I-Phone -vs- Swiss Army Knife, the demise of the self reliant

Growing up I had a few lessons pounded into me by my father; Don’t race a snow storm, Do love/ fear your wife, Don’t be a follower, Do buy “good” jewelry, and lastly Don’t leave the house without your wallet, socks, belt, hanky, and knife.  It was the 80’s so thanks to Don Johnson (sp?) and the rest of the Miami Vice cast, a belt and socks were not always a given, but oddly pastels were.  I really don’t know how the teachers were able to work in a class room where men didn’t were socks with leather shoes…..the smell must have been bad.

Today thanks to my expanding waist, a belt is a requirement, and shoes just feel better with socks.  A wallet is second nature for most adults.  The hanky is very useful but gone are the days of offering it to a damsel in distress.  Remember people you wash them after using and don’t offer them after they are used….none the less my wife will not accept one from me.  Carrying a knife has gone from a social and parental imperative, to an act of terror.  Now in the morning I have to plan out where I’m going and determine if a knife is “ok.”  Let’s pars this out.

First of all I’m not talking “Crocodile Dundee” knife, I’m talking Swiss army knife or similar.  Where would McGeiver be in today’s world if that good old Swiss he carried was confiscated in a governmental building?  More importantly how could he travel the world and thwart the bad guys if the knife was stolen from his checked luggage?

Second, these knives are not illegal.  Walk into Wal-Mart or Target and you can buy one (in PA you can do that for a shotgun too, but that’s another story)

Third, a knife is maybe the simplest and most useful tool you can carry, and a small Leatherman or Swiss knife can be so useful.  It always amazes me that we have “apps for that” and try to build functionality into our gadgets, but at the same time make the first “super gadget” the Swiss knife a villainous tool of treachery.  Good luck using your Apple phone to fix those glasses, cut that fruit, or remove that cork, even after you used the app.

Fourth, once people know you carry a knife regularly they want to borrow it, most don’t carry their own but like to have one accessible.

Fifth, a news article never written. “Youth uses Swiss army knife to rob bank” or “mass causality event due to Swiss army knife rampage”

We could go on here.  I think it’s a shame that we are allowing a few extremist folks who do bad things to alter our daily lives so drastically.  I have given my son a Swiss knife, but it lives in my dresser where he has to ask for it.  It kills me to do this.  I carried my knife to school, gave it to teachers who needed it….wore it on the outside of my scout uniform.  If my son did the same he would be expelled.  Not expelled because he threatened someone with it, or carved his name into a desk.  Just for the possession of it. 

We are living in a world where teaching kids to me prepared and self reliant doesn’t mean using your Swiss knife to fix the broken zipper, but using your cell phone to look up the app or calling mom.  What happens when the batteries die?  Who is more dangerous, a kids with a pocket knife he can use or a kid who can hack into someone’s Face book account? 

Bad guys will still be there, shit will happen, technology will allow guns to go through metal detectors, and bombs will blow stuff up.  All of those are bad terrible things. But they will happen.  When it does, who will be more useful to have around, the person with the useless cell phone, or the guy with a Swiss knife and some sense how to get stuff done?  Give me a call if you ever see Bear Grills pull out a cell phone.

Large Purse Causes Heart Attack

Had occasion to spend an evening out with my wife.  It’s a rare thing, as any of you fellow “breeders” know kids cramp a social calendar.  What was ever more special about the time out is that we were in a bar that didn’t have random yard sale stuff nailed to the wall.  It was a nice time.  We did our share of people watching and made a game out of trying to figure out who was with who in a cool little jazz bar attached to our hotel.  Two items from that bar are worth mentioning: 1. It was trendy enough to make it hard to determine who was coupled with who, 2. Women are into carrying huge purses.

Since its impossible to discuss the first without a picture….bare with me while I vent on the second.

I’m a guy who has a wallet, it has all I need for whatever contingency.  Often, I’ll strip this down to a money clip….ID, Cash, Credit card, Health Insurance card.  Other than keys and a pocket knife (future post) what more do you need?  Ok a cell phone, hanky, pen and eye glass case.  All of this fits nicely into the pockets of men. Relax ladies I know the story, already you are mouthing the words “women don’t have/ use pockets.”   Ok, find the above mentioned items, add in the travel face makeup, subtract the knife, and substitute tissues for the hanky (I have never had a woman hand me a knife or a hanky from a purse) and look at the size of the pile….now look at the purse.  What else is in there?  Do you need it?  Can you find what you need quickly?  Really, I mean as fast as I can pull it out of my pocket? Doubt it on all counts if the purse fits the trends I saw out over the weekend.

Why do I care……..beyond the “Small personal item”, issue when on the airplane, your purse impacts my life.  And no, it’s not because I appreciate the fashion aspects.

On returning to reality after our night out turns out the kids and my wife’s colds had gotten worst.  Chicken soup to the rescue! I hit ShopRite at 8 am Sunday, race through for the ingredients for scratch soup, and make it to the checkout in 15 minutes.  Now I’m stopped cold.  I have to choose a line, the self checkout is down….choosing the right line is critical to my sanity, after all my families health depends on this soup.  So first look for a cashier who is bright eyed and sharply typing codes.  Second avoid the older lady with the purse over her arm and the coupon folder in her hand.  Third, find a guy who looks like he is trying to do the same thing as me, fourth avoid the woman with the large handbag.

In Philly, 8 am on a Sunday is the first time the sale papers are in effect, and the stores are packed with the “older lady with a coupon folder types” I was the only solo man there. The lines were packed so I had to triage out my choices and chose a 30 something woman, casually perusing a magazine while the cashier did her best…..I did not see the purse until it was too late.  So I watched as the cashier ran the order over the scanner and the woman reviewed the magazine, I watched as the woman continued to read the magazine as the cashier bagged the food.  By now by blood pressure is ridiculous, but I’m boxed in…..food already on the counter, ATM card out and in my hand, I’m stuck!  At this point the woman heaves a purse the size of a large diaper bag onto the counter and begins rummaging for her wallet.  After an eternity she surfaces with one of those wallet/ check book things. 

My heart sank, a check? Really, a check? Instead of rifling through the lost world in the purse and producing the check while the cashier is working, the world must continue to wait while you fill out the check, and then the ledger!  “Maybe she will take the receipt and balance it in her car,” I foolishly thought.  Nope, resting the ledger on her purse, purse on the counter, I watched her carry the one and balance the book.  Then she had to fold the ledger, snap the wallet, and careful reinsert to the purse, re heave the purse into the cart and then begin to get out of the way…..

I lost 15 minutes of my life, waiting for someone to pay a bill in part due to inconsideration, and part due to the purse.  I figure I lost an additional 45 minutes of total life span and added 7 grey hairs, a high price for fashion!

I know there are a lot of generalities in this story, I know there are exceptions.  This is not the first time this has occurred, I’m sure it has occurred to you.  However I have never had to wait for a man to rifle through the purse, nor fill out a check.  And those magazines put all that men are interested in on the front cover.  When was the last time “Field and Steam” or “Sports Illustrated” was in the checkout line?  I would be willing to pay 5 percent more for a men only checkout, no checks, no purses, no small talk, thank you.  Soup Nazis style, credit card or cash out, type in the frequent shopper number move through the line, bag your food, mess up and lose your line privileges.  I think if retailers ever realize men hate shopping and really hate having to wait for someone to take your money, they would capitalize on the niche.

If I lose 45 minutes of life due to stress induction, every time I shop, I’m doomed to never see it.

The Last Calorie

Have you ever thought about how distinctly different a hardboiled egg tastes when compared to a fried egg?  Same ingredients (Assuming you didn’t use oil) but distinct tastes.  Eggs are good and there are millions of ways to eat them. My favorite hands down is purple pickled, with red beats.  Just in the realm of breakfast there are a few methods.  My 4 year old maintains 5 distinct breakfast egg varieties.  Dippy (over easy), scrambled, almost yellow, almost white, and 50/50.  The first two are standard for most folks. “Almost white” is scrambled but we changed the name so he would eat it and it stuck. “Almost yellow” is pan scrambled, so crack the egg and fry mixing in the yolk.  This brings us to “50/50”.

A “50/50” egg is made by separating the yolk from the white, adding the white to half the pan, then breaking the yolk add it to the other half and cook without mixing.  The end result looks like a derivative of a yin and yang symbol.  My 4 year old did not invent these egg types, my wife and I were driven to be creative by a kid who is finicky at times and by a need not to cater to him too much.  So if the family eats eggs everyone eats eggs, you just get to pick your style.

The writers for 1960’s TV shows obviously didn’t have a 4 year old.  If they did they would know that kids don’t just wake up, stroll into the kitchen and eat whatever mom is cooking.  (Bacon is an exception, you have to be pretty hard core not to want bacon.)  My wife will wake up, hit the kitchen and make homemade pancakes with sprinkles (funcakes) but if Porter doesn’t like the sprinkle color he will not eat them.  (We have at least 7 distinct types of sprinkles). We know the mornings are a crap shoot, but we keep trying to figure him out, someday we will guess right, and the world will end, rapture.

Why am I thinking about eggs?  Its 10 PM and I’m just rolling home after a long day in the office,  worked through lunch, subsided on black coffee, adrenaline, and bile.  Usually I wake up, kiss the wife and kids and leave for the day.  But this day Porter rejected his 50/50 egg and asked for an “Almost Yellow” egg just as I was walking out the door.  So I grabbed the cold 50/50 egg and ate it.  That egg ended up being the only calories I ingested for 16 hours.  So I’m likely thinking of eggs now because my blood sugar is way below standards.  I’m sure there is a moral here but the blood sugar is too low to pin it, so I will leave it up to you.  Vote at the bottom of the Blog Page. Way down there.....

Parental Upgrades, Lego Style

The other day my son asked me for help building a castle with Lego’s, not to be over shadowed, his younger brother said “me too, Daddy.”  Sitting on the floor I realized a couple of things, no way could I build two castles, no way would they share one, and to make anything I would have to dump the 35 gallon bin of Lego’s.  Dumping the Lego’s is a commitment, once dumped you are all in and will eventually have to pick them all up. 

6 hours later, the kids are in bed, and I have my castle.  Keep with trap door, working draw bridge, armory….King Author would be proud.  Prior to bedtime, my older son showed me his castle; it was simple but well defended.  Security cameras, missile systems, flying attack cars, the works.  I realized that in my son’s eyes my castle was lame because I failed to add any missiles, guns, or flying cars, King Author be damned.  I contemplated having a discussion about historical accuracy with him….and quickly gave it up and began adding “cool” weapons technology to my castle.

In the morning the kids attacked the castle, and loved it.  I got hi marks for the “coolness.” I’m sure by the time I get home it will be even cooler with every weapon in the Lego box stuck to it.

As a parent you are out dated from the moment your kids understand media.  We try to stay current, cell phone, IM, Facebook, cunzo pets, pokemon, bakugon….but it is impossible.  We are destine to lose cool as time goes on.  They still need us for money, food, and the like but eventually we will stop getting the cool add-ons and become the Lego castle. Then we have to ask them how to work something. I think this is why parents relish the idea of grandchildren, because for awhile, you are cool again.  

All Things Porterhouse

The other day was an insanely crappy day in the office.  Nothing going right, problems multiplying, and staff just shy of mutiny.  I am sure many of you have those days.  While banging my head on the desk, I got a phone call.  Expecting some fairly standard husband wife coordination, I answered the call as much to escape the day as to help determine what was for dinner that evening.

I was surprised when my 4 year old was on the other end, “Hi Daddy” and then a torrent of excited words followed as he unloaded what sounded like the details of two distinct stories twisted together, seasoned with a little free association.  If you have kids that are between 3 and 5 you have witnessed this.  Its as if their mouths can’t keep up with their minds, and half the mind wants to tell you something while the other half wants to run around in circles chasing a ball.  You kind of have to aim for the nouns and build your own story as you listen.  As long as you are not in a hurry, or the story doesn’t involve a big brother impaled by the toy, its cute and entertaining to watch and listen….for me it was a great cure for the day.

My 4 year old is named Porter.  The name was one of two on the list we had, and upon meeting him we new he was a Porter.  In my family the only people that get called their real name are outsiders. Everyone has a nickname even my mother, who a long time ago went from mom to “M.”  Porter lends itself to a few choice nicknames, we tend to call him Port, and Porterhouse.

This was the root source of the phone call.  While helping shop for groceries Porter discovered that Shoprite sells a meat called “Porterhouse.”  For you and I this is a steak of beef, for Porter it was a whole new meat.  A meat that shared his name.

At home that evening I asked him about the meat. “Do you think you will like it?” “I don’t know Daddy I have never tried it yet” fair enough I thought.  “Porter, what kind of meat is it?” “Daddy its Porterhouse meat.” I asked what porterhouse meat comes from, and stumped him.  So then I asked if he thought that it was made from other boys named Porterhouse.  Porter was certain the meat did not come from other boys named Porter, because he is the only Porter he knows.  At this point the big brother stepped in and told Porter the meat was beef, from a cow.  But I had one more question, “Porter do you think we named you after the meat or is the meat named after you.” Here porter surprised me and said he thought we named him after the meat, and he was proud of that. 

I’m sure that at some point in the future he will remind me of that, “Well, you named me after a slab of beef, what did you expect!” but for the short term it was a great way to end the day.   A year ago I could have told him the meat was made from other kids named Porter and he would have believed, it is nice to see them grow, even if it does take a little of the fun out of teasing them. 

In the Mirror, Kids

Children are a reflection of you.  It is an easy concept to maintain when the kid is slugging homers in little league or reading circles around his contemporaries in school, however when something less than perfect occurs it is easy to forget.  Theories abound about features mom nature built into kids to help insure parental involvement.  The idea is odd to most of us, the vast majority of parents can’t imagine not caring for the kids, however people do, and many other animals just walk away.  So scientist study what about kids triggers humans into caring for these little bundles, despite the gigantic commitment in time, and resources.  Babies smell good, they are cute, you can dress them however you like, they are portable, eventually they toddle, mash together words, hug, smile, carry your genetics……and a million other things, each of which triggers something in the parent that makes us forget the vomit, snot and other traumas.  Without this the human species would have even more trouble surviving.

Show a baby picture to someone and they will say “oh he’s cute, looks like his mom spit him out” besides the obvious “ well yeah she kind of did, duh!” it’s interesting to see how people relate to kids by the same reflective properties that fill you with pride at the baseball game.  Positive traits are easy, what about the stubbornness, imperfect smile, or recessive knuckle hair?  Here we have another tendency. Married or not, each owes 50 percent of his genetic stuff to each parent, so we blame the other parent, “your just as thickheaded as your father!” Next time you are about to say that, remember that we are who we are because of our genetics and how we were raised, not much choice there, but we do get to choose who we procreate with.

So the next time your wife gives you the Fisheye (the look that says “this is your fault”) when junior farts at dinner or picks his nose in church, remind her that she picked you as a partner, and therefore it is all her fault.  

This action is ill advised at best, and may lead to activities that keep you from procreating again, so you have been warned.  

Saving by Attrition

Did the annual holiday shopping mission today.  1 day, 4 malls, and 4 thousand people between me and where I wanted to be at any given moment.  All in all the day wasn’t too bad, my wife let me catch the last quarter of the hockey game at the bar in the mall and we got most of what we needed to do done.  When it comes to malls I like to treat them like band aids, and think the best way is fast in and fast out. 

Throughout the day the cashier would ring up the purchase, then proudly look at the receipt and tell me how much money I saved.  The savvy guys would use my name “ you saved 25 dollars by shopping with us today Jim.”  Wow on a first name basis already.  This wouldn’t bother me so much in a local store where you know the proprietor and staff because you’re a regular.  This however is not the case in the mall, I’m not a regular and the cashier will not be there after school starts up again. At one point I asked the cashier after he so proudly told me how much I saved, why it was that although I saved those 25 dollars, I had to spend 200 dollars to do it. “That’s some bad accounting,” I said…..the kid just looked at me puzzled and waited for me to leave.  Which I did of course but not before I thanked him….so maybe I just gave him the positive reinforcement he needed to continue telling people how much they saved although they lost money.

Malls must be opium for sociologists.  You can study every segment of the lower middle to upper middle class by just sitting on a bench.  Today I found myself wondering who has studied traffic patterns in malls, turns out there is a company call ShopperTrak who does just that. I’m sure there are scads of companies who do similar work.  Seems to me though that they have all failed.  People still stop in the middle of crowded passage ways, gather in groups hindering flow, and walk looking over a shoulder so they swerve about…..those are the worst the un-passables.

So although I’m head and shoulders above the masses, I’m still looking up at the sunlight as if underwater, through the glass of the malls skylight.

Underwater and Loving it....I think

Here I am underwater, looking up at the shimmering light above, wondering what it’s like for folks who don’t spend as much time submerged as I do.  I’m not a diver, nor do I clean aquariums big enough to swim in, but I do spend most of my time in the “Deep End” of the life pool.  Strangely when the stress abates and I’m breathing freely on the surface I find myself looking for something to weigh me back down.  So I’m either a metaphorical fish, a glutton for punishment, or simply a stress freak. 

I have been pondering this Blog for some time now, reading a blog of a friend finally pushed me out of the ponder and into action.  Please have patience for the sight, its not ever going to be too pretty.  But it will have what I hope are some interesting thoughts.

You can read into the title of this thing all you like, most is likely true.  I have an aquarium, I fish, I am an armature photographer, my work is centered in water resources, hell I have even received “the fish eye” from people who thought I was up to something.

I find myself looking for the stresses in life a lot.  A few people in my life do the exact opposite, they don’t seem to be concerned about the “worry” the “what if” contingency planning for them is something to start after an event.  Those people drive me crazy, partially with jealously but mostly with the frustration that their lack of forethought rarely impacts them as much as it does me. And so begins the thought process fondly referred to as the death spiral.

Stress kills, I know it.  However, it can be the beginnings of achievement.  Every time you make it up for a breath, it’s a minor victory.  Relish it.