Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Cart games

So I was leaving the grocery store the other day, pushing my cart toward my car. A large gust of wind came through, sending a rogue grocery cart out into the middle of the lot. Two guys in front of me, walking toward their car, deftly sidestepped the cart and continued to their vehicle.
Common courtesy, I decided, was dying again. While you may not think grocery carts are the great social barometer, I think they are. And if you doubt me, think of this: If it were not true, why would it be in print in a newspaper? Game, set, match, checkmate.
But allow me to explain. You see, grocery cart courtesy is one of the most basic things you can do. You get a cart, you use a cart, you return a cart. Seems simple. But when common courtesy begins to break down, the process, too, starts to crumble, mainly in the third step: the return.
And let me just spell it right out for you: If you find me a legitimate reason to voluntarily abandon your cart in the unoccupied parking place next to your car, I will give you $1 million. (Editor’s note: No, he won’t.) And the reason I am making such a bold offer is that there is NEVER a reason to voluntarily leave your cart in the parking space next to yours, only to either block someone trying to park or dare someone to try and gently nudge it out of the way with their bumper, which is a bad idea all around, but yet people still feel the need to try, never mind they have zero ability to steer and will undoubtedly send the cart crashing into the Nissan Sentra parked nearby. (I will now allow for everyone to catch their breath from that sentence.)
Some of you may think this is not that big of a deal. Guess what? You’re wrong. It’s a huge deal. Because it symbolizes something: Abandoning your cart shows that you don’t give a lick about what inconveniences other people. You don’t care about the car that may get dinged when a wind gust sends the rogue cart reeling. You don’t care about the driver who has to keep circling the lot because your abandoned cart is taking up a parking place. You don’t care about the kid out there having to go to all ends of the parking lot because you can’t wheel the cart over to the corral. In short, it’s just plain rude.
And when you see a cart go rolling to the middle of the road, blocking cars and creating a hazard, when you merely step around it, well, you’re all the things the person who abandoned it are and then a little more.
I know you probably think I am being a wee bit sensitive about this. After all, you are probably saying, aren’t there other things you could worry about? To which I say this: Won’t you think of the children? I am not sure how carts affect children, but I am sure there is a link, and I will not sit idly by while you allow a generation to disintegrate.
So anyhow, back to the parking lot the other day. Because I am not a big fan of being beaten up in a parking lot, I did not say anything to the two guys who walked around the cart. (For what it’s worth, I have never been beaten up in a parking lot, but I pretty well guess I wouldn’t like it. I’ve never been gored by a bull, but I feel confident saying I am not a fan of it.) Instead, I took the wayward cart and pushed it along with mine, forming a mini-herd. I noticed one of the guys looked over his shoulder and saw me grab the cart. While it is possible that he had a twinge of guilt over not having moved the cart, I think it is far more likely that he was thinking, “Say something, sweater-boy. We haven’t beaten someone in a parking lot in days.”
I find myself doing this on occasion. (Not the nearly getting beaten up in a parking lot part.) Whenever I am at the store, if someone has left a cart sitting in an open space, in the middle of the road, on top of another car, etc., I bring it back in. And, whenever I take a cart out to the car, I make sure it’s put in the corral. If I have the kids and a race car cart, I make a point of getting it back inside the store, lest an unexpected rain come up and some poor unsuspecting parent, thinking they had reached the home base of the race car cart, plop their kid in, only to hear a splash. Then, one of two things will happen: (1) The child will be very unhappy with your decision to place him in a puddle and loudly pronounce your unsatisfactory parenting or (2) he will be thrilled and, before you can get him out, he will have played patty-cake with the puddle, splashing everything within a 10-foot radius.
But again, I digress. Truth be told, for the most part, folks do fall on the courteous side. I guess I shouldn’t let these two guys sour my view on the world. I mean, if you think about it, there are usually way more carts in the proper place than out roaming free in the parking lot. Why focus on the few who don’t play by the rules? I should acknowledge the people who do the right thing. And I should do it for the children.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Stick it to it

Once again, we have suffered a problem with our heating unit. We often have problems with our heating/air conditioning, because the unit was manufactured in 1642, and the mules used to power it are difficult to replace.
This time, the unit had decided to form a nice bank of ice all around the bottom of it. And, when I peered down in the unit, just beneath the fan, I saw a nice thick sheet of ice. Several people told me that ice will often form on heating units during the winter. I informed them that while that may be true, rarely did entire ice ages descend on the units.
In addition to the ice, I noticed that if you stood about three feet from the unit, you could feel the ground vibrating. A lot. When I asked a neighbor to come check it out, he looked at me and said, “That’s not normal.”
Clearly, bad things were happening. My first thought was that at any moment, this thing could explode. I find it interesting how rarely things in the world explode, yet how we are always living in fear of that. Perhaps a little too much TV.
Anyhow, so I did what any sensible human would do, which was to head to the Internet. And no, I did not go to the Internet looking for home repair advice. The Internet, in all its usefulness, is also chock full of things that are designed to either terrorize or injure. If you look for medical advice, you will self-diagnose yourself with every disease known. If you use it for home repair, you will electrocute yourself. And then imagine the vicious cycle if you use the Internet to cure your electrocution.
But I digress.
I used the Internet to find the phone number of a college buddy, Lee, who works with HVAC units and can tell me quick-fix solutions (“OK, have you turned the unit ON?”)
I told him the deal, and he immediately showed why he is the ace when it comes to high-tech repairs. “See if you can turn the fan with a stick.”
Apparently, despite all of the super cool tools and gadgets they may have, the first go-to tool they employ is ... a stick.
Somewhat concerned I was being set up for some hilarious hidden camera show — “Coming up next on Fox’s ‘Wildest Limb Separations’...” I slowly moved the stick over toward the fan. I did a double take over my shoulder to see if I could catch a glimpse of the Fox camera guy. No luck.
I stuck the stick in and gave the fan a shove. Nothing.
“OK, it didn’t do anything. Including cut off my arm at the elbow.”
There was a brief, understandable pause. He then explained to me that a heating unit does in fact often freeze up, and that there was a defrosting mode that ... you know what — never mind. It was broken. Let’s just leave it at that.
I went in and told my wife what the problem was. Without hesitation, I gave her a breakdown of how a unit works, and what our problem was. She stared at me with the most precious look. It was like her little illiterate child had finally learned to read. I think a tear actually welled up in her eye. I then added, “It’s not like I figured any of this out. I called Lee. He told me what the problem was.”
So I called our home warranty folks, because if there is one thing you want on top of the headache of dealing with heating on the fritz, it’s the headache of dealing with the home warranty company. When I reached their recording, which uses voice recognition to select menu times, I used my usual three-prong approach.
1. Say “OPERATOR” at the first chance you get. If that doesn’t work...
2. Say “Transfer.” If that doesn’t work...
3. Say “Mr. Peabody.” Or “Grape Ape.” Or “Quick Draw McGraw.” Really most any cartoon character will work. The point is if “operator” or “transfer” aren’t programmed to lead you to a human (or at least the closest thing they could hire to work that shift), random words often cause the system to say, “You know what? Let the working stiff handle it. I’m going to go process some numbers or something.” (NOTE: If there is a Mr. Peabody working for the company, this could backfire, so be prepared to bail.)
With this particular company, I know to skip right to number 2. In a few seconds, I was talking to a real human. I know this because there are few cyborgs or lower primates that smack gum on the phone. Despite that, she was able to get a work order opened in the system quite quickly.
The next morning, the heating repair guy came out. He looked at the unit, knelt down beside it and immediately reached for — you guessed it — a stick. I glanced around for cameramen. Nothing. Guess it is, in fact, a legitimate HVAC repair tool.
In short order, using his magic stick, he determined that the fan motor was dead, and that was the reason for the freezing. He replaced the motor, and in no time had it purring away.
I am sure that it will just be a matter of time until our unit does something else to need repair. At least the next time something goes wrong, I’ll know exactly what to do — I’ll poke it with a stick.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Pane pain

So I was snoozing quite fine when I was awakened by a 6-year-old saying, “Daddy, come quick. It’s awful.”
Now, I did not immediately panic, because a 6-year-old’s version of “awful” can be far different than mine. “Awful” could mean that the red marker is out of ink. “How awful?” I asked, expecting her to tell me about how the Barbie’s arms had been removed.
“Parker kicked out a window and cut his foot.”
Oh, THAT awful. Gotcha. Time to get up.
Turns out, Parker had decided he was not going to sit in the back of the police car and ... oh, wait. That’s not it.
We were at my in-laws’ house in Atlanta, and for some reason I had gotten the good fortune of getting to sleep in that morning. The kids were playing on the ground, and Parker swung around, planting his bare foot squarely in the middle of a window, breaking the pane and putting a nice slice down the back of his foot.
When I came to see him, Parker came sprinting to me. “DADDY!!! LOOK!!!” Wounds are very cool to him.
My wife had already dealt with the bloody foot and cordoned off the crime scene. Fortunately, the cut was more of a scrape, which was a pretty impressive accomplishment seeing as how he had just roundhoused a pane of glass. Glass was everywhere, and I began the process of carefully removing the shards from the pane and cleaning up the glass that was all over the carpet.
After assessing the damage, my father-in-law and I decided that we could easily fix this ourselves. Actually, he decided that. I nodded and kinda laughed nervously, thinking back to the time when the two of us tried to fix a faucet at their house and managed to shut off all water to the house for about eight hours.
But I am not one to turn away a challenge, especially when the challenge is in the form of a gaping hole courtesy of my offspring. My father-in-law took us to a hardware store near his house. It was far from the mega-home improvement stores. It was a large store, but in more of the old fashioned style. My grandfather used to own a hardware store, and I loved to spend time roaming the aisles, finding different oddball items they stocked. While Lowe’s and Home Improvement may bring a sense of quick and easy order, there is something special (and nostalgic, for some of us) about roaming the aisles of a good old fashioned hardware store.
We made our way back to the cutting area, where pretty much any type of material you needed cut was for sale. We gave the guy the measurements, and I then produced a broken shard of glass. “And it’s this thick,” I said, holding up the glass like it was a prison shiv.
“Uh, it’s a window pane, right?” he asked.
“Yes...” I responded.
“Then it’s window-pane thickness. You don’t need that.”
Very good, then.
When the glass was cut, we headed back home with some window glaze and a putty knife, ready to tackle the job. The first order of business was for everyone to assume their positions. Parker – look for bugs. Father-in-law – Guard Parker. Women – head out shopping.
Now before you assume that I am being a chauvinist, let me assure that (a) they had been planning on going shopping before the window incident and (b) encouraging them to go ahead and take part in their trip was a good idea, because they would not be there to lecture me when I announced, “I broke the glass.” (I actually announced it with a few more words than that, words I’m not proud of, but I think most of you can understand.)
Turns out, we had measured just a smidge off, and the glass didn’t QUITE fit into the space allotted. Using a chisel, I tried to knock off a little of the window sill, and had gotten it almost securely in place, save for one little spot. It was at that point that my brain went out for a coffee break because, rather than chiseling away a little more, I decided I would see if glass was bendy. Guess what – it’s not.
The good news was that I was wearing gloves and the glass didn’t shatter, but was rather in two large pieces. I told my father-in-law to continue guarding Parker, while I made another run to the hardware store. When I walked in, the guy who had cut the glass the first time saw me standing there and shook his head. “I think I need about 1/16” less this time.” He asked me if he had cut it wrong. I assured him he had, in fact, cut it exactly how we had asked. A few moments later, he handed me a second pane. On it was a note that he told me to show to the cashier: “No charge.”
I looked at him and started to protest, as I had been the idiot who broke the glass. “Ah, I can get some more pieces out of the broken one. Just don’t break this one.”
Sure enough, this one fit snug as could be. I applied the glaze, and in no time, the window was secure. The whole thing was an unfortunate accident, and I am thankful that Parker was not seriously hurt. The whole thing did scare the tar out of him, which is probably a good thing. In retrospect, the whole incident serves as a valuable lesson – don’t sleep in. It will be awful.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Cell out

So I got a call yesterday from someone who was concerned about an issue that has upset people for years – people talking on cell phones.
As a business owner, she was telling me how on numerous occasions, she would think she was having a conversation with a customer, only to realize that the person was, in fact, talking on a cell phone – usually one of those cyborg-looking earpieces that blinks blue and scares children. Those conversations are never fun and usually go something like this:
HER: Hi, can I help you find anything?
CYBORG: And some spaghetti sauce.
HER: Uh, we don’t sell that here.
CYBORG: Detention? For what?
HER: Uh, I...uh...didn’t...give you detention.
CYBORG: OK, love you too.

After a while, it became clear that the issue is not cell phones. It’s people who don’t know the proper way to use cell phones. A lot of folks get upset whenever someone is using a cell phone. That’s silly. Cell phones are quite functional, and if you can adhere to a few basic issues of courtesy and behavior not reserved for feral cats, I think we can all agree that cell phones can be used in a positive manner. So let me put forth what is acceptable and unacceptable with cell phones:

ACCEPTABLE:
Using them in a grocery store to call home and clarify what to get. For some reason, this really annoys some people. You know what I find annoying? Driving BACK to the store because I got baking powder instead of baking soda.
UNACCEPTABLE:
Using them in a grocery store to have a fight with your boyfriend, set up a doctor’s appointment, yell at your housekeeper, tell your friend about your other friend’s recent diagnosis, etc.

ACCEPTABLE:
Having a conversation when you are dining alone.
UNACCEPTABLE:
Having a conversation when you are dining alone that is louder than an Aerosmith concert.

ACCEPTABLE:
Using a phone in your car, if you are using a hands-free device or are pulled off on the side of the road.
UNACCEPTABLE:
Using your phone in your car while also shaving, ironing your shirt and making waffles on your cigarette-lighter powered waffle maker (which was a bad idea to start with).

ACCEPTABLE:
Taking a call at the ballgame from a friend who just saw you on TV.
UNACCEPTABLE:
Taking a call at the ballgame from your bookie, and then explaining that you just need a few more days and that keeping your knees intact would be very helpful in collecting the needed money.

ACCEPTABLE:
Calling your wife to let her know you are on your way home from work.
UNACCEPTABLE:
Calling your wife to let her know that Happy Hour has been extended and that you hoped the twins’ viral infection was clearing up.

ACCEPTABLE:
Placing a call to emergency responders when you have had car trouble.
UNACCEPTABLE:
Placing a call to emergency responders because your phone’s address book contains a grand total of zero names, and sometimes you just need someone to talk to, and the nice bagboy at the grocery store said he really had to get back to work.

ACCEPTABLE:
Having your phone set on vibrate and excusing yourself from a movie theater to take an important call.
UNACCEPTABLE:
Confusing “important call” with “call from your friend who just HAS to tell you that the funny episode of ‘Seinfeld’ – you know the one with the rye bread – is on, and that TOTALLY is how Todd would have acted, too!”

ACCEPTABLE:
Having a distinctive ring tone.
UNACCEPTABLE:
Having a ring tone that sounds like a cat clawing glass.

I hope we can all agree that these guidelines will restore civility in our cell phone world. Cell phones are here to stay, so we might as well make their inclusion in our world as headache-free as possible. Let’s use these devices as what they are: functional, helpful units that allow us to communicate in times of need, in times of importance. But most of all, in times of grocery store crises.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Bring the pain

My sister summed it up best: “Well, he has spent the better part of his life with a black eye.”
Ah, the joy of having a son.
Parker is once again littered with the marks of being a little boy, namely cuts, scratches, bruises and bumps that make him look like he’s was on the receiving end of a Kid Battle Royal. I was standing on my mother’s porch with my sister, and we were commenting on the numerous badges of honor The Dude was sporting.
Among his current marks:
– A cut on his chin. He got this when he was pretending to be a lion and tried to get in the dog’s crate. No, it was not from the dog. For one thing, it was the crate of Murphy the Dachshund, and the most damage he could possible do to you would be if someone threw him at your very hard. Rather, Parker was pretending to be a lion, and his sister, who decided to take part in the animal games, told him that lions belonged in cages. My wife intervened before an actual crating occurred, but as Parker the Lion was being kept from captivity, he was able to scrape his chin on the open gate.
– A nasty purple bruise on his ear. This one I blame on pancakes. I decided to let my wife have some snooze time the other day and took the kids out for breakfast. Upon leaving, Parker, apparently woozy from five pancakes and about 14 gallons of syrup, tripped and fell into the van, turning his head just in time to he didn’t go face first. Since he is 3, Parker is by far the most independent creature on the planet and does not at all need assistance getting in his car seat. (Sure, I have to help him on occasion pull up Spider-Man underpants, but get in a van? WAY too grown up for that.) Anyhow, he went to climb into the car, lost his balance and went into the van door. I tried to catch him and did they big empty two-handed grab while shouting, “NOOOOO!!!!” in that slow-mo movie scream. He cried for a second, but as soon as he saw Allie was holding his stuffed dinosaur, the pain was not the issue. Dinosaur was the issue.
– A spot on his temple that looks like a little bump but has on occasion oozed out some nasty stuff. My mother has decided it was a splinter. I think that it is a distinct possibility, because Parker loves to walk through the woods. Note that I said he likes to walk “through” the woods. He will not be inconvenienced by moving branches out of his way.
- A rash that has made his fingernails pink and glittery. My wife says it is nail polish. I tell her that is absurd, and that clearly he has developed a wicked fungus that is very sparkly.
When Allie was little, she had her fair share of standard bumps and bruises. I remember when she first started walking and we took her to the doctor for a check-up. The front of her legs were all bruised up, and my wife and I were terrified that people would think we had somehow inflicted the bruises on her. The pediatrician assured us that he has, in fact, seen a child or two in his day, and that any child who walks will have bruises on their legs, because they walk with of the delicacy of a boulder rolling down a hill.
But she never got the repeated and visible injuries that Parker keeps getting. Sure, I worried at first what people would say the first couple of times he got black eyes courtesy of a coffee table or my knee. Relax, it was not intentional; I reached, he tripped, and Mr. Face met Mr. Knee. The terrified reaction I had was probably more painful than the actual shot to the noggin.
My mom says that Parker is a lot like me when I was as a child, so it stands to reason that injuries will be more commonplace. I broke a thumb playing one-on-one football. I broke an elbow when I got kicked in soccer (by my own teammate, no less). I broke three ribs playing flag football, which by all accounts is non-contact. We’re just hard-wired to be rough and tumble.
The good news is that I have not had a serious injury in some time. Sure I occasionally get a pinched nerve at this one spot in my back and I have to walk around for a couple of days with my head cocked at an awkward angle. And, if I sit at a desk for too long and stand up, my knee will sometimes buckle when I go to take a step, and I do this marionette-looking stumble until I regain my balance. But as I have gotten older, the daredevil-inspired wounds (read: stupid) have been reduced. I can only assume that in three or so decades, Parker will be doing the same thing. And hopefully by then, that rash on his fingernails will have cleared up.