Divine and Sublime: The Love of a Mother

My blog is normally reserved for general snarkiness and flippant disregard for all things serious.  With that said, I'm not exactly sure why I'm posting this here, but I did want to warn anyone reading this beforehand: if you're expecting this to be funny, it won't be.  Ooh, that sounds far more serious than I meant it.  Sorry.  What I meant to say was that this is a talk I was asked to give in church last Sunday for Mother's Day, so it's not directed at your funny bone.  This is your last chance to stop reading before it gets too serious.  I mean it.  

The year is 1989.  The place is East Harlem, otherwise known as The Barrio.  Walking east along 103^rd Street between Fifth & Madison Avenues, you spy an 11-year-old boy, Luis.  The school day is over, and he’s heading to his home in the projects just a few blocks away where he lives on the 17^th floor with a mish mash of family and relatives squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment.  As he left PS171, he descended a small set of concrete stairs in disrepair and littered with hundreds of discarded crack vials – the school a popular place for the local dealer and his clients to do their business and feed their addiction. 

It’s December, and the first snow has long come and gone, leaving the snow banks along the gutters black and dirty from the exhaust of cars and trucks racing by on their way to someplace else.  There is a chill in the air, and Luis tightens his scarf and ensures his coat is zipped up to his chin.  He shoves his hands as deeply as he can into his pockets almost to the point of ripping the seams, and he soldiers on toward home. 

Luis passes through a short brick tunnel under the railroad tracks that separate the northbound and southbound sides of Park Avenue as a Metro North train rumbles overhead.  He’s reminded of the night he passed by this very spot on an errand to the local bodega when he came upon a man whose throat had been slit, the blood fresh on the sidewalk, just as a police car pulled up with lights flashing – he just kept walking.  This was not the first time he’s had a front-row seat to what plays out on the mean streets of The Barrio. 

Crossing Lexington Avenue and nearing the projects that he’s known as home since he came to the United States, Luis spies a solitary figure walking toward him struggling under the weight of a bag full of clothing in one hand and groceries in the other – he quickens his pace.  The very sight of this figure puts the visions of crack vials and violence completely out of his mind, and the chill disappears.  Who has this seemingly magical power to transform and transport him from The Barrio to a place where, for even a mere moment, there’s no worry about drive-by shootings or being pressured by the local dealer to be one of his corner boys on the lookout for approaching police?  Who else but his mother, Maria! 

She works at a dry-cleaning plant in Brooklyn six days a week and has to take two trains and a bus each way just to get to and from work.  On her way to and from the local subway station each day, she drops off and then collects clothing that needs to be tailored, mended, and hemmed for extra money.  She is a dutiful visiting teacher with sisters living at the extremes of Manhattan island – this involves even more trains and buses.  And she holds two callings: Sunday School teacher and Second Counselor in the Relief Society.  The demands on her time are endless.  And yet, she has never let a moment of doubt slip into Luis’s mind about whether he is her priority.  When I served in the New York City Spanish Speaking mission back in the late ‘80s, I met a mountain of mothers like Maria and witnessed time and time again the transformative power of their love in the lives of their children.  Knowing women like this – knowing women like my beautiful wife and my own wonderful mother – it seems almost a disservice to dedicate only one day to the celebration of mothers.  In fact, I would urge you today to make it a point in your own way to celebrate the mothers in your life as often as possible – let’s face it, we wouldn’t be here without them. 

    

Just out of curiosity, I Googled “great women” and was greeted by numerous entries from magazines and profiles.  I clicked through a whole host of these entries and learned some very fascinating things about these wonderfully brave women – the common themes running through these sites were “political successes”, “net worth”, and “overcoming insurmountable odds”.  All great feats, of course, and ones that are laud worthy!  One woman especially intrigued me, and as I read through a short biography, the writer extolled her many virtues and accomplishments that detailed both her revolutionary and iconoclastic nature.  Kudos to her!  However, in this and other profiles, it is never once mentioned whether she’s married or has children.  I had to go to the source of all truth, Wikipedia, to learn that she is, in fact, married and has children and grandchildren.  Why do I mention this?  The reason is simple: the world – especially popular culture – does not rank “motherhood” as something that qualifies for greatness.  That’s sad!

    

The French poet, Charles Baudelaire, once wrote, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”  I’ll add to Chuck’s insightful observation: the second greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that motherhood is not one of the absolute pinnacles of accomplishment.  For too long, women have been relegated to roles of subservience.  In many cultures, women are still considered second-class citizens.  This is the doing of a world who has been tricked. 

    

In order to understand the true value and equality of women in the eyes of Our Father, you need only turn to the Scriptures for myriad examples.  Motherhood is so central to a plan conceived and implemented by a loving Heavenly Father that the Christ child was introduced to this world by being born to a woman – to a mother!  Mary was not just a willing soul who happened to be in the right place at the right time.  In Luke, Chapter 1, verse 28, we read of Gabriel’s pronouncement to Mary of her value – that Our Heavenly Father knew her by name and chose her specifically: “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.”  After Christ was crucified, laid to rest in a borrowed tomb, and three days passed, to whom did the resurrected Savior very first appear?  A woman – Mary Magdalene.  This was not a chance meeting.  Christ’s esteem for Mary was incredible!  He surely sought her out.  In fact, He made a point to visit her even before He had ascended to Heaven to complete his resurrected transformation.  We mustn’t forget the undaunted courage and unwavering devotion of the two thousand young men who followed Helaman into battle and specifically and unreservedly credited their mothers for their strength and success.  You would be hard pressed to convince those two thousand boys to believe that motherhood was NOT at the pinnacle of accomplishment – in fact, if you tried, you might find yourself on the business end of a very sound beating. 

    

I believe it’s fair to say that motherhood is among the most far-reaching and important callings in life.  It has possibly the greatest effect on lives that stretches from the cradle to the grave and into the eternities.  We would underestimate the value and power of motherhood at our peril! 

There’s a song by the band Madness called “Our House”.  Throughout the song, the lyrics describe the comings and goings of the different family members and the fact their house is the central gathering place for the entire neighborhood.  After describing the madness within the walls of their home, there’s a line: “Something tells you that you've got to get away from it.”  But the very next part of the song is very telling – you hear this, referring to their mother: “She sees them off with a small kiss.  She's the one they're going to miss in lots of ways.”  And that may perhaps be one of the toughest but most noble aspects of motherhood: letting them go with the hope that they’ve prepared their children to take on the world.  Fortunately, though, we have an eternal promise found in Proverbs 22:6:  “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  This sentiment is echoed in Doctrine & Covenants.

    

As I prepared this little homage to mothers, I searched the scriptures and found many wonderful examples to cite, but I had a great deal of trouble putting my own thoughts into words.  So, in light of this loss for words, I decided it would be better to quote directly an Apostle of God, Jeffrey R. Holland, who said it perfectly in a Mormon Message found on the Church’s website: “May I say to mothers collectively, in the name of the Lord, you are magnificent. You are doing terrifically well. The very fact that you have been given such a responsibility is everlasting evidence of the trust your Father in Heaven has in you. He is blessing you and He will bless you, even—no, especially—when your days and your nights may be the most challenging. Rely on Him. Rely on Him heavily. Rely on Him forever. And ‘press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope.’”

    

To that, I can only add the following: Motherhood is a divine calling – it is at least equal to if not greater than the calling of prophet.  Without mothers, we would not have prophets and a Savior!

Christmas 2012

Traveling recently on the Subway, a woman and a small boy sat down next to me and proceeded speaking with one another in a language I’m going to presume was of Asian extraction – trust me on this one.  The conversation went something like this:

Woman: “Asian words, Asian words, Asian words, Asian words, Asian words.”

Boy: “Asian words, Asian words, Asian words, Asian words, Asian words.”

This went back and forth as the train made its way uptown.  Suddenly, after a long string of consonance from the boy, this is what I hear the woman say:

            Woman: “Asian words, Asian words.  Yeah, something like that.”

Huh?!!  Did I suddenly become fluent in a language in which I’ve had no previous experience?  Sadly, no.  Just as I was considering this possible moment of genius, the boy rattled off another barrage of wild words with the woman responding in kind – I was alone again in a sea of linguistic loss tossed about by waves of strange sounds and foreign phonics. 

This annual note from the Greene family will probably have the same effect: long strings of senseless ramblings punctuated by a short burst (or two, if you’re lucky) of coherence. 

Having reached the age of 12 (with all body parts intact) this year, Sam is now in junior high.  This rite of passage has brought the inevitable: the need to see how long he can keep his P.E. clothes in his locker and go without bringing them home to be washed.  I don’t know about other parts of the country, but in our neck of the woods, the junior high and high schools don’t have lockers for the students in which to keep their books – they (school administrators) are fearful that someone might conceal a weapon or explosive device in a locker.  That’s all fine and dandy, but shouldn’t it be just the opposite: if Sam’s P.E. locker is anything to go by, he’s concealing a deadly weapon that drops a stink bomb each time he opens it and allows his clothes to air – make the boys (at least) take their clothes home every day instead of 75 pounds of books.  The chiropractors lobby won’t be happy about it, but the rest of the free world will be grateful. 

While there were times we weren’t sure he would live to see 15 ½ (he’s had his death-defying moments, and we’re just talking about our dealings with him as his parents), Jack has obtained his driving permit.  In preparation for his eventually obtaining his actual license next month, we purchased a small used pick-up truck for him to get himself to and from school.  Jack keeps referring to it as “my truck”; each time he does so, we quickly remind him that the truck belongs to us and that we’re allowing him to use it for OUR convenience.  To the best of my knowledge, the truck hasn’t been Christened with a name yet, but if Erin has her way, I’m sure it would be named something like “Carpool Freedom” or “The Great Emancipator”.  Recently, Jack has joined a shooting club (trap and skeet, not drive-bys and contract hits – those come later, I think), and he’s really enjoying it.  He’s graduated from “pull my finger” to just “pull” – we’ll take our parental victories wherever we can get them. 

Although Queen Creek has yet to live up to its name – still no sightings of hordes of cross-dressers roaming our suburban streets – it’s still a great place to visit.  Come over to our place: we can sit on the front porch, watch a haboob or two, and then go inside to escape the oppressive heat.  (We write a heck of a travel brochure, don’t we?)  If that doesn’t sway you, we promise to buy you a Coke the size of a kiddie pool – it’s the least we could do.   

Christmas 2011

Back in 1935, an Austrian physicist named Schrödinger devised a way to explain quantum physics and impress chicks by placing a cat inside a sealed box with a vial of poisonous gas that could break at any moment and kill the unwitting feline. The crux of this exercise was this: until one opened the box to see if Mr. Finickypants was still upright, the cat could be considered both alive and dead. (Who says physicists are boring?) This annual report from the Greene family may be considered a bit of a modern-day Schrödinger’s Cat conundrum: until you read it, you won’t know if it will please you or cause a psychotic episode. On with the fun!

Sam is now in sixth grade, and he’s quite the reader. While he has yet to tackle the likes of War and Peace or Catcher in the Rye (and who can blame him – I’ve never cracked open the former, and I’m STILL waiting for Salinger to finish the latter and make his point), he’s become a sort of “point man” on his Battle of the Books team. At one of his “battles” back in March, each time they were asked a question, the other two members of his team would immediately look to him expecting him to know the answer – kind of the same way the dumb jocks expect the Asian kid to be good at math. Nevertheless, he didn’t let them down. He also made the “Million Word Club” at school. (I’m not going to push the issue, but are they REALLY sure he actually read EVERY word in EVERY book? I know I skim – much like you’re doing right now with this Christmas letter.) Also, another year has passed in which Sam has tenaciously limited his exposure to trying new foods – deep down, I believe he’s proud of such an achievement. Whenever we go to a dinner at a relative’s home, Sam immediately disappears into another part of the house or out into the backyard in the hopes that he won’t be forced to eat something really disgusting like roast beef or mashed potatoes or ham – I’m waiting for him to learn about the Geneva Convention and/or Amnesty International and having him trot out the threat that he’s going to report us for cruel and unusual punishment. As his friend, Buddy the Elf, sticks with the four food groups of Candy, Candy Corn, Candy Canes, and Syrup, Sam’s dietary daring doesn’t go too much farther afield from that. We’re thinking about hypnotizing him and pumping him full of proteins and fiber on a weekly basis.

As the year began, we found ourselves packed into a smallish auditorium with a lot of screaming, grunting, and Spandex. No, I’m not talking about a reunion concert for an ‘80s hair band – it was a junior high school wrestling match, and Jack was in the thick of it. Just before his first match, Jack came home from school and immediately disappeared into the bathroom. If his school’s cafeteria served similar offerings to those I remember from my youth, and the bathrooms at his school resembled the ones from mine, it made perfect sense that he had a heightened sense of urgency to get into the bathroom. A few moments later, he walked up to me as I was standing in the kitchen, and he was wearing a singlet (if you don’t know what a singlet is, I’m not sure if you’d be more glad that I satisfied your curiosity by describing one or that I sufficed by saying, it’s something that’s tight in all the wrong places). Beaming with pride, Jack said to me, “Dad, take a picture of me.” Quelling a fit of laughter that was fighting to bubble up and explode from mouth, I looked at Jack and said, “You’ll thank me when you’re older if I don’t.” (And all of you will thank us that we didn’t make that our family holiday photo!) This summer, Jack started high school – and I believe most of his teachers are young enough that they probably still get carded at bars. At “Back to School” night, I swear I saw two of his teachers get dropped off by their parents. Jack has also become quite the entrepreneur by hiring himself out as a dog sitter for a number of people in our neighborhood. If you ever see a Labrador running down the street while wearing a singlet, Jack’s probably not too far behind.

When I’m not busy saving the world by texting a daily trivia question, I like going to the gym and asking the guys who are all ‘roided out and about to bench 950 lbs. if they need me to spot them. When she’s not busy finding ways to keep a delinquent Elf occupied, Erin enjoys making scale models of celebrities out of tofu and selling them on eBay. Drop us a line or come and stay with us – we would love to hear from and see you. Just leave the cat at home – it’ll be safer for him. Happy holidays!

Blown Away

It’s never a good thing when your wife or significant other (it’s one or the other) asks you to “put your hand in the fridge” – not because she’s about to slam your hand in the door or there’s an evil gnome living inside your refrigerator waiting to pull you in and suffocate you. (While it’s probable you have gnomes living in your refrigerator, I have it on good authority that they don’t have homicidal tendencies as they know the people on the outside of the refrigerator are generally the ones who are replenishing the gnomes’ supply of sticks of butter and black olives – gnomes are the reason you’re always running out of these two items.) At any rate, the true reason your being asked to “feel” the inside of the fridge is that it’s obviously not as cold as it should be.

Despite what I’ve heard about friendly gnomes (it’s just my luck I would have one of those rogue gnomes who was grumpy and on a hunger strike), I warily got off the couch, walked over to the refrigerator, opened it suddenly (the element of surprise is your friend), and felt the interior air. While it wasn’t hot enough knock me over with heat blast, the air wasn’t exactly arctic crisp either.

Since I audited “Refrigerator Maintenance 115” back in college (meaning: I intended on at least attending the lecture on how to make the ultimate popsicle but never went to class), I was never licensed to possess those gauges and thingamajigs with dials and coils all over them that help one diagnose the possible reason or reasons the fridge isn’t delivering its optimal bravura performance. So, I decided to wing it: I’m betting that’s what they teach in “Refrigerator Maintenance 116”.

Removing the grille at the base of the refrigerator in the front, I noticed that the coils were “furry” – you know, the fur of millions of dead dust bunnies. Using the vacuum cleaner hose, I cleaned off as much of the fur from the coils but noticed that I could only reach the front portion. The coils were in a horizontal-V configuration, so I couldn’t access the back portion. No worries, I’ve been working out – I can pull the refrigerator out from the wall to attack the problem from that side (and there are wheels on the fridge that make it easy enough for a three year old to move around as if it’s as light as a tricycle). Problem: after climbing back behind the refrigerator and removing a cardboard panel (yes, it’s made of cardboard, and it’s lined with a thin layer of insulation that looks like cotton candy – take my word for it, though; it tastes nothing like cotton candy), I found that a lot of “machinery” with a nasty fan blade that took umbrage to my finger being in its personal space stood between me and my successful fur eradication on the back half of the coil. A real poser!

Undeterred, I returned to the front of the fridge and pondered my options. The heart of the problem was simple: I needed something to produce sufficient “suckage” (that’s a technical term I learned from my college roommate who actually attended “RM 115”) to pull the accumulated dust off of the back coil, through the open spaces of the now-clean front portion of the coil, and gather the detritus into the vacuum hose. I’m a genius! However, my celebration was short lived. I quickly remembered that I had loaned out my one and only flux capacitor so I couldn’t rig up our vacuum cleaner to produce enough jigawatts to maintain the sufficient level of suckage – a story as old as time, of course.

The first option I then considered was squatting down and lifting the refrigerator vertically, but that clearly wasn’t going to work: I was by myself, and our dog has no opposable thumbs with which to hold the vacuum hose AND flip the “on” switch. I blame Darwin for this – this Theory of Evolution of his has some serious holes, in my opinion. Then the stroke of genius hit me: if I can’t vacuum it out, I’ll blow it out. With what, you may ask? One might think a hair dryer would be sufficient, but I didn’t want to take the chance that the power would still be too weak or the underside of the refrigerator might develop split ends without proper conditioning. Some of you probably see where I’m going with this, and you would be right: I am a genius. I went out to my garage and returned with . . . the leaf blower. In less than four seconds after strategically positioning the leaf blower and firing it up, all traces of dust bunnies were but a memory.

As my wife and son were cleaning a fine layer of what appeared to be volcanic ash from Mount St. Helens that had settled on every surface of the kitchen, I could tell they were completely blown away by my genius. In fact, I heard my wife say “unbelievable” numerous times.

Believe it or not, though, this is not the first time I’ve employed the leaf blower as a means to solve a non-leaf-related problem. One holiday season a few years back, we loaded our Christmas tree into the family minivan to haul it off to the dump. Upon my return, I found that the tree had decided to leave 95% of its needles behind in my minivan. I could have pulled out the old shop vac and spent the next two hours scouring every inch of the minivan’s interior, but I had things to do: in this case, I probably had a nap to take or a book to read. At any rate, I whipped out the leaf blower, opened every door of the minivan, and my work was done in about 30 seconds. My neighbor across the street watched me a bit quizzically, so as I turned off the leaf blower, I shouted over to him, “They laughed at Einstein, too.” I thought that summed it up; my neighbor was probably wondering “when did Einstein have time to invent the leaf blower?”

About an hour after cleaning the coils and pushing the fridge back into place, I opened it up to find the air noticeably cooler, the gnome was putting his parka back on, and all was well in the Greene house. No rest for the weary, though: I needed to run to the store for more butter and olives.

Sizing up the Year - Greene Family Christmas Letter 2010

Have you ever tried to type anything over, say, 50 words in length on one of these fancy-schmancy new “Netbooks”? The keyboard’s slightly larger than a microchip but smaller than a deck of cards. Who invented these things? And you can’t say elves, because I’ve seen their fingers – they’re like little sausages. Speaking of fingers, let’s just say I wasn’t born to play the piano or palm a Nerf basketball, but even with my girlie digits, this isn’t the easiest task in the world. Granted, giving birth and passing kidney stones still rank higher on the list of difficult tasks – you will have known that if either you’ve read some of our past Christmas letters or you’ve given birth (to a human being or a kidney stone – I wouldn’t recommend both at the same time, although reading this letter may feel like that). Take a Percocet, sit back, and enjoy!

Sam has become quite philosophical this year. As the date approached for our church’s annual children’s program, one of the women helping put it together asked Sam if he would prepare a short speech. His topic: Jesus and His miracles. Erin and I knew that Sam had reached the age that he needed to put the majority of the effort into preparing this speech, so we adopted a “hands off” approach to be sure he only came to us if he REALLY needed help. The “hands off” approach worked perfectly – we completely forgot about it until the night before the program when we came home from a date (with each other – it’s too complicated any other way) and he announced that he had already written his speech. He handed us his copy and asked us to read it. My favorite part – and I believe Erin concurs – was when he wrote, “To me, Jesus is like a superhero; just he doesn’t have a secret identity. That’s one of the things I love about Jesus; and about miracles.” Later, as the mid-term elections and all the attendant rhetoric were raging, Sam was watching the news with Erin when he turned to her and said, "So Republicans are like your friends, they don't really care what you do and you can do whatever you want. Democrats are like your parents. They want to boss you around and tell you everything you have to do." Take that, McLaughlin Group!

This was the year that Jack became a teenager. As a way of appropriately ushering in this new chapter of his life, Jack and Erin organized an “Amazing Race” themed birthday party. While I can assure you no yaks were harmed in the ensuing melee and the naked flamingos were a bit unnerving, everyone had a great time. Even Colonel Sanders made an appearance (and you all thought he was dead – yes, it was THAT good of a party)! With the teen years has come a keen interest in rocket-propelled flying objects, setting fire to anything that we will allow him to burn, and cooking. Honestly, the cooking thing has been with him for quite some time, but he’s really spreading his wings and taking on new and interesting challenges – and in the process, he’s become very good at it. Now, if he could find a way to cook a chicken by engulfing it in flames and shooting it into the first layer of the stratosphere and cooling it on its descent, he’d be in heaven! There’s probably a Discovery Channel show in there somewhere. In those odd moments when he hasn’t been filling his time with culinary terrorism, Jack’s been actively involved with Boy Scouts (where I believe the campfire was the origin of his fascination with burning things) and is within a hair’s breadth of getting his Eagle (fortunately that particular bird is both revered and protected by law so Jack can’t subject it to his proclivities). If any of you may be wondering how much a hair’s breadth equals, it’s exactly halfway between a skosh and a tad – see, this is both fun AND educational!

As for Erin and myself, when we’re not busy fighting crime in our secret identities (don’t tell Sam) as Carpoolio and Hairboy (you can guess who’s who), we fill our time raising pygmy goats that resemble reality TV stars for state fairs across the country – it’s extremely rewarding.

As I’ve written in the past: our door is always open for you (I made sure of that just recently by replacing the dead bolt that had us trapped in the house for four days – fortunately, we didn’t have to resort to eating each other). The weather’s great here (for about three more months), so come on by and sit a spell – that’s an ephemeral amount of time really, but it’s longer than a moment but shorter than a coon’s age. Happy holidays!

Gettin' 'Up In' Religion

I'm "monitoring" Sam's getting-dressed-for-church progress yesterday morning. I note that he's wearing black suit pants (that he inherited from his older brother, Jack) and a white shirt (not my choice). I tell him it's time for us to leave for church, and Sam jukes over to his closet for what I presume is going to be a tie - while he's only 10 years old, he's started to have a fascination with wearing "the noose". At any rate, as he comes around the corner I see him shrugging on the matching black suit jacket, no tie. This prompted a bit of an argument as Sam REALLY wanted to wear the jacket - crazy kid, it's 105 degrees outside. I finally "won" the argument with this little gem: "Sam, you can't wear a suit without a tie to church. It's either what you're wearing now - no jacket, no tie - or you have to wear a tie if you're going to wear the jacket. If you were going to go out and hit a couple of night clubs, wearing the jacket without the tie would be fine."

Fast forward to our drive home from church:

Dad: "What did you learn about in Primary today?"

Sam: "We learned about the afterlife."

Dad: "So tell me about the afterlife."

Sam: "In the afterlife, cheetahs and lambs will hang out and run around together."

Dad: "I think you mean that the lamb and the lion will lie down together - it's a prophecy from the book of Isaiah."

Sam: "No. The lions will be someplace else eating straw. And guess what: in the afterlife, a kid will be able to put his hand 'up in' a serpent and not get hurt."

Dad: "I think you mean that a child will be able to place his hand in a snake's den and not be bitten."

The son's patience is wearing thin at this point with the father's complete lack of understanding of all things Biblical.

Sam: "No, I mean a kid will be able to put his hand 'up in' a serpent."

Dad: "'Up in'? What exactly do you mean by 'up in'?"

Sam: "The kid will be able to stick his hand up a snake's butt and not get hurt."

My thought, while making sure I don't crash my car, was I'm not too sure the snake would agree with that.

Pregnant Woman (NOT ERIN) with a Sense of Humor

You can believe this or not, but I was at the gym tonight lifting weights. I'm not going to tell you how much weight I was lifting for fear you might think this thing is total fiction.

At any rate, near the end of my workout, I approached the free weights area and happened upon a pregnant woman doing dumbbell curls. Given her dimensions and proportions, there was NO question that she was pregnant - take my word for it on this one.

As I passed her, she had just finished the set she was doing and let the weights and her arms hang down on each side. I looked at the weights in her hands and then said, gesturing to her belly, "I think you're lifting those dumbbells wrong."

She paused for a moment, got a funny look on her face, and then she laughed - fortunately.

The Porcelain Year

While chatting it up with a couple of people at work the other day, I announced that my wife and I were about to celebrate 18 years of marriage – with each other. The discussion turned to what each anniversary represented. The easy answers, of course, were 25 years is the Silver anniversary; 50 is Gold; and 75 is Diamond. What was 18? The first thing that leapt to mind was “origami” (most likely something in the shape of either a gnu or a 1964 Chevy Impala), but one of the members of this discussion quickly reminded me that paper – origami’s material of choice – was the first anniversary. Paper? Clearly that doesn’t mean “get her a card and call it good” because then there would be no second anniversary. I honestly don’t remember what I gave my wife for our first anniversary – all I know is that I’ve been lucky enough to have 17 more.

At any rate, Paper Person proceeded to Google the question on her BlackBerry (I believe this very moment was the single reason God invented both Google and the BlackBerry – everything else we do with those two pieces of technology are just gravy) and found that “porcelain” is the traditional gift for an 18th wedding anniversary. I mulled this over quite extensively: do I buy my wife a toilet or a sink? Which one says “I love you” and “Happy 18th, Foxy Mama” more than the other? Given the fact I had already established the Divine origin for Google and BlackBerry, I decided not to chance it by seeking help in answering these questions using those avenues. So, I decided on my own: I booked a room at a local hotel for an evening.

The gentleman at the hotel seemed a little bewildered when I asked if our room would have both a porcelain sink and toilet, but before I let him get too worked up over it, I reminded him this was for our 18th anniversary. Silence on the other end of the phone – obviously the import of my question was suddenly crystal clear.

Fast forward to yesterday: After checking into our room (and confirming that both the toilet and sink were porcelain – I played it smart and didn’t make a big deal of it as I was sure my wife would make the connection and see me for the die-hard romantic that I am), we made our way to dinner. Here’s the problem with going to a fancy restaurant when you don’t drink alcohol: When the server asks you which wine you would like to begin your meal, you say, “May I have a Coke, please?” At that point, I would imagine, most servers are tempted to card you to see if you’re really a 13-year-old kid with premature gray hair and the unfortunate beginnings of a double chin. Although the server knows that since you’re not ordering alcohol and her tip will be relatively lower due to the smaller tab for the meal, she takes solace in hoping that you truly are 13 years old because your bedtime is 9:00 p.m. so you won’t be sticking around too long – more time to bring in a patron who will order enough booze to float a small navy.

As we took a short walk on the hotel grounds after dinner, we passed a wedding party. These kids were JUST staring their lives together – the seven years they lived together before “getting serious” don’t count – and here we were celebrating 18 wonderful years. These kids have the paper anniversary next year, along with cotton and leather after that, respectively. Who in their right mind came up with these gift ideas, Eli Whitney and the Marquis de Sade? All I know is that I truly look forward to our 19th and 20th anniversaries. I believe they are, respectively, “world domination” and “kittens” – and I wouldn’t want to do it with anybody else. I love you, Erin!

Thank You, Kanye!

Hear me out! I don’t hate Taylor Swift – I don’t think Kanye did a good thing by grabbing the microphone from her during her acceptance speech at the Video Music Awards. Believe it or not, I agree with President Obama’s outlook on his actions: Kanye is a jackass.

However, what Kanye did – inadvertently, I’m sure – was give the holier-than-thou media the chance to jump off their high horses and show their true colors. It must have been extremely cathartic for so many of the media! With this incident, they proved that they and the paparazzi are one in the same. The main dude at TMZ.com must have been interviewed by thousands of media outlets yesterday and today to get the “inside scoop” on Kanye’s behavior. You read that right: their “expert” is a cat who runs an outfit who spends most of its time tracking down the celebrity du jour to find out if she ate more than 200 calories that day and to snap pictures of said celebrity when she forgot to wear underwear (most likely because she’s not getting enough food to the brain).

The mainstream media want us to believe that they’re a step ahead of us at all times and that they keep themselves above the fray to assure we’re getting the “whole story”. First of all, by spending more than five seconds on the Kanye West story shows that they’re not above the fray at all – they’re down in the gutters, too. Secondly, if they wanted to make this into some type of life-lesson story or an exposure of what celebrity does to a man’s head, they shouldn’t be going to the guy who salivates over catching on video the ramblings of someone famous who has drunk enough Jack Daniels to float a small yacht. While there’s probably not a whole lot of “jackassologists” thick on the ground to dissect Kanye’s behavior for the morning news, there is a whole host of accredited professionals who could give the viewing public a little better insight into the whole affair – but that wouldn’t really be that interesting, truth be told.

So, Kanye, thanks for screwing up so magnificently! You gave the mainstream media the chance to let their hair down and show us they’re just a bunch of schlubs like us. Because of you, I’m inviting Matt Lauer to my next outdoor barbecue, and I won’t be ashamed to ask him to bring a beanie weenie casserole.

Start (Don't Stop) Making Sense

Let’s go back to a simpler time when our “politicians” made a little more sense: the American Revolution. Specifically, let’s focus on the night before the pivotal crossing of the Delaware.

Aide to General Washington (avoiding eye contact with his superior): “Sir, I have a gentleman outside your tent we caught snooping around and listening in on the meetings with your officers.”

General Washington (stops writing in his journal and puts his quill down – all he’s been able to write is “Lord Cornwallis is a tool.”) “Why has he been listening in on our meetings? Is he a spy?”

Aide (clearly not enjoying this task, he blows out a deep breath and continues to avoid eye contact): “No, worse. He says he’s a member of the press and insists that he’s exercising one of the rights – Freedom of the Press to be specific – for which this war is being fought.”

Washington (giving his aide that Are you completely bonkers? look – aide simply closes his eyes and makes an almost imperceptible shake of the head): “I’m a fairly intelligent man – at least my mother thinks so – but I’m having trouble understanding why this chap feels it necessary to listen in on my strategic planning meetings with my officers the night before one of the most important events of this war. Throw me a bone here, man.”

Aide (throwing back a look of Don’t shoot the messenger and looking up at the ceiling, hands behind his back, clearing his throat): “Sir, he claims that his readers have a right to know what’s going on at the front and that this right supersedes the safety and security of our men who are fighting this war.” (Aide holds up both hands, palms outward, in an it sounds even dumber hearing myself say it manner and rolls his eyes.)

Washington (looking at his aide with a sideways glance): “Are you absolutely sure he’s not a British spy sent here to kill us with laughter? They’re famous for their dry wit, you know, but this is absolutely ridiculous.” (Washington notices a very pained look on his aide’s face and turns to look him straight in the eye.) “What? You’re serious? Is there something more?”

Aide (hands behind his back again, staring up into the corner of the tent just over Washington’s shoulder): “Um, well, yes, there is one other teeny tiny thing. He’s insisting on being embedded in one of the front-line infantry units tomorrow morning and wants your personal assurance on his safety.” (Aide casts his eyes immediately to the floor and shuffles his feet.)

Washington (laughing hysterically and trying to keep himself from wetting his pants, he’s amazed his aide is able to keep a straight face – this is one phenomenal joke, perfectly delivered!): “Wait. You’re not kidding are you?” (He regains his composure, tugs at the hem of his coat and smooths down his lapels.) “Right. Take the bugger and his rights (Washington makes air quotes with his fingers) out back and give him the Thomas Paine treatment – beat some common sense into him. If that doesn’t work, dress him up as a woman and set him free in the British camp – most of those men haven’t seen their wives or girlfriends for months, and it’s cold. He’ll quickly learn the meaning of being embedded in an infantry unit!”

Fast forward to today: if someone in Washington’s position making a similar suggestion were overheard by the wrong person or videotaped and played on YouTube, the madding crowd would be clamoring for his resignation, his evisceration, and/or his castration. I can’t pinpoint where in the ensuing centuries we, the American People, decided to fill our collective wheel barrow with stupid bricks and get everything turned around, but it’s obviously happened!

I was watching the morning news recently when the talking head read a story about the liberation of a member of the press who had been taken hostage in the Middle East. The newscaster – one of the hostage’s kindred spirits – blithely announced the happy news that the man was now free but then quickly breezed through the part of the story that a British commando was killed in the operation. Warning: I’m going to capitalize this next part so you can clearly hear me. A MAN WHO HAS BEEN PAINSTAKINGLY TRAINED TO DEFEND HIS COUNTRYMEN AND WOMEN AND TO BRING HOME HIS FALLEN COMRADES UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WAS KILLED SO A MEMBER OF THE PRESS – SOMEONE WHO WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF HELL VOLUNTARILY, SOMEONE WHO WAS BRINGING ABSOLUTELY NO END TO THE CONFLICT OR PEACE TO THE REGION – COULD COME HOME IN THE PASSENGER CABIN OF AN AIRCRAFT WHILE THE DEFENDER CAN COME HOME IN A BODY BAG. That’s A LOT of stupid bricks for the wheel barrow, kids!

A Man and His Pets

Little did you know, but the day you were born into this world, you made an implicit promise with the rest of the world that you were going to accept some things just as they are and keep moving along. Parts of this compact include motorists who drive 35 mph in the fast lane on the freeway, your seventh-grade English teacher’s bad breath, and the inexplicable fame and success of hair bands in the 80s – you just file them away as givens and try not to let them ruin your day (or your decade for that matter).

Back when I used to have to travel a lot, I would stay in a mid-level hotel chain, and I was generally pleased with the accommodations. The two things I did do on a regular basis that still give my wife the heebie-jeebies was walk around my room barefoot and leave the bedspread on the bed when I went to sleep each night. Sure, I’ve heard all about the funky foot fungi that are ever present on hotel floors and what a hotel bedspread looks like under a black light, but I’ve chosen to exercise my birthright and just not think about it. I stayed in hotels regularly for over four years – I wasn’t about to let myself go neurotic.

Another aspect of my life in which I refuse to think beyond the moment is when I go to a convenience store and get a fountain drink. The lids to the cups are always arranged in such a way that it’s good odds that another ungloved human hand has touched the inside of the very lid you’re about to place atop your cup and allow who-knows-what to mingle with your thirst-quenching drink. But I can’t think about that! I have a Coke to swig.

Recently, I noticed our pool sweep wasn’t working properly, so I reeled it in and brought the head up out of the water only to notice that a small rat had become lodged in the intake valve – if the look frozen on its face conveyed its last thoughts before succumbing to the depths of our pool, I’m pretty sure he was ticked! While I dismantled the sweep’s head and pushed the rat’s body out of the opening with a screwdriver (that went immediately in the trash can afterwards), I made sure I didn’t touch the vermin with either of my hands. Nevertheless, the rest of that evening, I kept having to wash my hands with HOT water and plenty of soap. Before I went to bed, I forced myself to stop thinking about the whole incident so I could get some rest. Fortunately, I didn’t have any nightmares that night of Chuck E. Cheese chasing me with a pool sweep.

Although I feel to pat myself on the back for my ability to let things slide the way I do, I have three pet peeves that I just can’t shake:

1. Using Chopsticks to Eat Asian Food (IF YOU’RE NOT ASIAN AND/OR LIVING IN ASIA WHILE DOING THE EATING!): you’re not impressing anyone with your manual dexterity. The only person who MIGHT think you’re cool is the dishwasher at the restaurant because your chopsticks are made of cheap wood, and they’re going to throw them away after you leave rather than washing them.

2. People Who Say, “I Never Watch TV. There’s never anything good to watch.”: Liar, liar, pants on FIRE!!!!!!! So you pay $100/month for high-definition cable so your dogs have something to do while you’re gone instead of chewing up the sofa leg and/or playing “Guess Which Shoe I Peed in Today”?

3. People Who Make a Big Deal that They NEVER Sleep More Than Four Hours Each Night: Come on!! I have yet to eavesdrop on a conversation among a group of women who say, “That Steve is a hunk! Don’t you just love what sleep deprivation does to his eyes?” Even if you’re some freak of nature who revels in such a behavior, keep your weirdness to yourself and let me get some shuteye – Chuck E. Cheese isn’t going to be patient forever, so I might as well face him sooner than later.

Television's Healing Power

Over the years, I’ve tried to deliver wise advice and insights that might help you navigate your daily journey through life. My columns have ranged from the inner workings of the English language and air travel to the virtues of the public education system and the Theory of Evolution. If for nothing else, this stuff will at least come in handy during a spirited game of Trivial Pursuit. Sure, you could argue that my columns aren’t exactly on par with Nietzsche (which is perfectly fine with me because I gather he’d be a real downer at a party) and are light on what some people would call “facts”. Today’s column, though, turns its back on frivolity and mirth to serve a higher purpose by announcing I’ve decided to become a medical expert and warn you of a dangerous and potentially lethal malady that is reaching epidemic proportions. What formal medical training have I undergone, you ask? We needn’t dwell on such trivial matters when lives are at stake, people!

The disease to which I’m referring is HPV! There are a lot of commercials these days talking about being tested for HPV, but that’s a whole other issue. The HPV of which I speak doesn’t have any fancy commercials or public service announcements aimed at educating the public about its dangers because those who catch it are, quite frankly, not exactly smart enough to catch on. This HPV is He-Man Pamplona Virus: an infectious neurological disorder that mutates the brains of the male portion of the species causing them to do all sorts of stupid things. It’s named after the mindset of those men who run with the bulls through very tight alleys and narrow streets in Pamplona, Spain, each year, but this affliction knows no international borders, cultural boundaries, or specific age range.

This tragic disease manifests itself in so many ugly ways! Here’s a list of just a few: getting a double hernia from refusing to lift with your legs, running for political office, wearing Spandex at ANYTIME, posting a video on YouTube of yourself lip-synching an AC/DC song, being an actual member of AC/DC and STILL touring, NASCAR, cage fighting, the creation of MySpace, running an Ironman Triathlon, karaoke, the wearing of pants so low that even a midget pickpocket has to reach down, etc. (Although I don’t have conclusive evidence, I have it on pretty good authority that HPV was at the root of both the automotive designs and market launches for the AMC Gremlin and Dodge K Car, respectively.) We haven’t even scratched the surface, and you can already see how pervasive a reach and tenacious a hold this disease has.

Even I have not been able to avoid HPV’s insidious coils. I have consented to be a part of a relay team that will require me to run, jog, walk, and/or crawl over seventeen miles on rather uneven terrain. Why? Is the purpose of the race to raise awareness for breast cancer or autism? No. Am I doing this to honor the life of a great man or woman who has helped me be a better person? No. Pretty sure I’ve never undergone a lobotomy, so there’s only one good reason I allowed myself to get caught up in this madness: HPV-induced stupidity!

Although there may be no hope for me, I believe I have come across a cure for those for whom it’s not too late. Where, pray tell, did I find it? From watching TV. I saw a commercial for Miralax, a medication originally designed for constipation, while I was jogging on the treadmill the other day, and the two things that stood out to me were the words “No Sudden Urgency” and “No Grit”. For the impulsive male mind, this is certainly a step in the right direction and a blow to HPV! As soon as you’re finished reading this, I urge you to go out to the store immediately and get a bottle of Miralax. In addition to fighting off the contagion of He-Man Pamplona Virus, you’ll feel more regular within twenty-four hours. However, if you actually go to Pamplona to run with the bulls, and something seems to be stuck where it shouldn’t, no amount of Miralax is going to help that.

Toilet Humor

While hiking up Camelback Mountain with my almost-twelve-year-old son the other day he asked me how I got this gig writing a humor column. Between attempts to draw air into my lungs with what seemed to be a male elephant with a thyroid disorder sitting on my chest and his less-than-fit girlfriend sitting on his lap, I began to explain to him the laborious process of sending out thousands upon thousands of e-mails begging people to read my work and asking them if they would be kind enough to pay me in a currency recognized by the US Government – the market for beaver pelts and beads is way too volatile for my comfort level – for running my humorous little anecdotes on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Thinking I made a fairly reasoned explanation, I left him to ponder this wisdom and began to ascend a portion of the trail that required the use of handholds and carefully choosing where to place my feet to assure I would live long enough to write a couple more columns. By the time I reached the top of that stretch, Jack had already scampered up some other way – I swear he has mountain goat blood in him, which may not be too hard to imagine because both my wife and I have relatives from the South – and he awaited my arrival with a follow-up question: he wasn’t so much concerned about the ins and outs of how one goes about getting a job writing a humor column; he was more bewildered by the fact someone actually thought I was funny enough to pay me in something OTHER THAN beaver pelts and beads AND publish my musings in a newspaper – a vanguard of truth dedicated to keeping the public informed and up to date on what’s happening in the world (when the cable is out).

Rather than trying to reason with him (and in the interest of preserving what little breathing capacity I had left), I just looked at him and said, “It’s just one of the great mysteries of our time. It ranks up there with Stonehenge and why the French are so enamored with Jerry Lewis.” He began to ponder on that, and I’m not quite sure to this day if it was the natural phenomenon of Stonehenge or the absolute absurdity of the French’s love that caused his pensive nature.

As we were completing our ascent, I tried to see it from my son’s perspective. I’m the guy who marches him and his brother to bed on school nights – no humor there. I’m the guy who broke it to him that there’s a difference between boys and girls – definitely no humor there; that was just cruel! I’m the guy who demanded silence when trying to fix the toilet and then proceeded to break that silence with a few choice words directed at the fixture in question in a tone that seemed to be begging a response from an inanimate object – that’s not funny, that’s nuts!

Do you think people’s children see them the way the world sees them? Did Abraham Lincoln’s son see a true statesman when he looked at his old man or was he thinking, “What’s with the hat, dad? You’re tall. We get it.” Did Marie Curie’s kids see a pioneer in radioactivity or were they saying to each other, “Do you think mom will ever make a meatloaf that ISN’T burned to a crisp?” Did Socrates' kids recognize him as one of the founders of Western philosophy (which is contrary to the popular belief that it was John Wayne), or were they saying, “Enough with the questions. Yes, I want you to pass the salt NOW.”

The next time one of your kids gives you that look that can be interpreted as “was I adopted”, don’t bother breaking out a DNA test. Just wait until they get ready to go on their first date and break out the volumes of naked baby pictures of them when their date shows up, and they’ll wish they were adopted.

Christmas 2008

I believe you’ll all agree it’s been an odd year, and many of you look at this letter as the full stop, the period, at the end of that sentence of insanity. Happy to help!

Speaking of it being a strange year, just recently we went to purchase our Christmas tree at Home Depot and found the outside nursery entrance closed. The guy in lumber explained this was because they were anticipating a higher theft rate this year. While our sons almost ripped Erin’s arms off to get back to the nursery because she just wasn’t running at the speed of light, I followed behind musing on this little twig of information snapped off and offered up by this loquacious lumberman: did someone really go to the trouble to research a report on Christmas tree theft – is there big money in this – or was the guy just making stuff up? (If it’s the latter, he’s my kind of guy!)

Not finding anything earth shattering, we made our way to Target to peruse their selection. Surprisingly quickly, Erin found THE ONE and we were ready. Slight snag, though, they didn’t have any twine to tie the tree to the top of our Urban Assault Vehicle – our Honda Odyssey, Hugo. This was all part of their fiendish plan to force us to purchase some rope, which we did. I found the rope held far better than the twine ever did. With twine, I always drove home very gingerly to assure the tree’s safe arrival. This year, though, I had ROPE! So, we covered the five miles between Target and home in three minutes flat. On the turn into our neighborhood, we got Hugo up on two wheels. A group of kids on skateboards and BMX bikes applauded as we passed them – one of them saluted. We pulled into our driveway with the tree still affixed to the top of the van and all the needles on the tree still intact. (Be sure to purchase a fresh tree – with one that’s too dry, the drive home turns it into a replica of “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.)

Sam turned 8 this year and was baptized. We’ve learned that he has a penchant for 80s music that’s “funky and fresh”, and he’s fascinated with afros. Soccer is fast becoming his favorite sport, and he’s still in the fundamentals stage of learning the difference between a fullback and a sweeper and how to kick the ball directly into the face of your opponent – that’s coming to him quite naturally, though. Given enough time, we hope he’ll learn how to start soccer riots at the level you see in Britain. Dare to dream!

At 11, Jack’s choice for this year’s Halloween costume epitomized his two loves: creativity and building stuff. Constructing it completely out of cardboard, he was a human traffic cone. At the beginning of his summer vacation, he underwent a tonsillectomy and did fairly well in the recovery process. However, on Day 10 – the day you’re supposed to be determined “better” – he started coughing up blood and had to be rushed to the hospital to have that area re-cauterized. And then he had 10 more days of recovery. That was one riveting “What I Did Over Summer Vacation” essay!

Although another year has gone by and Erin still hasn’t realized her dream of traversing the globe in a lawn chair tied to one thousand helium balloons, she’s still feeling fulfilled through her work at school and church. A few months ago, we decided to get some of our tax money back, so Erin went to work part time at the boys’ school as an aide. She came home after her first day and said, “What a glorious scam! I just got paid today to do the same stuff I used to do when I volunteered for free!” From that point on, you know she secretly sneers at those other parents at the school who are still volunteering: “Suckers!”

As for myself, I’ve recently learned that it’s hilarious to put clothes on a dog. Seriously! I’m not talking about the whack jobs who dress up their pets and take family photos with them because they think they’re cute. Put a sweater that has a big puffy collar on a dog, and you can’t help but laugh – what’s even funnier is the look on the dog’s face because she knows on some level that she looks ridiculous and that the other dogs are going to make fun of her. Earlier this year, before discovering the hilarity of dog dressing, I left the sexy world of selling crumpled-up Kraft paper, thus giving up a life of intrigue and travel to exotic locales like Fernley, Nevada, and Beaver, Utah. Now I work for a packaging company in Arizona, so I’m home practically every night. The dog’s not altogether happy about that, I’m imagining.

If there’s six feet of snow on the ground where you are, come visit us. Here in Arizona, around Christmas time, we walk around all day in t-shirts and thongs – you can decide if I mean sandals or not.

Thursday, 4:32 p.m., at the Greene Home

Sam: Dad, I got a yellow card today.

Dad: What happened?

Sam: I was talking.

Dad: Well, you need to work on that don’t you?

Sam: But the kid I enjoy chatting with sits in front of me. (His choice of words here was about to put me in stitches. First off, he didn’t use the word “like” – “enjoy” expresses such a wider spread of positive emotions. Then, he didn’t use “talking” or “joking around” to describe the action from which he derives such pleasure – no, he suddenly turns into a 67-year-old British spinster who, when she’s not chatting, she’s nattering around her flat.)

Dad: That’s when you need to work especially hard not to talk. You need to tell him that you both need to keep quiet.

Sam: But, dad, he’s really funny. (At that, I had exactly ten seconds to make it to the bathroom before I wet my pants.)

Santa Needs a More Ergonomic Chair

With less than a million days before December 25th, Christmas was heavy on both my sons’ minds as we were driving home from Wal-Mart this evening. My younger son, Sam, asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I certainly felt put on the spot, so I had to think fast. I told them I wanted a Slip-N-Slide. Both of my boys perked up at that, and you could read their minds like a book: “Cool! That’ll be like a bonus present for me!”

Perhaps wanting to continue the wet-and-wild theme, Sam announced he was going to ask Santa for this enormous inflatable waterslide that’s about as big as our house – he saw one on “America’s Funniest Home Videos” on Sunday night. Careful not to spoil any illusions he may still be holding onto, I told him that I was reasonably sure Santa would not be bringing such an item to our house this or any other year. It’s not so much the cost – I’m looking out for Santa’s logistical constraints with so many stops and such limited space in his sleigh.

A momentary silence fell over the car as the suburban landscape rushed by our windows. Sam’s not one to let such a mood remain too long, and coupling that with his constant concern for his fellow man, he felt constrained to make public those inner thoughts that were ruminating about his head at that very moment: “You know, I feel kind of sorry for Santa having to go all over the world to deliver toys.” A quick glance over at Sam revealed he was really worried about the big guy making his rounds on that one magical night each year.

At that very moment, it was as if I could see what was taking place before his mind’s eye:

The scene: a squalid jail cell with inadequate lighting and a musty smell from a dripping faucet in the corner. In walks a skinny, pugnacious stub of a man wearing a khaki uniform, a belt hanging just below his armpits, and a silver badge that says “The Man.” Santa’s sleeping fitfully in the corner of the cell on a bench that needs a good varnishing.

The Man: “Wake up, fat boy! It’s time.”

Santa’s jarred awake, his eyes are bloodshot and worry is painted on his face.

Santa: “But I don’t want to go. It’s too cold outside, the reindeer have really bad gas because someone always seems to feed them a beef log and/or a can of Slim Jims just before we take off, and my Sciatica always acts up about two hours into the trip – that beaded seat cover some of those New York cabbies use doesn’t do squat for me.”

The Man: “A deal’s a deal, chump. Every year you make the same bet with the Easter Bunny, and he always wins and gets to vacation down in Boca while you have to stay at the North Pole and fly around the world delivering toys. He hides eggs – that’s what he does, and he’s good at it. You’ll never be able to find them all in a half an hour. I don’t care if you have your elves on the lookout when he’s hiding them – that’s cheating by the way, which’ll get you on your own naughty list. What irony! Now get up, and get dressed!”

Dejected, Santa stands up and walks to the door of the cell. The Man shoves the key home and turns the lock, swinging the door open and taking a step back to size up his ward.

Santa: “Alright. But have you ever been downwind when Rudolph gets a sinus infection? How do you think he gets a red nose? Ugh! Fine, tell the elves to get everything ready. We’ll be leaving in ten minutes. But first, I need to use the john and take a Percocet.”

Looking to snap Sam out of his reverie, I turned the radio on and heard the final seconds of “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd. Which is funny because that’s exactly how Santa’s going to feel if he mixes that Percocet with a little bit of spiked eggnog.

Oprah Explained

Have you ever tried to learn a new language? Sure, you go through all the grammar lessons, verb conjugation, learning the proper gender of certain words (you think I’m kidding), syntax, etc., but when it comes to being conversational, you have to display more than a textbook grasp of the language itself – you have to learn the idioms, the catchy sayings that identify you as a native speaker. In light of that, have you ever stopped to think of all the idioms we use in the American dialect of the English language that either make no sense or cause someone learning our language for the first time to say (in their own language, of course), “With minds that work like that, how is it possible that they became a superpower? That’s embarrassing to the rest of the world!”

Here’s just a sampling:

Beat a Dead Horse: Is there some part of the country in which it’s legal to beat a live horse? Is the purpose of this saying to convey the sheer uselessness of beating a dead one because there’s a whole paddock full of naughty horses just waiting their turn to take a lickin’?

Can’t Cut the Mustard: Has there ever been a time in human history when someone has needed the help of someone else to slice through a dollop of mustard? If so, can a person REALLY fail to do that?

Dropping Like Flies: Now, I could certainly see a group adopting the saying “Buzzing Around Like Flies” or “Landing All Over my Potato Salad Like Flies”, but I have in all my time on the face of this planet never seen a fly just drop from out of the sky. Sure, if it hits a bug zapper, it’s taking a dive, but so would you if you decided to walk right into something that delivers a gajillion volts of electricity through your entire body. If you’re wont to do that, perhaps they should change the saying to “Dropping Like Phyllis (or whatever your name may be)”.

Cock and Bull Story: Think back to the last ten or twenty tall tales or outright lies you’ve heard someone tell and ask yourself one simple question: Did a single one of them involve either a rooster or a male cow, or both of them for that matter? Do either of these animals have a tendency to stretch the truth more than the rest of the animal kingdom? Perhaps that’s why Oprah doesn’t eat beef!

Going to Hell in a Handbasket: I can understand the first part of this idiom – things are going from bad to worse – but the phrase “in a handbasket” has me over a barrel (I couldn’t resist). Is there something less than dignified about being carried somewhere in a handbasket as opposed to a bucket from Home Depot? Are we to assume Little Red Riding Hood was an emissary from the Underworld because of her devilish choice of conveyance for her grandmother’s goodies?

No Room to Swing a Cat: This certainly has to have a similar origin to the whole horses-who-like-the-beatdown thing. Was it during the Industrial Revolution when there was a shortage of tape measures that some carpenter’s aide said, “Wait, I got this one. If I can swing old Fang in a circle without hitting his head on anything, we should have enough space to install an elevator right here.”

I can picture the beleaguered foreign student leaving his English class one evening and deciding to strike up a conversation with the first person he sees on the street: “I learned about a mustard cutter who failed to swing his cat in a small room. He was so upset by this that he went to beat on his horse but found it was already dead and covered by flies.” His conversational companion undoubtedly is going to give him a very strange look, which will elicit something else from the student: “If you think that’s a cocky bull story, you and your handbasket can take a trip to hell.”

As he sits in the local precinct adjacent to a diner to fill out an assault report, he’ll say to the officer, “Do I smell bacon?”

Hillbilly Holiday

Recently, we took our kids on a cruise. We chose to go with the company whose name rhymes with Fisney. The cruise itself met and exceeded all of our expectations – except that the Coke was less than carbonated – and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has a pulse. But as I look back on our cruise experience, I can’t help but think it wasn’t quite what television and movies have portrayed cruises to be – and a lot of that is my own fault.

Hollywood usually shows the happy cruise goers ascending into a spacious jumbo jet with plush seats and leg room to rival the expanse of the Louisiana Purchase where they’re greeted by a stunning, blonde flight attendant and served filet mignon and drinks with little umbrellas in them. Instead, we crammed into a Boeing 737 with all coach seats and a guy who spent the four-hour flight eating an entire block of cheese. The woman sitting across the aisle from my wife, about halfway into the flight, reached under her seat and pulled out a Styrofoam clamshell box full of Chinese food. You do the math: four-hour flight, halfway through the flight, that’s two hours. Sure, there are enough preservatives in that stuff to keep anything “edible” until Haley’s Comet comes back around, but they do nothing for the smell.

When we arrived in Orlando, we caught the shuttle and proceeded to drive halfway back to Phoenix to retrieve our rental car. Such travels make a family hungry. So, after checking into our hotel and dumping our bags in our room, we went off in search of sustenance. One would think that being in a new city, one would seek out a local favorite featuring fare somewhat exclusive to that region and unleash one’s inner gourmand (that’s a fancy word for “chow hound”). No, we chose to unleash our inner Jethro Clampett and eat at the Cracker Barrel just up the street from our hotel. And for a hillbilly nightcap, I took the boys miniature golfing at a place with a marquee that read “Come feed our live baby gators”. I assumed they meant with your unruly children – that’s pretty good advertising.

The other thing movies and television don’t show you is the broad range of people you’ll see and meet on a cruise. And although you want to think you’re one of the beautiful people, you’re just as freaky as the rest. Despite the fact it was a family-oriented cruise, you still encountered the guy wearing a Speedo who really shouldn’t. (In all honesty, no man should wear a Speedo, but you know what I’m talking about. A friend of mine has come to call that a Spee-Don’t.) There was one woman who had enough extra skin on her back that she had cleavage coming and going. Ouch! But my particular favorite was the 60 year-old bald man wearing a t-shirt that read “Buffalo Soldier, Dreadlock Rasta” – did I mention that he was whiter than Michael Jackson? I’m sure there’s a blog out there written by one of our fellow cruisers that talks about a middle-aged man with a less-than-stellar physique who ate his weight in soft-serve chocolate ice cream covered in Hershey’s chocolate syrup – that freak would be me.

Lastly, what Hollywood fails to show you is the true disembarkation process. In the movies and on television, everyone’s dressed to the nines and the Captain and his inner circle are there to speak to every single guest to assure they had the time of their lives, that all unfulfilled dreams have been realized, that they’ve found a cure for cancer, etc. In reality, no one’s around as you waddle off the ship in the only pair of clean clothes you have left (you’re not even worried if they match) hoping that the ten pounds you gained on the eat-24-hours-a-day diet you’ve had over the last seven days aren’t going to cause the button on your shorts to pop off and hit your own child in the back of the head with a force sufficient to cause brain damage, or at the very least knock them out cold. Not that they’d notice anyway because they just loaded up on four chocolate doughnuts and two and a half pounds of bacon for breakfast. They think they’re seeing Mickey & Minnie waving goodbye to them – they’re really just carb-induced hallucinations, the things dreams are made of!

Moving the Merchandise

This past Saturday I opened my garage to pull my car out and run an errand when I saw my neighbors across the street holding a garage sale. No big deal. They do this about once every two or three months – I swear they have a warehouse full of this stuff because it always seems like they have at least one television set, a telephone, some type of hutch, and a table for sale at each one, and they’re not the same ones if you know what I mean. At any rate, in the time it took me to walk around my car and climb into the driver’s seat, I believe I saw between seven and eight vehicles pull up to my neighbors’ home and what seemed like hundreds of people come piling out of them like clowns out of a VW Bug at the circus. Of those seven or eight vehicles, I believe more than half sported bumper stickers for one or more Mexican soccer teams. Obviously, my neighbors had run an ad either on Univision or Telemundo – apparently, it’s not that expensive, and the reach those networks have is pretty vast.

By the time I had returned from my errand, all of the merchandise had moved except for the hutch. Have no fear, within another twenty minutes a woman pulled up in a station wagon and brokered some type of deal with my neighbors to take the hutch off their hands. With this extra money in hand, they could go buy more telephones and tables to be sold at a garage sale at a later date. Ah, the Circle of Life!

This year, we get to have a National Garage Sale – some of you more persnickety people out there choose to call it an Election – and move out some of the stuff that’s cluttering up our home and replace it with some other stuff we’ll invariably tire of in a matter of time. Come on, you see the similarities don’t you? Stiff, boxy accessories that just seem to be taking up space, gathering dust, and costing us far more than we should have paid in the first place – and there are the pieces of home décor, too.

Regardless of political affiliation, your choices in the National Garage Sale are all used products – some have a wobbly leg, others have a slightly scarred face, while others look pretty fresh but are rotting on the inside. In some instances, it’s a state giving up its Governor for a national position or a city surrendering one of their “greats” to run for a county or state seat. Sure, they stand there and tell you how wonderful he or she is as a leader. We never think to ask, “If they’re so nifty, why don’t you want to keep them?” Instead, we eat it up and tuck them under our collective arm and carry them to a new calling, all the while the city or state is standing there thinking, “Sucker!”

Nevertheless, vote with conviction! That’s your right and responsibility as an American citizen, for sure. (And if you’re like me, be sure to write yourself in for at least one position like Justice of the Peace – somewhere, there has to be a record showing that I got a vote.) But if you find yourself standing there at that flimsy plastic table with cardboard walls designed to be a voting booth (nothing says “Big Adult Patriotic Duty” like something that looks like a prop out of a third-grade school play), and you feel like you’re facing a moral dilemma by having to choose between candidates, just remember you can always put him or her up for sale at the next National Garage Sale. It’s one of the great constants in our universe: gravity will always keep us from floating away, water will always be wet, my mother will continue to buy the same style underwear for me at every birthday, and there’ll be another sucker willing to take the politicians off your hands the next time around.