The Smash Gift of the Year

What do you get the person who has everything? That age-old question is actually easily answered this time of year. You get them the gift of life, of course, in the form of the Emergency Car Escape Hammer and Seatbelt Cutter.

You would never give someone one of these for their birthday, but for some reason it seems to be a perfectly logical gift at Christmas. What says “I love you” at Christmastime better than a tool that cuts through your seatbelt and breaks tempered auto glass so you can escape through your driver-side window after you’ve driven your car off a cliff into the frigid water below?

Obviously, nothing. And there are so many options these days. They all have the standard pointed hammer and safety-recessed seatbelt cutter blade, but there are new upgrades coming out every year.

Some of them glow in the dark now, because, let’s face it, most of your unscheduled cliff diving happens at night, am I right?

Mine not only has a light, but also an electronic tire gauge that will tell me my tire pressure in PSI and also in kilopascals, which will be handy if I ever drive my car off a cliff in Italy.

Mine is standard blue, but many of the new models are coming out in a variety of fashion colors, including pink, making it much easier to accessorize.

There’s even one available called the Car Cane, that doubles as a convenient handle to help you get out of your car through the door during normal circumstances. You simply slip the hammer end into the steel U-shaped latch receiver on your car’s door frame, and, presumably, scratch the holy hell out of your paint as you use the rubber-grip handle to support your weight getting out of the vehicle. I might argue that if you need a crutch to get out of your car in the Target parking lot, you might not be able to Dukes of Hazzard your way out of your driver window while the car is upside down and underwater, but who knows? Adrenaline is an amazing thing.

I found one that doubles as a phone charger, plugging into your cigarette lighter. It has a light on the end that includes LED low beam, high beam, and red strobe light. Unfortunately, the light points toward the driver when plugged into the dashboard, so the only possible scenario would be the red strobe getting activated by a childish passenger, causing the driver to become blinded and resulting in them swerving off a cliff. At least they would then have the tool that they needed to save themselves handy and easily locatable, but one could argue that the tool might not be the best gift if it causes the accidents in the first place.

They have models where the entire handle is actually a large strobe light, for those times when you drive your car off a cliff into the middle of the ocean. Just activate the strobe light and the Navy helicopters will be able to pinpoint exactly where to drop the rescue divers. I assume it also has a dye pack, for daytime ocean emergencies.

There’s even one that has solar panels in the handle, so you can use the sun to charge your phone. That’s handy when you drive off the road, need to extract yourself from the vehicle, then live next to your car for the next six to eight weeks.

These emergency tools are great and all, but here’s the thing - when you are trapped in your vehicle, you have to find this thing in your glove box or center console. But if you need to cut your seatbelt in order to get free of it, I’m going to guess you won’t be able to reach the glove box too easily. And if you keep the knife/hammer in your center console, you might as well just keep it in Cleveland. You can’t find anything in your center console when you are sitting in your driveway. What makes you think you’ll be able to locate your escape tool when you are sitting at a forty-five degree angle with water rising through the floorboards and a deployed airbag in your face?

Maybe this holiday season it’s time for a slightly more useful automotive gift, like a lesson on how to properly use a turn signal.

Or how to merge onto a freeway.

Or how to make a left turn at a four-way stop sign.

Or how to pull forward and not get out of your car in the school drop off lane.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head. If you do want to go the traditional Emergency Car Escape Hammer and Seatbelt Cutter route, just remember - this tool is completely ineffective if the gift recipient is too large to fit out of their car’s window. If that is the case, a better gift might be a personal trainer, or a car with larger windows.

Happy holidays!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

The Dog (Birth)days of Summer

It’s our dog Remi’s first birthday today. We celebrated yesterday with our good friends down the street who own her sister from the same litter. Our kids made them two little disgusting dog cakes out of completely incompatible ingredients like pumpkin puree and Greek yogurt. The two matching yellow Labs thought the cakes were delicious. Dogs are weird.

Since my next book (currently under construction) will center around Remi’s life, she and her sister are soon to be famous. Out of curiosity, I visited www.onthisday.com to see what other famous celebrities they share a birthday with.

I’m not going to lie. They might end up being the most famous celebrities on the list.

Also born on June 13^th:

1539 Jost Amman, Swiss cartoonist, graphic artist and illustrator, born in Zürich, Switzerland (d. 1591) – So let me get this straight. There were cartoons in the 1500s? Not just poor hygiene and the plague? Who knew?

1911 Albert Cleage, famous African – Famous African what?

1911 Prince Aly Khan [Ali Salman Aga Khan], Pakistani socialite, jockey, political ambassador and husband to Rita Hayworth, born in Turin, Italy (d. 1960) – “Socialite and political ambassador” = good at drinking martinis and schmoozing. And how much competition for best socialite could there possibly be in Pakistan? Famous for marrying a movie star = not very famous.

1918 Helmut Lent, German night fighter pilot (d. 1944) – Look at the death date. Sorry, Helmut, but I can’t count you as a famous German pilot when you obviously got shot down by a non-famous allied pilot.

1925 Hans Fellner, bookseller – Famous for selling books? Seriously? I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love booksellers, but famous for it? I think not.

1926 Geoffrey Finsberg, politician – You may as well have said “garbage collector.” That would make Geoffrey more worthy of fame in my eyes.

1934 Lady Annabel Goldsmith, English socialite – Again, “famous” for being a martini sucker.

1935 Christo [Javacheff], Bulgaria, artist, wrapper (Running Fence) – A wrapper you say? Of what, exactly?

1947 Peter Holm, boyfriend of Joan Collins – Boyfriend? Not even husband. C’mon!

1954 Jorge Santana, Mexican rock guitarist (Malo), born in Autlán de Navarro – “Malo” means “bad” in Spanish. So, a bad guitarist made this list.

1955 Alan Hansen, Scottish football pundit – Every drunk Scotsman at the pub is a football pundit. How does that make Alan famous?

1962 Mark Frankel, actor (Leon the Pig Farmer) – If your most notable acting performance was in Leon the Pig Farmer, you are as far from famous as a martini-sucking Pakistani socialite.

1968 Deniece Peterson, rocker (5 Star-Silk & Steel) – Rocker? Of babies? Of chairs? Of boats? In what capacity did he or she rock, pray tell?

Since we have obviously set a low bar for fame, I think it is safe to say Remi and her sister are shoe-ins for this list. There was one person on the list, however, that intrigued me. I would again have to argue the claim of “famous,” since I have never heard of them, but their occupation certainly deserves respect.

1979 Nila Håkedal, Norwegian beach volleyball player – Initially, I wondered how anyone could be listed as a “Norwegian beach volleyball player,” until I Googled it and discovered that Norway actually does have at least one beach. Nila commands our respect, not only because she probably only had a four- to five-day seasonal window in which to practice, but also because while on the beach trying to serve and return the ball, she would have been constantly blinded by the almost neon-white bodies of her fellow Norwegian sunbathers. Respect.

Happy birthday, Nila and the puppies. Keep on rockin’ it, just like Deniece!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Ten Birthdays

Son Number One turned ten years old last week. Ten! Now, many of you with older or grownup kids are probably saying, “Been there,” and many of you without any kids are saying, “So what?”

I can assure you, when you have children, and the oldest one turns ten, the first thought through your head is, “Holy crap, I’m old!” Then the second thought is, “Holy crap, he can’t actually be ten. He was just five a few minutes ago, and now he’s in double digits?”

Then you do the math again, and then the thought hits you that if he has really been around the house for ten years already, then it’s only eight more years until you have to pay for college. Which, apparently, in parent years is only like six and a half minutes.

Then you faint.

Then your wife revives you by kicking you in the ribs and saying, “Get up, old man.”

You start to come to, muttering, “need… more… money.”

You wife responds, “Tell me about it!”

You get the feeling she didn’t know you were referring to your son.

She has known he was turning ten for a while. That’s because she is a woman and doesn’t forget things like the birthdays of her children. You, on the other hand, being a man, were reminded of his birthday the same way you have always been; by your dentist’s office. They send a nice Happy Birthday email every year.

I actually had quite a few clues leading up to the date, because my wife had already thrown him ten separate birthday parties. Not parties with cakes and hats and noise makers, mind you, but little events labeled as “doing this for his birthday.”

His birthday falls on the Thanksgiving break every year, so every year my wife uses his birthday as an excuse to do things.  We went to the movies “for his birthday.” Before that we had gone to pizza “for his birthday.” And mini golf. And ice cream. And dinner out.

Oh, and Monterey. That’s a whole separate town. It’s a three-hour drive from here. We were going there anyway for a family baby shower, but my wife mysteriously used his birthday as an excuse to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium the next day. I don’t know why we needed an excuse, but there we were, looking at hammerhead sharks and watching bat rays mate “for his birthday.”

And that was all before Thanksgiving. Then the family arrived for Turkey Day, and the aunts and uncles and grandparents spoiled him all over again. I’m pretty sure he thought the actual Thanksgiving dinner was “for his birthday.”

I have mentioned to my wife on a number of occasions that I think we might be spoiling him a little. She sees no issue. I have even brought up the possibility that the other two boys might eventually notice, and possibly resent, the disparity between their birthday celebration and those of Son Number One.

Yes, I said “celebration.” Singular. Son Number Two and Three are two years apart, but they were both born in April, and their birthdays are four days apart. They get a single party between the two of them, with some leftover Easter candy and maybe a cupcake if they’re lucky.

Now, please don’t misunderstand. It’s not that my wife is playing favorites; it’s just that she is sensitive to a certain specific birthday problem; namely, sharing your birthday with a major holiday. She had a rough childhood, birthday-wise. She was born on Christmas Eve.

Sharing your birthday celebration with The Big Guy can’t be easy for a kid in the first place (and I love her parents dearly, and not to throw them under the bus publicly), but one year when the family was having house guests for Christmas, they forgot her birthday completely.

I guess their dentist’s office didn’t have a reliable email service back then.

So, you can see where she could be a little worried about her son “sharing” his birthday with a big holiday. So I cut her some slack when she overcompensates a little with the whole “doing this for his birthday” thing.

I just pity his future wife. He might throw a fit if she doesn’t cook him a turkey with stuffing on his birthday and take him to the aquarium. I’ll give her my in-laws’ phone number. I blame them.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go shop for a small combination birthday/Christmas gift for my wife. She loves those.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Boy, am I Thankful

It’s that time of year again. When we all sit around the Thanksgiving table and list what we are thankful for, trying to get it done as fast as possible, because what we are really thankful for is the big, mouth-watering turkey sitting in the center of the table, and we want to get to it.

In anticipation of this ritual, I have done a little bit of pre-Thanksgiving reflection this year, without the distraction of the savory bird. I am thankful for all the major things, of course. My wife and children are healthy, we have a roof over our heads and plenty of food, and my wife and I have retained a socially acceptable level of sanity through our first eight calendar years of parenting. I say calendar years because, technically, we’ve only had kids for eight years, but we have three of them. When you have multiple kids, I believe your parenting years are actually a cumulative total of their ages. We have eight calendar years under our belt, but nineteen multi-kid years to our credit.

Raising three boys, I often think that there should also be some sort of multiplier involved in that number to account for the additional energy and mischief level that young boys bring to the table. It is probably a draw though, because the parents of girls will surely need a multiplier for pre-teen drama, and teenage dating, and boys, and specifically, that idiot with the pierced nose that keeps being seen near their fifteen-year-old daughter.  

I will take rambunctious and wild over body piercings, boyfriends, and boyfriends with body piercings any day of the week. That leads me to what I am specifically thankful for this year: Shopping for birthday presents. Specifically, boy’s birthday presents.

Son Number One’s birthday is very close to Thanksgiving, so our Thanksgiving week holiday plans always involve some kind of birthday celebration as well. Now, don’t misunderstand. I am not thankful that I have to shop for birthday presents. I hate shopping, in any form. What I am thankful for, is that we have boys, which greatly reduces the time and struggle required to find a gift.

Boys like hardware. All boys like hardware. All boys like anything hardware related. It is a universal truth that does not exist with any other store except the hardware store. Most boys like sports. Most boys like trucks. Most boys like Star Wars. All boys like hammers.

If you are invited to an eight-year-old boy’s birthday party, you can try your luck at Toys R Us if you want. You can get him some Legos, and he may or may not like them. You can get him a football that he may or may not want to throw. You can buy him a remote-control car that he may or may not want to drive around in the street. Or, you can buy him a socket wrench set that he will think is the coolest thing he has ever seen.

In fact, if you were to walk into any hardware store – I said hardware store, not Home Depot or Lowes – and go down any aisle, stop in the middle, turn to your right and point, you will be pointing at something that a boy will think is awesome. You might be in the lawn and garden aisle. Doesn’t matter. He will think that new 29-inch D-handle trench spade is the best thing he’s ever seen. Then, he will dig a thousand holes.

If you buy a boy his own roll of duct tape, he will be as happy as if you gave him a million dollars. Happier, actually, because to a six-year-old, a million dollars and ten dollars are the same thing. If you get him a whole sleeve of duct tape, forget about it! He’ll be so excited, you’ll have to peel him off the ceiling. Actually, with that much duct tape, there’s a good chance he may really figure out a way to stick himself to the ceiling. You have to be careful, there.

Buy him a real flashlight. Buy him some rope. Buy him a chain binder or a come-along. Buy him a conduit bender. Vice-Grips. It doesn’t matter. You want to be his for life? Buy him a five-pound box of ten-penny nails and a claw hammer. Done.

So, this year, among all the other regular stuff, that is what I’m thankful for. I am thankful that I don’t have to shop for girls. If my wife and I ever forget to buy a birthday or a Christmas present, I know that at the last minute I could walk into my garage, close my eyes and point, and come up with a gift that my boys would love, in less than fifteen seconds. Try that with a girl.

I wouldn’t even know where to start with a girl. I get in enough trouble shopping for my wife. Just ask her about the ironing board incident of 2001. I don’t need the headache! I do much better sticking to what I know.

Actually, come to think of it, there is one other universal love for boys besides the hardware store. You can’t go wrong at the gun counter at sporting goods store, either, but my wife thinks I should wait until they’re at least nine before I buy them firearms. Or did she say, nineteen? I can’t remember.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

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