The Answers to Everything

Today I found this list of Golden Age truths from my friend Ray who had his friend Carla to thank for it. I had the urge to respond thus.

1. Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still do not know what time it is.
   This presumes that with or without glasses, I can actually read it.
2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong. I’ll be the first to admit, I was wrong once.
3.  I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger. Except for the day that I spent practicing how to tie my shoes and finally nailed it. Excited, I went outside to tell my mom who was hanging laundry on the line and she said, “That’s nice, now go take your shoes off and go back in your room. It’s nap time.”
4. There is great need for a sarcasm font. That and a b.s. detector.
5. How are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet? Two words: plastic bins. Now I just shove the sheets in and close the lid. Fits in the closet perfectly. Problem solved.
6. Was learning cursive really necessary? It was, because in my school, you weren’t allowed to write in ink unless you had perfected cursive, which begs the question, are pens really necessary?
7. MapQuest or Google Maps really need to start their directions on #5.  I’m pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood. It’s that “pretty sure” part that keeps 1 through 4 cranking.
8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died. Like the guy killed by a bouncy house became airborne in a sudden windstorm or when Nana wrecked her Harley at Sturgis? (Probably a lot like the funeral home that has the slogan, Keeping the Fun in Funerals since 1952)
9. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired. Except when I drove through the hood. (see #16)
10. Bad decisions make good stories. Oh, how we laughed.
11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment when you know that you just aren’t going to do anything productive for the rest of the day. 10 a.m. like clockwork all week.
12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blu-Ray?  I don’t want to have to restart my collection… again. Or can we just start over with three channels that sign off at midnight and no way to record?
13. I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to. But not as terrified as when I “Open Recent Files,” click on my ten-page technical report and  this message appears: File Not Found
14. I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call. Preach.
15. I disagree with Kay Jewelers.  I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Light than Kay. Although, craft beers are all the rage now.
16. I wish Google Maps had an “Avoid Ghetto” routing option. Right next to the “Does Not Suffer Fools Gladly” option.
17. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger. Lest ye become hangry.
18. How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear or understand a word they said? Three. (See Tootsie Pop Licks rule.)
19. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front.  Stay strong, brothers and sisters! AKA Your failure to plan is not our problem.
20. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey – but I’d bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time. Nothing a hand-held rocket launcher cannot solve.
21. The first testicular guard, the “Cup,” was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important. Allowances made for some who are still learning.
22. I was in a Starbucks Coffee recently when my stomach started rumbling and I realized that I desperately needed to fart.  The place was packed, but the music was really loud so to get relief and reduce embarrassment I timed my farts to the beat of the music.  After a couple of songs, I started to feel much better.  I finished my coffee and noticed that everyone was staring at me.  I suddenly remembered that I was listening to my iPod (with ear piece) – and how was your day?  You win.

Signs of the Times

File this under “Politics.”

Not the national one.

The fun one.

There’s a nearby business/industrial property situated on a corner where a yellowish brick warehouse sits about 100 yards back from passing traffic that’s chock full of tractor trailers, commuters and vans and SUVs full of softball moms and all their gear.

A single macadam entrance to its loading dock that is narrowed by a rolling, chain link fence gate and concrete barriers remains visibly unvisited by day. But at the end of each day the gate with its single, rusted, NO TRESPASSING sign rolls closed for the night. Alien-esque, sometime before the next dawn, it reopens but no matter how early you pass by, the gate is already open once again.

The front and one side of the building’s frontage otherwise devoid of landscaping consists of a grass lawn that’s home to one modern metal sculpture and a tree or two. It dips into a hollow leading to a long-abandoned front office entrance. There, a tiny, lineless paved lot looks like it once served the company president, staff and visitors (but not the peons). The entire building rear and opposite side hides behind a railroad track embankment and a fenced in lot full of nondescript storage trailers.

The few windows in front reveal nothing about its contents save for a tiny, dilapidated wooden sign, peeling with age. Some of the stick-on black letters have peeled off leaving silhouettes announcing the company name: So and So Imports.

In the past, Stick Chick occasionally noted NO TRESPASSING signs on the lawn but not much else, and certainly not the number of notices that passersby could have placed announcing everything from nearby homes for sale to political rants, lost pets or yard sale ads.

Stick Chick has always maintained that the place must be a front for a clandestine government operation or more nefarious pursuits. Never would you see people bustling about and only once or twice in two decades of passing by on a regular basis did she ever see a vehicle coming or going from that skinny side entrance.

Most recently, and more ironically, facing each of the two roads that meet at the corner, someone unseen, placed a big yellow sign with red stencil-painted letters announcing NO SIGNS ON YARD.

Stick Chick laughed aloud the first time she saw them, imagining the poor bastard assigned to paint and plant the signs announcing no signs.

Some soul with a deeper sense of irony and humor than she recently planted a new accompanying sign. If you are driving and pass by quickly, you might miss it. But just the other day, Stick Chick turned the corner with v2.0 in the passenger seat who erupted with a fit of giggles that lasted a good half mile.

Neil Patrick Harris and the writers of How I Met Your Mother would be proud to know that Barney Stinson’s oft delivered line has made it into the common vernacular.

Kudos to the maker of the renegade sign, and the local who took this photo and posted it on Facebook. Stick Chick would be pleased to give proper credit on that one.

As the Pram Rolls Full Circle

Lately I have meditated on clarity in an effort to conjure specific memories. I have purposefully attempted to attach sights, sounds and smells to each so that they become vivid.

The result of one such attempt is a poem that I wrote and posted this weekend called The Pram. For illustration, I added a stock photo that looked as similar to the one I recalled as I could find.

I received an email from my mom (who read the poem) with this photo attached.

This is me in the pram.

I remembered.

Mind blown.

The Pram

Lying on my back
On thin foam makeshift mattress
Combed cotton coverlet close to skin
Sounds drift on summer breeze
Birds chirp
Familiar voices and foreign ones float
Interrupted by distant staccato airplane motor
Eyelids heavy I drift
Comforted by nearby walls
Retractable sunshade
I peer upward to glimpse sky
Viewed through mosquito netting
Quivering green leaves shuffling overhead
Squinting in bright green-blue refracted light
Inhaling synthetic scent of bleached white plastic
And clean air and baby powder
Falling downward into cavernous
Dreams
Chilled by air
Warmed by sun
Wholly content
Until squeaky springs
Jar my body
Casting rest aside