to say that other people found the chairs quite suitable, and said yes, she was sure.

“Well, if I have to use one of these, I guess this one will have to do.”

“Good.” The assistant began the process of carrying the rejected chairs up to the storage area.

Trudy took the pictures of Gwen’s family and Gwen’s other personal items and piled them in a corner of the cubical. She then reached into her sea bag and removed an old movie poster for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne. The poster depicted the Nautilus being attacked by a giant squid. If there is one thing you have to say about Trudy, it is that she came prepared. She had a box of tacks and a small hammer she used to tack the poster up on the back wall of the cubical. When she was through with that task, she pulled out a dust cloth and proceeded to dust the already clean work station and every item in it. It was as if she was preparing for some sort of inspection.

Charles walked up to her and handed her several tapes of his dictation. “Transcribe these for me,” he said.

“How soon do you need it?

“As quickly as you can do it.”

“That’s going to be difficult in a place so disorganized.”

“Start on it now, and give me your best effort.”

Trudy jammed the tape into the machine without further comment. She put on the earphones and glared at Charles to let him know she did not want him to watch her work. She had just finished typing the first page when she stopped. She reached over, picked up the receiver of the phone, and dialed Charles’ extension.

“This won’t do,” she said.

“What won’t do?”

“The light above me.”

“Did it burn out?”

“No, it glares! You have to replace it immediately.”

“It’s the standard light. It’s all we have.”

“Well, it has to be replaced.”

“It can’t be replaced. You’re going to have to live with it.”

“I can’t!”

“Look, if you can’t work here, I’ll have to ask Vera to find someone who can.”

“So that’s how it’s going to be!”

“That’s how it is.”

“Fine!” And she hung up on him.

In spite of all her complaining, she was an accomplished typist. She quickly and accurately transcribed the dictation. She then walked into Charles’ office and set the transcription on his desk without uttering a word. He watched her return to the cubical. She looked down at her watch, shading that instrument with her hand in an effort to shield it from what she considered to be the excessive glare of the overhead light. There was less than an hour left of her workday. She clucked a few times and set about rearranging everything in Gwen’s desk to make it “more efficient.”

When Charles went to give her more dictation the next day, she was wearing the same type of navy blue clothes and a green eyeshade. It was the sort of eyeshade worn by accountants in another era.

“What’s with the eyeshade?”

“The glare,” she said. “I told you that light had to be replaced.”

“And that’s your way of dealing with it.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, but what’s with the poster? Do you really think it’s appropriate for a law firm?”

“Of course it’s appropriate. As an English major, I can tell you it’s a classic novel and a classic Disney film. Why wouldn’t it be appropriate?”

Charles just rolled his eyes and walked away. There are some things you do not want to stir up. He had lunch with Max and Gini, and he used it as an opportunity to vent. He characterized Trudy as a flaming pain in the ass.

“She has that damn poster on the wall, and with the exception of the awful green eyeshade, she’s dressed like a sailor. She and the poster are clearly visible to any client going to the conference room or my office. How am I going to explain her to our clients?”

“I’d introduce her as Captain Nemo,” Max said.

“Have you complained about her to Vera?” Gini asked.

“No. The problem is that she’s very competent at what she does.”

“Then I guess you’re going to have to put up with her.”

"I’m afraid so.”

People were allowed to smoke in their offices back then, and cigarette smoke wafting out of the doors of the offices was far too common. When Charles returned to his office, he leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. Trudy’s nose twitched once, and she pointed it at the sky like a hound that was about to bay at the moon. She quickly picked up the receiver of her telephone and dialed Vera’s extension.

“This is Trudy, and I smell smoke!”

“Smoke?”

“Yes, and it’s thick!”

“Oh, my God!”

There was no small problem as far as Vera was concerned. She treated anything that went wrong as though it was going to instantly trigger Armageddon and no one was going to have a chance to repent. She raced out to the hallway and set off the fire alarm, thereby causing the evacuation of the entire building. The people on the floors above the law firm hiked up to the roof. The people on the floors below the firm made a dash for the street. The fire engines quickly arrived, and firemen were soon climbing the stairs to the law firm. It took the better part of the day to sort out what had happened. Fortunately for Vera, the partners of the firm were fairly tolerant about such things, and everyone had a good laugh over it.

“Was that weird enough to qualify as this years thing?” Max asked.

“I hope so,” Gini replied.

The next day Charles entered Max’s office. His face was as white as a ghost’s, and he plopped down in a chair as though he was carrying the weight of the world.

“You’ll never guess what that creature just did!”

“You mean Trudy?”

“That would be her. She thought there were still some grammatical errors in the motion I had just edited, so she rewrote the entire thing! She said she wanted to make it more readable.”

Gini walked into Max’s office in time to hear Charles’ complaint.

“I guess she was trying to be helpful,” Max said.

“Either that, or she was trying to gain some recognition,” Gini said.

“I don’t care why she did it. It’s really dangerous when a layman, who does not know the words of art, starts rewriting legal motions. I have to rewrite the whole thing, and the partner wants it this afternoon. What the hell am I going to tell him?”

“Tell him Captain Nemo nuked it,” Max said.

Charles laughed but there was no joy in it. Gini looked at him sympathetically.

“Did she destroy the tape of your dictation?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why don’t we have my secretary transcribe it, and Max and I will help you edit it.”

“You’re life savers, but I’m still going to tell the partner that Captain Nemo nuked it!”

“I hate to see her get fired, but I can’t say that I blame you,” Max said.

Given the mix of personalities involved in the Trudy and Vera fire drill, the event was not all that weird. This made Max think about the population of the building. There were a lot of people there, and there were many interactions between diverse personalities. He found it amazing that weird things did not happen more often. “Maybe they do,” he thought. “Maybe we don’t hear about them because they don’t impact a large number of people. Charles thought Trudy’s rewriting of his motion was weird, and the receptionist thought my lack of reaction to the earthquake was weird. All of which confirms my opinion that weird is relative.” This made him laugh. “It’s my theory of weird relativity. You won’t find in a book, but it’s certainly a part of life.

First published in macsbackporch.blogspot.com on Apr. 22, 2009