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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
A few years ago, I bought my mother a book. It was called Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten. I never read it myself, but I’m told it’s a folksy, common-sense look at the important lessons we’re taught at an early age, and how we can apply those basic concepts to our daily adult life.
Sounds iffy when you put it that way, no? The only three things I learned in kindergarten were:
“The leg cramps on the way up are nothing, compared to the rope burn on the way down.”
Where would I be if I’d taken those lessons to heart? I’d be a thirty-something single firefighter with an unnatural aversion to tater tots, that’s where. Frustrated? Maybe. Lonely? Probably — though also cootie-free. But happy? I’m not so sure. I’m thinking the lessons learned in kindergarten aren’t so universally applicable, after all. The pop psychology self-help section of the bookstore fails us again. Oh, gasp. Say it isn’t so.
Still, I like the idea that a particular time of life or activity could provide a metaphor for an enduring and effective worldview. I just don’t think ‘kindergarten’ qualifies. But with what shall we replace the book, on mothers’ and guidance counselors’ coffee tables? Here are a few possibilities:
Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned from…
The Smurfs
1. ‘Handy’ is one of the worst nicknames you could possibly be stuck with.
2. People who own cats are evil.
3. If there’s one hot blonde chick and a whole bunch of guys around, she’s not doing any of them.*
(*aka ‘The Cheerleader Theorem’)
Watching Scrambled Playboy Cable Channels on the Television in My Parents’ Bedroom
1. You can get away with a lot more, if you learn what ‘Mute’ means.
2. Pizza guys get way more action than I would have expected.
3. A squiggly, discolored nipple is often better than no nipple at all.
The Summer Before Sophomore Year in College
1. Poetry can get you laid, but only if it’s good.
2. My previous lesson about pizza guys was grossly incorrect.
3. Nobody wants to hear my poetry.
Junior High School Gym Class
1. The leg cramps on the way up are nothing, compared to the rope burn on the way down.
2. If you play it right, there’s a certain sad dignity in being picked last.
3. ‘Handy’ is absolutely the worst nickname you could possibly be stuck with.
My First Trip to the DMV
1. Asking, ‘What’s this pedal do?‘ is not an appropriate icebreaker.
2. Everybody in the world has a cooler car than I do.
3. I’m roughly as photogenic as a petrified buffalo turd.
That Time With the Girl in the Back Seat of Her Powder Blue Volkswagen Beetle
1. Girl cooties may not be the dangerous health risk we were once led to believe.
2. If you fumble with the clasp long enough, she’ll eventually take it off herself.
3. The leg cramps on the way up are nothing, compared to the rope burn on the way down.
My Ninth Grade Homeroom Teacher
1. Being sent to detention means you won’t go to college, and nobody will ever love you.
2. It’s entirely possible to drink yourself stupid before eight o’clock in the morning.
3. Spending time with teenagers will rob you of your soul.
That Winger Concert I Got Dragged to in 1989
1. Guys have no business wearing spandex.
2. Drunk big-haired girls will show you their boobs at the drop of a hat.
3. A squiggly, discolored nipple isn’t always better than no nipple at all.
There you go, kids; how’s that for a post? Start with pop psychology, end with Kip Winger’s spandexed asscheeks, and a callback reference to scrambled 80s porn. Where else are you going to get that kind of quality? Who loves ya, baby?
Permalink | 3 CommentsI’m no health nut.
That should be patently obvious from every word I’ve ever typed here, and every picture of me I’ve posted. I’m as likely to drink Marathon gasoline as to run a marathon. I get winded while channel surfing. One of the groups in my food pyramid is ‘nacho cheese’.
Still, I haven’t been married quite long enough yet that I can completely let myself go. When my wife is fifty, maybe, or sixty years old, then it should be safe to assume that she won’t go through the bother of finding someone else. Someone svelter, whose sweat doesn’t smell like bacon drippings. Delicious bacon drippings.
“I’m as likely to drink Marathon gasoline as to run a marathon. I get winded while channel surfing. One of the groups in my food pyramid is ‘nacho cheese’.”
And anyway, I want to live long enough to be ‘that cranky old bastard who lives down the street’ someday, so I make some nominal concessions toward a healthy lifestyle. I eat the occasional salad. I dabble in a couple of sports — fat old man sports like softball, to be sure, but in my current condition running out a weak grounder to third base counts as ‘aerobic exercise’, so it works. But most of all — and easiest of all, I take the stairs at work.
I work on the fourth floor in our building. So that’s three flights of stairs up, once a day, and back down three flights once more. Sometimes twice.
(How do I go ‘up’ only once, and ‘down’ sometimes twice? I walk down the steps for lunch, as an appetite builder. But am I going to risk dropping my tasty truck burrito on the stairs, huffing and puffing my way back up? No way, amigo. Gringo don’t play dat. Me and my burrito ride the elevator.)
Does this tiny nod in the direction of daily exercise make me Jim Fixx? No. It barely makes me Jim Belushi. But it helps keep me marginally healthy, relatively unsedentary, and wearing the same sized pants. What’s not to like?
Here’s the thing: the stairs that I take every day are in a glass-walled corridor. This corridor faces the hallway that houses the elevators. And many days — not every day, but many days — as I’m walking my three flights up to my cubicle coccoon, I see people getting on the elevator. Which is fine. It’s a seven-story building, and you can be damned sure that if I worked even one floor higher, this ‘climb the stairs for exercise’ bullshit would be out the window. EIther that, or they’d find me one day, collapsed and bleeding between the fourth and fifth floors, clutching a Post-It with ‘HELP — OXYGEN!!‘ scrawled on it.
But do these people enter the ‘vator on, say, floor two and then disappear from sight, their destinations lost in a haze of interdepartmental migration? No. More often than not, these people — the sluggish secretaries, lumpy laborers, and ass-dragging administrators — get on at one floor, and get off at the very next. I see their backs as they wait for the elevator, and then watch them shuffle out at the next floor, like corporate drones programmed only to use the shiny metal box to change floors.
In a way, the worst part is that taking the stairs for one flight is usually faster than waiting for the elevators, borne out by my double-sightings of these dilly-dallying doofuses. Yet they insist on making the trip, even when most of them appear to need a good brisk walk — or roll — down a flight of stairs or three. Those same legs get them to the vending machines and coffee pots — what gives?
In the end, of course, it’s no skin off my thighs if these folks want to ride the elevators ten feet at a time. If ever there’s a fire in the building, at least I know I can outrun them. I guess the fitness craze hasn’t swept the whole nation, after all. For every Jim Belushi type like me out there, there are still a couple of Johns around, too. Nice.
Permalink | No CommentsWe’re having the heater in our house replaced this week. I see the logic in doing furnace-related work in the middle of summer — it’s often cheaper if the contractors know you’re not desperately warming your private bits over the stove when you call. But I still appreciate the irony of a couple of guys putting in a new heater on one of the hottest days of the year. It’s supposed to approach one hundred degrees in New England later this week. If we turned the old furnace on, the house would actually get cooler.
The current heater utilizes a technology called ‘passive steam dispersion’. Where ‘technology’ is used in the very loosest sense. We’re talking ‘drunk sorority girl at a kegger’ loose here; maybe even ‘Jenny McCarthy on a casting couch’ loose. And that’s ‘loose’, people.
Because a ‘passive steam’ heating system doesn’t require anything approaching ‘technology’, as far as I can tell. ‘Passive steam’ heating involves heating up air, which then rises. Passively. Hence the name.
“Cro-Magnon man might have had contractors lumber into his cave, many thousands of years ago, and charge him an arm and an axe-blade to install ‘passive steam’ heat.”
So it just requires fire. Fire and long tubes. Cro-Magnon man might have had contractors lumber into his cave, many thousands of years ago, and charge him an arm and an axe-blade to install ‘passive steam’ heat. A bunch of burning sticks and some hollow tree trunks would pretty much cover it. Cro-Magnon man might’ve even taken it on as a DIY project, because Cro-Magnon man didn’t have to worry about fucking up his plaster walls and hardwood floors. Cro-Magnon man got off easy, yo.
I didn’t get the details on what’s going into the basement in a few days, but it’s been spun to me that it’s ‘better’. Which I’ve taken, perhaps overly optimistically, to mean ‘less passive’. Maybe something’s going to push the hot air up the tubes for once, so the upstairs finally gets some heat. Or maybe they’ll train the hamsters keeping the current furnace running to carry hot air up the tubes.
I don’t frankly care, so long as the bedroom’s warm enough to sleep in, and the new furnace looks expensive. I’m gonna have to sell this place someday, and if I’m replacing the damned furnace, I don’t want any fricking questions from prospective buyers about it. They’d better walk in, see the furnace, and gape in wonder at its obvious furnatory power. I want to see flashing lights and little humming dials on the thing. Maybe some steam coming out of the bottom — but not so much that you’d think there’s a leak. Just enough to be all impressive and mysterious and shit. And stick one of those Van De Graaff generators up on top, or something. For the money it’s costing, a couple of extras aren’t gonna kill you.
Actually, it’s not so bad. The company’s giving us a pretty reasonable price, so I don’t want to piss them off. Especially when we’re planning to ask them to schlep out here in the middle of a blizzard in January to install the air conditioner. And who said home improvement couldn’t be entertaining?
Permalink | No CommentsWe have a saying in our office:
‘It’s never the rocket science stuff.‘
Meaning that it’s not the complicated, convoluted, thinky sorts of things that we spend most of our time on, nor are those the sorts of things that cause us the most headaches. We’re a code-writing group for the most part, and we do occasionally run into some sort of mondo scary algorithm or brain-melting logic to code. But those are not our biggest problems.
It’s not like those things are simple, mind you. I, for one, am not the perkiest pair of nipples in the proverbial porno — so these sorts of intellect-requiring projects can cause their share of hair-pulling days and fitful, sleepless nights.
(Well, it’s either the projects, or those lunch-truck burritos I’ve been eating. I’m guessing it’s a little from column A, and a little from column B.)
“I’d be sitting there, doing half the hokey pokey in my driver’s seat, while cars piled up behind me waiting for their turn. Is that any way to start a day of being shackled to your cubicle? I think not.”
But for all of the ‘hard‘ work we struggle through, it pales in comparison to the time spent tracking down the ‘easy‘ stuff. Scanning thousands of lines of code for a rogue comma or semicolon. Troubleshooting a system top to bottom — only to find that someone accidentally kicked the plug on the server. Trying desperately to understand the problem a user is seeing, and later discovering their video card was on the fritz. These are the most common issues — the piddling little details that grind us to a halt every now and then. It’s never the rocket science stuff.
Why do I bring this up? Because for me — not the swingingest single at the orgy, remember — this rule of ‘easy stuff hard’ seems to extend to my commute to the office, as well.
To be fair, there is some ‘hard stuff’ involved with driving to work, as well. Unsynchronized stop lights, speed traps, elderly Sunday-driving obstacles — but I can usually find my way around or through these difficulties. My biggest problem lately has been the card reader at the office garage.
The reader panel is a flat plastic rectangle, about three inches wide by five inches tall. At the upper right corner is a little status light — the sort of thing that lights green and bleeps reassuringly when you’ve been scanned properly, or flashes red and bleats at you like an angry goose when there’s an error. For months — months, I say! — I believed that the ‘status light’ was also the card reader. Most of the card readers I’ve ever seen have a little optical dealie like that to recoqnize the card.
What I could never understand is why scanning the card was so damned difficult. I took great pains to shimmy the car close to the reader, and stretch my card up by the light. But often I’d have to wave it back and forth, turn it around, and waggle it up and down to get the stupid garage to let me in. I’d be sitting there, doing half the hokey pokey in my driver’s seat, while cars piled up behind me waiting for their turn. Is that any way to start a day of being shackled to your cubicle? I think not.
So, on Friday I made the discovery that you must have seen coming by now. The status light is just that — a light. A simple brainless LED, blind to the world and ignorant of any cards or raving idiots waving around in front of it. As it turns out, the whole rest of the panel is the card reader, and — assuming you actually wave your card in front of it — works quite nicely. All those times I sat, waving and swiping and cursing Henry Ford and Karl Benz for popularizing the production of the infernal machines that led to my garage fiasco, I was missing the card reader doohickey entirely. I might as well have waved my card at the garage wall, or in front of the attendant’s face.
(I tried the latter once, actually. The guy let me into the garage, but I’m convinced he snuck over and peed on my wheels while I was at work. When I peel out, it still smells like asparagus.)
Anyway, now I know. So I should be able to get into the garage without any further delay or humiliation. I suppose the moral of the story is this — when you’re not the sharpest shucker in the crab shack, everything is ‘rocket science’. Meh.
Permalink | 1 CommentAnd now, a poetic interlude. This bit o’ verse is entitled, ‘Grandma in a Shitbox Ford‘.
Don’t anyone say I never classed the place up with some culture and shit, yo.
Grandma in a Shitbox Ford
‘Twas a summer morning in my ‘hood,
When I set off for work, as well I should.
With no warning of what lay ahead,
I put pavement twixt my ass and bed.
“Two miles passed by without a hitch;
That’s when I first espied the bitch.”
I ventured forth in my trusty car;
Twelve miles to work — not so very far.
And no clues to what I’d’ve soon endured —
The grandma in the shitbox Ford.
I made my way from the garage,
Without vehicular entourage;
The streets, it seemed, were mine alone;
My deluxe private driving zone.
But soon I’d change my carefree tune,
When stuck behind a senile loon.
She’d sour my mood, rest assured —
That grandma in the shitbox Ford.
I zipped unscathed through traffic lights,
Toward the highway, and full speeding rights.
Past the onramp, and the toll booth tower,
Then through at ninety miles an hour.
Two miles passed by without a hitch;
That’s when I first espied the bitch.
Inching as though the car were moored —
That grandma and her shitbox Ford.
She occupied the far left lane,
Clogging traffic like a hairy drain.
From ninety, I slowed down to ten,
Checked my speed, and braked again.
My consternation wouldn’t soon abate;
She’d neither move her ass, nor accelerate;
She well earned my ‘Masshole’ award;
Wrinkly grandma, rusty Ford.
Eight miles in, my exit loomed.
In the ‘slow car’ lane, the traffic zoomed.
But as I saw the chance to make my swerve,
The old lady slowed for a gentle curve.
My blinker on, I eyed the ramp.
With back asweat, and forehead damp.
But my slot was filled by a rogue Accord,
Thanks to grandma and her shitbox Ford.
I righted my ship with a sudden twist,
Though now I found my exit missed;
And miles before a roundabout,
Where I might sort my destination out.
Still, our biddy blocked my path,
Pissing off and incurring wrath.
For fifteen painful minutes more
I followed grandma in her shitbox Ford.
Finally, I wriggled free,
Outracing a Beemer Series 3;
And made my way to work, irate —
Fuming, and an hour late.
I honked to show my great displeasure;
The crone’s response was a special treasure.
As I passed her by, I was gestured toward;
Flipped off by granny, from her shitbox Ford.
She crept away as I gaped, amazed,
With her dander up, and finger raised.
I don’t know where she found the verve,
But that old bitch sure had some nerve.
I smiled as I made my offramp ‘u-ie’;
Though I wished her car would go kabloo-ie.
I found a nemesis, out of her gourd,
That spritely old hag, and her shitbox Ford.
God bless ya, Granny! Now get off the goddamned road!!
Permalink | 2 Comments
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