more normal than not

This is a picture of my Grandfather’s garage in Montana…way back when.

My father used to like to tell the same simple stories…over and over.

It wasn’t like he was on an endless loop…constantly repeating himself daily.

It’s just that he had a repertoire that he could pull out if the situation called for it.

One of the episodes he mentioned was appreciating a mechanic at the local Chevron station that he knew when we lived in New Jersey for a couple of years.

The mechanic’s motto was, “let’s start with the simple stuff…it’s usually something simple.”

If you get to hear a story a couple of times for a lesson to sink in…it was time listening well spent.

Yesterday it was time to change the oil in the old Toyota truck my daughter is driving now.

I drove it for a while to warm it up, got it up on the ramps, crawled underneath to remove the drain plug…and all this antifreeze was dripping on my head….and the level in the just filled overflow tank was “unfilled” .

WHAT???!!!

This simple oil change was about to get a lot more complicated.

So…I got my light and started checking around the water pump.  It had to be the water pump.  Where else do you lose coolant unless it’s a head gasket or something?  Maybe a freeze plug is rusted out?  Did she do something to it and crack the block?  Maybe it’s the head gasket?  That would be bad…that would be really bad.

So I was ready to drain it all…pull and inspect the radiator…pull and replace the water pump…I’ve got to get this thing ready for school on Monday…but if I work tonight I should get it done…I can get it done.  OK…it’s going to be alright…I can do it.

And then…I heard my father’s voice saying, “I knew a mechanic in New Jersey at the Chevron station…you know what he used to say?  He used to tell me that ‘he’d start with the simple stuff…it’s usually something simple’.  That’s what he used to say, at least.”

Well, I took a breath and started looking around again.  It really wasn’t all that wet around the water pump…nothing leaking around the bottom of the radiator…what’s this coolant around the top of the shroud?  Where is that coolant coming from?  It looks like it’s leaking down from the ….upper radiator hose!

I had a bad seal at the upper hose and it was seeping out every time the car was driven.

That was simple.  That was easy.

It got me thinking about all the people who look for the easy solution first.

They’re the ones who are really good at their trade or life who approach problems with simplicity and clarity.

Because they look for the simple solution first they sometimes make the things they do look easy.  Life is not a hardship for these people.

I wonder how many of them some people discount as just being lucky…”they never came up against anything difficult, never had to deal with anything hard in their work or in their life….let’s see how they handle things when it all really hits the fan”.

I think that what’s going on is they know that it makes things roll better if they just use the restroom…and avoid the fans.

Their lives aren’t complicated (by choice)…but they sure are elegant.

Some people make their lives more exciting by always backing up to every fan they see…maybe just so they can say, “See!!  See!!  I get dealt the nasty hand every single time…I just can’t win!  Born to lose, that’s me for sure.”

I don’t always make good choices.  I tend to get excited and run around willy nilly…sure that the sky must be falling soon…but I sure do appreciate seeing the calm elegance of a well lived life.

It’s something good to shoot for.

….and went sliding into “I don’t care”.

Learning, learning, learning….all the time learning.  I can’t help it….I’m always learning something.  Most of the time, I’m learning the same thing over and over…something about retention.

What was I saying?  Just kidding…I have more focus than that.

I meet people who seem to have it all together sometimes.  They know what they know…and that’s all they am.  That’s an efficient way to handle life, I guess…build up a storehouse of needed information, establish a strong and consistent comfort zone, and then don’t get out of it for the rest of your life…get mired into some strong opinions that you aren’t afraid to share…and just go for it.

Just go for it.

That confident front is something that I can’t rise to meet.

The “zen folk” talk about beginner’s mind…staying open to new things as if it was the first time the subject was presented…eager and willing to learn.

What do they call beginner’s mind if it’s by default?

We are resilient…malleable…able to leap tall buildings….no, that’s someone else…

We can rise to the occasion when presented with “emergencies”.  Any situation outside of our comfort zone has the opportunity to change us.  If we seek discomfort, seek adventure, seek the new …wouldn’t we spend our lives…no, live our lives… deep in the constant of changing …and maybe improving?

The thing about seeking the new all the time is that, at some point at least, the terror of constant change and uncertainty becomes the norm…and I suppose that you’d get used to it.  Being in a state of flux becomes old hat…growing and changing isn’t a scary thing.

Of course, it never stops being confusing for the people around us…”you used to be so nice…what happened to you?”.  I don’t know what to think about that.  It’s great to be a “people pleaser”…but I think it gets hard to please anyone if you dislike yourself.

I used to think that “lay down your life for a friend” meant taking the bullet, absorbing the blow.  Now I think maybe it means giving up your desires to make everyone else’s life better.

The trouble with that is, from my experience, that at some point you’re going to feel like calling in your markers….and when your sacrifice isn’t appreciated like you think it should be, it hurts like crazy.

People with needs can’t slow down long enough to notice who might be trying to fill those needs.  They take care of the people around them, to be sure…but taking care of themselves doesn’t go much farther than voicing a need…and having needs makes it hard to really take care of the people around them, too.  It’s not hard to get used to the “nobility” of always putting yourself before others, either.  We try and fill the roles we choose.

What I mentioned earlier about being set in your ways…I guess that what makes it really hard is to present that “I’ve got it all together” front…but feel the need to change churning under the surface all the time.  That’s a tension filled conundrum …what do you do if the way you think the world sees you doesn’t jibe with how you really see yourself?

Some of us just keep pulling the chrysalis tighter around us, I guess.

Full disclosure:  I worked at Waldenbooks for 5 years back in the day when I had to have someone describe to me what a search engine was.

Maybe that’s not full disclosure …but it’s enough of a reveal for the purposes of this blog ( a man needs some secrets).

We went to IKEA yesterday….and afterwards we went to the mall that’s just up the road from the Ikea in Charlotte.

I thought that I’d check out the bookstore.  They had millions of books at this particular store. I didn’t count them but I trust the sign….it was a big bookstore and I am sure they must have had at least a million books there.

I asked them if they had the latest Timothy Ferriss book , The Four Hour Chef.

I told them that since it had been published by Amazon that a lot of retail bookstores wouldn’t carry it.

The first two guys I asked hadn’t heard of it or either of his other two books.

The lady at the computer looked it up for me and said she could order it for me…and if I had a membership card (giving me access to all of the millions of books they could order for me), I could get it for 10% off.  Getting 10% off would lower the price to $31.50….but the shipping to my house would be free.

I told her that I didn’t do membership cards after selling them for five years at Waldenbooks.

Amazon sells the book for 19.88…with free shipping if my order hits 25.00.

How does a retail bookstore with tired, uninformed staff and a limited supply of books make it in this new, competitive world?

Friends have raised the point that people ( I won’t name anybody…or get too near a mirror when I’m making the accusation) use retail bookstores as places where they can sample before they buy…from a cheaper online competitor.  That’s really pretty crappy…but unfortunately, it’s the new reality.

I don’t know how a bookstore employee could possibly maintain any enthusiasm for the job.  When they graduated with their MFA in Creative Writing, I’m sure they had a grander vision for their lives than working for close to minimum wage stocking the latest teen vampire novel and answering questions about books that aren’t really about cooking that they don’t even carry.

I know I would.

I wasn’t going to buy it from them anyway.  My asking was mostly just a test to see if they carried it…and, like I mentioned before, give myself a chance to actually hold a copy before I ordered it.  So, if they were tired and beaten down by another person stopping them in their tracks to question about something that might be on the other side of the store from where they were taking inventory of their dog care books…I can relate to their pain.

Amazon was a young and still unprofitable company when I worked at Waldenbooks.

I can only imagine what it must be like to work at a retail bookstore now.

Unless you worked at the coffee shop…it would really stink.

( I wasn’t going to mention the name of the bookstore…  it was “cuter” somehow not to, but when I went to look up some information on it one of the first links I came to was this one… I thought the irony of it all was just too much….imagine…the same exact bookstore we were at.)