in the bin

Posted on by February 24, 2014

mp_questlove8_largepicture by Pari Dukovic from Wired magazine 2/17/14

Still—like Fishbone said in a song I just heard on a streaming radio station—problems arise. Sometimes it’s a little too easy to get to a song: think, type, retrieve. What about calling up your friend, making him drive you to the record store, waiting patiently behind the guy who won’t move away from the “B” bin, and then flipping through to see what Beach Boys records (or Beastie Boys or Brothers Johnson or Buckingham Nicks) are left? All of that’s gone now. And, counterintuitively, because it’s gone, it’s harder and harder to truly fall in love with a song or album. What was your cost of entry? How hard did you have to work? Which leaves the ultimate question: How do you build a relationship with music? How do you find your way to those songs that draw you in and—like Eddie Floyd and Mavis Staples said in a song I heard just yesterday on a randomly shuffled playlist—never never let you go?

“What was your cost of entry?” That’s a quote from a quote of an article in the latest issue of Wired magazine by Quest Love of the band the Roots.

How hard on the head of the nail can you hit something?

That’s the thing that I’ve been feeling right along…that somehow everything becomes kind of disposable when it’s so easy to get ahold of.

With the click of a mouse, I can find pretty much any song that I ever want to hear.

I can see pretty much any movie that I want to see.

With the click of a mouse, I can do that.

That’s kind of cool…no, that’s very cool.

I like having access. It’s so much cheaper than driving to every pawn shop that sold used records and looking obsessively through the bins. It’s so much faster.

But I’m alone in my search. I don’t see people I know or rub shoulders with anyone. It’s just me and my headphones and my computer…getting on Grooveshark or Google to look up some band that I was curious about.

It’s too easy.

There was a store in Marietta called Woolco that was kind of a competitor to Kmart. I guess that it was a “super” Woolworths. That was before I knew what Walmart was.

Anyway, they had bins of albums that they’d discount heavily.

I bought a lot of “classic rock” when it was still just music that was outdated. Five year old music isn’t even classic rock yet…it’s just old music from the 60’s and very early 70’s that no one was buying anymore…so it was cheap at Woolco.

I’ve never felt the thrill clicking a mouse that I felt pulling a new/old album out of its cardboard sleeve and putting it on the turntable for the first time.

Never.

Never, never, never.

This article…and the whole article can be found here…is a short one. It’s really an essay, I guess.

Quest Love says it best when, at the end of the essay, he says…

 “We did it one way in the past; now we have to figure out how to do it in the present, which, in so many ways, is the future. I try to navigate the waters by remembering where I’m going. When it comes to players, to programs, to services, think of them as ships bringing you to the music you need, have always needed, will continue to need. They’re not the voyage. They’re the vessel. Learn how to steer in the prevailing winds and soon you’ll be sailing.”

We have a lot of new options in how we get our music. It’s easier to share music than it’s ever been. There are a lot of good things that the new streaming services offer.

Man, it sure was fun looking through all the records at Woolco, though.

This was a great essay….and a really good issue of Wired with a lot of good tips on “modern” ways of finding new music. Check it out.

Taebo

Posted on by February 23, 2014

tae-bo-ultimate-300“WAIT!!! WAIT!!!! I THINK THERE’S ONE I NEEEEEEEEEED!!!”

We were at the flea market, and the young boy making the request for his mother to just slow down a little, take it easy, while he looked through all the display cases of video games for something…anything…that he might be able to GET…wasn’t one of mine.

That was refreshing.

It wasn’t one of my sons asking for a little time while he looked at the video games or tried to find the perfect robot.

His mother was on the phone…and she put the conversation on pause long enough to yell back at him, “TAEBO!! TAEBO!! COME ON!!!! WE’VE GOT TO GO!!”

The kid’s name was “Taebo”.

That was worth the trip to hear that.

“Taebo”.

Maaaaaannnnnnnnnnnn…that’s kind of weird.

Funny.

Of course, we named our little girl “Sparrow”….and from what I’ve seen, that’s kind of unusual. I don’t know too many people named Sparrow.

But “Taebo” is kind of unusual, too. Very memorable….but unusual.

It opens up a whole world of possibilities to realize that you really can name a child just about anything.

“Ronco”.

“Whirlpool”

“Vegomatic”

“Thighmaster”

You could name a child anything you want.

That’s a lot of power in a parents hands and mouth and brain.

Being able to do it doesn’t make it right. It’s not right to saddle a child with an unusual or strange name.

That’s just not right.

Now if it was a business, we’d do our market research and pick a name accordingly.

We’d be careful if the money was on the line and we were trying to be smart about it.

But when they come to you at the hospital and start filling out all the paperwork, it can be kind of overwhelming.

You might blurt out just about anything when the pressure’s on.

When the pressure’s on, and they ask, “Who is this baby going to be? What did you name this new bundle of joy?” well….

You might yell out, “Whirlpool!!” and then reconsider and shout out something a little more traditional, like..”No! Change that! Whirlpool’s crazy!!! TAEBO!!! TAEBO!!!  I PICK TAEBO!!! Do that one!!! TAEBO!!!”

But nobody ever says, “Tell them what they’ve won, Johnny!!” after you pick a name for the new baby.

It’s not a contest, after all.

The flea market is a crazy place.

It’s probably a better cross-section of all the different kinds of people in a community than you’d get a chance to see anywhere else.

The flea market is full of life.

(And I suspect that it’s probably the place to get some really authentic Mexican food if you’re feeling adventurous.  I don’t need to get a map pointed “south” to be in a place where I can experience another culture.)

And the flea market is probably the one place in the world where I might have a chance of hearing a mother yell back to her little boy to just “hurry up!! We’ve got to go!!! Now!!! We’ve got to go now….”

“TAEBO!!! TAEBO!!! WE’VE GOT TO GO!!!”

 

rehoming

Posted on by February 22, 2014

twowolvesfighting6a00c22528bc95f219

People getting rid of dogs are like people getting rid of cars.

You don’t get rid of something unless there’s some kind of issue.

A person can talk up the thing they’re trying to eject from their lives like it was the greatest thing to ever hit the planet, though. They can describe it in glowing terms.

They can entice.

In the case of a car, the description can include words as hopeful as “for parts…or fix up and drive” or “needs TLC”.

Who wouldn’t jump at a description like that? It’s a challenge of some sort.

“Hate to sell, but…” is another one. That ship will never sail again. You wouldn’t even have a chance of buying the beloved whatever if you didn’t catch these fools in a moment of weakness.

You better jump on it while that miracle window is open.

Now, dogs are even more interesting.

You really have to read between the lines with an ad trying to “rehome” a dog.

It may be a pretty blatant red flag…like “doesn’t like children” or “must not be around cats” or “outside dog only….bites”.

Those are things that I watch for…but I don’t have to ponder very hard.

I don’t want a dog that bites.

All dogs bite.

I want a dog.

I just don’t want a dog who bites very often.

It’s the more subtle clues that make me wonder exactly what is going on with the dog and this family that needs to get rid of it.

It’s the clues like “energetic” or “needs fenced yard” or even, and I haven’t seen this one yet but I suspect I will, “eats too much”.

There’s a lot of mixed breed puppies who need to be rehomed, too.

That’s kind of a “crap shoot”.

(Is that how you spell “crap shoot”? It sounds kind of bad….)

The people with these puppies make it sound like they did some paternity testing or something..”mother is a purebred Great Pyrenees…father is a roamer, but is a prizewinning Georgianna Mastiff…or something cool sounding like that…we think.”

I never imagined that it could be narrowed down like that. Except for the “roamer” part. That’s probably pretty accurate.

So…the reason I’m pondering all this is that some folks on my route have two dogs that they may be looking for new homes for.

I know these two dogs. I’ve fed them pounds of dog bones over the years. They’re great dogs. Smart dogs. Good around kids.

One’s a white shepherd and the other is a big chocolate lab.

These are great dogs. I know them. I’ve talked to them a bunch over the years. They’re good buddies.

And I know what the problems with them are.

They are curious and they like to explore the world around them.

That’s a bonus in a person, I would think. It’s a good thing to be curious about your world.

I do think that we’d be arrested eventually if we wound up in someone else’s yard or the homeowners woke up to find us in their kitchens….just because we were curious roamers.

We would be sent to the slammer in a heartbeat.

There has to be a limit on how we express our curiosity.

Dogs get in trouble for checking things out, too.

And there’s the “rub”…could I corral these two dogs without totally breaking their spirits? Would it be like taking on a “too far gone” car project because I was sure that I was more competent than the person who was broken by the derelict dream and who just gave up instead of continuing to try?

Am I the man for the job?

Would it be a situation where I could say, “Yeah…those dogs used to get in so much trouble for roaming around…but they have so much fun at my house that they stick close to home now.”

I don’t really know.

Those two dogs are pretty great, though.

she’s got everything she needs….she’s an artist, she don’t look back

Posted on by February 21, 2014

small-easel-with-a-blank-canvas-1385377654QWM

“She Belongs to Me” Bob Dylan

I look back.

I look back fondly at songs that talk about not looking back.

What’s up with that?

There was a time when I thought that I wanted to be an artist.

Maybe you never really completely stop being something? Maybe what I thought I wanted to do is still inside me somewhere…I don’t really know.

Being a mailman brings home a lot more consistent paycheck than being a full-time artist.

But being an “artist” sounds so much cooler than being a mailman, somehow.

“What do you do?” is a silly question in some ways.  It’s an easy question…the person asking it doesn’t have to have any real insight or sensitivity…doesn’t have to even really care about the answer.

Maybe it just shifts the attention away from what the “asker” does…a preemptive strike before the question can be asked of them?

“What do you do?”

“Well…I’m an artist.”

“No…that’s not what I meant. What I meant was …what do you do? What do you do for a living? How do you make your money?”

The money part legitimizes it somehow.

“I’m an artist.”

That would be simple and direct…satisfying…to be able to say that and just stop describing.

Better…but less realistic…than, “I’m an artist…but I spend most of my time waiting tables.”

Or driving the mail around.

It is cooooool to have a profession that pays the bills. That’s unexpected and appreciated.

Paying the bills is a grown-up thing to do.

Paying the bills…..

I look back.

I’m thinking about hands stained with graphite, looking at an easel filled with the frantic beginnings of what I hope might be something good, trying to figure out where to go with this new piece of “artwork”, trying to work out the problems.

I’m thinking about how satisfying it is to commit something to canvas or paper and not have any idea where I might be going with it.

I’m thinking about my place in the air…standing on the ground.

I’m thinking about how it felt to be surrounded with other people doing the same thing…trying to figure things out.

College is good in a lot of ways.

College can also be bad, I suppose.

If it’s the end of an education…if you get out and decide that you’re done with all that “learnin’ “…well, that would be pretty sad.

If anything convinces you that you’re “done”…I guess that would be a bad thing.

“She never stumbles…she’s got no place to fall.”

Maybe if you never really stand up, your chances of falling disappear?

“Just keep your head down…we’re going to make it through this…”

I wouldn’t trade a willy-nilly creative life for the “security” my family now knows.

“Security” can be kind of willy-nilly, too…but it sure is a lot less stressful than worrying about “the bills” all the time.

I don’t want to jump at something that sounds “cool” when people depend on my consistency.

But gypsy nomad, artist/musician, child of the universe…school bus living, desert sunrise viewing, campfire omelet making, live-r and lover…roamer and shaker, bread baker, “hello” maker, tax evader…no, not that one…small tax payer…smiler….sounds awfully good to me.

It’s pretty subversive to figure out how to be a free spirit on a tight schedule….bottled up but uncontained.

I’m a “secret soarer”….another leaf on the wind.

I’m an artist.

tabula rasa

Posted on by February 20, 2014

tabula_rasa

I am a completely blank slate this morning.

That’s never happened to me before.

Usually, if I drink some coffee after a moment of panic about what I was going to write about, an idea comes trickling in and I’ll fill up the morning with ramblings about the new snow or the Jeep breaking down, or something about family life, or beginning running, or growing older day by day, or trying to figure out how to stay younger day by day, or a trip I took…or want to take, or some remembrance of a loved one gone, or children’s toys or bad experiences at a fast food restaurant, or homesteading, or just about anything that brushes up against me while I wander through this world…still breathing.

But this morning, I’m a blank slate.

The only thing I can think of to write about is not knowing what to write about.

What a cop-out.

The trouble with arriving at that conclusion is that I know that there’s always something to write about.

If I’m breathing, there’s something to write about. Life goes on whether I’m paying close attention or not.

The “car” is always in gear…going forward even when I don’t press on the accelerator…going forward even when I do press on the brake.

Life progresses at its own pace.

Of course there’s always something to write about.

I know that.

There is always life swirling around me when I’m awake enough to pay attention.

And I flatter myself thinking that it’s a “tabula rasa” situation.

My head is full of too much extraneous information to even approach a blank slate option.

My slate is full…it’s just full of goofy stuff that crowds out the useful stuff.

So “beginner mind” is something that eludes me.

So….what to write about?

I’ve had my coffee, the house is still quiet….what to write about?

How about….dogs?

We need a dog.

That’s like needing a new car…or needing another pair of shoes…or a new watch because I’m tired of the old beat up watch I wear and look at everyday.

We don’t need a dog.

I want a dog, though.

Wants and needs? Maybe that’s something to write about? The difference between the two?

Maybe I could figure out something about that situation that I could write about?

Maybe I could write about how inspirational it is to see a video on YouTube of a young family travelling through Central America in a VW bus?

Maybe I could write about how depressing it is to see a young family travelling through Central America in a VW bus…when I can’t figure out how to make it back up to “somewhere interesting” with my own family.

Nah…that’s too pathetic…too whiny.

Maybe I could just run my fingernails across what I imagine to be the “tabula rasa” until someone begs me to stop making that horrible screeching sound?

“Blank slate” is a pipe dream.

The breeze blows across my cheek on a warmer Winter day, and my head is full of the promise to come.

There is always something to write about.

I just need to calm down a little and recognize that fact.

the most popular bobsledder

Posted on by February 19, 2014

lolo_620

 

There’s a link to an article on the Fox Sports website that calls into question the selection process for the Olympic bobsledding team.

And, yes…I couldn’t think of what to write about this morning.

The athlete that they were quoting said that he questioned the selection process…”said the teams for Sochi were chosen based largely on an athlete’s popularity”.

How many household names do I know who ride a bobsled?

Not many.

I don’t know any of these guys. Bobsledding is not an obsession of mine. I don’t follow the sport.

Now, Lolo rides a bobsled…and apparently that’s not very popular.

She must be popular somewhere for people to single her out as an example of the unfairness of the selection process.

She is supposed to be pretty fast. She can quickly push a sled as well as anyone.

People know who she is.

Why shouldn’t she push a sled with the other folks?

From what I’ve noticed, though, there really isn’t a lot in this life that is consistently fair.

There is always going to be some kind of situation or measure that doesn’t really add up.

And how about the wind tunnel that the speed skater’s suits included this year?

That slowed them down enough that they couldn’t medal.

I’m checking all my clothing for hidden stumbling blocks as soon as I can.

I’d hate to be held back because my clothing was a drag.

But back to this Lolo thing.

It would be kind of a drag, of a different sort, to work hard for a long time at being an Olympian riding a big, fast sled…and then have someone crash the party who just started riding a big, fast sled.

Nobody likes a dilettante.

Lolo is a dilettante.

But she has a great and unusual name…and that carries more weight than you’d imagine.

She could be a garbage collector or an ice cream truck driver and still attract attention with that name.

It’s a great name….very unusual.

You know…if they had a guy in a big Mickey Mouse suit riding in one of those sleds, I’d watch it.

I’d watch that….and you know they wouldn’t win. Ever.

Imagine the drag a set of big Mickey Mouse ears would create?

I wouldn’t care if they won or not. I’d watch it.

And I wouldn’t have to know the name of the guy (or girl…it could be a girl Mickey) in the suit. They could be an anonymous Mickey.

mickey bobsled

To me, that would be the most popular bobsledding team.

It’s funny when someone draws attention to how little attention they get by complaining about how someone even slightly less anonymous is drawing more attention than they are.

Man, that can make you feel like small potatoes if you don’t watch out.

It’s unfair to be skipped over if you’re qualified.

But other than the dilettante…who are these bobsledders, anyway?

I shouldn’t talk, though.  Did you see how that dude smashed the bathroom door?

They’re pretty big dudes.

I shouldn’t talk about them.

Emmet

Posted on by February 18, 2014

emmett

I was off work yesterday because it was President’s Day.

So, after I took Nate to preschool, I ran some errands.

When I picked him up, it was close to lunch time…so we went to McDonalds.

I’m not a fan of McDonald’s, but Nate likes the Happy Meals…so we went to McDonalds.

The kids ( the older kids…Sparrow stayed with us) went to see the Lego movie this weekend…and Nate had been to McDonalds the week before and had gotten the Happy Meal with the Lego Batman 3-D cup in it, so he was pretty jacked about getting another cool cup for the collection he’d just started.

” We have Wyldstyle and UniKitty.”

Nate wanted MetalBeard.

“I DON’T WANT WYLDSTYLE!!!! I DON’T WANT UNIKITTY!!!”

(Those two are “girl cups”.)

“Well….we need to go then. They don’t have MetalBeard. They’re out of that one.”

“I DON’T WANT TO GO!! I WANT METALBEARD!!”

Geeeershhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

So I did the only thing I could do. I went to another McDonalds.

“We have Unikitty and WyldStyle….let’s see….we have a Batman….and we have Emmett. We have a Batman….an Emmett…”

The guy behind the counter was looking through all the cups for us.

” How about MetalBeard?” Nate asked.

“They don’t have that one. The man said that they have Emmet. How about Emmet?”

“Who’s Emmet?”

“Emmet is the one with the hard hat” I told him.

So of course he needed to run over to the sign and look, with a bunch of people waiting behind us in the line.

After studying the picture for a while, he said, “YEAH!!! EMMET’S GOOD!!!”

Emmet was acceptable.

Whew.

So we got the Happy Meal and sat down and Nate started to eat.

( Interesting…to me at least…aside. Did you know that a Big Mac, that seems to have either gotten a lot smaller or my hands have gotten a lot bigger over the years, is three dollars and seventy nine cents now? Holy Smokes…what a ripoff.)

“Where’s my milk?” he asked….after we’d sat down and he’d started to eat.

“They forgot to give it to you. Stay right there…don’t move…I’ll be right back.”

“Do you have some milk? You didn’t put it in the Happy Meal.”

“White or Chocolate?”

“White” I answered, and when they gave it to me, I brought it back to Nate and all was right in the world….after I scraped the onions that weren’t supposed to be on his burger off, and after I’d frantically wiped enough of the mustard that wasn’t supposed to be on there off with my napkin that it was hard to see the yellow anymore. I should have just ordered another hamburger for him….but I wasn’t comfortable leaving him alone.

It takes Nate longer to eat his really little hamburger than it takes me to eat my really little BigMac, so I started to clean up before he was done.

I picked up all the trash on the table and left what he was still working at eating with him…and threw away what I could before we left.

He ate for a while…and then he said, “Where’s the lid for my milk?”

“I threw it away. Did you need it?! Why would you need it? Just drink your milk and we’ll go.”

“I NEEEEEEED MYYYY LIDDDD!!!! I NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED IT! GET IT!! GET IT!!!”

Total instantaneous freakout.

What the heck?

“Just drink your milk and we’ll go…you just have a little left…just drink that and we’ll go home and see Mommy.”

” I DON’T WANT MY MILK!! I DON’T WANT IT!!! I NEED MY LID!!! MY LID!!! I DON’T WANT MY MILK!!!”

I tried being reasonable. It wasn’t working.

So… I’m not going to dig in the trash for the stupid lid….that’s gross, and I’m not going to put a dirty lid on his milk…and when I haul him out of there, it’s escalated to the point where it’s getting pretty uncomfortable.

I just want to get out of that McDonalds that I didn’t want to go to in the first place.

I didn’t want to go to ONE McDonalds. I sure didn’t want to go to TWO McDonalds.

On our way out, Nate crying in my arms, me holding the Happy Meal box and the cup in the hand not holding onto a crying boy, on our way through the door of the Walmart McDonalds…. Nate says, “I NEED MY MILK!! I NEED IT.”

So we go back through the McDonalds…through the throngs of curious people who were probably wondering why a Daddy would let a 4-year-old “be the boss of him”…. and get the milk that I left on the table when we did my walk of shame…and he finishes it out by the Redbox kiosk….and then he throws the empty container away…without the lid.

Thank goodness that Emmet was acceptable or we might have really had some problems at the McDonalds.

I’m afraid I’ll have a bad dream

Posted on by February 17, 2014

elmo bad dream

Nate had a bad dream this morning.

I get up early….and it’s usually pretty quiet at the house when I’m the only one up.

Nate got up early this morning.

I was in the bathroom…and when he came out of his room, he came in with me and sat down next to the potty on the stool he uses to reach the sink when he brushes his teeth.

“I had a bad dream. There were all these kids acting weird.”

He was pretty scared and didn’t want to go back to sleep, so we talked about dreams for a little while and then went out and started a Lego movie on Netflix.

When I asked him if he wanted to go back to sleep, before we’d started the movie….but after I realized that Nate was up early with me for the morning…he told me that he didn’t want to sleep…that he was “afraid he’d have a bad dream”.

( He just came into the room I’m writing this in, pulled his shirt off, and said that it didn’t go with his pajama bottoms….”I DON’T LIKE THIS SHIRT!!!”…. “I don’t want to wear this shirt…” me: “Well, why don’t you just wear it for a while until we can find some other clothes for you to put on?  It’s kind of chilly and I don’t know where your other clothes are.  Why don’t you wear that for a while?” Nate, bare-chested at this point: “I DON’T WANT  TO WEAR THAT SHIRT!!! I DON’T LIKE THAT SHIRT!! I DON’T WANT TO WEAR THAT SHIRT!!!”)

It is never as quiet in the morning when Nate is up with me.

We got home from Asheville about 7:30 last night, but it was dark by then and because Nate had fallen asleep in the car, we just changed him into some pajama bottoms while he was sleeping,  and left his “go outside” shirt on.

So, of course, the shirt wouldn’t be the right one for sleeping in…or for waking up in, either.

So that’s what was going on with the shirt.

Nate and I are both up now.

I was thinking about what he said about not wanting to go back to sleep because he was afraid he’d have a bad dream.

I was thinking about that…and wondering if I could twist it a little…just a little “twerk”…and turn it into a blog topic.

But what would you say if you were going to write about a 4-year-old getting up early after a scary dream? How could you write about that?

I was thinking about not wanting to sleep because the possibility of having a bad dream existed.

Then I started thinking about starting anything… and what a shame it would be if I…and I’m talking about me again…didn’t start something because I was nervous about getting the “dream” right.

What if I didn’t start trying to create a good reality for myself and my family because I was worried that I couldn’t get the vision for my life quite “right” in my head first.

What if I spent so much time trying to “twerk” the vision that I never felt confident enough to implement “phase 2” of my endless planning?

What if I never kicked it over into “action land” because I was afraid I’d make a “bad dream”?

I had a friend whose father told him, “Do something…even if it’s wrong.”

Maybe that’s the secret. Don’t get so caught up in the dream that it only comes around when you’re sleeping? Or maybe…don’t sleep all the time because you’re trying to figure the dream out?

I don’t understand dreams all that often.

Maybe we should just turn on another Lego movie and forget the dream completely for a while?

Maybe having your own “bad” dream is better than trying to live someone else’s dream?

 

Walmart Wolverine

Posted on by February 16, 2014

animalangry

There’s some new kind of coffee beans in the container this morning…black and greasy…..shiny with coffee oil.

This should be one heck of a cup of coffee coming soon.

We went to Walmart last night.

That was our big “cabin fever” tonic…to get out of the house after a week of snow and go somewhere…we needed to get out and just go.

We had to go.

So we went to the Goodwill and then went to the Walmart .

That’s what they call “thinking out of the box”.

We are nothing if not creatures of habit.

When we were finishing up at Walmart, but before we’d actually had a chance to start ringing up our small pile of merchandise, Jenny asked the checkout girl for a price check on a usb charger that my son had found in the marked-down section.

She didn’t realize that the checkout lady was already in the process of doing a price check for the people ahead of us.

Apparently, those people had picked up the one box of chocolates in the discounted Valentines Day candies that had an illegible bar code, so the lady running the register had her co-worker waddle slowly back to the section to get a price on the already cheap….but soon to be cheaper….candy.

You would have thought Jenny had said something like, “OK…hold still…I’M GONNA CUT YOU NOW!!!” when she asked her if she could scan that usb thing.

This woman started huffing and puffing, subtly rolling her eyes….grabbed it, scanned it, threw it back at Jenny….”12.95!!!!! 12.95!!!”.

It kind of gave us something to talk about later.  It wasn’t very nice.

But, you know, thinking about it this morning…it wasn’t very “anything”.

That the people working the front end at Walmart are civil at all is a miracle.

They’re like caged wolverines….taking our money through the bars of their prisons, snarling “DEBIT OR CREDIT?!!! DEBIT OR CREDIT?!!!” as we try to expedite our evacuation.

Their managers even tell them when they can step away for a moment.

They are tied to that little area, working on a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome, punching numbers and running barcodes across the scanning platter, having someone else occasionally waddle out into the giant store for a price check….and trying to give correct change every single transaction.

And at the end of the encounter, they are probably required to say, “HAVE A NICE DAY!!!! HAVE A NICE DAY!!!”

It’s not a résumé builder to work at Walmart.

You don’t get to join the “1 percenters” very often if you run a register at Walmart.

And it doesn’t get me any closer to nirvana to have a cashier monotone an insincere wish for me to have a “nice day” before I can leave.

It is a victory to find some quick common ground with these cashiers…to connect momentarily and let them know that I know that behind all the “wolverine”, there’s a human being ringing up my doodads.

I like connecting. I like letting them know that I see them.

(They’re probably thinking, “I WISH THAT WEIRDO WOULD STOP LOOKING AT ME!!! STOP LOOKING AT ME. MANNNNN, IF YOU DON’T STOP LOOKING AT ME…..”)

I don’t know that I should expect much from a Walmart cashier, though.

They are all just a bunch of caged beasts…more minimum wage slaves.

But….HAVE A NICE DAY!!!

the shape I’m….

Posted on by February 15, 2014

arnold old Something’s been happening a lot more frequently these days.

I don’t mean that I can’t avoid this weird new trend.

I just mean that it’s happening enough that I’m starting to notice it.

Some of my peers….and most of the people a little older than me….are starting to talk “old”.

There’s not a symptomatic way of talking that defines “old”…there’s not a new lilt in the voice, a cragginess that wasn’t there before….it’s just that the subject comes up more now than it did when I was in my 20’s.

When I was in my twenties, “old” was a curiosity. Now it’s trying to become an intimate friend.

I can see that if I don’t do something quick about this growing up thing that “old” is going to be a real monkey on my back if I don’t watch out.

So when these people around me start to moan and groan about the “age thing”, it’s kind of like being around people sneezing in public who won’t cover their mouths.

“Geeeeeesh…..don’t say that!! Gaaaaaaaaahhhhhh…don’t talk like that with all that ‘old’ talk!!! Arghhhhhhhh…you’re infecting me!!!”

I think they send out the AARP cards and membership because they want to kill us all off.

They give us a taste of a discount…the discount is attached to a reminder of our getting older….we get to be in a club that’s huge but exclusive…we get to be in a club that is only for older people….and….

BAM! In our heads, we are now officially old or approaching it fast.

Then we start feeling it….we start feeling “our age”…and soon we’re sitting around all the time and creaking and getting stiff and wearing out from disuse.

And then we start seeking out ways to keep the thought of being old fresh in our minds.

We get all the senior discounts that we’re entitled to.  We work the system.

We’ll leave Neverland forever for a cheap cup of coffee at McDonalds.

So I think that it’s a weird plot.  Euthanasia is still illegal…so why not hit it from a more subtle angle? Why not just make everybody who is susceptible feel old so that they kick off sooner?

Freaking AARP.

It’s like this whole thing is some kind of club that I didn’t even know I’d asked to join…but all of a sudden…or so it seems..”all of a sudden”, I’m a member of.

I’m a member of a club that loves company.

Why do all these people want to remind me of the inescapable fact (look at Conan! He’s getting older, too!) that as you add years, at some point you’re getting older?

It’s no big deal, really.

No…actually, it’s a huge deal.

Sometimes, I just feeling like saying, “Hey, you….yeah, you….wrinkly man…yeah. You. Do me a favor, won’t you? Why don’t you just keep your old to yourself for a while? Do you think you can do that?!”

Everything’s about the attitude.

I don’t want to be an embarrassment with my inappropriately youthful demeanor …I don’t want someone to yell out of their mid-life crisis mobile, “Hey, You!!! Why don’t you grow up already!!! Young punk!!”….I don’t want that to happen…but I don’t want to be infected with an Old Head before my time.

I guess that what I’m saying is that I don’t want that.

Ponce de Leon, out.

“I can fly, I can fly, I can fly!!!” Funky Fred and the Neverland Bunch