“Attention-deficit” is a bit of an understatement. It implies that a person is merely lacking in their attention-span. But what if “lacking in attention-span" doesn’t quite describe you? What if simply being "distracted" just doesn’t cover it? What if basic action of taking another breath is enough to divert your focus? What if you essentially have no attention-span whatsoever? Then you’d be me.
I’m constantly on my own little planet. I like it here. You might imagine it’s all sub-arctic temperatures and barren rock, or maybe ultra-dense atmospheres of noble-gases, but it’s nothing like that. Astronomers have lied to you.
Picture yourself at any given moment. Eating ice-cream; driving a car; fighting off a pack of wolverines. Now, imagine your thoughts while performing that activity. If your thoughts and actions are remotely related, you’re doing it wrong. However, if you find yourself thinking about eating Rocky-Road while battling the wolverines, then Howdy, welcome to my world.
They say a joke is never as funny the second time you hear it, unless you’re me. Because I don’t remember the first time; I wasn’t paying attention. I’m a great audience for listening to your corny old jokes, because each time it’s just like new. Tabula Rosa. I'll laugh and laugh the eleventh time I hear about the twelve-inch pianist just like I did the first.... Man, I’d love to repeat that joke to someone, if only I could remember it.
By and large I’ve learned to roll with punches. After enough years of being spacey, you get used to it. There are times, however, when I’ll get caught off guard, and I end up in some embarrassing spots, saying things that make me cringe a little, that I’d rather not admit. For example:
I once went to pick up my Chevrolet from a mechanic. I’d had some brake troubles, in that when I went to step on the brake, and the car didn’t stop, I knew I was in trouble. They performed their high-priced wizardry, and the car was no longer a hazard to other drivers; merely a hazard to the poor soul driving it.
I’m filling out the pertinent paperwork to pay the mechanic, distracted by the din of my perpetual inner monologue:
Why doesn’t the ink in a ball-point pen seep out all over the place when you aren’t writing with it? ...And what the hell is that ink made of, anyway? It's not just water, it's way too thick for that. They've had ink for centuries; what on earth was India ink made out of? It comes from trees! No, dammit, that’s rubber. Where the hell does it come from and w-
“Don’t you have a sister?” A voice interrupts. The mechanic has been standing in front of me the entire time. I mean, he’s the one who handed me the goddamn pen. But I’m still startled.
“Don’t you have a sister?” He asks.
My face may look calm, but it’s Code Red in the Cerebral Department: Who the hell is this guy? What’d he ask me? What’s going on? Quick! Just say something before you look like an ass!
“No.” And then the message clears the circuits: A sister! He asked about your sister! Shit! But it’s too late. The damage is done; I look like an ass.
“You don’t have a sister? But I went to highschool with a girl who has the same last name as yours….”
“Sorry, buddy. No sister.” That’s it! Keep digging the hole deeper!
“But I’m sure she even lived over there on your street!”
“I’m an only child, man.” ...And I think you just struck a buried gas main!
Both of us know I’m lying at this point. But what the hell do I say?
“Oh, I’m sorry. I misunderstood the question that even a mentally-enfeebled drunk would have been able to answer correctly. My mistake. I do have a sister.” I can’t back-peddle, because I’m not even peddling in the first place: I’m flying down a 45 degree grade on a rusty old 10-speed with bald tires and no brakes. And there’s an intersection ahead.
So, with my face a bright crimson, I adroitly avoid eye-contact as I take my car-keys and scuttle out of the garage.
It’s a lot like the time I went to order a pizza. I pick up the phone, and confidently dial the number from memory, being the pizza-aficionado that I am.
“Howdy, I’d like to place an order for pickup,” my mouth says. My brain however, is looking at the refrigerator.
“What would you like, sir?”
What the hell is that drawing that someone stuck up there? It’s a sort of a drawing of a man- “I’d like a large pepperoni pizza.” –but those are some weird pants. And what’d someone write on there? ‘Why is there a man with a penis on the refrigerator?’ That does look sorta like a dick-
“Anything else with that pizza, sir?”
“No, that’ll be all.” –but what a weird question to ask. Why is there a man with a penis on the
refrigerator? Because eunuchs aren’t allowed on the fridge!
“May I have your phone number, sir?”
Wait, what? “My phone number?”
“Yes, sir.” Shit! What’re you doing? You’re ordering pizza. He needs the phone number! But he’s never needed the number before! Just give him your phone number, idiot!
“Uh, 703-” Stop! That’s your Virginia phone number! You’re in New Jersey!
“I mean. 978-” Attaboy! That’s the number! “-0452.”
Something’s wrong.
There is something wrong with that phone number.
Why is that phone number wrong?
Because that is not your phone number.... That is the phone number you just dialed!
You just gave the pizza place their own phone number! Run!
Thankfully, this isn’t the whole story of my life, and these incidents aren’t every day occurrences. Besides, they end up being funny to tell. And I’ll re-read this a year from now after I’ve forgotten the whole thing, and it'll be brand new and funny again, and I'll laugh, and laugh....
I’m constantly on my own little planet. I like it here. You might imagine it’s all sub-arctic temperatures and barren rock, or maybe ultra-dense atmospheres of noble-gases, but it’s nothing like that. Astronomers have lied to you.
Picture yourself at any given moment. Eating ice-cream; driving a car; fighting off a pack of wolverines. Now, imagine your thoughts while performing that activity. If your thoughts and actions are remotely related, you’re doing it wrong. However, if you find yourself thinking about eating Rocky-Road while battling the wolverines, then Howdy, welcome to my world.
They say a joke is never as funny the second time you hear it, unless you’re me. Because I don’t remember the first time; I wasn’t paying attention. I’m a great audience for listening to your corny old jokes, because each time it’s just like new. Tabula Rosa. I'll laugh and laugh the eleventh time I hear about the twelve-inch pianist just like I did the first.... Man, I’d love to repeat that joke to someone, if only I could remember it.
By and large I’ve learned to roll with punches. After enough years of being spacey, you get used to it. There are times, however, when I’ll get caught off guard, and I end up in some embarrassing spots, saying things that make me cringe a little, that I’d rather not admit. For example:
I once went to pick up my Chevrolet from a mechanic. I’d had some brake troubles, in that when I went to step on the brake, and the car didn’t stop, I knew I was in trouble. They performed their high-priced wizardry, and the car was no longer a hazard to other drivers; merely a hazard to the poor soul driving it.
I’m filling out the pertinent paperwork to pay the mechanic, distracted by the din of my perpetual inner monologue:
Why doesn’t the ink in a ball-point pen seep out all over the place when you aren’t writing with it? ...And what the hell is that ink made of, anyway? It's not just water, it's way too thick for that. They've had ink for centuries; what on earth was India ink made out of? It comes from trees! No, dammit, that’s rubber. Where the hell does it come from and w-
“Don’t you have a sister?” A voice interrupts. The mechanic has been standing in front of me the entire time. I mean, he’s the one who handed me the goddamn pen. But I’m still startled.
“Don’t you have a sister?” He asks.
My face may look calm, but it’s Code Red in the Cerebral Department: Who the hell is this guy? What’d he ask me? What’s going on? Quick! Just say something before you look like an ass!
“No.” And then the message clears the circuits: A sister! He asked about your sister! Shit! But it’s too late. The damage is done; I look like an ass.
“You don’t have a sister? But I went to highschool with a girl who has the same last name as yours….”
“Sorry, buddy. No sister.” That’s it! Keep digging the hole deeper!
“But I’m sure she even lived over there on your street!”
“I’m an only child, man.” ...And I think you just struck a buried gas main!
Both of us know I’m lying at this point. But what the hell do I say?
“Oh, I’m sorry. I misunderstood the question that even a mentally-enfeebled drunk would have been able to answer correctly. My mistake. I do have a sister.” I can’t back-peddle, because I’m not even peddling in the first place: I’m flying down a 45 degree grade on a rusty old 10-speed with bald tires and no brakes. And there’s an intersection ahead.
So, with my face a bright crimson, I adroitly avoid eye-contact as I take my car-keys and scuttle out of the garage.
It’s a lot like the time I went to order a pizza. I pick up the phone, and confidently dial the number from memory, being the pizza-aficionado that I am.
“Howdy, I’d like to place an order for pickup,” my mouth says. My brain however, is looking at the refrigerator.
“What would you like, sir?”
What the hell is that drawing that someone stuck up there? It’s a sort of a drawing of a man- “I’d like a large pepperoni pizza.” –but those are some weird pants. And what’d someone write on there? ‘Why is there a man with a penis on the refrigerator?’ That does look sorta like a dick-
“Anything else with that pizza, sir?”
“No, that’ll be all.” –but what a weird question to ask. Why is there a man with a penis on the
refrigerator? Because eunuchs aren’t allowed on the fridge!
“May I have your phone number, sir?”
Wait, what? “My phone number?”
“Yes, sir.” Shit! What’re you doing? You’re ordering pizza. He needs the phone number! But he’s never needed the number before! Just give him your phone number, idiot!
“Uh, 703-” Stop! That’s your Virginia phone number! You’re in New Jersey!
“I mean. 978-” Attaboy! That’s the number! “-0452.”
Something’s wrong.
There is something wrong with that phone number.
Why is that phone number wrong?
Because that is not your phone number.... That is the phone number you just dialed!
You just gave the pizza place their own phone number! Run!
Thankfully, this isn’t the whole story of my life, and these incidents aren’t every day occurrences. Besides, they end up being funny to tell. And I’ll re-read this a year from now after I’ve forgotten the whole thing, and it'll be brand new and funny again, and I'll laugh, and laugh....
Nobody can hear their own accent.
I learned this when I first moved out of Virginia at age eighteen. I crash landed in New Jersey where I attempted to set up my new life. I'm looking for an apartment, and the realtor asks: "So, where are you from?" Well, that was an easy guess: I'm apartment hunting and I don't know the area, of course she knows I'm not local.
I'm setting up my new bank accounts and the teller asks: "So, where are you from?" Huh. That was a pretty darn good guess that time... maybe she asks that of all the new customers?
I'm at the grocery store. Buying milk. And eggs. And bread. And the cashier turns to me and asks:
"So, where are you from?"
"God dammit! How do you know I'm not from here?!"
Thus, I learned: I speak in a Southern accent. It doesn't matter that for all intensive purposes I was raised in Washington, DC. I grew up south of the Mason-Dixon line and speak with the intonations that betray it.
Which brings us to Bostonians: Once again, everybody here claims the right to "normal" speech. A guy who's pronunciation sounds like he's impersonating JFK will sit there telling me how thankful he is he never picked up that Boston accent. And if I point out the differences in the way we talk, I brace myself for the declaration: "This is the spot where the Pilgrims landed; we're the original Americans; this is how everyone is supposed to talk!" (Only when spoken aloud it doesn't have even half of those R's.)
And I won't argue the historical details, but somehow I seriously doubt that everyone disembarked the Mayflower broadcasting "Pahk the cah at Havahd Yahd!"
Normally this failure-to-communicate is a pretty trivial problem. But understand that I work for a power company; our plants generate electricity and sell it to the utillity National Grid, who then sends you exorbitant energy bills. It turns out that when dealing with enough juice to electrify Cambodia, it's surprisingly important that everyone understands each other, as I learned the hard way a couple of weeks ago.
It's 2 AM when I get an urgent call to come out to a switch-yard for some unexplained trouble (the trouble is never explained; the dispatchers know how I love surprises). I arrive and find twelve guys from National Grid emergency crews waiting for me in a huge 121,000 volt substation, so I put on my Game Face and try to pretend I know what the hell I’m doing:
“Morning guys, what do we have going on here?”
“Well, we were doing an inspection of our equipment and we got some knocking on 'B' phase of your incoming potheads…”
Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand that. I didn’t either. But I wasn’t about to admit it.
“Really…? Knocking on 'B' phase, you say…?”
“Yeah, knocking right up near that bus insulator.”
I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.
Knocking? Is this some sort of utility slang? Is this some electrical phenomenon that I’ve never heard of? Electricity doesn’t knock! What the hell are these guys talking about? But here I am, the only one from my company, all alone, standing in the midst of a dozen senior linemen, who've all spent more years trouble-shooting than I've spent breathing; I’ll be damned if I’m gonna come out and just broadcast my ignorance. I need some clues!
“So.… This… knocking… about what time did you hear it…? Can you imitate it…? What did it… smell like? ...Was it bigger or smaller than a breadbox?"
For ten minutes, I'm going around the circle of guys, interviewing everyone. For lack of anything else to make me appear competent, I'm about to start doing it all again, when all of the sudden “B phase” erupts into a series one-hundred-thousand volt sparks like it's the goddamn 4th of July! And all the National Grid guys: “There she goes! It’s knocking again!”
I still don't know if I was more angry or terrified: “What the holy jumping Jesus?! That’s not knocking, you idiots!”
Then, while standing there bathed in the searing ultraviolet light of this ongoing electrical Apocalypse, it became clear to me: They were saying "Arcing!"
But they were saying it in goddamn Boston-ese!
“Aaaahhhhking on 'B' phase!”
And the closest English word my silly-southern-brain could make out of that was “knocking!”
So the next time you're using your computer, and the power flickers and dies, erasing hours of work on your Master's thesis that you predictably failed to back-up, and you sit there livid with frustration, cursing the power company and their damn linemen to the depths of Hell: Rest assured, there's an equally frustrated Southerner working out there in the field, cursing right along with you.
I learned this when I first moved out of Virginia at age eighteen. I crash landed in New Jersey where I attempted to set up my new life. I'm looking for an apartment, and the realtor asks: "So, where are you from?" Well, that was an easy guess: I'm apartment hunting and I don't know the area, of course she knows I'm not local.
I'm setting up my new bank accounts and the teller asks: "So, where are you from?" Huh. That was a pretty darn good guess that time... maybe she asks that of all the new customers?
I'm at the grocery store. Buying milk. And eggs. And bread. And the cashier turns to me and asks:
"So, where are you from?"
"God dammit! How do you know I'm not from here?!"
Thus, I learned: I speak in a Southern accent. It doesn't matter that for all intensive purposes I was raised in Washington, DC. I grew up south of the Mason-Dixon line and speak with the intonations that betray it.
Which brings us to Bostonians: Once again, everybody here claims the right to "normal" speech. A guy who's pronunciation sounds like he's impersonating JFK will sit there telling me how thankful he is he never picked up that Boston accent. And if I point out the differences in the way we talk, I brace myself for the declaration: "This is the spot where the Pilgrims landed; we're the original Americans; this is how everyone is supposed to talk!" (Only when spoken aloud it doesn't have even half of those R's.)
And I won't argue the historical details, but somehow I seriously doubt that everyone disembarked the Mayflower broadcasting "Pahk the cah at Havahd Yahd!"
Normally this failure-to-communicate is a pretty trivial problem. But understand that I work for a power company; our plants generate electricity and sell it to the utillity National Grid, who then sends you exorbitant energy bills. It turns out that when dealing with enough juice to electrify Cambodia, it's surprisingly important that everyone understands each other, as I learned the hard way a couple of weeks ago.
It's 2 AM when I get an urgent call to come out to a switch-yard for some unexplained trouble (the trouble is never explained; the dispatchers know how I love surprises). I arrive and find twelve guys from National Grid emergency crews waiting for me in a huge 121,000 volt substation, so I put on my Game Face and try to pretend I know what the hell I’m doing:
“Morning guys, what do we have going on here?”
“Well, we were doing an inspection of our equipment and we got some knocking on 'B' phase of your incoming potheads…”
Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand that. I didn’t either. But I wasn’t about to admit it.
“Really…? Knocking on 'B' phase, you say…?”
“Yeah, knocking right up near that bus insulator.”
I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.
Knocking? Is this some sort of utility slang? Is this some electrical phenomenon that I’ve never heard of? Electricity doesn’t knock! What the hell are these guys talking about? But here I am, the only one from my company, all alone, standing in the midst of a dozen senior linemen, who've all spent more years trouble-shooting than I've spent breathing; I’ll be damned if I’m gonna come out and just broadcast my ignorance. I need some clues!
“So.… This… knocking… about what time did you hear it…? Can you imitate it…? What did it… smell like? ...Was it bigger or smaller than a breadbox?"
For ten minutes, I'm going around the circle of guys, interviewing everyone. For lack of anything else to make me appear competent, I'm about to start doing it all again, when all of the sudden “B phase” erupts into a series one-hundred-thousand volt sparks like it's the goddamn 4th of July! And all the National Grid guys: “There she goes! It’s knocking again!”
I still don't know if I was more angry or terrified: “What the holy jumping Jesus?! That’s not knocking, you idiots!”
Then, while standing there bathed in the searing ultraviolet light of this ongoing electrical Apocalypse, it became clear to me: They were saying "Arcing!"
But they were saying it in goddamn Boston-ese!
“Aaaahhhhking on 'B' phase!”
And the closest English word my silly-southern-brain could make out of that was “knocking!”
So the next time you're using your computer, and the power flickers and dies, erasing hours of work on your Master's thesis that you predictably failed to back-up, and you sit there livid with frustration, cursing the power company and their damn linemen to the depths of Hell: Rest assured, there's an equally frustrated Southerner working out there in the field, cursing right along with you.
Everyone's moving. You, me, everybody... well, maybe not you. I ended up in a loft apartment, which has been a dream of mine ever since I started dreaming of having a loft apartment.
I've moved once a year since I was eighteen, and I think I've reached some sort of integral limit. I'm not sure what will happen to me if I pack-up again any time soon, but I don't think it'll be covered under Mover's Insurance.
My good friend also moved. He bought a house. When he told me he was going to close the deal, I was happy for him and congratulated him profusely until he asked me to lend a hand fixing it up. Then I suggested that he was far too young to own a home, and besides, wasn't it a serious financial burden?
I asked myself: How bad could it be? Just some minor cosmetic repairs.
How bad could it be? He just wants to replace some lights; I've wired skyscrapers.
How bad could it be...? I was never in Vietnam. But had I been, I would've instantly identified what happened next as one of those notorious "Flashbacks."
New Jersey: 2003. Living in a huge Victorian house with about four-thousand room-mates and their assorted boyfriends, girlfriends, and platonic friends. Privacy was at a minimum and in the words of Roosevelt you had to do what you could, with what you had, where you were. Noble aspirations until you realize that everyone was applying that philosophy toward the end goal of getting laid. The bathroom was one of the few places of guaranteed solitude, and someone was sharing that solitude with his girlfriend when they happened to slip and he put his hand through the shower wall.
This was a dire situation. It took us down to one working shower for a population that rivaled some Singapore slums. All we had to do was pull down the broken tiles until we got to solid wall, re-sheetrock, and re-tile. Maybe three hours worth of work, tops.
We start removing tiles, searching for solid wall. That wall might as well have been made of Tater-Tots for all its structural stability. And not premium Tater-Tots: This was an Inner-city-elementary-school-caffeteria Tater-Tot Wall. And like so many of its inedible brethren it ended up in a pile on the floor... and so did the wall other... and the other... When we ran out of walls we removed the ceiling. The framework holding up the walls was also rotting... which meant it had to come out... which meant we had to remove the tub.
It's a massive cast-iron tub. It must weigh 300 pounds. "How do we get this out?"
(It turns out a cast iron tub will shatter when hit with a 20 pound sledge-hammer.)
"Don't do that again; we don't need to sweep up 300 pounds of tub. Isn't there a better way?"
"What about a gasoline-powered demolition saw?"
"Oh, of course. Why woluldn't I have thought of that...?"
You've probably seen city maintenance workers using these saws to chop up sidewalks. I say that because we borrowed it from the city maintenance shed where it had been used primarily to chop up the sidewalks. Showing far more enthusiasm than common-sense, we walked into a bathroom the size of a broom-closet and promptly introduced the 19th century tub to an enginge-driven diamond-coated saw blade spinning at 9,200 RMPs.
Having successfully cut a bathtub in half, I crossed that off my list of Life Goals, and we set about trying to remove the pieces. I squatted down, grabbed some iron, and started lifting, only to find myself suddenly up to my waist in floor. Instead of lifting the bathtub up, I had simply moved my body down... through the floor and into the space above the kitchen.
"After we get the tub out, we're tossing the sink, and the toilet, so we can also get rid of this screwed up floor. Help me out of here."
"Hang on, I'm gonna get the saw...."
Yet, as we balanced across naked wood beams to heave a 5-gallon-per-flush toilet out of a third-story window, I couldn't help but reflect on the growing mountain of debris now lying in the driveway, and note that all this started as a simple quest to replace a couple of tiles...
So, how bad could it be? I knew full well. And my suspicions were well confirmed by the 13th or 14th hour I'd spent in my friend's new house, pulling out and repairing wiring; gamely trying to explain why it wasn't okay to wire a dishwasher with the same type of cord you'd use for an alarm-clock. Yes, I know it's neat that your dimmer-switch dims all those lights, but it also dims your television, stereo and mini-fridge....
"Don't touch that; stand back; trust me, I know what I'm doing." I think I must've broken a record for the number of times someone can say those without a trip to the ER.
Moving? I don't need to move anymore. When other people move, it's almost more than I can handle.
I've moved once a year since I was eighteen, and I think I've reached some sort of integral limit. I'm not sure what will happen to me if I pack-up again any time soon, but I don't think it'll be covered under Mover's Insurance.
My good friend also moved. He bought a house. When he told me he was going to close the deal, I was happy for him and congratulated him profusely until he asked me to lend a hand fixing it up. Then I suggested that he was far too young to own a home, and besides, wasn't it a serious financial burden?
I asked myself: How bad could it be? Just some minor cosmetic repairs.
How bad could it be? He just wants to replace some lights; I've wired skyscrapers.
How bad could it be...? I was never in Vietnam. But had I been, I would've instantly identified what happened next as one of those notorious "Flashbacks."
New Jersey: 2003. Living in a huge Victorian house with about four-thousand room-mates and their assorted boyfriends, girlfriends, and platonic friends. Privacy was at a minimum and in the words of Roosevelt you had to do what you could, with what you had, where you were. Noble aspirations until you realize that everyone was applying that philosophy toward the end goal of getting laid. The bathroom was one of the few places of guaranteed solitude, and someone was sharing that solitude with his girlfriend when they happened to slip and he put his hand through the shower wall.
This was a dire situation. It took us down to one working shower for a population that rivaled some Singapore slums. All we had to do was pull down the broken tiles until we got to solid wall, re-sheetrock, and re-tile. Maybe three hours worth of work, tops.
We start removing tiles, searching for solid wall. That wall might as well have been made of Tater-Tots for all its structural stability. And not premium Tater-Tots: This was an Inner-city-elementary-school-caffeteria Tater-Tot Wall. And like so many of its inedible brethren it ended up in a pile on the floor... and so did the wall other... and the other... When we ran out of walls we removed the ceiling. The framework holding up the walls was also rotting... which meant it had to come out... which meant we had to remove the tub.
It's a massive cast-iron tub. It must weigh 300 pounds. "How do we get this out?"
(It turns out a cast iron tub will shatter when hit with a 20 pound sledge-hammer.)
"Don't do that again; we don't need to sweep up 300 pounds of tub. Isn't there a better way?"
"What about a gasoline-powered demolition saw?"
"Oh, of course. Why woluldn't I have thought of that...?"
You've probably seen city maintenance workers using these saws to chop up sidewalks. I say that because we borrowed it from the city maintenance shed where it had been used primarily to chop up the sidewalks. Showing far more enthusiasm than common-sense, we walked into a bathroom the size of a broom-closet and promptly introduced the 19th century tub to an enginge-driven diamond-coated saw blade spinning at 9,200 RMPs.
Having successfully cut a bathtub in half, I crossed that off my list of Life Goals, and we set about trying to remove the pieces. I squatted down, grabbed some iron, and started lifting, only to find myself suddenly up to my waist in floor. Instead of lifting the bathtub up, I had simply moved my body down... through the floor and into the space above the kitchen.
"After we get the tub out, we're tossing the sink, and the toilet, so we can also get rid of this screwed up floor. Help me out of here."
"Hang on, I'm gonna get the saw...."
Yet, as we balanced across naked wood beams to heave a 5-gallon-per-flush toilet out of a third-story window, I couldn't help but reflect on the growing mountain of debris now lying in the driveway, and note that all this started as a simple quest to replace a couple of tiles...
So, how bad could it be? I knew full well. And my suspicions were well confirmed by the 13th or 14th hour I'd spent in my friend's new house, pulling out and repairing wiring; gamely trying to explain why it wasn't okay to wire a dishwasher with the same type of cord you'd use for an alarm-clock. Yes, I know it's neat that your dimmer-switch dims all those lights, but it also dims your television, stereo and mini-fridge....
"Don't touch that; stand back; trust me, I know what I'm doing." I think I must've broken a record for the number of times someone can say those without a trip to the ER.
Moving? I don't need to move anymore. When other people move, it's almost more than I can handle.
As much as I love having a nice car, I hate having a nice car: Some jackass backed into it. Or at least I think that’s what happened. There’s this really strange series of dents a quarter of the way up the hood. It looks like a body dropped out of the sky and landed on the front of my Honda.
I miss the time when I drove a junker Chevrolet Cavalier, because I didn’t care!
In Massachusetts there are rotaries (see also: “roundabouts” and “traffic circles”) and no one knows how to drive in them. They also don’t know how to drive when they leave them, but that’s not the point. When approaching the rotary, you yield to vehicles already going around it. It’s not a difficult concept. But too often someone fails to yield and comes sailing through the intersection, and it’s the person already in the rotary who has to slam to a stop… except when it was me in my Chevrolet.
Go ahead and fail to yield! The combined value of your headlights is worth more than the Bluebook of my whole Cavalier! I was 1.5 tons of American-made scrap metal with bad brakes. I’d sail around rotaries with my hand on the horn, which only marginally drowned out the sound of my maniacal laughter. Do your worst!
But they got the last laugh. My Chevy broke down with a regularity only matched by Timex and heavy drinkers of Metamucil. Be it the time I got stranded with a broken vacuum line and had to fix it with a drinking straw and a paper-clip while singing the theme-song to “MacGyver,” or the time my cooling fan committed suicide in heavy traffic:
I had the pedal to the floor to keep up with the surrounding motorists in their fancy crash-tested vehicles when I happen to look down at the temperature gauge and see it pegged in the red zone. I wheel over to the side of the highway and pop the hood. The fan’s out! It’s an electric fan, so I rip open the fuse-box, and yank out the blown fuse. There’s only one other fuse I can use to replace it, so I steal that one out of the windshield wipers and pop it in.
I start the car.
The fan starts, too.
I do a happy little jig by the side of I-95 like a jackass.
Problem solved.
…Right up until the new fuse blows and the fan dies again. I'm all out of fuses, but I only have to drive another mile to my exit; as long as I go fast enough to air-cool the engine, I’ll make it. I hop back in traffic, but the needle on the temperature gauge is moving faster than my damn car! I’m wheeling back and forth all over the highway like a giant metal Hacky-Sack, but I only get about 200 feet before I'm back at the boiling point and have to pull over. I was so close to the exit I could practically smell it.
So, I wait.
And wait.
It starts getting dark.
I start lighting flares.
And I wait.
Four hours later. The traffic is almost gone. I turn the key, the car starts, and so does the rain. I hit the wipers. They do an even better imitation of Nothing than the cooling fan. Maybe if I just reach a sleeve out the window, I can wipe the rain away...
Now I have to try and see through the rain and the smears of dirt and grease I made with my sleeve. Thank god I have that one working headlight.
I’ll never admit that things deteriorated to the point where I was driving with my head out the window, with the rain streaming into my face, squinting wildly, trying desperately to tell the difference between mail boxes and pedestrians, unable to even slow down because the car would overheat! ...I'll never admit that.
I managed to make it home without involuntarily committing any felonies, the only unimportant loss being my every shred of personal dignity; I wasn’t using it anyway. Besides, wrapped as I was in my comfy cocoon of delusion, I didn’t think it would ever get worse than that.
...Until that 15 degree winter day when the water-pump ruptured.
Or the time I got the genius idea to repair the dying transmission.
Or when the power-steering pump detonated while going down the interstate....
...While I may hate having a nice car, what, with it's freshly crumpled hood, I also absolutely, positively love having a nice car.
I miss the time when I drove a junker Chevrolet Cavalier, because I didn’t care!
In Massachusetts there are rotaries (see also: “roundabouts” and “traffic circles”) and no one knows how to drive in them. They also don’t know how to drive when they leave them, but that’s not the point. When approaching the rotary, you yield to vehicles already going around it. It’s not a difficult concept. But too often someone fails to yield and comes sailing through the intersection, and it’s the person already in the rotary who has to slam to a stop… except when it was me in my Chevrolet.
Go ahead and fail to yield! The combined value of your headlights is worth more than the Bluebook of my whole Cavalier! I was 1.5 tons of American-made scrap metal with bad brakes. I’d sail around rotaries with my hand on the horn, which only marginally drowned out the sound of my maniacal laughter. Do your worst!
But they got the last laugh. My Chevy broke down with a regularity only matched by Timex and heavy drinkers of Metamucil. Be it the time I got stranded with a broken vacuum line and had to fix it with a drinking straw and a paper-clip while singing the theme-song to “MacGyver,” or the time my cooling fan committed suicide in heavy traffic:
I had the pedal to the floor to keep up with the surrounding motorists in their fancy crash-tested vehicles when I happen to look down at the temperature gauge and see it pegged in the red zone. I wheel over to the side of the highway and pop the hood. The fan’s out! It’s an electric fan, so I rip open the fuse-box, and yank out the blown fuse. There’s only one other fuse I can use to replace it, so I steal that one out of the windshield wipers and pop it in.
I start the car.
The fan starts, too.
I do a happy little jig by the side of I-95 like a jackass.
Problem solved.
…Right up until the new fuse blows and the fan dies again. I'm all out of fuses, but I only have to drive another mile to my exit; as long as I go fast enough to air-cool the engine, I’ll make it. I hop back in traffic, but the needle on the temperature gauge is moving faster than my damn car! I’m wheeling back and forth all over the highway like a giant metal Hacky-Sack, but I only get about 200 feet before I'm back at the boiling point and have to pull over. I was so close to the exit I could practically smell it.
So, I wait.
And wait.
It starts getting dark.
I start lighting flares.
And I wait.
Four hours later. The traffic is almost gone. I turn the key, the car starts, and so does the rain. I hit the wipers. They do an even better imitation of Nothing than the cooling fan. Maybe if I just reach a sleeve out the window, I can wipe the rain away...
Now I have to try and see through the rain and the smears of dirt and grease I made with my sleeve. Thank god I have that one working headlight.
I’ll never admit that things deteriorated to the point where I was driving with my head out the window, with the rain streaming into my face, squinting wildly, trying desperately to tell the difference between mail boxes and pedestrians, unable to even slow down because the car would overheat! ...I'll never admit that.
I managed to make it home without involuntarily committing any felonies, the only unimportant loss being my every shred of personal dignity; I wasn’t using it anyway. Besides, wrapped as I was in my comfy cocoon of delusion, I didn’t think it would ever get worse than that.
...Until that 15 degree winter day when the water-pump ruptured.
Or the time I got the genius idea to repair the dying transmission.
Or when the power-steering pump detonated while going down the interstate....
...While I may hate having a nice car, what, with it's freshly crumpled hood, I also absolutely, positively love having a nice car.
First, you have to understand that I love milk. Skim milk. I imagine being lactose intolerant is like the Seventh or maybe Twenty-Fifth Circle of Hell. The average trip to the grocery store might have me buying three or four gallons of the stuff, which is just what I'd done the other day when I staggered through the front door under the weight of my own personal dairy farm.
Having sensibly loaded myself down with far more than I could carry, I managed a complete isometric workout just trying to heave the bags onto the kitchen counter. Having sensibly heaved more than the counter could hold, I turned my back just in time for a gallon of milk to tip off the edge and drop to the floor. Upon hitting the floor, the jug split along the seam, breaking clean in-half like some giant egg, and as giant eggs are wont to do, promptly flooded my kitchen from end to end.
It’s not that it’s small, my kitchen, it’s just than until that moment I’d never appreciated the total area a gallon of skim milk was capable of coating when you lay it out 1/16th of an inch deep.
Second, you have to understand that I have a cat. Louise. She was a stray for a couple of years before a friend at the SPCA finally caught her and gave her to me. Apparently, in the wild, cats learn to instantly recognize the sound of a gallon of milk hitting a linoleum tile floor, because Louise came rocketing through the advancing tide of lactose like some tiny, contemporary, fur-covered Moses. To discourage begging, it’s rare that I feed my cat any human food, but now, she inexplicably found herself surrounded on all sides by this veritable delicacy! She was so deliriously happy that she initially forgot to actually drink and spent several seconds just spinning in ecstatic little circles out in her oasis of dairy.
By this point I’d retreated to kitchen door, and attempted, quite pointlessly, to implore my cat out of the pool of milk. My cries of “Dammit, no!” were wasted, especially since through force of repetition the cat seemed entirely convinced that was actually her name. Through frenzied waving and a series of Jurassic sound-effects, I managed to scare Dammit-No out of the milk. Having never been in this situation before, I failed to predict that a cat frightened away from a milk-lake will proceed to juggernaut around your apartment at top speed, trailing said milk with it as it goes.
I had to address the larger of the two problems, and the still-expanding flow of Skim commanded my attention. No sooner had I grabbed a mop and bucket to begin cleanup than I saw Louise: She had found her trail of flavored paw prints and was intently following them back to the source. Re-entering the kitchen, the wonders of feline short-term memory allowed her to “discover” this bonanza of milk all over again, whereupon she deftly re-enacted her whole series of earlier acrobatics.
The hell with me, the hell with the mop and bucket, this cat was not to be moved from this skim milk. I had to clean around her as she held a competition with the mop to see who could absorb the most of the spill. It was only as I reached the edges of the kitchen cabinets that the full force of the problem became clear to me: I’d sponge dry a slight depression in the floor near the toe-board, and watch as it mysteriously refilled…. It was under the cabinets! Milk! The substance for which the Expiration Date was invented! It was under the cabinets and I couldn't get it out!
All I could do was stare at my mop-bucket full of tan dairy; at my cat as it attempted to lick the patterns clear off the linoleum, and try to ignore the faint odor of sour-milk that had already started to form in my nostrils.
Having sensibly loaded myself down with far more than I could carry, I managed a complete isometric workout just trying to heave the bags onto the kitchen counter. Having sensibly heaved more than the counter could hold, I turned my back just in time for a gallon of milk to tip off the edge and drop to the floor. Upon hitting the floor, the jug split along the seam, breaking clean in-half like some giant egg, and as giant eggs are wont to do, promptly flooded my kitchen from end to end.
It’s not that it’s small, my kitchen, it’s just than until that moment I’d never appreciated the total area a gallon of skim milk was capable of coating when you lay it out 1/16th of an inch deep.
Second, you have to understand that I have a cat. Louise. She was a stray for a couple of years before a friend at the SPCA finally caught her and gave her to me. Apparently, in the wild, cats learn to instantly recognize the sound of a gallon of milk hitting a linoleum tile floor, because Louise came rocketing through the advancing tide of lactose like some tiny, contemporary, fur-covered Moses. To discourage begging, it’s rare that I feed my cat any human food, but now, she inexplicably found herself surrounded on all sides by this veritable delicacy! She was so deliriously happy that she initially forgot to actually drink and spent several seconds just spinning in ecstatic little circles out in her oasis of dairy.
By this point I’d retreated to kitchen door, and attempted, quite pointlessly, to implore my cat out of the pool of milk. My cries of “Dammit, no!” were wasted, especially since through force of repetition the cat seemed entirely convinced that was actually her name. Through frenzied waving and a series of Jurassic sound-effects, I managed to scare Dammit-No out of the milk. Having never been in this situation before, I failed to predict that a cat frightened away from a milk-lake will proceed to juggernaut around your apartment at top speed, trailing said milk with it as it goes.
I had to address the larger of the two problems, and the still-expanding flow of Skim commanded my attention. No sooner had I grabbed a mop and bucket to begin cleanup than I saw Louise: She had found her trail of flavored paw prints and was intently following them back to the source. Re-entering the kitchen, the wonders of feline short-term memory allowed her to “discover” this bonanza of milk all over again, whereupon she deftly re-enacted her whole series of earlier acrobatics.
The hell with me, the hell with the mop and bucket, this cat was not to be moved from this skim milk. I had to clean around her as she held a competition with the mop to see who could absorb the most of the spill. It was only as I reached the edges of the kitchen cabinets that the full force of the problem became clear to me: I’d sponge dry a slight depression in the floor near the toe-board, and watch as it mysteriously refilled…. It was under the cabinets! Milk! The substance for which the Expiration Date was invented! It was under the cabinets and I couldn't get it out!
All I could do was stare at my mop-bucket full of tan dairy; at my cat as it attempted to lick the patterns clear off the linoleum, and try to ignore the faint odor of sour-milk that had already started to form in my nostrils.
This is all in progress. I practically live in the Stone Age; I don't have access to the internet much. It may take a while.
SEPTEMBER 2010
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
AUGUST 2010
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
JULY 2010
JUNE 2010
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30