humor – Page 2 – Deep Dark Thoughts

A Word to the Wise

My youngest child, EM2, recently turned 21 years old. In the U.S. she is now a legal adult in every way that matters. As she herself was quick to remind me, she can now legally drink alcohol. She pointed this fact out to me as she dug through my liquor cabinet, popping open every bottle inside and sampling the contents of each one. She even took the gin and tonic I had been drinking out of my hand to try it.

“That’s awful. It tastes really bitter,” she said. Then she took another sip. “Nope, still awful.” And back in for a third gulp before returning the now half empty glass to me. “I don’t know how you can drink those,” she told me while pouring herself a shot of vodka.

But today’s blog isn’t about my daughter’s new, off-the-rails drinking habits. Rather, I wanted to discuss the phenomenon in our country of picking a random age and then “declaring” that a person is a fully functioning adult. It isn’t even a consistent standard. At 18 years old, we can go fight in a war and vote for president. But we can’t own a handgun or drink until we are 21. (I find that an odd pairing, by the way. I don’t want to get into a gun control conversation, but I do find it interesting that this country says you can start drinking alcohol and buy a gun on the same day. Seems there should be some kind of distancing between those two.)

Since both my kids are now considered adults, in addition to making me feel exceptionally old, it has made me begin to question the way I saw myself when I was that age. I considered myself pretty grown up, but was I really? When I was the same age as EM2, I voted for a president because I saw him playing the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show. I figured what more do I need to know to pick the leader of the free world other than his eighth-grade musical training. I clearly wasn’t alone in that thinking.

I like to think that the younger adults in the world these days are slightly better informed than I was. But I doubt it. On November first, last year, two days before the presidential election, I asked my oldest, EM1 if she knew who she was voting for. She told me, “I’m not sure. Who’s running again?”

Yeah. This world is in good hands.

I also recall I had some very questionable decision-making skills outside of the political arena. I remember throwing a small party in my dorm room at college. The only person at the party of legal drinking age was the guy who brought all the beer. We were all risking getting thrown out of school because of that party, and we were all paying quite a bit of money to be there (or at least our parents were). A college education was expensive, even back when I went in the 1700’s.

On a side note, I made another very bad choice during that party as I recall. I hung my raincoat on a wall hook that was too close to the garbage can. Why is that a bad decision, you ask? Well, I didn’t think it was, until the next morning when I found that my roommate had vomited into the pocket of my raincoat because he couldn’t quite make it to the garbage can in time.

Live and learn, I guess.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that maybe age shouldn’t be the sole determiner of adulthood. As they say, you’re only young once, but you can be immature forever. I am a good example of that. We should probably have some kind of test that decides if a person is ready to become an adult. Ancient cultures required their children to go out and kill a large animal or attempt some potentially lethal act of bravery to prove themselves. Maybe we should still be doing something like that. We don’t have to make our kids go out and hunt a lion or anything, but perhaps we could withhold the title “adult” until they at least figure out how to get a job and pay some of their own expenses. That might be nice.

Are you listening, EM1? EM2?

Or if we have to pick an age to be an adult, why don’t we make it 30? Most of the people reading this blog who are over 30 probably agree with me. Those that are under 30 are most likely trying to figure out my address so they can firebomb my house. Which just proves my point.

Violence only proves how immature you are. So nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.

I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I actually have none of the answers. I can only ask the questions. Are we expecting our children to become adults before they’re ready? Are we expecting behaviors from them simply because of their chronological age rather than their psychological and mental capabilities? Should that be changed, or is it good enough?

Should there be a written test? Or a physical benchmark that determines adulthood? It doesn’t even have to be anything dramatic. It can be something simple, like just moving out of their parents’ house.

Are you listening, EM1? EM2?

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Not So Handy Man

I have lived in my current home for ten years. It is the first place I have ever lived that did not have a backyard the size of a postage stamp. Suddenly owning five acres of land to care for, you can imagine that the learning curve is pretty steep. I have destroyed a lot of stuff while learning how to fix that very same stuff.

Over the years, I think I have gotten better at taking care of problems on my own, but every now and then something stupid comes along that reminds me that I still have a lot to learn.

Last week was an example of that something stupid.

I planted a few new fruit trees on the property over the last few weeks and added some drip lines to make sure everything was getting enough water to survive the hot Sacramento summer. As the weather has recently warmed up and the rains have stopped, I turned on the watering timers, activating the drip lines.

Things began dying. I wasn’t sure exactly why at first, but a quick exploration of the yard showed me that most of my driplines were dry. The timers were turning on, but no water was reaching the plants, including my new fruit trees.

I started hand watering the trees with a bucket and a hose while I tried to figure out what the problem was.

Timers were working. Check.

Valves seemed to be opening. Check.

Water flowing? Nope.

I’d done everything I knew how to do, which admittedly was not much. It was time to hire a professional. I was hesitant to call another plumber after the debacle I had gone through in January of this year. A pipe broke under my driveway and it took several weeks, three plumbers, and $2000 dollars to repair. If you don’t recall that particular episode in my life, you can catch up on it HERE.

I still have a small case of PTSD over the incident. I occasionally wake up my wife in the middle of the night yelling, “It’s still leaking! It won’t stop! Why won’t it stop?”

I briefly wondered if, after fixing the broken pipe under my driveway, had they rebroken it? Or perhaps put something together wrong so the water was flowing somewhere else? Was my neighbor getting free water to fill his pool at my expense?

Regardless of the reason, it was beyond my ability to correct. I finally broke down and called a landscaper that specialized in sprinkler repair. I figured, it he can’t fix the problem, maybe he can tap into my existing pipes and set up a new sprinkler valve and timer. It would probably be expensive, but it was better than losing $300 worth of new fruit trees. Or at least better than an entire summer of lugging buckets of water around the property watering those same damn trees.

The repair guy turned up the next morning. He started with the usual:

“Hi. What seems to be the problem?”

I told him the drip lines don’t work and I think there might be something wrong with the valve. I was pretty sure the valve was fine, but I guess I was still hoping I didn’t need an entirely new drip system.

He checked the valve, looked at me, and said, “Nope. Valve is fine.”

With a sigh, I pointed toward a row of trees beside our driveway and told him, “My trees are dying. There’s no water going over there.” I felt like a child admitting I didn’t know how to tie my own shoes.

“You might have a broken pipe,” he said.

I told him about the broken pipe in January, and that the plumber had promised that everything was now fixed.

The sprinkler guy asked, “When they finished and blew out the pipes, everything was working then?”

When they finished and did the who and the what now?

“They didn’t check,” I admitted.

Sprinkler guy gave me a look that suggested he might now also be thinking I didn’t know how to tie my own shoes.

“So, they didn’t blow out the pipes when they were done?”

“I could answer that question,” I said carefully, “If I knew what you meant by ‘blow out the pipes.’”

Rather than explain what he meant, Sprinkler guy simply unhooked the drip line connector from the main hose bib. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry. Neither do I. I’m just repeating the words he used because it sounds better than saying he unscrewed the blue twisty thing from the pipe with the handle on it.

He next turned on the water from the main valve.

Chunks of mud and a torrent of brown water came pouring out of the hose bib. When the water finally cleared up, he turned it off and reattached the drip line.

“They didn’t blow out the lines,” he said.

“Yes. Yes, I see,” I told him. Then I held out my left foot and said, “Can you tie this one, too?”

He didn’t understand the joke, but that was okay. He seemed very happy when I handed him a check for $100 for the 30 seconds of actual work he had done.

The good news is my trees are getting watered again and they will (probably) survive the summer. I even learned something new from Sprinkler guy. I now know that “blow out the lines” means run water through the pipes to flush out the dirt.

The bad news is I clearly still have a lot to learn about taking care of a large piece of property.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go buy some new shoes that use Velcro straps instead of laces.

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Only in Hillsborough

How do you define essential? Is it the job title you hold, or does it depend on the work you are actually doing?

Clearly, as a semi-retired author, my contribution to society today is somewhat questionable. I write short stories and novels that nobody reads, I blog about all the petty little things that irritate me during the week, and occasionally, I come up with a clever joke about genitalia that I post on social media. Hardly life-saving stuff.

But what about years ago? In the 1990’s, I was a police officer working for the Hillsborough Police Department. Was I essential then? There are those that would argue, no. Hillsborough is a quiet little residential town of about 11,000 people spread out over six square miles. There are no businesses of any kind allowed inside the city limits, which means everyone in Hillsborough is there because they live there. There are no commuters and no outside people coming into the city to shop or browse.

It is the ultimate bedroom community. As such, other than neighborhood squabbles and domestic issues, there is almost no reported crime in the city. So, are police essential workers?

I have heard City Counsel members say that the only crime in the city of Hillsborough is every two weeks when the cops cash their paychecks. I’d say that’s at least one vote that we aren’t essential.

So, what were my job responsibilities? What did I do? Um… I guess that depended on what day you asked me. Sometimes I did traffic enforcement. I did neighborhood patrols and responded to burglar alarms. Those sound necessary, right?

I also dragged garbage cans in from the curb, picked up mail and stray newspapers that accumulated in front of homes when the families were on vacation, reported broken sprinklers and streetlights to city maintenance workers, and even moved cars from the street into driveways at the request of homeowners.

Pretty dangerous stuff. Makes the heart pound a little faster and the adrenaline flow, doesn’t it?

My favorite “essential” duty, while I was working for HPD, was the time a resident flew to Europe for vacation. While he was overseas, he remembered that he had left his pool pump running in the back yard and he called the Hillsborough Police. The dispatcher called me on my radio to advise me of the call for service.

This is back in the 90’s remember, so we did not have computers or cellphones in the cars. All we had was the radio, and these radios were not private channels. They were frequently monitored by other police agencies, ham radio operators, any kid with a police-band receiver, and even some news reporters.

The dispatcher advised me to respond to the homeowner’s residence and turn off the pool pump. She said, “Sam-1 is aware of the call and has approved it,” which means the sergeant working that day knew about the request and had approved police resources to deal with the issue.

Police resources being, of course, me.

Next, the dispatcher told me when I arrived at the house, she had further instructions for me. I got to the house, advised on my arrival, then the dispatcher proceeded for the next five minutes to explain where the pool pump was located, how to find the shut off switch, and the proper way to turn it off so as not to damage it. I had to ask her to repeat several of the directions since it took me three attempts simply to locate the “Off” switch. By the time I figured out how to get everything shut off and put away, I felt like I had successfully defused a bomb.

I turned off the pump and left the house. I thought that was the end of it, but I was wrong. Apparently, a local news columnist by the name of Herb Caen heard about my daring rescue of a pool pump. Either he, or one of his staff, had overheard our radio traffic and he decided that my exploits would make a wonderful addition to his newspaper column.

The headline the following day read: ONLY IN HILLSBOROUGH.

I have very mixed feelings about this event, even today. On one hand, he was making fun of me and my department. It was quite hurtful. Funny, yes, but hurtful. He wrote about how little real work the cops in our town did, and he even suggested that we should turn in our police batons and replace them with sprinkler keys.

Not very nice.

On the other hand, it was the only time that doing my job got my name in the newspaper. I still have the article in my scrapbook.

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A Workout at Home

Many years ago, we bought a recumbent, stationary bicycle so we could exercise without ever having to leave the house. At the time we made the purchase, I had no idea that “stationary” would be the key word in that description. The bicycle has sat untouched in the upstairs loft almost from the day we brought it home.

It isn’t completely useless. It has turned out to be a wonderful place to hang clothing, towels, and coats. The cup holder is also quite functional, and I find myself frequently taking advantage of the little plastic attachment whenever I am upstairs with a drink and suddenly find myself in need of free hands. I do feel that two thousand dollars was a bit of an extreme investment for a cup holder, however.

As the bicycle has gathered dust, waiting patiently for someone to actually use it as something other than a chair from which to watch television, my wife apparently decided to take pity on it and buy it a friend.

She told me, “I want to buy a treadmill for upstairs.”

“We already have a bicycle that nobody uses,” I pointed out.

“No, I don’t like the bike. I want something I can walk on.”

“Go outside. There are all kinds of streets out there you can walk on.”

“What about when it rains?” she asked.

“We have a bike upstairs.”

“I don’t like the bike.”

That circular discussion went on for about three months. I foolishly thought that’s all it was: a discussion. Then one day, my wife announced that she had purchased a treadmill and it would be delivered in the next week.

“It will get here Thursday,” she said. “Will you be home for the delivery?”

I tactfully pointed out that I have no job to go to, no friends, and no reason to ever leave the house.

“So, you’ll be home?” she asked again.

I sighed and assured her that I would be home on Thursday.

My wife told me that she had paid extra money on the delivery so that the treadmill would be placed in our garage rather than simply pushed off the truck in the middle of the street. I, however, was going to have to figure out a way to get it from the garage, into the house, and upstairs.

“The delivery notes say it weighs three hundred pounds. Is that okay?”

“Okay for what?” I asked, honestly not sure what she was asking.

“Can we carry it upstairs together?”

I admit I probably laughed a little too long and a lot too loud. I think I might have hurt her feelings a bit. To make her feel better, I patted her shoulder and said, “There’s no f***ing way you and I are going to be able to carry that upstairs.”

Unfortunately, it was too late to cancel the delivery, and I was stuck with a three-hundred-pound item that was going to be dropped in my garage in a few days.

Thursday arrived, and a large truck pulled into our driveway. A gentleman got out of the truck and told me that he was dropping off our treadmill and asked where he should put it. I pointed toward the garage since my wife had paid extra for the drop off service.

This gentleman was in his 60’s and might have weighed 120 pounds if he was soaking wet. I looked in the truck for the other people that were going to help him carry a 300-pound crate but didn’t find anyone else. It was just him.

He opened the back of the truck and revealed a single box, bigger than the both of us put together. He scratched his head, then asked me, “Do you mind giving me a hand?”

Sure, why not? My wife had paid good money for garage delivery, and she should get garage delivery. She had just failed to realize that she was paying the wrong guy, since I would be the one dragging it into the garage.

With Phase I (delivery) completed, I moved on to Phase II, getting it upstairs. In a flash of brilliance, I opened the box and pulled out all the smaller, loose pieces and carried them upstairs separately to reduce some of the weight. After about a dozen trips up and down the stairs, I had emptied the box of everything except the treadmill track and base assembly. I estimated I had reduced the overall weight to a paltry 280 pounds.

Piece of cake.

The next thing I picked up was a phone, because that treadmill was not going anywhere without some real help. I called a friend of mine and asked him to come over. My friend (I’ll call him Scott, because his name is Scott and I’m too tired to think of a fake name) was foolish enough to pick up the phone and admit he was home.

To make a long story short, the treadmill is now upstairs, and I owe Scott a massive favor in return for his assistance getting it there. If he calls me next week and asks me to spend the night hiding in his garbage can and shooing away raccoons with a stick, then that is what I will be doing. Whatever painful or humiliating task he asks me to do in the future, I will have to agree to it. After he helped me lug 300 pounds of metal up a flight of stairs, I can’t say no to anything he might ask in return.

Until that day comes, I can only sit back and wait until he decides to call in that favor.

It will probably involve lifting or dragging something heavy. It seems only fair. I should probably start exercising and getting in shape for whatever it is, so I’m ready when it’s my turn. Fortunately, I’m in luck.

I have a treadmill upstairs.

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A Trip to the Store

My wife and I recently took a trip to the grocery store. That’s nothing new. We do that every now and again so we can continue to keep the children alive despite the fact they show absolutely no gratitude for our efforts.

We were going to buy some fresh fruits and vegetables in order to have healthy snacks around the house.

Okay, that was a lie. We went for chips, canned goods, cheese, and sodas. We also stopped for burgers on the way home and ate them in the car so we wouldn’t have to share with the kids. Fruits and vegetables? What am I, a goat? That stuff just ends up going bad at the bottom of our crisper drawer and has to be mopped out with a sponge and a handful of paper towels at the end of every month.

Anyway, back to my initial point: we were going to the store.

Our shopping trips lately have fallen into a routine. Or rather, I should say, they’ve fallen into a rut. This week was no different.

My wife and I arrived at the store, looked at all the cars in the parking lot, and said the exact same thing we say every week.

Wife: “Crowded today.”

Me: “Yup. Why do we keep coming on Saturdays?”

Wife: “We could just go home and try again tomorrow.”

Me: (heavy sigh) “No. We’re here. I’m not driving all the way back here tomorrow. We should just get this over with.”

With the mandatory “It’s crowded” speech out of the way, we climbed out of the car.

We were immediately bombarded by the sound of accordion music in the parking lot. This has been a regular occurrence for many weeks now. Accordion players are like cats. They make a lot of noise nobody wants to hear, they’re difficult to shoo away, and if you make the mistake of feeding them once, they will keep coming back.

I looked over my shoulder and saw a woman putting money in the accordion player’s music case.

“Dammit,” I muttered. “Now he’s going to be here again next week.”

My wife said, “Leave him alone. He’s not that bad.”

I warned her, “He’s a stray, and we’re not taking him home with us.”

I selected a cart, and we wandered into the store. The first stop on the weekly journey is always the deli counter. The same woman is usually working the counter, so I always wave politely and say hi. She has worked at this particular store in the deli department for at least the last two years and she still has no idea how to do her job. My wife and I have started taking bets as to how she is going to screw up my order each week. We have a bingo card of things she has done, and we pick a new square before each trip just to keep things interesting.

This week, I asked her for one pound of the smoked ham, cut thin for sandwiches. She nodded, told me “okay,” then pulled out a sleeve of meat from a pile on the refrigerated counter. I watched her as she fired up the slicer and shaved off one pound. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw how thin she was cutting the ham. I usually have to tell her three of four times to make it thinner than the three-inch slabs she normally cuts.

She weighed the ham, bagged it, and handed it to me.

“There you go. One pound, honey ham.”

“I asked for smoked ham,”

She smiled and nodded again. “Right, we ran out, so I gave you honey ham.”

I took my incorrect meat, said thank you, and walked away.

You may be wondering why I didn’t discuss the order change with her, but I have tried fixing her mistakes in the past and the discussion never goes well. She doesn’t seem to understand why people care so much about getting what they ask for.

Besides, I had just won five dollars from my wife. I picked winning square #6 in the “what’s the deli lady going to botch up this week,” lottery. I chose “wrong order.” My wife foolishly went with square #7, “breaks the scales,” even though the deli lady had done that the previous week and rarely repeated the same mistake twice in a row.

I tossed my winning honey ham into the cart, and we continued our stroll through the store. The rest of the trip went smoothly, except for a rather long wait at the cashier line at the end. Hence our initial “why do we keep coming on Saturday,” discussion in the parking lot. We left the store about an hour after we arrived, with $200 less in our bank account.

We ran through the parking lot to the car, trying not to make eye contact with the accordion player. Sometimes they try to follow, and when that happens, the only way to get rid of them is throw out a can of tuna or something; then when they stop to pick it up, you can escape while they’re distracted.

This time, we got away without drawing any unwanted attention.

Next week, who knows? It’s always a crap shoot.

When next we go shopping, we will probably go on a Saturday again. The odds are pretty high. Especially since my wife and I never learn from our mistakes.

Speaking of odds and never learning from mistakes, I wonder what the woman at the deli counter is going to do next week. She hasn’t overcharged me in a while, so I think I’ll bet on square number 3.

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Pursuing that Healthy Lifestyle

I need to start eating healthier. I know, everybody says that. But I really mean it this time.

Yeah, everybody says that, too.

My doctor said most people eat too many processed foods, things packed with preservatives or made with sugar or flour that has been bleached beyond having any nutritional value. He recommended eating more nuts, seeds and raw grains for digestion and health.

I asked if that meant I should be consuming more barley and hops. He shook his finger at me and said, “I see what you’re suggesting there, but no. That is absolutely not what I’m saying.”

It was worth a try.

I know I should also be eating more fruits and vegetables, but it’s difficult to eat those things when I’m already full from pasta and garlic bread. There is only so much room in the human stomach. I have tried to add more french fries and potato chips to my diet to cover the extra vegetables requirement. I think that effort has thus far been a success. And since I recently discovered that tomatoes are fruits, I have started requesting extra sauce on my pizza.

Baby steps. But I think I’m heading in the right direction.

At least my diet is still better than my dad’s ever was. All I saw him eat was red meat and the occasional chicken, then he would wash it all down with a couple pots of coffee. I’m pretty sure the only thing that grew out of the ground that my dad ever put in his mouth was tobacco.

Despite his deplorable eating habits, he lived to be 77 years old. I would consider that a good run if I lasted that long. My kids, however, for some odd reason, seem to want me to stick around a little bit longer (even though most of the time it’s my kids that make me think that an early death wouldn’t be so terrible).

So, what is keeping me from changing my eating habits and consuming more nutritious foods? Mostly, it’s that I don’t want to. I like fast food, and junk food, and processed foods. There is a cardboard box in my refrigerator right now with half a pepperoni pizza in it, and there are a couple bags of chips waiting in the pantry for me to bust open a bottle of salsa and go to town on them.

I know a few of you are thinking, “But Gary, there are healthy alternatives to those things. You don’t have to give up the foods, they just need to be made with better ingredients.” To those people, I say, I’ve tried most of that “alternative” stuff, and frankly, it tastes like crap. If you honestly believe that a mashed cauliflower is a reasonable alternative for potatoes, then you’ve never eaten a proper potato mash with garlic, cream, and three pounds of butter. Try it. Your stomach will thank you for it.

Your heart might slow down a little in your chest, but that’s the price of enjoying really good food.

Recently, EM2 wanted to make me a pizza using almond flour in the crust. After a few weeks of pestering me, I agreed to let her do it. She cares about my health and she wanted to do something nice for me. Because of that I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but the truth is, the pizza was awful. It tasted like I was eating the cardboard box that real pizza gets delivered in.

Her next project is she wants to make me a vegan macaroni and cheese, with wheat pasta and cheese substitute made with raw cashews. I don’t fully understand the witchcraft behind these particular ingredients, and I don’t really want to. I’m pretty sure that using cashews to make cheese is how you summon the devil out of hell and into the real world.

I’m going to start eating better. I promise. I just need to pick a day to start. It can’t be today. Like I said earlier, I have pizza in the fridge and chips in the pantry. I don’t like to waste food, so I need to eat those things before I start the diet. That’s just common sense.

I found a couple pouches of instant stuffing mix and instant mashed potatoes in the pantry, too, so those need to be eaten. That means I can’t start tomorrow, either. Maybe next week?

Although, I just noticed there is also an entire box of brownie mix that should probably be used before it expires. Two boxes of yellow cake mix, as well. I can’t let those go to waste.

April. Definitely April.

I will definitely try again in April.

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