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.

The Virtue of the Five-Second Rule

Lately, it seems like every time I turn on the television, there’s a news report about the grave concern we should all have about childhood obesity. Of course, accompanying those reports are videos of prepubescent boys and girls walking around in less-than-flattering bathing suits and ill-fitted clothing. (Wow, sounds like some old 8mm home movies I’ve seen of our family reunions!) One could take the view that all children are evil and, like vampires, they can’t see themselves in mirrors so this fashion gaffe is excusable. However, that one doesn’t wash because you see these children out in public when the sun is up (usually sitting in a food court at a mall). At this point, you want to yell back at the television reporter something in this vein: “Put childhood obesity aside for a moment, sister! What about this rash of completely moronic, if not insane, behavior displayed by these parents who allow a pudgy girl to walk out of the house wearing a bikini?”

While I’m still waiting on my online degree from Dr. Phil in psychology (three box tops from Raisin Bran and $5.95 for shipping and handling), I’m afraid I’m not qualified to touch on the reasoning/motivation behind this parental behavior. However, having been a pudgy young man at one point in my life (I’ve come full circle back to being a pudgy adult-like man) I feel I am more than qualified to explore the question of obesity. I blame the Olympics!

Before I explain, a little history lesson is in order: in 1785, Antoine Lavoisier put forth the Law of Conservation of Mass, which states “matter is neither created nor destroyed.” Not to be outdone by some Frenchy, the German physician and physicist and co-founder of thermodynamics, Julius Robert von Meyer (he later dropped the “von” because it made his business cards look too “stuffy”), put his own spin on it in 1842 with “energy can neither be created nor destroyed.” (Scientific genius aside, I’m impressed that both of these gentlemen were able to speak English with such facility and proper grammar.) And then in 1907, Al Einstein (“The Steiner” to his friends – I can’t tell you without blushing what his tenth-grade girlfriend called him) wrapped his arms around the whole thing with “the total amount of mass and energy in the universe is constant.”

With the Olympics upon us, these athletes have been losing weight and trimming down to be at their peak performance levels. Great, but where does all that mass (a kinder word for “fat”) go? Some of you smartypants out there would say it’s converted to energy and burned off. Ha! I didn’t have to go to college and major in something completely unrelated to science or physics to know that’s totally wrong! Look around you: whenever a friend or loved one loses weight, another friend or loved one gains the equal amount – it’s The Law, and you can’t break The Law. These Olympians are shedding the pounds, and that mass is descending on the waistlines and thighs of our children like Paparazi on a C-list celebrity walking out of rehab.

Why have the Olympics? The Cold War wasn’t won because of the West’s dominance in kayaking. The Cuban Missile Crisis wasn’t averted with the shotput. As far as I know, we haven’t found a cure for cancer with beach volleyball. Ironically, we sit around and watch people with freakishly perfect bodies do things that have no practical application. Take the Decathlon, for example: running incredibly fast for certain distances, jumping over obstacles, and throwing odd-shaped objects as far as you can. The only practical application I can find for that would be a life of crime.

If we really wanted to bring the Olympics down to a level of reality, we should have events like “how fast can you put a flyer for the local dentist on 200 windshields without provoking the ire of the car owner” and “escaping the boss’s notice for an entire morning, an entire afternoon, or the whole day” (that one could be broken down into heats, for sure). Other events could be “how much food can be eaten off the floor using the five-second rule” and “talking your way out of a speeding ticket.” Useful stuff, you know.

Oddly enough, the path to becoming a humor columnist never ran parallel to that of a world-class athlete. Hard to believe, I know. With that said, though, many of you may say my lack of understanding the appeal of the Olympics is rooted in my inability to master a pommel horse. That’s fair. But see how long it’ll take a pommel horse to get you to the grocery store to pick up dinner for the family.

Democracy on Aisle Ten (second try)

Not too long ago, I found myself in line at a convenience store getting ready to purchase “breakfast”, which consisted of a 32-ounce Coke and a pack of Ho-Hos. I realize my eating habits mirror those of a thirteen-year-old whose parents have left him home alone for the weekend for the first time, but what I did next would have made my parents proud. As I made the front of the line, I noticed a soldier standing a few paces back preparing to buy his breakfast – I can assure you, it was far more healthful than mine. When the clerk went to ring up my purchase, I motioned to the guy and said, “This and whatever the soldier’s having.” The young man walked up to me with his hand out and said, “Thank you, sir.” I could hardly look him in the eye – seeing a man with Ho-Hos crying is just what the terrorists want – and I said, “Thank you for our freedom!”

What makes us “Americans”? After a lot of soul searching (and a couple more Ho-Hos), I came to the conclusion that what makes the American culture so uniquely “American” has its roots in or association with the South. You go to the Northeast, and they have deep ties to Italian and Irish culture. In the Midwest, you have a lot of Polish and German influence. Latin America weaves itself solidly through the Southwest. And the West (read: California) has its origins from another planet. But the South gave us NASCAR and Elvis, Wal-Mart and Kentucky Fried Chicken – that’s America!

Do you want to know the real reason Abraham Lincoln was so adamant about not allowing the Southern states to secede? He knew that without the South, the country would have no identity – the resulting country would be known as “those ninnies who have no national identity”, or something like that.

In the wake of Sherman’s March to the Sea, the land was scorched and flattened. Popular belief is that Sherman’s plan in doing this was to assure the Confederate Army didn’t have anywhere to fall back and gain shelter and provisions. That was only a by-product of the March to the Sea. The real reason was to pave the way for Ted Turner (a northerner!) to start up CNN and open his cable superstation, TBS, bringing the world an endless supply of re-runs. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Coke’s headquarters are in Atlanta? Don’t be naïve!

Now, admittedly we have a rather kooky outlook on the rest of the world that doesn’t make a lot of sense. For example, we don’t think twice when our fellow citizens from one part of the country add an “r” to all words that end in “a” and drop the “r” at the end of other words and replace it with an “a” (example: Linder instead of Linda, Lobsta instead of Lobster), but when we hear some foreign tongues being spoken we think it all sounds like gibberish or a bunch of people who are really ticked off at each other all the time.

Also, we as Americans are very selective about what we deem as quality and how we talk about it. If something’s from France or Germany, it’s “imported”. That’s code for “classy”, which if my Latin serves me correctly is another word for “ridiculously overpriced”, or something like that. If it’s from somewhere else, we call it “offshore” and deem it as sub-standard. Using that line of reasoning, are we to assume the consumers living in those “offshore” countries are okay with buying crap?

Speaking of France and Germany, we really should be careful how we “value” their imports to us. There’s something off with both of them. Even today, the French just love Jerry Lewis – yes, he’s the same guy who has the telethon over Labor Day weekend who can’t ever seem to get his bow tie on his tuxedo clasped properly around his neck. And the Germans are absolutely ga-ga over David Hassselhoff’s music – he sings?

Another odd thing about our country is that the side that “won” the Civil War is known as the Yankees. In today’s vernacular, that means absolutely nothing because the only Yankees we know are a bunch of overpaid guys in pinstriped tights and black mascara (they say it keeps the sun’s glare down – ha!), and most of them aren’t even from this country and don’t speak English. Pass the fried chicken, the race is about to start!

Democracy on Aisle Ten

Once the Fourth of July has come and gone, will our patriotism have lessened in any way? Will our fervor, passion, and love for democracy and freedom reach a crescendo as the last firework pops in the sky and fades as the black of night descends over us in its place? Heck no! We’re happy to be Americans, warts and all, year round!

I have not travelled abroad extensively – Canada, Mexico, and Hong Kong are the three places I have visited – but I’m willing to bet we have a unique perspective of the world. That’s not to say that it’s better or worse than, say, a Belgian’s view but unique.

For example, when you watch the business portion of the evening news or read that section of the paper, you continually come across reports about “offshore” or “overseas” materials and technologies flooding the US market. You never see the reporter dancing a jig over this news; it’s always with a very stern face akin to that of someone who just wolfed down a box of prunes thinking it was a Whitman’s chocolates sampler. And when they speak of these “offshore” or “overseas” items, they’re always from a third-world country or China. Those terms are code for “inferior”.

By these news media’s standards, basically everything outside of the United States is “offshore” and/or “overseas” even if we’re connected by land. So, does that mean that the rest of the world just settles for crap? Does the guy from a Taiwanese factory that produces “offshore” lighting fixtures just go home and sit in the dark because he’s not going to be caught dead using the flop his company turns out? Does that thought ever cross our minds?

We as Americans are very selective about what we deem as quality and how we talk about it. If something’s from France or Germany, it’s “imported”. That’s code for “classy”, which if my Latin serves me correctly is another word for “ridiculously overpriced”, or something like that. Conversely, if I buy a dress shirt that’s made in Indonesia – I own my share – I’m not wont to tell people it’s made from imported cotton.

Speaking of France and Germany, we really should be careful how we “value” their imports to us. There’s something off with both of them. Even today, the French just love Jerry Lewis – yes, it’s the same guy who has the telethon over Labor Day weekend who can’t ever seem to get his bow tie on his tuxedo clasped properly around his neck. And the Germans are absolutely ga-ga over David Hassselhoff’s music, which is even worse than his acting.

The ironic thing about what makes us different is that most of those things that make the American culture so uniquely “American” have their roots in or association with the South. You go to the Northeast, and they have deep ties to Italian and Irish culture. In the Midwest, you have a lot of Polish and German influence. The Southwest is predominantly Hispanic. And the West (read: California) has its origins from another planet. But the South gave us NASCAR and Elvis, Wal-Mart and deep-fried everything.

Fortunately, David Hasselhoff was born in Baltimore, Maryland, which is north of the Mason-Dixon line, so for all intents and purposes we don’t have to claim him as part of our culture and can let the Germans have him to keep. The Belgian guy would agree.

We Don't Need Nine Lives

Our oldest son had undergone a tonsillectomy recently but had some complications and needed another surgery. This development threw a major monkey wrench into our vacation plans, but what could we do? I didn’t go to medical school, and my humor column credentials don’t necessarily qualify me to override the surgeon’s admonitions, so we ended up staying home. As a consolation prize for our son (and for my wife’s sanity), we bought the “Rock Band” game for Wii.

I would highly recommend everyone who reads this column run right out and purchase this game for their family. I don’t own stock in any of the gaming companies, and I can’t say I particularly fell in love with the game. No. My reasons for this recommendation is it’s a harmless but necessary reality check: after playing it for about two minutes, you’ll quickly realize you were never destined to be a rock star and your parents were right when they told you to go to college or trade school. Suffice it to say, my fantasy of being a drummer was crushed, and I can safely say my wife isn’t the next Nelly Furtado or Gwen Stefani. In other words, all the years of my life leading up to this moment weren’t wasted.

Listening to the radio the other day, the host of the program read a statistic that the average life span for American males is now 78 years. I didn’t think much of it until I realized that I’m going to turn 39 later this year – for all of you who don’t like to do math that requires more than taking your shoes off to count higher than ten, that’s exactly half. Rather than look at this in the classic half-empty/half-full manner, I care to look at it like a roller coaster ride.

As the great chain-driven Roller Coaster of Life chinks its way to the top of the hill, it’s nice to look around and take in the view that only such heights afford. You look around at your fellow passengers: some are peeing their pants with excitement even though nothing’s happened yet (there’s a huge metaphor in that alone, but we don’t have time), some are trying to look indifferent but you know they’d rather be giving a bath to a cat with a multiple-personalities disorder, and some have no reservations at all – they are screaming at the top of their lungs begging any deity or pagan god to deliver them from this evil.

Not me. I’ve enjoyed the ride up so far, but I’m certain my plunge through Middle Age will be an incomparable experience with the upcoming corkscrew of Paying for Braces and the double loop of College Tuition. Next will be the double humps of the Twilight Years that make you feel like you’re going to be thrown out of your seat, which produces that sensation that you’re going to involuntarily lose bladder control at any moment.

Before I know it, I’ll be climbing another hill with my hair a little mussed up, and a small dab of spittle starting to drip from the right side of my mouth. Yeah, who cares? I’m not trying to impress anyone! I crest this hill and proceed downward into a tight spiral of the Home Stretch, teeth (or dentures) rattling and my vision slightly blurred. I’ll take the last corner and know that I’m about to enter the Great Wheelhouse in the Sky. The Grim Reaper will pass his scythe to his left hand and reach out to me with his right slowly shaking his head when I try to get out on the wrong side of the car – one way only. I won’t argue but only ask if my wife has already arrived or if I can wait around for her. The ride wouldn’t be worth it otherwise.

Thanks, Oddballs

Quite honestly, I had some pretty bad teachers during my pre-college (that is to say “free”) educational career. In second grade, I had Mrs. Harold who, I swear, was Mr. Magoo in drag only with bigger, rounder glasses. My fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Payne, would prance around the room like Lawrence Welk on lithium and then scream at the top of his lungs when he wanted our attention. It worked. Sixth grade brought Mrs. Fontaine who always wore these gigantic fake fingernails that she inadvertently flicked into Sam Haymon’s hot lunch one day. He almost ate the thing, and I don’t believe he would have noticed if Christy Schlotski hadn’t flipped out and run from the room as if a giant booger had landed on one of her puffy sweaters – Sam’s love for all things gastronomical was surpassed only by his unrequited love for Christy.

Fast forward to high school: I’m fairly certain that my Geometry teacher drank . . . a great deal. Based on having to deal with just a handful of the kids in my class alone, I can’t say I blame her, but that’s another discussion for another day. While she never showed up for school wearing her underwear on the outside of one of her three polyester pant suits (burnt orange, pastel blue, and earth brown), she displayed the classic behaviors of slurred speech (which is probably what kept her from teaching English also), mood swings, and the avoidance of bright lights. My Economics teacher’s idea of giving us proper instruction on the inner workings of the New York Stock Exchange was to show us the movie “Trading Places” from start to finish. Isn’t tenure a wonderful thing!

While we would all prefer to decry the shortcomings of tax-payer-funded institutions – especially when we’re waiting in line for two hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles – we all have to give a nod to the public school system and say, “Well done!” Despite the fact these learning experiences don’t quite live up to sitting at the feet of Socrates and Aristotle, I believe I survived and came out of “the system” prepared to face the world. Why? Because that’s REAL LIFE. These experiences, good or bad, prepare you to deal with all sorts of oddballs that come across or even completely block your path in life – and I’m not just talking about your college professors.

When your refrigerator’s ice maker stops working, or you need to replace the muffler on your 1987 Honda Civic, you go to someone who probably didn’t attend an east-coast prep school or aced the SAT’s math and verbal sections. But you can probably bet good money that they were smart enough to NOT let a public education stop them. Further, you’re not likely to see a group of men and women gathered around a table at a technical school reviewing applications and saying, “Gosh, this kid looks like he could be a promising BMW master mechanic, but either his English teacher was ineffective in teaching him the subtleties of Beowulf or he’s just not smart enough to get it. Either way, I think he’s too big a risk.” Free education has value!

The next time you’re driving down the highway behind someone who’s driving an SUV the size of a third-world country, talking on a cell phone with the attitude that he’s the center of the universe, and traveling at least fifteen miles an hour below the speed limit in the fast lane, the first thought that’s going to come to mind is, “What’s this cat’s deal? He’s driving like he owns the road!” Truth is, he probably has enough money to own it, and he probably paid way too much for his education – you can’t buy IQ!

Dim Your IQ for Takeoff

In our day-to-day lives, I believe it’s safe to say that most of us are reasonable, semi-intelligent human beings. Send us through the metal detector at the airport, however, and I believe we act as though we just underwent a temporary frontal lobotomy. In other words, from the moment we walk into the secured area of an airport until we exit at the baggage claim, we’re complete morons who blissfully go on with life as if everything’s normal. Follow me through this process.

After gathering up all of our clothing following the strip search, here’s one of the first things we hear coming over the intercom: “In the interest of aviation security, please maintain your personal property in your possession.” You find yourself thinking, “That’s good advice. I totally want to maintain aviation security.” Others around you are sporting similar nods of agreement as the disembodied voice of reason drones on and on. In the interest of “aviation security”? How about in the interest of common sense? Is there an assumption here that once we’re outside of the airport, leaving personal articles lying about willy-nilly is perfectly acceptable? So, we clutch our bags a little tighter and go wait in line to spend $78.94 on the latest issues of Time and People magazine, a pack of gum, a roll of Lifesavers, and a bottle of water. That’s smart.

In between the “aviation security” announcement and the constant intercom paging of one Michael Wisterbean to report to gate D1 immediately (for the last thirty minutes – leave the guy already!), you hear this little piece of wisdom: “If anyone unknown has asked you to carry a foreign object, please contact airport security immediately.” First of all, DUH! Secondly, why all the fancy wording? Foreign object? Seriously, do we anticipate someone approaching us and asking us to carry a Frigidaire refrigerator on the flight to Sioux Falls? On second thought, though, stocked properly, that could make for a much better selection for in-flight meals. At any rate, admit it: you’ve found yourself pausing for a brief moment to review the last few hours to MAKE SURE a stranger hasn’t asked you to carry a foreign object on your flight – and Aunt Mildred’s fruitcake doesn’t qualify.

When we finally get on the plane (which is a humongous chunk of metal far heavier than your 6-year-old self who tried and failed to fly by jumping off the roof of your house with an umbrella), we settle into our seats and dutifully listen to the flight attendant’s announcements and admonitions. Most of this stuff is pretty innocuous and seemingly unnecessary (like showing us how to buckle our seatbelts “tight and low across the hips”), but the one thing every flight attendant says that no one ever questions is, “We’re going to dim the cabin lights for takeoff.” The cockpit is sealed off, so it’s not like driving a car at night where internal lights make it hard for the driver to see outside of the car. So why dim the lights? Are the engines’ electrical needs so great that more than five or six passengers simultaneously turning on their overhead reading lights will cause a complete shutdown and make us crash? You don’t read about THAT in the safety brochure.

This “lobotomizing” of the flying general public does help explain why some people try fitting the luggage equivalent of a stuffed alligator in the overhead bin and the reason some airline pilots have been caught flying naked, but this has to stop for the simple reason that the intercom system in all major airports should be used exclusively for the paging of fictitious persons like Amanda Hugandkiss, Al Coholic, and the crowd favorite, Seymour Butz. We must return to simpler times!

Ben The Jokester

One recent morning found my oldest son and me sitting at the breakfast table together and chatting about this and that. Out of the blue, he begins explaining to me the mechanics behind building a dry-ice bomb. I believe he garnered this little nugget of newfound “wisdom” from a kid at school – we seriously need to screen his friends better – and the intimacy of our conversation naturally coaxed it out of him. For an eleven-year-old boy, you can’t find a better bonding moment.

Nevertheless, as he finished his explanation of this phenomenon of fun, I pointed out that he had a couple of holes in his understanding of this matter and filled them in for him. This didn’t produce the “thanks, Dad” I was expecting; instead, he looked at me squarely with an eager look of curiosity and asked, “Dad, have you ever built a dry-ice bomb?” At the very moment the last syllable came out of his mouth, the world stopped spinning on its axis – you might have sensed it, too – and everything froze in mid air. It felt as if I was in the middle of The Matrix, and I wasn’t sure how long this was going to last. (The only other time this happened was when the last syllable came out of MY mouth when I was explaining the facts of life to my son, and what seemed like an eternity was really only a nanosecond.) So I did what any normal approaching-middle-age dad would do: I grabbed a Sharpie, drew an Abe Lincoln beard on my son, got back in my chair, and waited for time to start up again. And when it did, I screwed up my courage, looked my son right in the eye, and got up from the table without answering the question. Never lie to your children, people.

Many of you are probably wondering how old I am and when am I going to grow out of pranks. Granted, the ALLEGED dry-ice incident was over twenty years ago back in college, but the Abe Lincoln beard was recent. (I’ll admit that the beard was a bit immature, but you have to know your audience.) At any rate, I’m not that old, and I don’t believe there is an age limit. I’m willing to bet the whole thing with Benjamin Franklin with the key on the kite string had absolutely nothing to do with electricity experiments – one of his buddies was probably locked in his bedroom on the second floor of a neighboring building because they had been caught mooning the town pastor. Obviously, they didn’t adhere to the maxim of “know your audience”. I digress – but that’s probably why most of you are reading this in the first place.

In that vein, I recently changed jobs, and in the process of moving on, I needed to return some equipment including a cell phone. The company acknowledged receipt of the equipment, and about a week later I was curious if they had disconnected the service for my old cell phone. Alas, they hadn’t, and I still have the password to access the outgoing voicemail greeting. When the great gods of pranks smile upon you and hand you an opportunity like this, you don’t pass it up. As of the writing of this column, if you call my old cell number, this is what you’ll hear:

“Hi, you’ve reached the now-defunct cell phone voicemail of Grant Greene with the XYZ Corporation. While rumors that I am a member of a cult or that I joined a cabaret troop under the name of Lydia Johnson are totally untrue, I am no longer with the XYZ Corporation. If you’re calling about a matter related to the XYZ Corporation, you’re going to want to hang up and . . . actually, you’re going to want to listen to this part first and then hang up and call XXX-XXX-XXXX and ask for customer service. If you’re just now learning that I’m no longer with the XYZ Corporation, rest assured I’m not a member of a cult or traveling with a cabaret troop under the name of Lydia Johnson, but you’ll need to call me at . . .”

Whether I’m an approaching-middle-age dad or a feral teenager, some of you may find no humor at all in the idea of having a little fun with corporate America. As for myself, I have to admit to some degree of satisfaction knowing people are either laughing or scratching their heads when they call my old cell number. However, if campus security from my old college starts calling around about some dry-ice bombs twenty years ago, Grant Greene is dead and Lydia Johnson is in Brazil on an extended engagement with the cast of “Moulin Rouge”.