Home-Schooled

 

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

This past week, I was thinking about the old saying that everything you need to know, you learned in kindergarten.  And I suppose that when you really stop to think about it, that may very well be true.  I mean, in kindergarten you learned how to be nice, how to share, and how to play well with others.  Of course, you also found out that you could increase the relative trade-in value of your lunch if you could talk your mom into tossing in some Twinkies and that having the bigger box of crayons was just inherently better than having the smaller set. 

Good manners and a basic understanding of a consumer-driven free-market economy—that’s pretty much what you get out of a kindergarten education.  Whether or not that’s really all you need to know in life is a whole other question.

My younger sister, though, never bought into the whole “everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten” philosophy.  As far as I could ever tell, she thought kindergarten was for sissies. Hell, they wouldn’t even let you have real scissors in kindergarten, and I always figured that she regarded the whole thing as a complete waste of a perfectly good year of your life that you could have otherwise spent learning how to use a chain saw and boning up on your survival skills.

Anyway, for some strange reason, my sister decided one day that all I really needed to know in life was how to shoot an arrow.  I have no idea why she thought I needed this skill, and I don’t think she did either.  For my part, I suppose I thought it might come in handy at a cocktail party someday.  I didn’t know exactly what kind of a cocktail party would involve an archery demonstration, but then again, I didn’t really know what a cocktail party even was.  So it seemed like as good a rational for learning to shoot an arrow as any other reason might have been.

So, my sister set up a little archery range in our backyard one fine spring day and got down to the business of educating me.  It vaguely seemed like something we shouldn’t have been doing, and I think we both kind of knew that.  But just to be clear, my mom had never said that we couldn’t shoot arrows in the backyard.  Of course, if my mom had spent her time listing all the things she didn’t want us to do, she’d still be talking some 30 years later.  But as far as my sister  and I were concerned, since we had never specifically been told that we couldn’t play backyard archery range, that meant that it fell under the category of Things We Didn’t Think Mom Would Care If We Did. 

Now, in all honesty, Things We Didn’t Think Mom Would Care If We Did was kind of a strange category because it was flexible to the point of being completely unpredictable.  I mean, one summer, we found a pond full of tadpoles, so we brought home about 150 of them.  My mom wouldn’t let us keep them in our bedrooms and sleep with them in our beds like we wanted to, but she didn’t really have any problem with us setting up a veritable Frog Nation on the patio.  And it was great.  We watched those little tadpoles all day long.  It was fun.  It was educational.  What more could a parent want?

Strangely, though, my mom felt completely different when we brought home a snake.  But it wasn’t like she just got mad.  It was more like she totally freaked out.  She didn’t just want us to take that snake back to where we’d found it; she wanted us to hop on a bus and drop it off in another state.  And I can just imagine how that would’ve played out when my dad got home from work.  “Where are the kids?” “Somewhere in Nebraska if they know what’s good for ‘em.”

As far as our archery range went, though, we didn’t know for a fact that my mom didn’t want us shooting arrows in the backyard, and that was good enough for us.  Of course, looking back on it now, I can honestly say that the smartest thing we did that day was put the dog inside before we got started.  And I think it’s just dumb luck that neither one of us had started drinking regularly by that age.

We didn’t really have a bow so much as we had a 40 year-old carved stick with a 40 year-old piece of string attached to it that my father had made back when he was a kid and wasn’t supposed to be shooting arrows in his backyard.  But it seemed like a pretty decent bow.  I don’t know why he still had it except that to the best of my knowledge, that man had never gotten rid of anything smaller than an airplane in his whole entire life.  Something the size of a bow probably wouldn’t have even registered on his junk radar.

I’m not sure where the arrows had come from, either, but my younger sister is the kind of person who’s always “got a guy,” and doubtless that even back then, she had a guy who knew a guy who had no real reservations about supplying teenagers with a limited range of weaponry.  I’m also not sure where she had dredged up the target.  It was a regulation-sized deal stuffed with hay and everything, and I just figured that she’s scored it in some back alley transaction somewhere.  “Psst…hey, kid, wanna buy a target?”  You don’t really imagine people dealing in black-market archery equipment, I guess, but back then, that was pretty much what the seedy side of life in the Denver suburbs amounted to.

Anyway, we were all set up for my sister to show me what she’d learned in school.  Now, why anyone ever thought it was a good idea to offer high school kids a course in how to launch sharp pointed sticks into the air is sort of beyond me.  Then again, a fair amount of high school gym class involved being smacked in the back with a basketball, getting a soccer ball kicked into your face, and having a tennis ball driven into your forehead, so it wasn’t exactly a “safety first” kind of environment to begin with. 

And it wasn’t just the wimpy kids who got pummeled.  In our school, Assault with a Piece of Sports Equipment was an equal opportunity kind of activity, and that made sense.  After all, you didn’t need any great level of athletic prowess to horsewhip someone with a jump rope.  All you needed was ten seconds of inexplicable bravery and a fair amount of righteous, misdirected anger.  Needless to say, even the tough guys got their fair share of abuse at my high school. 

At any rate, I think the gym teachers finally figured that since they were basically just teaching Assault 101 anyway, they might as well take it one step further into actual weapons.  As far as I could tell, the only reason they settled on archery instead a full course in riflery was because it was more cost-effective.  I mean, bullets aren’t reusable unless you’re firing lead balls out of a musket, and trust me, no self-respecting kid in my high school was going to stand out in the middle of the football field, shoot off a musket, and then go shag the bullets so the next person could use them.  The only thing that could’ve made that idea any sillier is if they’d also required the students to wear clown suits while they were doing it.  And if there wasn’t enough money for bullets, there sure weren’t any funds for clown suits.  So, the gym teachers just stuck to archery, and that was that.

Anyway, back at our home archery range, my sister stepped up for the inaugural shot.  She drew the bow back, and I have to admit, she actually did look a lot like Robin Hood.  She let the arrow fly, and right at the moment, we discovered something:  that bow was more than just decent.  It was freaking rocket launcher.  We just stood there and watched in amazement as the arrow sailed over the target, over the fence, and off into the wild blue yonder. 

To this day, I honestly have no idea where it landed, but I’ve always imagined the neighbors in the next three yards down sitting out on their patios having a nice glass of ice tea as this arrow goes whizzing past overhead.  “What the hell was that?”  “Oh my God, we’re under attack!”  And the next thing you know, everyone is grabbing up their canned goods and bottled water and herding their children into the basement. 

At any rate, I was always pretty sure that even if we had fired an arrow into our neighbor’s yard three houses down, we hadn’t actually fired it into the neighbor himself.  I think there would’ve been some neighborhood gossip about something like that.  It probably just landed in his yard, where he later accidentally ran it over with the lawn mower and spent the next hour or two tweezing splinters out of his shins and kneecaps.  Of course, I don’t really know that that’s true, but I tend to be optimistic like that.

Back at the shooting gallery, though, we only had one arrow left, and I wanted to take a turn.  But my sister insisted that a proper demonstration was necessary for my educational benefit.  She was nothing if not a dedicated teacher.  So, she lined everything up again and vaguely mumbled something about needing to aim low when you’re shooting an arrow (especially if you’re firing it out of a cannon). 

I’m not entirely sure what happened next, but I’ve long suspected that right at the moment she let fly, we both closed our eyes. I don’t really know why, but for my part, I’m pretty sure I was praying.  I didn’t think that would necessarily improve my sister’s aim, but just for the sake of the neighbors, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

When we finally both opened our eyes, that arrow was nowhere to be found.  The only sure place it wasn’t was in the target.  And that in and of itself was kind of amazing.  I mean, it was a regulation-sized target.  It was huge.  And we were only about 7 feet away from it.  It wasn’t like we were shooting at a dinner plate from three blocks away.  But still, my sister had somehow managed to completely miss the entire target, which, all things considered, was probably a greater feat of archery skill than actually hitting it would’ve been.

I think we were both silently hoping that we hadn’t just run our neighbor through for good, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get the image out of my head of this nice older guy in a pair of khakis and golf shirt pinned to his fence like an insect sprawled out in a display case.  Anyway, we frantically started looking around, and then we saw it—a hole right through the front door of the garden shed.  We went in, and there was the arrow…halfway through the back wall of the shed and firmly embedded in the fence behind it.  My little sister had shot that arrow through two sheets of metal and right into a wooden fence.  She had taken down that garden shed like a rhino on the Serengeti.

And even though we both knew we were in big trouble at that point, she was really sort of proud of the accomplishment.  Then again, I suppose that not just anyone can bag a garden shed with only one shot.  To this day I believe that if she could’ve uprooted the whole thing and had it mounted above the mantelpiece, she would’ve done it.  It would’ve gone right next to the front fender of our old Volkswagen that my dad winged with a BB gun.  But this was hardly the time for pride.  I mean, we had shot up the garden shed, and there was no hiding it.  We had crossed over into the category of Things We Knew My Mom Would Care If We Did.

To make matters worse, that arrow was so firmly driven into the fence that we couldn’t pull it out.  So, my sister, always the evil genius, just started stacking stuff in front of it.   She was crafty like that.  And that was a good thing because all I wanted to do was run as fast as I could in any direction that led away from the scene of the crime.  I mean, right at that moment, I would’ve happily traded away everything I had for a clown suit and a bus ticket to Nebraska. 

Anyway, we wiped our prints off the bow and put it back in the garage where we’d found it, and we stashed the target next to the side of the garage where no one ever went. We figured that if we were lucky, someone would steal it.  It was, after all, in brand-new condition.   If nothing else, we could claim that we’d never seen it before and that we had no idea where it had come from.  We couldn’t hide the holes in the shed, but the way my sister saw it, we’d be home free if my parents couldn’t actually prove that we’d done it. 

Of course, I don’t know why we thought that if our parents actually hadn’t seen us do it, they’d be more inclined to think that some rogue band of infidels had invaded our backyard and shot up the garden shed.  I can just see my parents discussing it.  “So, what do you think—the rogue band of infidels theory…or our own children?”  My parents just aren’t that dumb.  Hell, nobody’s parents are that dumb. 

And I suppose that we could’ve always just lied about it, too, but my sister knew that I’d never make through a parental interrogation.  I could barely make it through a math test without a sedative. My sister knew that I couldn’t take my parents’ beady little eyes boring a hole into my guilty little brain.  I’d crack like an egg under the slightest pressure.  I’d sing like a diva at the Met.  So, she just hid the evidence to the best of her ability.  I mean, that girl was born thinking like a defense attorney. 

And if that plan had failed, I’m sure she had a backup strategy that involved burying my parents in evidentiary suppression hearings and specious legal motions guaranteed to stretch on until long after both of us had moved away.  And all that planning worked, too.  After a week went by with no mention of the shed from either of our parents, I decided that if I ever actually got arrested, I wasn’t going to waste my time calling a lawyer.  I was just going to call my sister.  As far as I was concerned, she could make anything disappear.

Years later, during some random attack of conscience, I told my mom the story of my day of home schooling, emphasizing, of course, that the whole thing had been my little sister’s idea.  But I figured that by then, the statute of limitations had run out on that particular crime and that my sister and I really had gotten away with something.  Even now, though, I’m not completely sure if I told my mom about it because I thought I needed absolution or because I just wanted bragging rights, but the truth is that I didn’t get either. 

As it turns out, my parents had known about it for years.  After all, you couldn’t really miss the hole in the front door, and even if you did, the half of the arrow you can still see going through the back wall and into the fence is harder to miss than that target should have been.  But then again, I always figured that my parents weren’t that dumb, and apparently I was right.  I just hadn’t ever counted on them being quite that forgiving.

The funny thing is that in the end, I never did get to shoot an arrow.  To this day, I’ve never shot an arrow.  I’ve never even held a bow in my hands. But I wound up learning a few things from that whole experience.  Mostly I learned that a little home schooling is a dangerous thing, especially when your little sister is running the school.  And I learned that despite your best efforts, your parents usually know what you’re up to.  And if they don’t know, they’ll find out.  Parents are smart like that.  But beyond that, I gained what is perhaps the one piece of knowledge that they actually don’t teach you in kindergarten:  the world is a wondrous place full of all sorts of remarkable things that you can know, and the invitation to learn is always there.  But from time to time, you’re better off turning down that offer.  I mean, if my day of home schooling taught me anything, it’s that sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy.

© R. Rissler, 2012.  All rights reserved.

Sweets for the Sweet

 

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

Just the other day, I was listening to the old Van Halen song “Why Can’t This Be Love,” and I realized that Valentine’s Day is once again upon us.  Now, I have to admit that Valentine’s Day isn’t one of my favorite holidays, but then again, that’s probably why it’s such an endless source of fascination for me.  I tend to be much more interested in the things I don’t like than in the things that I do, and I think most people are like that.  I mean, I’ve heard people prattle on and on about how the last order of spicy chicken wings they ate tasted like they’d been marinated in stomach acid, and I’ve seen people derail entire dinner parties with minute descriptions of how reading about Lindsay Lohan’s latest escapades left them with little more than a raging headache and a markedly uncomfortable bloated feeling.  But when it comes to things people like, they usually just go, “Yeah, I thought that was good,” and that’s pretty much the end of the story.

I don’t know, though, that I’d say I actually dislike Valentine’s Day.  I’m just not that into it.  That might be because I’m single, but really, I think it’s more because I just find the whole thing kind of confusing.  And personally, any kind of unnecessary confusion just annoys me.  I mean, Valentine’s Day just brings up a bunch of questions that, frankly, I’d rather not have to waste my time thinking about.  And yet, from at least the beginning of February to the actual day itself, they’re almost impossible to get away from.  So this year, I decided to just tackle them head on in the hopes that some little bit of clarity might emerge.

Now, probably the biggest question that this wonderful day of love generates is a fairly simple one:  why do men seem to need to be reminded at least three times a day that Valentine’s Day is coming up?  Are they really that forgetful?  I mean, if they are, why does anyone give them important things like mortgages and jobs and children?  After all, these are things whose successful maintenance usually requires some degree of memory. 

But if you judged the ability of men to remember anything based on the sheer number of ads reminding them that Valentine’s Day is coming up, you’d expect them to walk into their houses, have their wives ask, “Did you pick up the kids from swimming lessons?” and reply, “What kids?”  “You were supposed to pick them up after you got off work.”  “I have a job?”  “Well, how do you think we’re paying for this house?”  “We have to pay to live here?”  If guys were even half as forgetful as TV leads you to believe they are, it would be amazing if they could find their way home at night.  Hell, it would be amazing if they could even remember that they had homes.

But beyond just forgetting about the holiday, if you just go by what you see in the media, selecting the Valentine’s gift itself is some sort of mysterious experience that men have to be guided carefully through, and that brings up my second question:  are guys really that inept when it comes to buying presents?  It’s like the media is saying that if TV didn’t tell guys what to get their loved ones, there’s just no telling what they might show up with.  “Here, my dearest Valentine, I brought you this candy and these gifts.”  “Oh, chocolate-covered cherries!  How delicious!  And what’s this?  A case of beer and a shotgun?  What the hell is this about?”  And from there, things just turn ugly.  Really, really ugly.  I mean, as far as the media is concerned, guys aren’t just forgetful; apparently they’re stupid, too. 

The funny thing is that at least according to TV, there are really only two levels of Valentine’s Day gifts to choose from:  expensive jewelry and stuff you can buy at the drug store.  So, it’s not like getting a present is exactly rocket science.  If you go the expensive jewelry route, you just walk into a jewelry store, plunk down all your cash on the counter, and say, “I want to biggest, sparkliest thing this money will buy.  And could you gift wrap it for me?”  It’s so easy that it hardly even requires a brain.  And apparently, that’s the angle the jewelry stores are playing—it’s so easy even a man can do it.

Of course, going the “stuff you can buy at the drug store” route is a little harder.  After all, if you just walk into a drug store and plunk your money down on the counter, one of the employees will probably grab it and run away. So, you really do have to do a tiny bit of shopping first, and that can be a bit of a challenge.  I mean, you’re buying a Valentine’s Day gift that expresses your deep love and true devotion at a place that sells cough syrup and tampons.  So, you know, it’s a tricky situation, and your relative level of sincerity is always a bit questionable.  But then again, all the Valentine’s Day stuff is usually in one aisle, so at least you get a little guidance. And what you can’t fake in sincerity you can often make up for with sheer bulk.

One thing you rarely see Valentine’s TV ads for, though, is candy.  But that’s likely because as children, we're sort of pre-programmed to associate candy with Valentine’s Day.  That is, for most kids, the holidays break down into two categories:  present holidays and candy holidays.  Any holiday that doesn’t involve one of those two things isn’t a holiday to a kid.  It’s just a day when you have to dress up and maybe go to church, and then you have to hang out with a bunch of your cousins from Iowa who you don’t even really know very well and wouldn’t be likely to befriend on any other occasion. 

As far as the kid-recognized holidays go, though, Christmas and your birthday are present holidays.  Halloween, the Fourth of July, Easter, and Valentine’s Day are candy holidays.  Of course, if you’re Jewish, Hanukkah is your big present holiday, and Passover has to be a candy holiday, although, frankly, except for the occasional macaroon, it’s not that great of a deal as far as the treats go.  But no matter what faith you’re raised in, Valentine’s Day is a candy holiday.  Kids might give out Valentines at school, but trust me, it’s got nothing to do liking someone.  It’s all about the candy.  I mean, if some kid gives you a Valentine that doesn’t have a little candy heart in it, then it’s just a big gyp.  

So, it’s not a huge surprise that even men, as feckless and confused as they may be, don’t need big signs telling them to get some candy.  Apparently, once they’ve been nagged and hounded and led by the nose to the store, their pre-programming kicks in, and in a way, it’s probably not all that surprising that a large percentage of Valentine’s Day gifts come from drug stores.  I mean, around Valentine’s Day, drug stores usually have big signs outside that just say, “We have candy!”  So the guys go in, grab the treats, and then proceed to lurch through the aisles in their complete ineptitude as gift-buyers snatching up anything wrapped in red foil that isn’t edible or in a liquid form. 

Of course, one thing that you almost never see in the media are ads for what women should give men for Valentine’s Day, and that’s probably because the basic expectation is that women are going to give the…”gift of themselves” shall we say.  But that brings up my third question:  on any other given night of the year, are women really that unwilling to have sex with their partners?  I mean, as a general rule, do they really need to be bribed into it like that?  Is that what Valentine’s Day is actually all about—forgetful, stupid men bribing otherwise unwilling women into having sex with them?  Well, yes, if you watch television, that’s exactly what Valentine’s Day is about.  Personally, I don’t know why anyone would want to participate in it.

And certainly, a fair number of people don’t participate in the Valentine’s Day festivities, not because they’ve taken the inordinate amount of time to think about it like I have but just because they’re single. Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays that seems to say, “this is not for you” if you aren’t in a relationship.  But even that doesn’t seem to be entirely true anymore, and that leads me to my fourth and perhaps most perplexing question:  why does every cable station seem to think that Valentine’s Day is a great occasion for a re-run marathon?  I mean, are single people really that lonely?

Of course, it’s always possible that the marathons are geared toward couples, but if everything goes the way it should on Valentine’s Day, I’m not sure when these people would have time to work in three or four hours of TV viewing.  I thought the whole point of bribing someone into having sex with you was supposed to be so you would have something to do that night.  And besides, some of the marathons are a little off-color for a romantic evening.  I mean, if you’re out on a date and your partner says, “Let’s hurry up and eat so that we can go back to my house and watch eight straight hours of Criminal Minds,” you’re probably going to want to politely excuse yourself and then run to the nearest police station.

So, I think it’s safe to say that most of the Valentine’s Day TV marathons are meant for single people.  But are they really the people TV programmers seem to think they are? Are they really such desperate, lonely souls that they have nothing better to do on Valentine’s Day than sit around on the couch watching hour after hour of re-runs, swilling cheap scotch, and crying?  Are they people who really need a sitcom marathon to remind them that a boring nebbish like Bob Newhart could get a babe like Suzanne Pleshette and that even Estelle Getty wasn’t sitting home alone on Valentine’s Day? Well, yes, if TV programming is any indication, that’s exactly who these people are.

The funny thing is that most of the people I know in real life are absolutely nothing like their TV advertising counterparts.  I mean, most of the men I know aren’t particularly forgetful or noticeably stupid.  Most of the women I know think sex is a fine thing and good exercise to boot.  And most of the single people I know don’t sit around on the couch drinking cheap scotch.  They go to bars and drink cheap scotch. 

But then again, advertisers pay millions of dollars to put all that marketing out there.  Jewelers make up special pieces just for Valentine’s Day.  And someone actually gets paid to program all those re-run marathons.  So, it sort of stands to reason that there must be at least some men who really are that forgetful and stupid, some women who really do need to bribed into giving it up, and some single people who are single-handedly keeping the distilleries in business.  I don’t happen to know any of these people, but they must be out there.  And maybe that’s the real source of my confusion.  It’s just that age-old question:  who the hell are these people?

I suppose that in end, what irks me most about Valentine’s Day is just that I seem to wind up asking these same four questions every year, and it kind of reminds me of the four questions that are asked at Passover, in which case I should probably just invite all my friends over on Valentine’s Day and hold a seder.  I mean, when you come right down to it, Valentine’s Day is a very confusing holiday, and the only thing that keeps me from throwing up my hands and just giving up on it all together is that this year, buried in all the murky confusion and conflicting imagery, I’ve discovered one nugget of universal truth and the one thing about Valentine’s Day that we all understand from the time we’re children to the time we’re old and gray:  there’s candy.  Forgetful, thoughtful, stupid, smart, hesitant, horny, taken, single, drunk, sober—it doesn’t make any difference at all.  Amid the train wreck of confusion that truly is Valentine’s Day, there’s always going to be candy.  And that may well be as much clarity as I’m ever going to get on the subject.

Ultimately, I don’t think anybody really understands what they’re supposed to do on Valentine’s Day, and I have to admit that I find something sort of comforting about knowing that at some level, we’re all just winging it.  So, on this Valentine’s Day, do whatever you feel you must.  Fall in love, give gifts, make love, get drunk, watch sitcoms, whatever.  But don’t forget to take some time to pay homage to what is the true essence and absolute core of this holiday’s meaning.  In other words, don’t forget to have some sweets.  After all, when it comes to Valentine’s Day, love is fleeting as far as I can tell, but candy is forever.

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy.

© R. Rissler, 2012.  All rights reserved.

The Next Best Thing

 

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

This past week, I was on my way home from my holiday vacation, and it was pretty much the typical scene.  A group of unsuspecting travelers stuffed into an airplane cabin roughly the size of my bathroom.  Every available space crammed with carry-on luggage that really should not have been carried on or even carted very far away from the house.  Crying babies strategically placed every couple of aisles for maximum passenger irritation.  Like I said—typical.

But somewhere between the mountains of luggage and the screaming children, I noticed that I was sitting next to an elderly person and right in front of a crying baby.  And I started thinking about New Year’s and about the two holiday characters—Father Time and Baby New Year—that go along with it.  And I have to admit that as holiday characters go, they’ve got to be two of the strangest around. 

Of course, there’s nothing all that odd about an old holiday character like Father Time.  After all, Santa Claus is old, and nobody complains.  Then again, Santa is an old guy who brings people presents, so why would anyone complain?  And Uncle Sam from the Fourth of July is old, too.  I mean, I don’t think there was ever a time before he became an uncle that people just called him “That Guy Sam.”   And he’s sort of a perennial “funny uncle,” too.  But that makes sense.  If Uncle Sam was a father, his kid would be “The Son of Sam,” and that wouldn’t be very patriotic at all.

So, there’s really not anything all that weird about a holiday character being old, but then again, most older holiday characters actually serve a purpose.  They have a job to do.  Santa delivers gifts and spreads holiday cheer.  Uncle Sam makes you want to wave a flag and go join the army.  But Father Time doesn’t actually do anything, and I think that’s what makes him seem so strange to me.  I mean, as holiday characters go, he’s completely useless.

The funny thing is that in way, Father Time seems like he’s rigged out for something.  I mean, the guy has an hourglass in one hand and a scythe in the other, and these are not things that people just carrying around for no reason.  The hourglass kind of makes sense, though.  After all, he is Father Time, so it seems reasonable that he would have an hourglass or a sundial or at least a decent watch on him.  But the scythe is just confusing because a scythe is usually used to harvest something.  So what?  Now Father Time is a farmer, too?  Then why isn’t he wearing overalls?  Where’s his tractor?  Why aren’t chickens trailing around after him?  I mean, what is the deal with this guy?

Of course, the scythe is usually a big symbol of death, but even that doesn’t make sense.  I mean, killing people is the Grim Reaper’s job, and that’s one department we don’t need any redundancy in.  Besides, what’s Father Time supposed to do?  Cut off Baby New Year’s head?   Oh, yeah, a headless baby—that would be a really great image for the beginning of a new year. 

And think about what would happen if Father Time actually did cut off Baby New Year’s head.  Then we wouldn’t have a New Year.  We’d just have more of Father Time’s homicidal rampage, and the world really would slowly wind down, one person at a time.  And while I’m sure that there are people who get up on New Year’s day and feel like it really is the end of world, that’s just a hangover.  It’ll pass, and besides, that’s not really the agenda we want to set for the rest of eternity.

I’m not saying we should just get rid of Father Time, though.  I just think we should let him retire.  I think the government should give him a nice pension and maybe buy him a condo in Boca.  Oh sure, some people would write their Congress people about how that’s government waste and all, and doubtless a few people would complain that Father Time is “just phonin’ it in,” but at least he’d be happy.  He’d probably make some friends and learn to play bridge.  And he could use his scythe to play shuffleboard.  If nothing else, it would be a lot better than him just wandering around in a dirty toga with that hangdog look on his face and sharp weapon in his hand.

In a lot of ways, though, Father Time actually has it easier than Baby New Year does. After all, he’s on his way out.  Nobody really cares that much about him.  That’s why he can go around looking so disheveled and being such a mess.  Once the ball drops in Times Square, he’s out of here.  He’s history.  He didn’t have a job to do, and he didn’t do it.  And as holiday characters go, we’re OK with that.  But Baby New Year is a whole other story.

Of course, there are other holiday characters who are babies.  My arch-nemesis Cupid immediately springs to mind, and I suppose that if you look at Christmas from a certain perspective, the Baby Jesus qualifies, too, although there does seem to be something kind of blasphemous about calling the Baby Jesus a festive holiday character even if you aren’t a Christian.  Luckily, Cupid casts a big enough shadow to prop up the whole Baby Holiday Character category, so at least Baby New Year isn’t out there having to pioneer the whole idea of the festive infant symbol on his own.

But I think Baby New Year’s job has gotten harder as time has passed because we’ve come to expect more out of babies than we did before.  I mean, back in the ‘50s, what did anyone expect out of a baby or even a young kid?  Look at Beaver Cleaver.  Leave It To Beaver is based on the fact that The Beaver actually isn’t very smart.  He gets simple stuff wrong all the time, and he tells a fib when there is absolutely no reason to.  He’s like an idiot compulsive liar, and he wouldn’t get into half the trouble he does if he had some critical thinking skills.  But then again, watching Beaver reason his way out of a problem wouldn’t make for very good TV, I guess. 

Yet, that’s how TV sets our expectations for babies and children.  We’ve had generations of sitcoms—The Andy Griffith Show, Dick Van Dyke, The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family—that gave us nothing but children of barely average intelligence and underdeveloped morality, and we set our expectations accordingly.  Back in the 1960s, we were happy if Baby New Year could actually count to 60 and wasn’t on an acid trip.  In the 70s, we were just satisfied that he hadn’t gone disco.  And by the ‘80s, just being able to name three hair metal bands was enough to get you into a good college, so Baby New Year had no problem fulfilling our expectations.

But these days, everything is different for babies.  We have the little E-Trader baby who stands up in his crib and tells us about how he put stop-loss orders on all the stocks in his portfolio, and Evian has this creepy ad featuring a bunch of  roller-skating, breakdancing babies that look like Munchins on crack.  And then there’s Stewie on The Family Guy.  He’s just kind of a basic super-smart, pervert baby who makes you want to sell your house and move away.  I mean, seriously, kids today, right?

At this point, though, TV has so totally sucked us into The Cult of the Genius Baby that we think babies can do anything.  A baby walked on the moon?  Sure, why the hell not?  A baby jumped the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle?  OK, that sounds reasonable.  A baby won the Nobel Prize for Physics?  Yeah, so what else is new?  I mean, really, is there anything a baby can’t do anymore?

Well, yes.  In reality, babies can’t do a lot of things.  Like walk.  Or talk.  Or use the toilet.  Most of them can’t even stand up on their own.  I mean, basically, babies do four things:  eat, sleep, poop, and go on planes and cry.  Occasionally, they laugh and smile and are cute, but for the most part, it’s really just the four things.  That’s the reality of Baby World.  Unless you actually are a baby, it’s just not that impressive a place.

And no one is really paying the price for our distorted perceptions and unrealistic expectations more than Baby New Year is.  You see, unlike Cupid, Baby New Year has a really badly defined job.  I mean, Cupid’s job is easy—step one:  shoot person in chest with arrow; step two—fly away.  There’s really no room for interpretation there.  But Baby New Year’s job is to usher in the New Year, and I don’t think anyone actually knows exactly what all that entails.

I imagine that in earlier years, all it amounted to was the Baby New Year showing up, pushing Father Time off the stage, and saying something like, “Happy New Year!  And best of luck to ya!”  But of course, now, it can’t be that simple.  It’s not just an appearance.  It’s an extravaganza!  There are musical acts and dancing bears and fireworks.  Father Time is digitally erased pixel by pixel over the course of several hours.  And it’s all streamed live over the internet to cities all over the globe in beautiful high-definition (and stunning 3-D in selected markets).

And ten minutes before his appearance, Baby New Year is probably sitting in Makeup with a Manhattan in one hand and a cigarette in the other swearing at his agent, “What’s with this glittery diaper?  I look like an idiot!” “Uh, let me see what I can…”  “And geez, what’s this sash made out of?  Sandpaper?  I’ve got a rash the size of Texas on my chest!” “Well, yes, but you see, the sponsor…”  “Oh screw the sponsor!  I’m not doing this next year unless I get more money!  You tell them that!  Do you hear me?” 

And then someone yells, “Cue the baby!” And it’s show time.

And two seconds later, it’s all over. The New Year comes, the Old Year goes, and that’s the end of that story.  Maybe the New Year Baby did a good job, maybe he didn’t.  It’s sort of hard to tell.  I guess the only indication that it’s been successful is that Father Time is gone, and seeing as how he has a tendency to wander off even when he’s not being depixelated into cyberspace, that isn’t such a hard thing to accomplish.

All in all, you have to admit that Father Time and Baby New Year are two of the strangest holiday characters going.  Father Time’s job is to get pushed out of the way.  Baby New Year’s job is to push him.  After that, they’re both pretty much unemployed for the rest of the year. I don’t think any other holiday characters work less than those two, and if I was Baby New Year, I’d look out for Cupid trying to horn in my gig.

Anyway, as I sat on the flight back from vacation with an elderly person next to me and a crying baby right behind me, I realized something:  this was the same flight I took home last year.  And it will probably be the same flight I’ll take back next year.  There’s an odd kind of continuity to it, and I really sort of like that because even though the new pushes the old out of the way once a year, my own life just doesn’t change that fast.  And I really wouldn’t want it to, either.  I mean, when you really stop to think about it, the New Year is a two-second holiday with a cast of the laziest holiday characters going.  And it’s great and it’s fun and it’s festive, but what really matters is what we do with the other 31,535,998 seconds before it happens all over again.  After all, the next best thing you’ll ever do is always the one thing you haven’t done yet.  So, Happy New Year, Dear Readers.  And best of luck to ya.

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy.

© R. Rissler, 2011. All rights reserved.

Trick or Treat

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

When my sisters and I were kids, my parents tried to instill a lot practical wisdom in us.  And I’d like to think that at least some of it took, too.  My parents always were and still are big believers in the idea that you just have to use whatever is at hand to get the job done.  That’s one thing they really drilled into our heads:  you have to be resourceful.   And they’re rather ingenious people themselves.  My mom is the kind of person who could build a life raft out of nothing but old Ziploc bags and guile.  And these days, my father is planning out how he’s going to use the tank from an old water heater to create a super-compressor for his paint gun.  I think his ultimate goal is to be able to spray paint the patio furniture from outer space.  Trust me, when it comes to being resourceful, these people aren’t fooling around.

I don’t think either my sisters or I have ever been quite that resourceful or had such cosmic plans, though.  I especially tend to think on a much less grandiose scale.  I mean, as a small child, my greatest talent was the ability to turn virtually anything into a hat.  Of course, all that really involved was putting the thing in question on my head and saying that it was a hat, but still, at least it fell within the family tradition.  The real test of resourcefulness in our family, though, came every year on Halloween.  For me and my sisters, it was the greatest challenge of how to work with whatever you had available.  And one way or another, we always seemed to find some way to get through it.

Growing up, we had two Halloween costumes.  One of them was a tiger outfit with a striped pair of flannel pants, a matching striped flannel top, and a mask.  Without the mask, the whole outfit looked a lot like a pair of pajamas.  In fact, it might actually have been a pair of pajamas at one point.  I mean, it would’ve been just like my mom to dig up an old tiger mask somewhere and then convince us all that the whole getup was a Halloween costume.  She was kind of crafty like that.  And we were kind of gullible.

No one really remembers what the other costume even was.  It was probably something completely inappropriate like an old Santa Claus suit or a pilgrim’s outfit.  So, of course, nobody wanted to wear it.  I mean, what little kid wants to go out on Halloween dressed as a pilgrim?  No one wants to give you candy if you look like that.  If you’re dressed like a pilgrim, everyone expects you to knock on their door and just hand them a turkey.  And can you imagine being the little kid who has to go out trick-or-treating as Santa Claus?  Grown-ups would open the door, take one look at you, and be like, “What the hell?”

Anyway, the strangest thing was that we had two costumes, but there were actually three kids in our family.  So, I’m not really sure what that was about.  At one time, of course, only two of us were old enough to go trick-or-treating, but after that, I’m not really sure what happened.  I guess we probably just had to go out in shifts.  One kid would put on the tiger outfit, do a block of houses, and then go home so the other kid could use the costume.  Then the second kid would go out, and the neighbor would say, “Weren’t you just here?” “No.”  Then his wife would call out, “Who’s at the door, honey?”  “I don’t know. Some kid in a pair of pajamas.”  “You mean the one with Santa Claus?”  “That was my sister, damn it!” 

Then the neighbor would look you up and down with more than a little suspicion and finally drop some candy into your bag just so he wouldn’t have to waste any more of his time trying to figure out if he was being played by a 7-year old over a roll of Smarties.  After all, trying to decide who’s who on Halloween can be tricky.  I mean, kids aren’t usually that hard to tell apart, but a kid in a mask and a pair of pajamas is a whole other story.

Anyway, after we finally outgrew the tiger suit and whatever the other outfit might have been, we just started making our own costumes.  That required a completely different level of ingenuity because we didn’t have a lot to work with.  Basically, my parents would let us make costumes out of just about anything that they were otherwise going to throw away.  So if you wanted to go as a ghost, you ended up a in sheet that likely had a giant tear going right through some mysterious stain that even three cups of bleach couldn’t get out.  You looked like a ghost who’d been mugged and then thrown in the gutter.  It wasn’t scary so much as it was just sad.

Of course, there was always the robot route.  Being a robot didn’t require much more than a couple of boxes, and my dad always had boxes in the garage.  But that was the problem—my father has never willingly parted with a cardboard box in his life.  To him, a good, sturdy box is the key to surviving pretty much any disaster situation.  Now, exactly what sort of crisis one could fend off using nothing more than a cardboard box is a bit beyond me.  I mean, seriously, when was the last time you saw a superhero named “Box Man”?  When did anyone anywhere ever defeat a criminal by smacking him in the head with a cardboard box?  

But in my dad’s world, those boxes were his first and last line of defense.  If there was a tornado, we could hide underneath them.  If there was a flood, we could float away in them.  If there was a nuclear attack, we could use them to build a bomb shelter.  That man had more faith in cardboard than he did in God.  The way he figured it, those boxes were all that stood between him and utter chaos.  And there was no way he was giving up that kind of security just so some kid could be a robot for Halloween.

 Luckily, my grandparents had a trunk of old clothes that they kept around for us to play dress-up in, so if my parents weren’t throwing away anything that would make a decent costume, you could always just go as someone from the distant fashion past. The problem was that most of the clothes were my grandfather’s, and they didn’t exactly fit.  So, I’d head off to trick-or-treat in a pair of old pants cinched up somewhere around my armpits, a vest that ended somewhere around my knees, and a jacket that fit me like a full-length dress.  And it always went the same way with the neighbors.  “Trick-or-treat.” “What the hell are you supposed to be?”  Then the wife would poke her head around the corner and call out, “Who’s at the door, honey?”  “I don’t know.  Some kid in a tweed evening gown.”

I suppose it could’ve been worse, though.  If my mom had let us go out dressed in my dad’s old clothes, I would’ve been trick-or-treating in a floor-length Nehru jacket.  I would’ve looked like a tiny Communist dictator.  And I can just imagine how that would’ve gone over.  “Who’s at the door, honey?”  “I don’t know….I think it’s Mao-Tse Tung.” 

I imagine the neighbors started to miss the days when the strangest thing they had to deal with on Halloween was the untimely appearance of Santa Claus, but no matter what you were wearing, they always gave you some candy.  These days, of course, a lot of parents are pushing for healthier treats, but back then, if someone had given you a carrot stick, you’d have given it back.  I mean, back in the late 1960s, most people believed that sugar actually was one of the four food groups, right along with red meat, lard, and caffeine.  And if you were a grown-up, nothing topped off a balanced diet better than a cigarette and a martini.  So, it’s not like anyone thought that a little candy was going to kill you.

To me, though, Halloween was never about getting the treats.  After all, not all of the candy you got on that night was good.  There were always a few pieces of no-name, cut-rate candy that you just knew someone had fished out of the clearance bin at some seedy-looking convenience store.  That was always the candy that was either so hardened by age that it would actually break your teeth or so off-brand that it tasted faintly like dirt.  Either way, it wasn’t something you wanted to put in your mouth.

Every now and then, too, some joker on the next block over would slip you a throat lozenge and try to pass it off as a mint. And honestly, there are few things more disappointing than thinking you’re about to enjoy a delicious cherry treat and then finding out that it’s really just a Sucret someone dug out of the bottom of old purse.  I mean, if you actually had a sore throat, I suppose it was quite a find, but otherwise, it was a big gyp.

Besides, eating candy wasn’t that big of a deal at my house.  My mom always kept a little bag of Brach’s candy in the cupboard, and we were allowed to eat some most anytime we wanted to.  So, I spent my allowance on stuff that my mom didn’t keep around, like beef jerky and pepperoni sticks and tiny wheels of processed cheese.  When I was a kid, I didn’t have time to rot out my teeth or mess with my blood sugar.  I was too busy clogging up my arteries.

Anyway, we lost interest in our Halloween candy after about three days, and my mom would finally take whatever was left in our candy bags and dump it all into the Brach’s sack in the cupboard.  Then we’d all nibble away at it until one fateful evening when my dad shook out the last piece, popped it in his mouth, and then spit it out with a loud “Who the hell put a throat lozenge in here?”  Then he’d turn and look at me.  “And why are you still wearing your costume?”  “These are my pajamas, Dad.”  “Oh.”  And at that point, Halloween was pretty much officially over at my house.

The funny thing is that despite all the hassles that Halloween inevitably brought with it, I always liked that holiday.  There was never any telling what any of us kids might show up as—a World War I pilot, a secretary from Cleveland, a pre-pubescent version of Jesus.  It all just depended on what we had to work with.  It was the ultimate exercise in catch-as-catch-can.

In the end, though, I guess trick-or-treating really is good training for life.  I mean, what really happens when you go for a job interview?  You dress up in a businessperson costume, knock on the door, and go, “Hi.  Can I have a job?”  Then they give you a treat, or they say, “What the hell are you supposed to be?”  It’s just like trick-or-treating.  But more than that, Halloween has a great way of reminding us that a little resourcefulness, a little talent for making something out of nothing, is ultimately a good thing.  And it’s ultimately a fun thing, too, because let’s face it—deep down inside of all of us, there’s a little MacGyver just itching to get out.

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy.

© R. Rissler, 2011.  All rights reserved.

Got Milk?

 

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

There’s an old saying that “you are what you eat,” and to certain extent, I suppose that’s true.  Scary, of course, but mostly true.  Then again, what you eat depends a lot on what you’ve got around to eat.  So, maybe it’s more accurate to say that you are what you would eat. 

I think people with families to feed have it easier in some ways when it comes to food, though.  Of course, the meal prep and the cleanup are bigger hassles.  When you’re only feeding yourself, you can eat right out the can with your bare hands if you want to.  It’s not like anyone is going to object.  But there does seem to be something about a child’s ability to use silverware that somehow makes parents feel like they’ve done their jobs.  So, even now, if my mother calls while I’m eating tuna straight out of the handy-dandy foil pouch, I always mention that I’m using a fork.  She seems to find that comforting.  Don’t ask me why.

And I don’t know if actual grocery shopping is easier if you have a family or not.  One day, I saw a woman in the store with a completely full cart and three little kids in tow…AND she was using coupons.  It was amazing.  I mean, I have a good deal of respect and admiration for firefighters who run into burning buildings, but I was utterly in awe of that woman.  If I had had the money, I would’ve paid for her groceries myself.  After all, I think that kind of bravery really should be rewarded.

But shopping for one is a completely different experience.  People always say that you should never go grocery shopping when you’re hungry.  But that’s the only reason I ever go grocery shopping.  I mean, if I’m not hungry, why would I go buy some food?  That just doesn’t make any sense to me.

Now, I realize that there are lovely, responsible people on their own who plan ahead and stock up on food accordingly.  I am not one of those people.  I just figure I’ll worry about what’s for dinner when it’s dinnertime.  Besides, if I go to the grocery store when I’m not hungry, I tend not to buy any actual food.  Instead, I come home with 48 rolls of 9-ply toilet paper, an entire selection of coma-inducing cold medicine, and batteries.  Lots and lots of batteries.

And I don’t know what it is about the As Seen on TV aisle that holds such special meaning for me, but if I get anywhere near that section when I’m shopping without being hungry, it’s like being enticed into an opium den.  I mean, I can’t even figure out what half of that stuff is supposed to do, but who cares?  Some little thing will catch my eye, and it’s like I can’t turn away.  I’m totally mesmerized by that thing.  It folds up, it folds out, it expands, it contracts, it absorbs, it repels.  It’s magic!  Magic, I tell you!  And I must have it.  Even if I don’t have any idea what it is.

Of course, when I am hungry, I’m not that much better at shopping.  When you’re single, you can eat whatever you want to eat whenever you want to eat it.  And while that might seem oddly freeing, trust me, it isn’t.  I don’t know how many times I’ve come home with ten pounds of some kind of fish I’ve never even heard of.  I can’t count how many jars of cocktail onions have found their way into my cart.  And every now and then, I just go into an absolute crouton mania.  There’s just no telling what I might buy.  I remember coming home one time only to find that after I’d put all the food away, my entire freezer was filled up with nothing but frozen waffles and vodka. 

I’ve tried the idea of making a list before I go to the store, but it never quite works out.  After all, I don’t have time to make a list.  I’m hungry.  I need some food right now. 

At one point, though, I tried keeping a rolling list that I would work on from time to time so that when I got hungry, I could just snatch it up and head off to the store.  The problem was that lists like that tend to be rather, well, optimistic.  It was more a list of what I thought I should eat rather than what I actually do eat.  So, I’d write down stuff like string beans and peas and low-fat milk and bananas, and then I’d get to the store and wonder, “Who broke into my house and made up this list?”  And then I’d end up going home with a TV dinner, a jar of pesto sauce, and this lingering feeling of guilt and shame.  So, I gave up on that idea a long time ago.  If there’s one thing I don’t need in my life, it’s the stress of trying to live up to my grocery list.

My strangest grocery shopping experiences, though, were back when I was finishing college.  One summer, a friend of mine and I were both working on the graveyard shift as janitors for the university, and since we needed to keep our nocturnal schedules over the weekends, we did our grocery shopping at about 3am on Saturday nights.  Back then, the 24-hour grocery store was a completely new thing, so it seemed like an adventure.  A really weird, kind of creepy, sort of scary adventure, but an adventure nonetheless.

Of course, the 24-hour grocery store in our town was really kind of seedy and cut-rate.  Their big selling point was that their prices were lower because you had to bag your own groceries.  Personally, I think their prices were lower because they never cleaned the place or bothered to replace any of the continually flickering overhead lights.  Just walking into that store was like being sucked into a scene out of a David Lynch movie.  From what I could tell, they employed nothing but drug addicts.  Even the customers looked strangely vacant and potentially dangerous. 

I don’t actually remember the name of the store, but they really should’ve just called it The Random Junk and Crap Grocery Store because that’s about what it amounted to. When you walked in, you really sort of expected to see an aisle sign that read “Bloated and Dented Canned Goods.”  A section of completely mislabeled food items wouldn’t have been out of place, and to be honest, this was the kind of store that would happily sell you an opened box cereal or a half-eaten sandwich.  I think their whole business plan was based on a mixture of apathetic capitalism and brutal honesty.  They didn’t know anything about food safety, and they weren’t trying to hide it.  But if you insisted on buying groceries from them, they wouldn’t try to stop you.

One of the most entertaining parts of the store was a section located beyond an entire aisle of used cardboard boxes they were trying to sell and just to the side of a fairly disreputable-looking dairy case.  That last section was the kind of area that really should’ve been called something like Stuff That Fell Off the Back of a Truck.  You never knew what you might find back there.  Boxes of prime rib, cases of scotch, Barbie Dream Houses, tube socks.  There was really no telling.  Whenever I went back to that area, I always sort of expected to find some heavy-set guys sitting around smoking cigars and playing poker.  But really, if I’d come upon a chorus line of dancing midgets, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

The funny thing is that as strange as that store was, my friend and I kept going there.  After all, they did actually have lower prices, and as long as you made sure that whatever you bought wasn’t misshapen or giving off a foul odor, you were pretty safe.  Besides, back then, bagging your own groceries seemed oddly empowering.  It was like the store was entrusting you with a sacred duty, and that made you more than just a customer.  You were an integral part of the machinery that was The Random Junk and Crap Grocery Store.  Whether or not that was something you wanted to admit to your friends was a whole other story.

Of course, the 24-hour grocery store is a really common thing these days although shopping at 3am is still a lot like being trapped in an episode of The Twilight Zone with little snippets of the movie Dune thrown in just to confuse you.  What makes shopping even stranger, though, is that the Stuff That Fell Off the Back of a Truck section seems to be a staple in a lot of the bigger, super-grocery stores.  In fact, it’s taken over about half the space of those stores.  And I might just be Old School, but I don’t ever think I’ll understand that.  I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with knowing that the grocery store that sells me milk and eggs is also willing to sell me a car and finance the loan.  My mind just can’t expand quite that far.

My mom, of course, thinks the idea of the grocery super-store is great because it’s more convenient.  I mean, to her, if you need groceries and a new couch, what could be better than finding it all in one place?  And I suppose she’s got a point.  It really is a lot more convenient.  But for someone like me, it’s also a lot more dangerous.  After all, if I find myself in a regular grocery store now without being hungry, the worst thing that will happen is that I’ll go home with five rolls of non-stick aluminum foil, two boxes of dryer sheets, and a loofah sponge.  And frankly, there are worse things I could do.

But the grocery super-store is just a disaster waiting to happen for someone like me because suddenly I’m not just walking out with a package of light bulbs. I’m walking out with a new set of patio furniture. I’m not just buying a new dustpan. I’m buying a lawn vacuum.  And I don’t even have a lawn.  Or a patio.

What scares me most about it all, though, is that I really do believe that you are what you look around your kitchen and decide you would eat.  So I’m perfectly willing to say that I am ten pounds of lutefisk.  I’ll own up to being a jar of maraschino cherries.  I’ll stand on the highest mountain and proudly proclaim that I am a crouton.  But I’m just dreading the first time I go into a grocery super-store when I actually am hungry.  The sheer number of products will be overwhelming, and I have no doubt that I’ll eventually return home dazed, confused, and probably slightly motion sick only to have to look myself straight in the mirror and face the fact that I am a radial tire.

All in all, I miss the days when I was a little kid going grocery shopping with my mom.  My whole job then, at least as far as I understood it, was to hang off the cart and grab random things off the shelves.  These days, I’d happily pay some little kid to do that for me.  Hell, I’d pay a grown-up to do that for me.  But there’s something about being a grown-up yourself that makes people think you should have mastered the fine art of grocery shopping by now.  And I suppose that to some extent, I have at least reached some level of competency when it comes to buying food.  After all, I haven’t starved to death yet.  Still, whenever I see some parent in the store with a child, there’s always some part of me that just wants to lean down and say, “Kid, you don’t know how good you’ve got it.”  But, hey, I’m an adult, so I just gather up my tube of cake frosting, my bottle of soy sauce, and my block of cheese because, you know, it’s dinner time.  And I’m hungry.

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy.

© R. Rissler, 2011.  All rights reserved.

Back on the Chain Gang

 

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

So, Labor Day has just passed us by, and I have to say that I think it’s a bit of a weird holiday.  I mean, it’s cool because most people get the day off, but it’s odd because it’s a holiday that was basically invented by a labor union for no other reason than they thought that people should get a day off.  It wasn’t originally intended to be a celebration of anything, really, except maybe the more mischievous side of union agitation.  In fact, if you listen closely on Labor Day, you can almost hear the faint sounds of Jimmy Hoffa laughing his ass off from…well, wherever he finally ended up.

Of course, what’s really tragic is the day after Labor Day.  It’s like on Labor Day, everyone says, “Yes, let’s celebrate YOU, the American worker!  You are the lifeblood of this country, the machine that drives us forward as a people, the very heart and soul of everything that makes this nation great!”  And people wave flags around and have parades and feel the need to publicly read Carl Sandburg poetry out loud.  Then the next day, it’s like, “And now you better drag your lazy butt out of bed and get to work, or you’re fired.”

Well, so much for the celebration of the exalted American worker.  After Labor Day, if you want a day off to relax and reflect on your contribution to this great land of ours, you have to get it the old-fashioned way.  You have to call in sick.

Now, I have to admit that I’ve long had a somewhat defiant attitude about calling in sick when all that’s really wrong with you is that you’re having a bad hair day or don’t have any clean clothes to wear.  To me, these are perfectly valid reasons to stay home.  I mean, you’re probably doing your co-workers a favor by not subjecting them to your distressing hairdo or your filthy, dirt-encrusted clothing.  But more than that, I think a sick day should be a private thing between you and your not entirely guilt-ridden conscience.  And I can trace that attitude right back to its source:  my first professional job.

You see, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I had a job with a big corporation, and for the most part, I liked the job just fine.  But that company had the strangest sick leave policy I’ve ever seen.  Basically, you got “short-term sick leave,” which was a day or two, and you got “long-term sick leave,” which was five days or more.  The strange thing was that you only got five short-term sick days per year, but you got four weeks of long-term sick leave.  And it wasn’t cumulative, either.  At the end of the year, the slate was wiped clean, and everybody just started over with the same amount of sick days.

The idea, as far as I could ever tell, was to discourage you from calling in sick because you got so few short-term days that you didn’t want to blow one just because you felt kind of sort of cruddy.  As far as the company was concerned, if you felt kind of sort of cruddy, you could drag your sorry butt into work and just sit in your office feeling that way.  After all, we had an infirmary on site in case things turned ugly, so as long as you weren’t actively bleeding from a major artery, the company just figured you could come to work. 

Of course, in practice, the sick leave policy worked the exact opposite.  If you got a stomach bug that normally would’ve taken two days to get over, you stayed out for five days so that you could take long-term sick leave.  After all, if you came back after two days, you’d used almost half of your short-term days.  But if you stayed out for a week, you’d only used a quarter of the your long-term time.  So in the end, the sick leave policy wasn’t even about the number of days you were out sick.  It was just about fractions.  And apparently, whoever made up the sick leave policy wasn’t very good at math.  Or predicting human behavior.

Anyway, at one point, I think the company must’ve caught on to what was happening, but instead of changing the policy, they just tried to make it scarier to call in sick by requiring you to specifically list what was wrong with you.  Now, I don’t know what kind of twisted soul ever thought this up, but listing what was wrong with you wasn’t just a matter of writing down, “I had the stomach flu.”  These people wanted details.  Disgusting, horrible details. 

So, if you had an ear infection, you couldn’t just say, “I had an ear infection.”  You had to describe the blinding, crippling pain.  If you had a cold, you had to tell them all about your runny nose, furry tongue, and pounding headache.  If you sprained your ankle, they wanted an essay on the swelling and torn ligaments.  Like I said, I have no idea what kind of sick mind ever thought that up. 

I also don’t know what kind sick mind ever thought that would work.  I mean, all it did was encourage people to exaggerate or just flat-out lie.  In my department, the phrase “projectile vomiting” became so commonplace that it ceased to even raise an eyebrow among the most sensitive of employees.  In fact, we would just sit around making up the most disgusting descriptions we could think of.  It was everybody’s favorite office game. 

Eventually, though, we realized that even though the “Gross Me Out” system was probably the brainchild of some genius manager in Human Resources, it was the administrative assistants over there who really had to deal with it.  And I don’t think they wanted to read that icky stuff any more than we wanted to write it.  And beyond that, if you used terminology that they wouldn’t be likely to know right off the tops of their heads, they wouldn’t look it up, either.  But really, who would?  I mean, if part of your job involved reading the kind of stomach-turning stuff people had to write on their sick leave forms, why would you want that torture to go on for one second longer than it had to? 

All that mattered was that something sounded reasonably disgusting enough.  As long as you cleared that hurdle, you were golden.  Well, OK, maybe not golden, but at least you were sick as far as the company was concerned.

The problem, though, was that I’d never been any good at lying, especially about being sick.  I’d always come up with something like “beriberi,” which sounds a lot more like a frozen drink you’d buy at the Taco Bell drive-through than a nervous system disease.  Or I say that I had “dengue fever,” which would actually make sense…if I lived in Nigeria.  And when I couldn’t think of anything, I tended to panic and write down stuff like “rabies” or “ebola virus.”   Then I’d always imagine some HR person reading that and thinking, “And you only needed one day off to recover?”  Thunk.  Denied.

But there was even more pressure on that job because you couldn’t just go with a disease name, even if you could come up with one that actually sounded like a real illness and wouldn’t need to involve a mad dog or a trip to a sub-tropical region in Africa.  It was all about the symptoms with that company.  So one day, I got out my dictionary and just started making up symptoms that were basically honest but could still pass the HR retch test. 

And in honor of The Day After Labor Day, I’d thought I’d pass them along.

Symptom	What It Really Means	Why It Would Work
Acute Bellicose Rupture	You got really, really angry with someone really, really fast.  And then you snapped.	Well, it just sounds awful, doesn’t it? “Bellicose” sounds like the first cousin of a varicose vein, and a rupture just sounds really messy.  Besides, “acute” makes it seem like a real emergency, and that’s always a plus in an excuse.
Chronic Ennui	You are frequently bored in a really hanging-around-in-a-French-café-wearing-a-beret-and-smoking-an-unfiltered-cigarette-left-over-from-WWII kind of way.	“Ennui” sounds vaguely gastrointestinal and not in a particularly pleasant way.  But more than that, it’s chronic.  That means you can use it over and over and over.  It’s recyclable.  It’s eco-friendly.  It’s the ultimate green excuse.
Generalized Malaise	You’re just kind of tired and uninterested in doing much of anything…like, say, going to work.  In fact, the very thought of going to work makes you tired and uninterested.	The idea of a generalized illness puts people off right away because there’s no telling what’s wrong with you.  There’s something wrong, but it can’t be pinpointed.  That’s the beauty of it.  It might be nothing. It might be epidemically contagious. Who is to know? And besides “malaise” is a French word…and most people would rather avoid French words.
Impacted Truculence	You have a scathingly harsh sense of judgement wedged into your psyche.  When someone says you have a stick up your butt about something, this is what you have.	How many phrases do you know of that start with the word “impacted” and turn out to be something good?  This isn’t a symptom anyone is going to want to personally verify.  Trust me.
Infectious Juvenility	You’re so immature that it will affect others.  You won’t just come to work wearing a big clown nose.  You’ll bring enough big clown noses for the whole office.	It’s infectious. And infection scares people. No one wants to be around anyone who is infected with anything. No one will even take the chance of making you come in to work if you say you have this.
Intumescent Jackassery	You have a swollen, engorged sense of foolishness. You’re puffy with giddiness.	Actually, I don’t think this one would work.  I just always wanted to write the word “jackassery” on a sick leave form.  I love that word.  It’s like tomfoolery on steroids.
Localized Apathy	You don’t care about one specific thing…like, say, going to work.  You care about other stuff…like TV and candy.  But you don’t care about going to work.	It sounds kind of serious but still like something that, given enough time and rest, you can recover from without having to have something amputated.  It’s definitely one to use if you’re going for the sympathy vote.  You might even get flowers out of the deal.  If nothing else, it automatically authorizes you to walk with a limp.
Oozing Turpitude	You are leaking moral corruption and general depravity.  It’s kind of like having cystic acne on your soul.	Would you really want to see something that’s oozing? I wouldn’t.  And neither would whoever is checking your sick leave excuse.  It’s like the free pass of the sick leave world.
Paralytic Indolence	You’re too lazy to get up.  In extreme cases, they couldn’t blast you off your couch with a fire hose.	Well, you’re paralyzed.  That’s never good no matter what the reason behind it is.  And no one expects you to come to work if you’re paralyzed.
Relapsing/Remitting Hedonism	You are far too occupied with the pursuit of pleasure to come to work.  It can also just mean that you’re too drunk to show up.	It relapses, it remits, it’s all over the place!  It’s completely unpredictable.  It could surface at any time.  And hedonism sounds like the result of some sort of genetic mutation, so nobody is going to question it.  In fact, if you say you have this, most people will feel sorry for you.  And then they’ll avoid you.

The trick to using the symptoms, though, was to combine them in ways that sounded like real illnesses. What started as a small bit of intumescent jackassery, for example, could quickly develop into full-blown infectious juvenility that could ultimately result in a bad case of oozing turpitude. And, of course, a good case of impacted truculence could always quite easily lead to an acute bellicose rupture. I think Hallmark even makes a card for that.  And who could ever predict when chronic ennui, a generalized malaise, and a stubborn case of localized apathy would collide into the perfect storm of make-believe illness?

You had to be kind of smart about what symptoms you put together, though.  After all, the HR people tended to gossip, and it wasn’t like you were never going back to your job again.  So, you probably wouldn’t want to combine something like relapsing/remitting hedonism with paralytic indolence.  That makes it sound like you were too lazy to get off the couch and come to work because you were too busy drinking cheap scotch and watching movies on “the special TV channel.”  And that’s really not the image you want to get back to your co-workers and managers.  I mean, if that’s really why you didn’t come to work, you probably would be better off just saying that you had rabies.

The funny thing is that for all the time I spent making up those symptoms, I never actually used any of them.  In fact, I rarely missed work, mostly because by the time I was awake enough to even think about calling in sick, I was already in my car and halfway to the office.  Still, I always kept that list in my desk drawer, and even after I left that job, I’ve always had a copy of it around.  And I’d love to say that those excuses were my way of flying in the face authority and of sticking it to The Man, but really, I still keep the list around just because it makes me laugh.  And because it reminds that if everything in business really made sense, it wouldn’t be any fun at all.

So, sometime soon, schedule an afternoon appointment for some reparative therapy to address your acute nutritional deficiency syndrome.  In other words, take a long lunch.  And don’t feel too bad about it, either. I mean, we take one day out of the whole year to extol the virtues of everyone who works for a living.  On all those other days that are most decidedly not Labor Day, you have to fend for yourself and remember that in the end, it really is the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the worker that makes a country great.

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy.

© R. Rissler, 2011. All rights reserved.