We don’t eat KFC chicken all that often. It’s expensive and not the most healthful stuff that ever slid down a gullet. But it’s comfort food and we like it, so every now and then we go for it.
So I drive down there tonight and I place my order for the eight-piece family dinner that’s currently on special. Only to be told that alas, they’ve run out of chicken. They’ve neglected to prepare enough of the item around which the meal is formed.
Now, last time I went to KFC, about a month or so ago, they were similarly bereft of cooked poultry. That time, there was a line inside and a longer line in drive-through, so I blew it off and headed for one of their competitors. But this time was different.
I REALLY didn’t want to cook tonight and nothing else sounded good.Besides, having taken the women-folk’s orders, showing up back home without the requisite pollo would have been loco.KFC’s failure would have become my failure.And besides, the nice lady promised the chicken would be ‘up’ – I refrained from pointing out that I prefer anything that’s had its head lopped off remain ‘down’ – in eight minutes. So I waited.
And sure enough, eventually the chicken showed up and all was well. I took the dinner home, maintaining my status as intrepid provider. The meal was shared and I am still loved, or at least, put up with. The night turned out alright and after all this wasn’t the worst calamity to befall me in my life. But it was an annoyance I could have lived without.
I think I have a way for KFC to avoid future embarrassment. I know it’s not my place, but if they’ll just take this advice, I’m thinking they won’t have to worry about a repeat non-performance. And here it is:
When you run a special on chicken and it’s coming up on dinner time, make more chicken.
Our offices are moving in a few months to a building downtown. For the first time, we’re not going to have free parking. The expectation is that the employees will be given monthly bus passes. Which is okay by me.
We’re fortunate to live in an area where we can get just about anywhere by public transportation. Given my age and depending on the term of the new lease, it’s quite possible I’ll never again drive a work commute. Except, of course, when I have to pop into work to pick up teaching materials for a trip, but they’ll have shared spaces for that.
And that is SO fine by me!
I truly love riding the bus. Of course, that’s easy for me to say, because in this new location, I won’t even have a transfer. Get on a block from home and get off two blocks from work.
My working life is about to get just a bit better. Live for the little pleasures, I say!
Why is a woodland friendly but a forest foreboding?
Can a fish get away with farting?
What is the proper number of times to run the vacuum cleaner over a pine needle stuck in the carpet before it’s more cost-effective to just bend over and pick the darn thing up?And once you do, what do you do with it? (Tell the truth!)
Why doesn’t everyone like the same music I do?
What is the half-life of cheese spread?
Why does such unhealthful food taste so good?
On the other hand, is there really such a thing as too much of a good thing?
Why wasn’t Quidditch a sport at my high school?
Work on these – more questions will be forthcoming in future postings.
There are many other words the meaning of which I don’t know, but this is the one that chaps my hide.It doesn’t pop up all that often but every time it does, I tell myself I should look it up.
It’s not like looking it up is that big a job. We must have a half-dozen dictionaries in this house, one of which is on the shelf behind me, easily within arm’s reach. I just turned around to make sure that was true and there it was. A perfectly good Webster’s - which isn’t the best but at least it’s not schlock like the New American Collegiate. Of course, I didn’t pick it up. That would spoil my run of not knowing what teleological means.
I’m not afraid of big words. I love words and language. Linguistic uppityness is my life.
I regularly use words like aliphatic and enumerative, cathartic, existential and streptococcus. I didn’t have to look any of them up. I love to trot out a really obscure polysyllabic construction even when a short, common word would have sufficed. My personal lexicon is copious and my use of it inspired.
I’ve just never bothered to look up teleological. And I probably won’t this time, either. And it will continue to annoy me every time I come across it.
It had been a tough week all around and the last thing I needed was a letter from the phone company politely informing me that my ex-roommate had left me saddled with a large long distance bill that I needed to pay immediately and in person, lest my service be interrupted. A call to their billing office yielded nothing more than polite but firm insistence that I must pay in person and that it had to happen more or less immediately. Resignedly, I made an appointment for the next day.
The next day, as my co-workers huddled around the lunch wagon, I ran to my car and raced to the phone company offices, figuring that if everything went smoothly and I didn’t get pulled over for speeding, I’d have time to pay the bill and grab some fast food to wolf down during the drive back. I made it there in record time and without breaking many traffic laws and scurried inside. Pushing through the second set of doors, I quickly brushed by the line of walk-ins.
“Ma’am,” said I in a voice that I thought conveyed the perfect mix of deference to her exalted position and harried stress at being delayed by having to detour around the line of ThoseWhoSimplyWalkedIn. “Ma’am,” I asked the petulant looking beauty school dropout behind the counter,” can you tell me where to go for a twelve-fifteen appointment with the billing supervisor?” The chill that ran down my spine was caused less by her disgusted sneer than by the sound of a watery chuckle from a man about halfway back in the ever-growing queue. When I looked at him, the man shrugged sympathetically.
“I’m 12 noon. The people in front of me are eleven-forty-five. is somewhere back there.” And my gaze followed his jerked thumb, taking in a line that now stretched out the door through which I had originally entered.
“Sir, please step aside,” said the big-haired creature behind the counter.
In a flash of recognition and resignation, I realized how completely I’d been had. Checking my watch as I slunk to the end and observing the line’s progress for a few minutes, I knew there was no way I was going to get back to work on time, much less stop for sustenance along the way. Worst of all, my boss had bet me I wouldn’t make it back in less than two hours and it looked like I was in grave danger of owing him a lunch.
It took forty minutes to reach the head of that line, forty minutes of quietly seething at having been suckered, first by my scofflaw ex-roommate, and now by one of his creditors. I resented the stares of the deadbeats around me, knowing that I was not really one of THEM. I paid my bills and it was only through the perfidy of one like THEM that I found myself cooling my heels in their company. When finally my turn came at the counter, I requested through clenched teeth that I be allowed to speak to the billing supervisor. Now. The harridan simply held out her hand for my paperwork.
“You don’t understand I am here to discuss a bill…”
“With the billing supervisor, I know. May I see your bill, please?”
I handed it over reluctantly, and she barely glanced at it before thrusting it back at me, flipping a small green pre-printed card on top. She pointed at a bank of phones on the wall, into which several of my former line-mates were speaking in varying degrees of exasperation.
“Go over to one of the white phones and dial the number on the green card.”
I stared, first at the card, then at the bank of phones, then back at the girl behind the counter.
“Why do I need…”
“Sir, I have a line waiting here…” (a thoroughly superfluous bit of information at this point, I can assure you)
“I’m not going to meet with a billing supervisor?”
“Dial the number and you’ll be talking to one. Next, please.”
By now, I was not interested in keeping my cool, not concerned with avoiding a scene and completely uninterested in arguing with the young, er, lady. I suggested that she call into the back room for a supervisor because until I was face to face with a supervisor, I was not going to relinquish my place before her. And it was at that moment that I decided a concert was called for.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, turning to face my line-mates, “I propose to entertain you until such time as a supervisor comes out here to meet with me. Please feel free to join in.”
I’m no opera star but I do sing loudly. I got about halfway through The Battle Hymn Of The Republic before the door behind the ‘customer service agent’ slammed open and a middle-aged man with ruddy cheeks came out from wherever they kept their ruddy-cheeked middle-aged supervisors, glancing around for a moment, taking in the line of half-laughing and half-angry fellow late-bill-payers and please-turn-on-my phoners before turning to face me with a loud, disapproving sniff.
“Is there a problem here, sir?”
Not wanting him to feel deprived, I finished the “sounding forth the trumpet” verse before interrupting my performance. I handed him my paperwork and my check, informed him that he was now almost an hour late for my 12:15pm appointment, and would he please process my paperwork and hand me my receipt. I further informed him that failing satisfaction, I was prepared to offer next a nice medley of Peter, Paul and Mary songs. Or perhaps a few hundred rounds of The Itsy-Bitsy Spider.
He actually ripped the receipt; he signed it so hard and fast. And I turned to walk out past the line of co-waiters, some laughing their keesters off and others glaring at me with looks that could definitely kill. I heard the whoosh-click as the supervisor disappeared once more into the back room.
And then it happened. It was the guy behind me in line who supplied the punch line, just as I started to push open the door to freedom.
“Are you gonna go get that guy back, or do I have to sing a song, too?”
Tonight, we went to a dinner hosted by MIT alumni for accepted students and their parents. It was a lovely evening with some really fun folks, good food, etc. And every parent there was feeling the immense relief of “my kid has this wonderful opportunity.”
Then, as we’re leaving the place, we see the collection of flashing lights, which turns out to be first responders taking care of a homeless guy passed out on the sidewalk. And I was struck by the contrast.
It wasn’t superiority I was feeling or on the other hand, any particular empathy. But a question that went through my mind. At some point, this guy and I were both kids in grade school, with our whole lives ahead of us. And I ended up with these daughters and this wife, while he ended up passed out (or worse) next to his grocery cart at the south end of Lake Union.
So, what could we do today, here and now, to help ensure the same opportunities for today’s third graders as have blessed my girls?
Today, I am a wealthy man. I found the Barnes and Noble gift card that I received for Christmas. Mary and I went down there and splurged on books with no redeeming social value. I bought four detective novels, one of my guilty pleasures when it comes to reading.
I’ve been reading a college text on the origins of music that Daughter One recommended. It’s a fine and interesting book, but not the sort of thing one reads through in a sitting or two. And I have on my nightstand a book of FDR’s speeches that I pick up every now and again. I enjoy constitutional case law, particularly reading the dissents on landmark decisions.But none of these things could fill out a steady diet.
For shear entertainment, I like novels. Detective novels, historical novels, sci fi, anything with dogs, the occasional love story, just about anything except romance novels. I enjoy being taken for a ride by an author who’s done a good job of imagining the setting and fleshing out the characters.
I really enjoy reading everything I can find by a particular author. I cruised through Mitchener and Uris years ago. I read Elie Wiesel whenever I find him. And of course, some books are so special, you read them again a few years later. The Color Purple was one of these.
A good book is a conversation between author and reader. And goodness knows I love to talk!
I can’t wait to curl up in bed tonight and let a new story unfold.
There’s an old growth tree in our yard. It’s a Douglas Fir, massive aroundthe base and reaching maybe ninety feet above the ground. It was probably too small to be of interest when this area was logged over in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, then large and stately enough to have been spared as an artifact when these houses were built in 1954.
Over the years, the various owners of this property have added to the tree inventory, planting more than they cut down, so that now our little third acre sports sixteen full-sized trees. But none so grand as the oldest one.
There isn’t a lot of old growth left in this area. The Big Fir that we climbed as kids to prove our manhood is still there and there's a really great example over by the old campus where Microsoft is now. One or two here and there in odd corners. A few along the lake front. And of course, ours.
Only it’s not really ours, is it? I mean, from the tree’s point of view, we’re just one chapter in the story that’s been unfolding for at least a hundred years and that may well go on for another hundred or more. It’s seen this area virgin, and then logged over, and painfully re-grown only to be cleared once again to build our houses.
This tree was growing twenty feet from where I’m now sitting when the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk and while my Dad was in the Navy. While I attended Mrs. Beagle’s kindergarten, the tree was right there, providing shade and shelter for birds uncounted. It stood just there while the astronauts took their first orbits and landed on the moon and while we fought an ungodly war in Indochina.
It was there waiting for us when we moved into this house and cleared the weeds from around its base. It stood there while the guy three owners ago built an airplane in the garage and when the owners before us went through their ugly divorce. And it watched over our girls as they grew.
If you’re waiting for some profound wrap-up to this piece, you’ll be waiting awhile. I just enjoy thinking about the life of this tree and what it’s seen in its time.
As we face the prospect of our second daughter going off into to the collegial great unknown, I find myself looking back at the days when we helped each of them through their first school “projects.”We never actually had to do the smelly volcano thing. Perhaps because where we live you can look out many windows and see a real volcano on a clear day. But there were plenty of projects over the years.
Mary sewed all sorts of things and I ‘helped’ build things.There were costumes and models and all manner of baked goods. Once, we even built a life-size pumpkin carriage for the high school production of Cinderella. When they were very young, our cooperation frequently amounted to the kid painting what the parents had built. I built a collapsible puppet theatre for Daughter One's 4th grade class and she painted it. Mary designed the ‘night sky’ for Daughter Two's room and Daughter Two helped paint it.
We helped Daughter One learn to sing and taught Daughter Two to pound nails. And now, Daughter One is a singer and Daughter Two is on her way to becoming an engineer. And at some point, the tables turned.
We still help with their school projects. Sort of.Daughter One practices for her directing class by explaining a show to me in technical terms and from the point of view of an actor, only dumbed down to reach my level of comprehension. And Daughter Two is the leader of her school robotics team. She and her friends designed and built a robot that will be in competition this weekend against teams from all over the state.And tonight, Mary and I spent the evening painting the team numbers on the cloth covers for the bumpers.
I have a love-hate relationship with my cell phone.
I like that I can call Mary from the store to ask if she prefers high pulp or low pulp and that in an emergency, I can reach people in a hurry. I’m thrilled that Daughter Two can check in before she leaves one place and when she gets to the next one.And it’s been critical a couple times when Daughter One had car or weather problems coming over the pass.
I do like that I can check e-mails while I’m sitting in a remote airport and that when I’m teaching, I can flip the phone open during breaks and check for urgent messages.
What I’m less sanguine about is the overabundance of applications included in the package. I’m never going to use most of them (when I need a photo, I use an actual camera, thank you) and they just muddy the waters. It takes me three tries to make a call because if you so much as breathe on the wrong key, you’re off and running to some website you’ve never heard of.
And you might note that I mentioned ‘check e-mails,’ and not ‘send e-mails.’ There’s a simple reason for this.In order to accommodate a screen size that’s still woefully inadequate for most of the apps, the keyboard has been reduced to a tiny minefield of wrong letters.I could no sooner type out a useful message on this keyboard with my sausage-shaped fumble fingers than I could fit my caboose into one of those clown chairs at a day care open house.
I swear I’m not a Luddite. I am in favor of technical progress. But my preference is for appliances that do one or two things well over pieces of hooha that do a hundred things half-baked.
I know this places me firmly in the geriatric gnome category. So be it. I think things should work.
I wish I had something profound to offer tonight. Something soothing or at least, life affirming. But frankly, the images of the earthquake off Honshu and the efforts to save the savable offer all the commentary that’s necessary.
People are at their best when responding to suffering. There are plenty of heroes tonight.
The wind storm today put the rain roof over the dog run to rest permanently. This would be the same rain roof that we were repairing when I tore up my shoulder back in December. The roof that has now twice in one season kited over into Barb’s yard next door, thankfully failing to do harm to her dog, Joy.
I am done with rain roofs for the dog run. Odin and Zoey have a killer insulated dog house and they sleep inside at night. They will not suffer from being unable to lay on a dry deck on a rainy day. They can lay in the dog house and remain quite toasty. Life goes on.
The neighbors to the West of us have workers on their roof with tarps. That can’t be good.Been there, done that, got the slicker.
Meanwhile, Daughter Two is on her way back from Washington and Lee. Can’t wait to hear her stories! And Daughter One called Mary a few minutes ago just to take a break from finals and chat for a few minutes.
Everyday happenings in the Briar Patch. You have a good night, too.
Daughter Two is clear on t’other side of the continent tonight, checking out – and being checked out by – one of her college choices. Mary and I both wish we could be flies on the wall but of course, this is our daughter’s time to spread her wings a bit.
For the first time in her educational journey, parents don’t count. We can’t check with other parents or talk to the teacher or volunteer to take tickets or call the lines. We’re spectators and I really expected this to be a tough thing to swallow.
The thing is, there’s nothing to swallow. This is the natural order of things and we’re thrilled to watch her take these steps. If ever a young person was prepared to mold her own existence, she’s the one.
So, to our daughter tonight, we send our best thoughts, our hopes and love, but that’s all we can offer. And that’s the way it should be.
We have to be up at 3:00am this morning to take our daughter to the airport. She’s going to Washington and Lee University for scholarship interviews.I say ‘this morning’ because it’s now 1:03am.
I could blame this insomnia on my cold, I suppose. But I think the truth has more to do with where she’s going.
I recall (how could a parent forget?) all the nights we spent up with one of our daughters, giving breathing treatments, soothing fears, reassuring them that day care, or first grade, or middleschool would be survivable.
Yeah, it might be the cold that’s keeping me up. But I can’t help reflecting that when your baby is at a crossroads, a Dad can’t help wishing he could be there to watch for traffic.
This evening, mid-munch, I made the bold proclamation that this was my last McDonalds’ meal until I’ve lost thirty pounds. It felt okay for a few minutes.
Now it just feels silly. Especially since I uttered this nonsense in front of both my wife and Daughter Two (the mean one).
Suddenly I understand what younger folks mean when they post “WTF” on Facebook.
Don’t be surprised and DO NOT point and laugh if my postings for the next few weeks – or months – seem a bit…I don’t know…abrupt.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of the crazies from the Westboro Baptist Church to protest military funerals. And they were right. Freedom of speech is not reserved for those with whom we agree.
This case should never have made it to the Supremes. Anyone with a modicum of sense and a dollup of knowledge of the U.S. Constitution would have figured out that suing the protesters was a doomed enterprise.
This is not to say that I agree with the yahoos from WBC. In fact, I rate them on a par with people who fly airplanes into skyscrapers. Like the Jihadists, these folks are driven by the twin evils of hatred and self-satisfaction that is so common among religious extremists.
But trying to curtail their right to speak is the wrong way to go. We can’t fight extremists by limiting our own civil liberties (doncha wish John Ashcroft and Bush Two had taken this advice?).
These hateful, idiotic woohoos don’t really expect to curtail patriotism or bring a halt to military funerals. They are interested solely in publicity. The best way – the only acceptable way – to fight them is to declare them irrelevant. Stop taking pictures of them, stop quoting them in the media, and for goodness’ sake, stop taking them to court.
I know this isn’t a particularly elegant post but sheesh, folks, can’t we just be satisfied to let these hateful wackos self-identify as the fringe element they are?
I stayed home sick today. I have a code id by doze. Which does not make me unique, I know. Lots and lots and lots of people had colds today and many of them had no choice but to go to work. Which I suppose makes me one of the fortunate ones.
Staying home for a cold is sort of a double score because you can still think well enough to enjoy your seasons of West Wing DVDs but not so well that you’re tempted to do any real work. The Zen of upper respiratory yuckiness is usually totally about relaxing and rolling with things. And the occasional moan reminds those around you that you are eminently worthy of their deepest sympathy.
It could and should have been the perfect sick day. Except that I ruined it. I kept my physical therapy appointment.
I know, I know. What was I thinking?
In keeping with macho tradition, not only did I keep the appointment, but I refrained from allowing the PT guy Josh to see that his ministrations actually hurt me. Make no mistake – Josh knew I was struggling to keep from crying out. I knew that Josh knew. And Josh knew that I knew that…what the hell. You don’t let another guy see your pain.
Here’s the rub: it hurt like hell. Not like medieval torture, I’m sure. The rack must surely have been unpleasant. And I’ve no doubt that drawing and quartering could leave an impression. I’m not claiming samurai-worthy forbearance here.
On the other hand, I’ve passed kidney stones, had a gall bladder removed, and broken enough bones for a good sitcom gag. I’ve seen suffering and felt suffering and I’ve had the experience of wondering if it wouldn’t be the smart thing to just give up and die.
But today, good ol’ Josh taught me another level of pain. Not only that, but he expects me to repeat twice a day at home and work for the shear joy of suffering. And being the macho oh-yeah-just-watch-me kind of idiot that I am, I’ll do it.
Which never would have been necessary if I’d just taken advantage of the cold and begged off the PT appointment.
I’m an idiot. I screwed up a perfectly good stay home sick day.
In an earlier posting, I said that I’d seen “Waiting for Superman” on a plane and that it was a transformative experience. It was, but perhaps not in the way the producers might have hoped.
For those of you who’ve not seen this movie, it’s a documentary that purports to expose some of the big problems with our system of public education.I believe it’s fair to say that the producers’ message is that many, perhaps most, of the problems with education in American come back one way or another to the fact that teachers’ unions too frequently prevent school districts from promoting excellence and shedding mediocrity.
Of course, I’ve also heard in other venues the argument that teachers are limited in what they can do with a kid who’s not encouraged to learn in the home environment. And that the lack of effective discipline in school too often makes the job of teaching an exercise in self-defense.
The only thing I can say for sure is that a lot of the arguments surrounding this issue seem to shed more heat than light. My own daughters have had a stellar experience, with mostly dedicated, gifted educators who clearly cared deeply about outcomes for their students. Of course, they were in a ‘gifted’ program and once you’re identified as a ‘smart kid’ and placed in one of these special programs (segregated, not pull-out or enrichment), the skids are sort of greased for you.
Make no mistake – our girls worked their patoots off for twelve years. And we are SO proud of their accomplishments. But to be fair, they also had access to learning resources that few other public school students enjoy, even in this, the top public school district in the country if Newsweek is to be believed.
Our public schools – ALL of our public schools – should be temples of learning. Our teachers should be highly honored members of an esteemed profession. And parents should be involved in their children’s lives, including or even especially their intellectual lives. I may have to write a separate post on that one, but for now I’ll just leave it at that.
We are at a crossroads in America. We are just now being forced to face the fact that we’re slipping in terms of our educational outcomes as compared to the other ‘developed’ countries. At the same time, we’re facing budget crises nationally and in almost every state and municipality.
Politicians of all stripes are drawing lines in the sand. It seems we’ve become more about blaming than accepting responsibility. And in my state, I keep seeing ever-deeper cuts to education funding.
One might say that with my own daughters exiting the system, I don’t have a stake in future education funding because my children are done with the system. But I would suggest that we all have a vital stake in every kid’s education. Not because of what a left-behind kid might do. Because of what we might otherwise never know they could have done.
I don’t know the answer to questions of nature vs. nurture or union vs. non-union. I’m not certain I even care about those questions. I do care about all our kids having the same opportunities my kids have had. Because I’ve seen what excellent teaching and caring encouragement at home can do.
I teach adults for a living. I’m not part of any school district and I don’t have the degrees my siblings have earned. But I have a wealth of business experience and my experience tells me that if you don’t provide the needed resources, no amount of managerial expertise or inspiration or caring will get you to the worthiest goals.
I will never be asked to sit on a blue ribbon panel on education. My sole vote is as a taxpayer. And my vote is that education should be first-funded and last cut. Put the resources in place and then let’s talk about how to deploy them. Surely, we can do better and the first step down that road is sending the clear, affirmative signal that education matters.
Of course, we can’t fix our system of education merely by throwing money at it. But without funding, we can’t fix it at all.
