In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I would regale you with the heartwarming tale about the night I met my wife. Unfortunately, the night I met my wife was pretty un-eventful, besides the fact that I met the love of my life. So instead, I will regale you with the shocking, explosive, frightening, and downright weird tale about the night after the night I met my wife. It’s a tale of a bar, a truck, a barefoot man, a policeman, a bathrobe, and a shotgun.
I met my wife in a bar. It was only my first or second time at this particular bar, but she had been there for thirty-two nights in a row. She and her best friend were going for a combined personal record. It was her initiative and dedication to the endeavor that drew me to her. We were both college students in San Luis Obispo, CA, and she was working at a pizza place that summer. She would get off work at midnight and meet her friend at Bull’s Tavern to shut the place down. We met one evening, talked until closing, and said goodnight.
I thought she was really neat-o, so having heard about their record-breaking attendance goal, I had a good idea of where I might find her again the next evening. After missing her a few times, between the bar and the pizza place, we finally connected, and had another delightful evening of bar-booth conversation. This was the kind of bar where “delightful conversation” means you sat in a red naugahyde booth, taking turns shouting into each other’s ears, in an attempt to carry on a conversation over the AC/DC blaring out of the jukebox.
After the last-call light came on at 2 am – this was back when we could stay up until 2 am – we walked back to the pizza place where my truck was parked, and carried on our conversation in the cab of my Ford F150. By about 3am I had convinced her that kissing me wouldn’t be so bad, and just when I was about to plant one on her, a sonic boom came rolling down the street. It would have been much cooler if we had heard the explosion as we kissed, but you just can’t plan for these kinds of things.
She said, and I quote, “That sounded like a 12 gauge!”
I replied, scoffing-ly, “There is no way that was a 12 gauge shotgun. It was probably just a car backfiring.” In my head I was thinking, “Cool. She knows her shotguns. But that couldn’t have been a shotgun.”
Roughly four minutes later a barefoot man in a bathrobe came walking down the street carrying a 12-gauge shotgun.
Now, if I can paint the scene for you. It is past 3:00 in the morning, and the town has completely shut down. We are the only car parked on the street, directly across from the pizza parlor. The only other car that we can see belongs to a police officer who is parked in a parking lot across the intersection from the pizza place. The police officer is standing outside of his car, chatting with a man on a bicycle. They have apparently not heard the big bang, and seem very relaxed. The pizza place is located on the corner of the intersection, and the man in the bathrobe with the heavy artillery is walking past the pizza place, toward the cop, but neither one of them can see the other yet. We are parked across the street and have a clear view of both of them, and a pretty good idea of what is about to happen. Between the five of us, we are the only people still awake in the whole town, and two of us are a whole lot more awake than we were a minute ago.
The bathrobe-clad gentlemen rounded the corner and came into view of the police officer, and they saw each other at about the same time. We were positioned at just the wrong angle, so when the cop drew his weapon, he was pointing it right at us. We both did that thing where you slide down below the dashboard in case the bullets start flying, but foolishly keep your head up high enough to see, because you don’t want to miss the action.
The policeman immediately started asking the nice man to kindly set his shotgun down. By “kindly asking,” I mean he instantly began shouting, “Drop the #$*%&@ gun right now! Drop it, #$@*&%!!!” I thought he was handling himself very well given the surprising circumstance he had just found himself in. The bicyclist he had been talking to before the rude interruption did something that still to this day I cannot believe, even though I saw it with my own two barely-visible-above-the-dashboard eyes. He dropped his bike to the ground and fit himself completely underneath the front bumper of the police cruiser. Next time you see a police cruiser, take a look at the ground clearance. I think it might have been Houdini himself in that bike helmet.
Well, the nice man with the 12-gauge didn’t drop his gun right away. He just sort of stood there, trying to have a conversation with the cop. He was holding the gun at a 45 degree angle toward the ground, not exactly pointing it at the cop, but not exactly pointing it away from him, either. As the police officer walked closer and closer to the man, yelling commands louder and louder, I was sure we were about to witness something very unpleasant on what had, otherwise, been a really nice night.
Thankfully, for everyone involved, the man finally decided to set his shotgun gently on the ground, and seconds later, the police officer set his knee not-so-gently on the man’s neck, and the stand-off was over. As Captain Bathrobe was led to the police car and Harry Houdini extricated himself from underneath the Caprice Classic, I started the truck and drove my date home in stunned silence.
Fortunately, she didn’t hold the incident against me, and we continued to see each other. We searched the local paper for two weeks straight after that night for some mention of the incident, partially to prove to people that we weren’t making it up, but mostly to find out for ourselves what we had seen. Why was there a man firing a shotgun in sleepy, downtown San Luis Obispo, and why was he then walking the streets with that shotgun, barefoot, in a bathrobe? We never found a single mention of it, and to this day, have no idea what happened.
We graduated and parted ways, and met again six years later at a mutual college friend’s housewarming party. We have been together ever since. After meeting her father, I finally understood her knowledge of shotguns. And after getting to know my father-in-law, I have a strong suspicion that he and my wife might know more about that night than they are letting on. I know he owns a 12-gauge, and I’m pretty sure he owns a bathrobe.
Where exactly was he that night? Out looking for her, perhaps?
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The Event Planning Calendar
My mother-in-law recently threw a party for her father – my wife’s grandpa – for his 93rd birthday. Between friends and family, more than 60 people were invited to what was surely one of the biggest and most important family events of the year. She threw this party on Saturday, February 5th.
In late January I had been wandering through our kitchen and happened to peruse the calendar for upcoming events. When I noticed that we were scheduled to be at my wife’s folk’s house on Saturday the 5th, I immediately questioned my wife.
“Why does this say we will be in Morro Bay next weekend?”
“It’s my grandpa’s birthday party on Saturday.”
“Excuse me?”
“IT’S MY GRANDPA’S BIRTHDAY PARTY!” (Sometimes she mistakes my incredulous voice for me being hard of hearing.)
“I heard you the first time. I just don’t believe it.”
“Why?”
“Why?!? The 6th is Superbowl Sunday!”
“Oh.”
Oh? That’s all I get? I couldn’t believe it. Allow me to explain… The birthday party was being held 317 miles away from our house. It takes us five hours to get there if there is no traffic and no pee breaks. This is California, so there is always traffic, and we have three kids, so instead of no pee breaks, we have about thirty pee breaks every 100 miles. (To be fair to the kids, more than a few of the pee breaks are instigated by their soda-drinking parents.)
I stared at my wife, and she just stared right back. It was obvious I would get no help from her in rectifying this mess.
I called my mother-in-law.
“Is your dad’s birthday party really on the 5th?
“Yes, why?”
“Because the 6th is the Superbowl!”
“Oh, whoops.”
Whoops?!? Again, not the satisfying solution to the problem that I was looking for. I realize that she had more logistics to worry about than just my schedule, but come on. Who throws a party for out-of-town guests on Superbowl weekend? It became clear to me that I would be waking up on Superbowl Sunday six to seven hours away from my television. I had already invited people over to our house to watch the game. I could cancel that plan and stay in Morro Bay to watch the game with my wife’s family, which would be fun, but I would have to take a day off work to do it. I like to use my sick days for when I’m really sick, or when there is a meeting I need to avoid, so I didn’t want to burn one on this.
This event scheduling debacle really highlighted for me the need for a universal nationwide calendar of blackout dates for party and event planners. I mean, come on, ladies! The Superbowl is only the single-largest and most watched sporting event of the year. I would have thought you might have heard it was coming up.
We obviously need: The Universal Event Planning Calendar of No-Go Dates Due to Sporting Events and Other Guy Stuff.
The calendar would include the obvious sports that every American party planner should already be aware of; namely, NFL and college football, NBA and college basketball, major league baseball, golf, hockey, and Nascar. It would also include the lesser-known but still relevant sports, such as the Olympics (both summer and winter), pro rodeo, soccer, minor league baseball, Indy cars, tennis, curling, rugby, logging competitions, boxing, Scottish highland games, lacrosse, and the Tour de France.
We will need to include hunting and fishing seasons on the calendar as well. Nothing spoils a wedding faster than an absent groom who’s off in a duck blind because his fiancé forgot to check the calendar. Seasons that should be included are deer, elk, moose, duck, pheasant, salmon, and steelhead. Again, the calendar will need to include the slightly lesser-known, but equally important seasons for dove, quail, snipe, ground squirrel, mockingbird, catfish, opossum, mongoose, tree squirrel, and tiger shark.
In addition to the obvious sports and hunting categories listed above, the calendar will also need to include major non-sporting events. Whether us guys choose to attend personally, or catch all the action on TV, these events cannot be missed. They include Octoberfest, all three of the triple crown horse races, any major WWF, WWE or MMA fight, the world series of poker, and the running of the bulls. A few lesser-known events will, again, need to be included if this calendar is to be deemed at all credible. These include Novemberfest, the all-Mexico bull fighting series, the inter-Irish pub darts championships, Septemberfest, the world series of canasta, and Decemberfest.
Basically, if you want to throw a party or have a wedding, you need to do it on Saturday, July 23rd. That’s our only open date.
If the birthday party had been on July 23rd, I wouldn’t have had to haul my kids out of bed at 3:30 in the morning to be home in time for the pregame show! Could someone get started putting that calendar together?
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
In late January I had been wandering through our kitchen and happened to peruse the calendar for upcoming events. When I noticed that we were scheduled to be at my wife’s folk’s house on Saturday the 5th, I immediately questioned my wife.
“Why does this say we will be in Morro Bay next weekend?”
“It’s my grandpa’s birthday party on Saturday.”
“Excuse me?”
“IT’S MY GRANDPA’S BIRTHDAY PARTY!” (Sometimes she mistakes my incredulous voice for me being hard of hearing.)
“I heard you the first time. I just don’t believe it.”
“Why?”
“Why?!? The 6th is Superbowl Sunday!”
“Oh.”
Oh? That’s all I get? I couldn’t believe it. Allow me to explain… The birthday party was being held 317 miles away from our house. It takes us five hours to get there if there is no traffic and no pee breaks. This is California, so there is always traffic, and we have three kids, so instead of no pee breaks, we have about thirty pee breaks every 100 miles. (To be fair to the kids, more than a few of the pee breaks are instigated by their soda-drinking parents.)
I stared at my wife, and she just stared right back. It was obvious I would get no help from her in rectifying this mess.
I called my mother-in-law.
“Is your dad’s birthday party really on the 5th?
“Yes, why?”
“Because the 6th is the Superbowl!”
“Oh, whoops.”
Whoops?!? Again, not the satisfying solution to the problem that I was looking for. I realize that she had more logistics to worry about than just my schedule, but come on. Who throws a party for out-of-town guests on Superbowl weekend? It became clear to me that I would be waking up on Superbowl Sunday six to seven hours away from my television. I had already invited people over to our house to watch the game. I could cancel that plan and stay in Morro Bay to watch the game with my wife’s family, which would be fun, but I would have to take a day off work to do it. I like to use my sick days for when I’m really sick, or when there is a meeting I need to avoid, so I didn’t want to burn one on this.
This event scheduling debacle really highlighted for me the need for a universal nationwide calendar of blackout dates for party and event planners. I mean, come on, ladies! The Superbowl is only the single-largest and most watched sporting event of the year. I would have thought you might have heard it was coming up.
We obviously need: The Universal Event Planning Calendar of No-Go Dates Due to Sporting Events and Other Guy Stuff.
The calendar would include the obvious sports that every American party planner should already be aware of; namely, NFL and college football, NBA and college basketball, major league baseball, golf, hockey, and Nascar. It would also include the lesser-known but still relevant sports, such as the Olympics (both summer and winter), pro rodeo, soccer, minor league baseball, Indy cars, tennis, curling, rugby, logging competitions, boxing, Scottish highland games, lacrosse, and the Tour de France.
We will need to include hunting and fishing seasons on the calendar as well. Nothing spoils a wedding faster than an absent groom who’s off in a duck blind because his fiancé forgot to check the calendar. Seasons that should be included are deer, elk, moose, duck, pheasant, salmon, and steelhead. Again, the calendar will need to include the slightly lesser-known, but equally important seasons for dove, quail, snipe, ground squirrel, mockingbird, catfish, opossum, mongoose, tree squirrel, and tiger shark.
In addition to the obvious sports and hunting categories listed above, the calendar will also need to include major non-sporting events. Whether us guys choose to attend personally, or catch all the action on TV, these events cannot be missed. They include Octoberfest, all three of the triple crown horse races, any major WWF, WWE or MMA fight, the world series of poker, and the running of the bulls. A few lesser-known events will, again, need to be included if this calendar is to be deemed at all credible. These include Novemberfest, the all-Mexico bull fighting series, the inter-Irish pub darts championships, Septemberfest, the world series of canasta, and Decemberfest.
Basically, if you want to throw a party or have a wedding, you need to do it on Saturday, July 23rd. That’s our only open date.
If the birthday party had been on July 23rd, I wouldn’t have had to haul my kids out of bed at 3:30 in the morning to be home in time for the pregame show! Could someone get started putting that calendar together?
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Soap
My wife has been couponing. This is a new sport for shoppers involving laying out thousands of dollars on ranch dressing and ketchup, because the price was so low, “it was practically free,” and then giving them away to friends and family because you ended up with five hundred bottles of each. She swears to me that we are saving money by stocking up on things we don’t need, but I remain skeptical.
One item in particular became a point of contention recently. She came home with six big squeeze bottles of “Men’s Hair and Body Wash.” I asked her why in the world she had bought me liquid body wash, to which she answered the typical coupon addict’s response of, “It was so cheap, they were practically giving it away.”
My main problem with that recurring answer is that there is a certain amount of money between “actually” and “practically” when it comes to giving things away at the store.
She then told me that she planned to stop buying bar soap for the shower. I was to immediately begin washing myself with liquid “Energy Wash” that would “Recharge and Energize without Drying.” (With mint extracts!). I politely explained that that was not going to happen, and she should return the bushel of body wash to the store. She calmly informed me about the coupon return policy restrictions, and politely inquired as to why I was such a stubborn jackass. I told her that my bar soap worked just fine, and then went on to state my case about how I don’t think we’re actually saving money when she buys things we don’t need, just because they are on sale. She didn’t see it my way.
After a few days and approximately three hundred requests from my wife for me to “try the damn body wash,” I gave in.
One of my main objections to using body wash was that I didn’t want to have to use her weird looking, pink, loofa-like, spongy, spidery, half-sandpaper/half-shammy-cloth thing-a-ma-jig that hangs on a rope from our shower handle. It looks like someone tied a pink fishnet into a knot the size of a grapefruit, and the only thing it does is collect shockingly cold water and dead skin cells. Besides being disgusting, it is a tool that I just don’t want to have to use.
I like bar soap. Bar soap is ingenious. You pick it up and use it, and when it disappears you know it’s time for a new one. It is self-cleaning, and there are no appurtenances, tools, holders, delivery containers, devices, or spongy loofa things. It’s just you and the soap. Simple.
She listened calmly to my hesitations about using her squishy pink bacteria farm-on-a-rope, then she rolled her eyes and explained - in the same voice she uses when she is helping one of our children figure out a ridiculously simple problem - that I obviously did not need to use her bath sponge. I could just squirt the body wash into my hand, and proceed to soap myself up. Since the body wash was apparently un-returnable, I gave in and told her I would give it a try. She thanked me profusely in the same voice she uses to thank police officers for speeding tickets.
The next morning, it was go time. I hopped into the shower, strangely enthusiastic about my new cleansing adventure. Maybe I would love the body wash. Maybe I would discover a whole new world of instant morning refreshment. It was, after all, “energy” wash that promised to “recharge and energize” me through the deft and patented use of non-drying mint extracts.
Here’s how my body wash experience went:
1) Grabbed bottle of energizing body wash from shower caddy.
2) Unscrewed the large blue bottle top on the squeeze bottle and stared down into the ¾” diameter opening.
3) Thought to myself, “How does this work? This stuff is going to come out of here fast.”
4) Smelled the energy wash. Mmmm. Minty.
5) Further pondered the large opening.
6) Examined the large blue bottle top in my other hand and finally noticed the flip-top cap on top.
7) Screwed large blue bottle top back onto bottle and flipped flip-top open.
8) Looked at much, much smaller squeeze-bottle delivery hole and decided that was the way to go.
9) Squeezed large handful of bright-blue minty energy wash into my right hand.
10) Flipped flip-top closed and set bottle of energy wash back in shower caddy.
11) Washed top of left forearm.
12) Ran out of minty energy wash.
13) Did some quick math in my head.
14) Decided that if I needed to keep opening the bottle and getting more minty energy wash every three seconds, I would be 2-1/2 hours late to work.
15) Left minty energy body wash in shower caddy.
16) Picked up bar of soap.
17) Washed myself.
18) Put soap back in soap tray.
19) Turned off water.
20) Toweled off.
21) Threw bottle of super-minty energy-style hair and body wash into trash can.
I informed my wife that the experiment had failed, and as a side note, that it did nothing to energize me at all, mint extracts or not.
She informed me that I was a Neanderthal and just simply did not know how to use body wash properly.
I’m a pretty smart guy. What am I missing, here? How is body wash supposed to be even remotely as convenient or useful as bar soap? I asked my wife that question, which she refused to answer. She just mumbled something about how cheap it was. I guess in the couponer’s mind, price goes a long way toward necessity and usefulness.
As far as the “recharge and energize” claim, I still haven’t figured that one out. Maybe it’s caffeinated and I was really supposed to drink it.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
One item in particular became a point of contention recently. She came home with six big squeeze bottles of “Men’s Hair and Body Wash.” I asked her why in the world she had bought me liquid body wash, to which she answered the typical coupon addict’s response of, “It was so cheap, they were practically giving it away.”
My main problem with that recurring answer is that there is a certain amount of money between “actually” and “practically” when it comes to giving things away at the store.
She then told me that she planned to stop buying bar soap for the shower. I was to immediately begin washing myself with liquid “Energy Wash” that would “Recharge and Energize without Drying.” (With mint extracts!). I politely explained that that was not going to happen, and she should return the bushel of body wash to the store. She calmly informed me about the coupon return policy restrictions, and politely inquired as to why I was such a stubborn jackass. I told her that my bar soap worked just fine, and then went on to state my case about how I don’t think we’re actually saving money when she buys things we don’t need, just because they are on sale. She didn’t see it my way.
After a few days and approximately three hundred requests from my wife for me to “try the damn body wash,” I gave in.
One of my main objections to using body wash was that I didn’t want to have to use her weird looking, pink, loofa-like, spongy, spidery, half-sandpaper/half-shammy-cloth thing-a-ma-jig that hangs on a rope from our shower handle. It looks like someone tied a pink fishnet into a knot the size of a grapefruit, and the only thing it does is collect shockingly cold water and dead skin cells. Besides being disgusting, it is a tool that I just don’t want to have to use.
I like bar soap. Bar soap is ingenious. You pick it up and use it, and when it disappears you know it’s time for a new one. It is self-cleaning, and there are no appurtenances, tools, holders, delivery containers, devices, or spongy loofa things. It’s just you and the soap. Simple.
She listened calmly to my hesitations about using her squishy pink bacteria farm-on-a-rope, then she rolled her eyes and explained - in the same voice she uses when she is helping one of our children figure out a ridiculously simple problem - that I obviously did not need to use her bath sponge. I could just squirt the body wash into my hand, and proceed to soap myself up. Since the body wash was apparently un-returnable, I gave in and told her I would give it a try. She thanked me profusely in the same voice she uses to thank police officers for speeding tickets.
The next morning, it was go time. I hopped into the shower, strangely enthusiastic about my new cleansing adventure. Maybe I would love the body wash. Maybe I would discover a whole new world of instant morning refreshment. It was, after all, “energy” wash that promised to “recharge and energize” me through the deft and patented use of non-drying mint extracts.
Here’s how my body wash experience went:
1) Grabbed bottle of energizing body wash from shower caddy.
2) Unscrewed the large blue bottle top on the squeeze bottle and stared down into the ¾” diameter opening.
3) Thought to myself, “How does this work? This stuff is going to come out of here fast.”
4) Smelled the energy wash. Mmmm. Minty.
5) Further pondered the large opening.
6) Examined the large blue bottle top in my other hand and finally noticed the flip-top cap on top.
7) Screwed large blue bottle top back onto bottle and flipped flip-top open.
8) Looked at much, much smaller squeeze-bottle delivery hole and decided that was the way to go.
9) Squeezed large handful of bright-blue minty energy wash into my right hand.
10) Flipped flip-top closed and set bottle of energy wash back in shower caddy.
11) Washed top of left forearm.
12) Ran out of minty energy wash.
13) Did some quick math in my head.
14) Decided that if I needed to keep opening the bottle and getting more minty energy wash every three seconds, I would be 2-1/2 hours late to work.
15) Left minty energy body wash in shower caddy.
16) Picked up bar of soap.
17) Washed myself.
18) Put soap back in soap tray.
19) Turned off water.
20) Toweled off.
21) Threw bottle of super-minty energy-style hair and body wash into trash can.
I informed my wife that the experiment had failed, and as a side note, that it did nothing to energize me at all, mint extracts or not.
She informed me that I was a Neanderthal and just simply did not know how to use body wash properly.
I’m a pretty smart guy. What am I missing, here? How is body wash supposed to be even remotely as convenient or useful as bar soap? I asked my wife that question, which she refused to answer. She just mumbled something about how cheap it was. I guess in the couponer’s mind, price goes a long way toward necessity and usefulness.
As far as the “recharge and energize” claim, I still haven’t figured that one out. Maybe it’s caffeinated and I was really supposed to drink it.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
The English Sea
The nice folks at the Roseville, California public libraries have inexplicably asked me to host the kick-off event for their 23rd annual Youth Poetry Contest. Apparently, they consider my children’s book, My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, to be full of children’s poetry. I just thought it was full of rhymes, but who am I to argue? After all, they are the professionals here. They are even billing me as, “local poet, Marc Schmatjen.” Who woulda’ thought, huh?
Thankfully, they were wise enough not to ask me to judge the event. I will simply be in charge of leading a large group of young children through some rhyming exercises and teaching them about the different kinds of poems. I figured that I could pull it off with a little luck and a lot of ad-libbing, so I accepted the job.
In honor of the event this Saturday, I thought I would try my hand at some poetry. We’re going off the reservation a little this week, but I don’t want you to worry. I doubt that this will be a permanent thing!
“The English Sea” – A Poem of Sorts
Here in the English Sea, it is tough to grammatically wade.
When you hear English, you see, context must be weighed.
Sounding out a word ewe herd? There may be many ways, not just one.
Four instants, there are three ways to spell too, and two ways to spell won.
Consider this:
A bird with the flu, flew up our flue,
But our brand new gnu knew what to do.
You’ll want to cry foul, but alas, my poor dear,
It’s just a wayward ailing fowl and an African deer.
The sentence is sound, it’s grammatically right,
Although its content isn’t something I’d write.
The words all disagree when eyed on the page or the pane,
But they are pronounced with true sameness. I’d call that a pain.
They have a real name: Homophones, don’t you know.
Do they make the English language neat and tidy? No, no, no!
To know your way through them, you need lots of know-how.
Are they easy and intuitive? No way, no how!
Some of them can serve to make sentences sweet.
To hold up your whole body is a feat of your feet.
And the presence of presents makes your birthday neat.
Some of them serve to make sentences insane.
If he rode down the road, you’d see him holding a rein,
But if he rowed down the road, then you’ve had too much rain.
But most of them serve to make you feel like you’re losing.
They’re right there, but they’ve left their chairs there. Is that amusing?
It is certainly not. That’s just downright confusing.
Dew knot give up yet. Try this little tail:
The heir to the throne was thrown through the air.
He gave his horse too much rein and regretted his err.
He ended up in the mud on his derriere.
But the err the heir dared was minor, he swore.
A riding faux pas in the rain, and a seat that was sore.
He knew an err in the reign could cost so much more.
It wasn’t so bad to be thrown from one’s steed,
The heir and his father, the king, both agreed.
To be thrown from the throne would be much worse, indeed.
Sea, now that wasn’t sew bad.
In order for your assistants to kindly deliver your correspondence on your stationery,
It would be of great assistance if your correspondents would kindly remain stationary.
On second thought, theirs no hope too bee had.
It doesn’t make sense, it’s hard not to err,
When many of the scents travel over the air.
My advice is two get reel good at math before you are grown,
Because this language will only make ewe moan and groan.
English has never made sense, and now you see it too,
Unlike dollars and cents, one and won don’t make to.
I really hope I’m not banned permanently from the public library system after this!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Thankfully, they were wise enough not to ask me to judge the event. I will simply be in charge of leading a large group of young children through some rhyming exercises and teaching them about the different kinds of poems. I figured that I could pull it off with a little luck and a lot of ad-libbing, so I accepted the job.
In honor of the event this Saturday, I thought I would try my hand at some poetry. We’re going off the reservation a little this week, but I don’t want you to worry. I doubt that this will be a permanent thing!
“The English Sea” – A Poem of Sorts
Here in the English Sea, it is tough to grammatically wade.
When you hear English, you see, context must be weighed.
Sounding out a word ewe herd? There may be many ways, not just one.
Four instants, there are three ways to spell too, and two ways to spell won.
Consider this:
A bird with the flu, flew up our flue,
But our brand new gnu knew what to do.
You’ll want to cry foul, but alas, my poor dear,
It’s just a wayward ailing fowl and an African deer.
The sentence is sound, it’s grammatically right,
Although its content isn’t something I’d write.
The words all disagree when eyed on the page or the pane,
But they are pronounced with true sameness. I’d call that a pain.
They have a real name: Homophones, don’t you know.
Do they make the English language neat and tidy? No, no, no!
To know your way through them, you need lots of know-how.
Are they easy and intuitive? No way, no how!
Some of them can serve to make sentences sweet.
To hold up your whole body is a feat of your feet.
And the presence of presents makes your birthday neat.
Some of them serve to make sentences insane.
If he rode down the road, you’d see him holding a rein,
But if he rowed down the road, then you’ve had too much rain.
But most of them serve to make you feel like you’re losing.
They’re right there, but they’ve left their chairs there. Is that amusing?
It is certainly not. That’s just downright confusing.
Dew knot give up yet. Try this little tail:
The heir to the throne was thrown through the air.
He gave his horse too much rein and regretted his err.
He ended up in the mud on his derriere.
But the err the heir dared was minor, he swore.
A riding faux pas in the rain, and a seat that was sore.
He knew an err in the reign could cost so much more.
It wasn’t so bad to be thrown from one’s steed,
The heir and his father, the king, both agreed.
To be thrown from the throne would be much worse, indeed.
Sea, now that wasn’t sew bad.
In order for your assistants to kindly deliver your correspondence on your stationery,
It would be of great assistance if your correspondents would kindly remain stationary.
On second thought, theirs no hope too bee had.
It doesn’t make sense, it’s hard not to err,
When many of the scents travel over the air.
My advice is two get reel good at math before you are grown,
Because this language will only make ewe moan and groan.
English has never made sense, and now you see it too,
Unlike dollars and cents, one and won don’t make to.
I really hope I’m not banned permanently from the public library system after this!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Tooth Fairy
It is really starting to amaze me what kids will believe. I mean, we just got through Christmas and the whole Santa Claus thing again. Here’s the story, kid: A fat man in a red suit who lives at the top of the world with a bunch of toy-making elves came to our house in a sleigh pulled by flying deer. He landed on our roof and came down our chimney while we were all sleeping and delivered Razor scooters.
Now, never mind the logistics of a round-the-world trip with six billion stops in one night. That is the easiest part of the story to swallow as far as I’m concerned. We have a concrete tile roof with no snow and a 35-degree pitch, yet my kids think someone landed a sleigh on it. Apparently, flying deer make sense to them, and the fact that our gas fireplace chimney is really just a 3-inch diameter pipe doesn’t faze them. I guess they figure if the fat man can get here with flying deer, he can fit himself, two Razor scooters and a soccer ball down a hole the size of a water glass.
I have to cut them some amount of slack regarding Santa, since it’s undoubtedly the most popular world-wide myth being perpetrated on children. It’s easier to fool them because we parents have our story straight about Saint Nick.
We are currently dealing with another benevolent, magical house-visiting stranger, but this one is weirder. Weirder than a man who lives with scooter-producing elves and flying caribou, you ask? Yes. I’m talking about the Tooth Fairy.
My six-year-old, Son Number One as he is called, has been losing his baby teeth for a while now. He recently lost number three and four, which happened to be his two front teeth, so he now looks like a really unfortunate beaver. When he lost his first tooth about a year ago, we introduced the Tooth Fairy to the boys.
Here’s how the conversation went:
“Now that you’ve lost this tooth, we need to put it in an envelope and put it under your pillow.”
“Why”
“So the Tooth Fairy will come and bring you money.”
“The Tooth Fairy?”
“Yes. The Tooth Fairy comes and takes your teeth out from under your pillow and leaves you money.”
“Oh, OK.”
OK?!? What do you mean, “OK?” Don’t you have about a bazillion other questions?
Who is the Tooth Fairy? Is the Tooth Fairy a he or a she? Where does she live? How does she know where we live? How does she get in the house? How does she get into our room? How does she know which room is ours? How does she get under my pillow? Why do we leave the tooth under my pillow instead of out on the dresser? How does she even know I lost a tooth? There are three of us in this room, so how does she know which pillow? Does she just check under all the pillows? Why does this happen at night instead of at lunch or at school?
And the biggest unasked question, in my opinion…“WHY?” Why does the Tooth Fairy want my teeth? Why is she willing to pay for them? What does she do with them?
I mean, as an adult, I would immediately question her motives as well as her under-the-pillow drop spot. Santa can do his thing downstairs by the fireplace all night as far as I’m concerned, but if you’re telling me someone will be getting under my pillow while I’m sleeping on it, some serious questions are going to be asked. And if I don’t like any of the answers, the Tooth Fairy is likely to find a gun under that pillow, not an incisor.
But, a simple, “OK,” is what I got from my boys, and they woke up in the morning excited about Number One’s shiny new dollar coin. They are really gullible! That reminds me… We parents really need to get on the same page about a few things regarding this tooth-hoarding nymph.
For starters, we should all come to a consensus on amount of money given per tooth. Back in my day it was a nickel or a dime at my house, but some of the kids at school were getting quarters. I always thought that was a little weird. Why did she pay Billy more for his stupid teeth?
Nowadays, with the inflated price of health care, we’re up to a dollar per tooth with my kids, but I have heard some parents saying five dollars. Besides the fact that I have three boys and would go broke at five dollars per tooth, it just seems like too much. At those prices the kids might start getting suspicious and asking more questions, and I think we can all agree, nobody wants that. Also, if the price gets too high, we’ll have kids in the garage pulling out each other’s teeth with dad’s needle-nose pliers, trying to score enough cash for a new Nintendo. Not good.
We also need to agree on what she does with the teeth. We should get our story straight for the kids, but mostly we should all figure out what to actually do with the teeth. My wife and I are currently saving them in an envelope, but neither one of us can figure out who’s idea that was, or why we’re doing it. What are we saving them for?
Come to think of it, I’m out four bucks so far, and all I have to show for it is four used teeth that I don’t really want in an envelope. Maybe my boys aren’t the gullible ones in this situation.
Why ARE we keeping these? Why are we paying our children for their old teeth? Those are really the big unanswered questions here. I have four tiny teeth in my dresser drawer that I don’t want right now, and I would really like to get those questions answered before I’m down sixty bucks, holding sixty baby teeth, and wondering, “What now?”
Let’s all get together and discuss. I can meet on Thursday evenings.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Now, never mind the logistics of a round-the-world trip with six billion stops in one night. That is the easiest part of the story to swallow as far as I’m concerned. We have a concrete tile roof with no snow and a 35-degree pitch, yet my kids think someone landed a sleigh on it. Apparently, flying deer make sense to them, and the fact that our gas fireplace chimney is really just a 3-inch diameter pipe doesn’t faze them. I guess they figure if the fat man can get here with flying deer, he can fit himself, two Razor scooters and a soccer ball down a hole the size of a water glass.
I have to cut them some amount of slack regarding Santa, since it’s undoubtedly the most popular world-wide myth being perpetrated on children. It’s easier to fool them because we parents have our story straight about Saint Nick.
We are currently dealing with another benevolent, magical house-visiting stranger, but this one is weirder. Weirder than a man who lives with scooter-producing elves and flying caribou, you ask? Yes. I’m talking about the Tooth Fairy.
My six-year-old, Son Number One as he is called, has been losing his baby teeth for a while now. He recently lost number three and four, which happened to be his two front teeth, so he now looks like a really unfortunate beaver. When he lost his first tooth about a year ago, we introduced the Tooth Fairy to the boys.
Here’s how the conversation went:
“Now that you’ve lost this tooth, we need to put it in an envelope and put it under your pillow.”
“Why”
“So the Tooth Fairy will come and bring you money.”
“The Tooth Fairy?”
“Yes. The Tooth Fairy comes and takes your teeth out from under your pillow and leaves you money.”
“Oh, OK.”
OK?!? What do you mean, “OK?” Don’t you have about a bazillion other questions?
Who is the Tooth Fairy? Is the Tooth Fairy a he or a she? Where does she live? How does she know where we live? How does she get in the house? How does she get into our room? How does she know which room is ours? How does she get under my pillow? Why do we leave the tooth under my pillow instead of out on the dresser? How does she even know I lost a tooth? There are three of us in this room, so how does she know which pillow? Does she just check under all the pillows? Why does this happen at night instead of at lunch or at school?
And the biggest unasked question, in my opinion…“WHY?” Why does the Tooth Fairy want my teeth? Why is she willing to pay for them? What does she do with them?
I mean, as an adult, I would immediately question her motives as well as her under-the-pillow drop spot. Santa can do his thing downstairs by the fireplace all night as far as I’m concerned, but if you’re telling me someone will be getting under my pillow while I’m sleeping on it, some serious questions are going to be asked. And if I don’t like any of the answers, the Tooth Fairy is likely to find a gun under that pillow, not an incisor.
But, a simple, “OK,” is what I got from my boys, and they woke up in the morning excited about Number One’s shiny new dollar coin. They are really gullible! That reminds me… We parents really need to get on the same page about a few things regarding this tooth-hoarding nymph.
For starters, we should all come to a consensus on amount of money given per tooth. Back in my day it was a nickel or a dime at my house, but some of the kids at school were getting quarters. I always thought that was a little weird. Why did she pay Billy more for his stupid teeth?
Nowadays, with the inflated price of health care, we’re up to a dollar per tooth with my kids, but I have heard some parents saying five dollars. Besides the fact that I have three boys and would go broke at five dollars per tooth, it just seems like too much. At those prices the kids might start getting suspicious and asking more questions, and I think we can all agree, nobody wants that. Also, if the price gets too high, we’ll have kids in the garage pulling out each other’s teeth with dad’s needle-nose pliers, trying to score enough cash for a new Nintendo. Not good.
We also need to agree on what she does with the teeth. We should get our story straight for the kids, but mostly we should all figure out what to actually do with the teeth. My wife and I are currently saving them in an envelope, but neither one of us can figure out who’s idea that was, or why we’re doing it. What are we saving them for?
Come to think of it, I’m out four bucks so far, and all I have to show for it is four used teeth that I don’t really want in an envelope. Maybe my boys aren’t the gullible ones in this situation.
Why ARE we keeping these? Why are we paying our children for their old teeth? Those are really the big unanswered questions here. I have four tiny teeth in my dresser drawer that I don’t want right now, and I would really like to get those questions answered before I’m down sixty bucks, holding sixty baby teeth, and wondering, “What now?”
Let’s all get together and discuss. I can meet on Thursday evenings.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
I Have a Dream - A Father's Version - Part 2
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. It is a Father’s Dream.
I have a dream that one day the people at Lego will take pity on my bare feet and finally round the sharp corners on their little plastic blocks.
I have a dream that one day my sons will pee in the toilet, instead of peeing on and around the toilet.
I have a dream that my sons will begin to think about putting a toy back where it goes, instead of throwing it over their shoulder when they’re done with it, or when they hear, “Dinner.”
I have a dream that eventually the daytime decibel level in my house will drop below the equivalent of a rock saw being destroyed by a jackhammer on a freight train.
I have a dream that one day we will be able to get my four-year-old tired enough that he will sleep past 5:30am.
I have a dream that someday soon my sons will be able to get out of bed, no matter what the hour, and go poop or get a drink of water without having to tell me about it.
I have a dream that I will change my last diaper on my child before I am old enough to need them myself.
I have a dream that the people who predict college tuition levels to rise 250% over the next 15-20 years have actually been smoking crack, and college is really getting cheaper.
I have a dream that somewhere, out there, there is a sippy-cup manufacturer that can actually make a container for milk that doesn’t leak when turned upside-down and slammed on the table by a two-year-old.
I have a dream that someday I will walk into my office and not find that my computer login name has been changed to bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbAW#4e5c by one of my sons randomly pushing buttons.
I have a dream that one day, taking the boys with me on an errand will not automatically add 45 minutes to that errand.
I have a dream that I will never again hear the words, "Daddy, help! I fell off the toilet while I was peeing." That I will never again have to deal with the cleanup of that unfortunate incident.
I have a dream that I can someday stop having to explain to the 911 dispatcher that my son was just playing with the buttons and they do not need to respond to my cell phone’s location.
I have a dream that a pharmaceutical company somewhere will eventually produce a safe and reliable children’s tranquilizer for short-term knockouts, so that we parents may sign escrow documents, or talk to the bank teller, or read the paper in peace.
I have a dream that someday I will hear about what actually happened at school, instead of hearing, “Nothing.”
I have a dream that the next call I receive from the principal will be to congratulate me on something outstanding my son did, instead of to discuss another “incident.”
I have a dream that someday we can find a food group that all five members of the family will willingly eat, besides bacon.
I have a dream that my three boys will somehow moderate their food intake to fit my budget, and not eat the entire contents of the refrigerator in one day. My six-year-old can eat a whole chicken, so I guess… I have a dream that someday soon food will get a lot cheaper, and giant refrigerators will go on sale.
And when this happens, I will sing:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Because teenagers clean up after themselves, are better behaved, quieter, and eat less, right? Right!?!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. It is a Father’s Dream.
I have a dream that one day the people at Lego will take pity on my bare feet and finally round the sharp corners on their little plastic blocks.
I have a dream that one day my sons will pee in the toilet, instead of peeing on and around the toilet.
I have a dream that my sons will begin to think about putting a toy back where it goes, instead of throwing it over their shoulder when they’re done with it, or when they hear, “Dinner.”
I have a dream that eventually the daytime decibel level in my house will drop below the equivalent of a rock saw being destroyed by a jackhammer on a freight train.
I have a dream that one day we will be able to get my four-year-old tired enough that he will sleep past 5:30am.
I have a dream that someday soon my sons will be able to get out of bed, no matter what the hour, and go poop or get a drink of water without having to tell me about it.
I have a dream that I will change my last diaper on my child before I am old enough to need them myself.
I have a dream that the people who predict college tuition levels to rise 250% over the next 15-20 years have actually been smoking crack, and college is really getting cheaper.
I have a dream that somewhere, out there, there is a sippy-cup manufacturer that can actually make a container for milk that doesn’t leak when turned upside-down and slammed on the table by a two-year-old.
I have a dream that someday I will walk into my office and not find that my computer login name has been changed to bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbAW#4e5c by one of my sons randomly pushing buttons.
I have a dream that one day, taking the boys with me on an errand will not automatically add 45 minutes to that errand.
I have a dream that I will never again hear the words, "Daddy, help! I fell off the toilet while I was peeing." That I will never again have to deal with the cleanup of that unfortunate incident.
I have a dream that I can someday stop having to explain to the 911 dispatcher that my son was just playing with the buttons and they do not need to respond to my cell phone’s location.
I have a dream that a pharmaceutical company somewhere will eventually produce a safe and reliable children’s tranquilizer for short-term knockouts, so that we parents may sign escrow documents, or talk to the bank teller, or read the paper in peace.
I have a dream that someday I will hear about what actually happened at school, instead of hearing, “Nothing.”
I have a dream that the next call I receive from the principal will be to congratulate me on something outstanding my son did, instead of to discuss another “incident.”
I have a dream that someday we can find a food group that all five members of the family will willingly eat, besides bacon.
I have a dream that my three boys will somehow moderate their food intake to fit my budget, and not eat the entire contents of the refrigerator in one day. My six-year-old can eat a whole chicken, so I guess… I have a dream that someday soon food will get a lot cheaper, and giant refrigerators will go on sale.
And when this happens, I will sing:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Because teenagers clean up after themselves, are better behaved, quieter, and eat less, right? Right!?!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Resolutions
My wife had been after me all week to tell her what my New Year’s resolutions were, and apparently, “I don’t have any,” was not an acceptable answer, so I was forced to find some. I did some quick internet research and came up with a list of the most popular resolutions in America. Not wanting to appear like I was slacking off, I have adopted all of them. Bring it on, 2011!
Spend more time with family and friends
Since the only two things I do are work and hang out with my family and friends, the only way to accomplish this resolution was to quit my job. Done.
Go to the gym more
OK, let’s not start talking crazy. I modified this one slightly to fit my lifestyle. I resolved to drive past the gym at least twice a week. If I go the long way to 7-Eleven, I can go by the gym on my way to get my 94-oz soda. Baby steps, people!
Lose weight
I am all about this resolution. I have been keeping my eye on the new MacBook Air, and I think it’s time to pull the trigger on that bad boy. That should get rid of about five pounds compared to my old Dell.
Quit smoking
I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this one, and frankly, I really don’t understand why I need to. I mean, what’s better than ribs? Answer… nothing. Still, I guess I could rotisserie more chickens or something like that. I’ll have to think about this one some more.
Enjoy life more
Uh… hello? Didn’t they pay attention to the first one? I just quit my job. This one is kind of redundant, don’t you think?
Quit drinking
No problem there. This one requires no action on my part. I only drink beer, and everyone knows, beer doesn’t count. It’s more of a food group than a beverage, really. They can’t possibly mean beer, can they? I mean, what would I drink while I was smoking? Or rotisserie-ing?
Get out of debt
This one may be a little tricky, since I just quit my job, but I have at least resolved to stop taking payday loans to cover my gambling losses. That should help. I will, instead, borrow money from friends and relatives. That should cut down on my principal and interest payments significantly.
Learn a new language
I have actually been meaning to do this for quite a while, so this resolution thing should really be the boost I need. I am going to learn to speak Number Three. I am constantly having to ask Son Number One and Son Number Two what the heck Number Three just said. Everyone in our house can understand our youngest son, except me. My wife will really appreciate it when I finally crack the code! It should also really help him when he’s trying to tell me stuff like, “My head is stuck,” or “You’re sitting on me.”
Help others
This one sounded like a lot of work, and appears to involve talking to other people, so I decided to modify it slightly. I have resolved to give my sons 30% fewer smart-ass answers to their questions. That should help them learn more actual facts, and should satisfy this category.
Stick to a budget
Budgets have never really worked out for me, and since I am unemployed now, the idea just seems silly. I mean, how can I have a budget when I don’t have a paycheck? Hello! So, I have modified this one to be “Stick to a system.” Namely, my horse picking system at the track. I figure without any future paychecks, I will need to really buckle down and get serious at the track if I’m going to feed the family.
Find my soul mate
This one required some modification. For starters, since I already have a wife, finding my soul mate might involve a messy divorce. Plus, one of the main reasons I got married in the first place was so that I could stop dating. In light of these considerations, I have decided instead to find my soul mate of beer. My beer mate, if you will. Yes, that one perfect beer that compliments everything in my new and improved life. I don’t expect the search to be easy. On the contrary, I think this quest may take a lifetime, but I’m willing to put that kind of time in for such an important resolution.
Find a better job
Again… hello? I just quit my last job. Don’t they even pay attention to their own lists? I have found a better job; namely, no job. Duh!
Be less stressed
Let’s see, here... I’m an unemployed guy on a quest to find his beer mate. This one should not be a problem.
On second thought, when I presented this list to my wife, she looked a little stressed. That sometimes has a way of coming around to bite me, so the “Be less stressed” one might be a little more difficult than I thought.
She keeps muttering something that sounds like, “You quit your what?” and her face seems a little redder than normal. Maybe she should think about quitting her job and going on a quest to find her wine mate. I’ll suggest that to her. That might get me some extra points in the “Help others” category, too.
I can’t figure out why she seems so upset. After all, this was her idea.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Spend more time with family and friends
Since the only two things I do are work and hang out with my family and friends, the only way to accomplish this resolution was to quit my job. Done.
Go to the gym more
OK, let’s not start talking crazy. I modified this one slightly to fit my lifestyle. I resolved to drive past the gym at least twice a week. If I go the long way to 7-Eleven, I can go by the gym on my way to get my 94-oz soda. Baby steps, people!
Lose weight
I am all about this resolution. I have been keeping my eye on the new MacBook Air, and I think it’s time to pull the trigger on that bad boy. That should get rid of about five pounds compared to my old Dell.
Quit smoking
I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this one, and frankly, I really don’t understand why I need to. I mean, what’s better than ribs? Answer… nothing. Still, I guess I could rotisserie more chickens or something like that. I’ll have to think about this one some more.
Enjoy life more
Uh… hello? Didn’t they pay attention to the first one? I just quit my job. This one is kind of redundant, don’t you think?
Quit drinking
No problem there. This one requires no action on my part. I only drink beer, and everyone knows, beer doesn’t count. It’s more of a food group than a beverage, really. They can’t possibly mean beer, can they? I mean, what would I drink while I was smoking? Or rotisserie-ing?
Get out of debt
This one may be a little tricky, since I just quit my job, but I have at least resolved to stop taking payday loans to cover my gambling losses. That should help. I will, instead, borrow money from friends and relatives. That should cut down on my principal and interest payments significantly.
Learn a new language
I have actually been meaning to do this for quite a while, so this resolution thing should really be the boost I need. I am going to learn to speak Number Three. I am constantly having to ask Son Number One and Son Number Two what the heck Number Three just said. Everyone in our house can understand our youngest son, except me. My wife will really appreciate it when I finally crack the code! It should also really help him when he’s trying to tell me stuff like, “My head is stuck,” or “You’re sitting on me.”
Help others
This one sounded like a lot of work, and appears to involve talking to other people, so I decided to modify it slightly. I have resolved to give my sons 30% fewer smart-ass answers to their questions. That should help them learn more actual facts, and should satisfy this category.
Stick to a budget
Budgets have never really worked out for me, and since I am unemployed now, the idea just seems silly. I mean, how can I have a budget when I don’t have a paycheck? Hello! So, I have modified this one to be “Stick to a system.” Namely, my horse picking system at the track. I figure without any future paychecks, I will need to really buckle down and get serious at the track if I’m going to feed the family.
Find my soul mate
This one required some modification. For starters, since I already have a wife, finding my soul mate might involve a messy divorce. Plus, one of the main reasons I got married in the first place was so that I could stop dating. In light of these considerations, I have decided instead to find my soul mate of beer. My beer mate, if you will. Yes, that one perfect beer that compliments everything in my new and improved life. I don’t expect the search to be easy. On the contrary, I think this quest may take a lifetime, but I’m willing to put that kind of time in for such an important resolution.
Find a better job
Again… hello? I just quit my last job. Don’t they even pay attention to their own lists? I have found a better job; namely, no job. Duh!
Be less stressed
Let’s see, here... I’m an unemployed guy on a quest to find his beer mate. This one should not be a problem.
On second thought, when I presented this list to my wife, she looked a little stressed. That sometimes has a way of coming around to bite me, so the “Be less stressed” one might be a little more difficult than I thought.
She keeps muttering something that sounds like, “You quit your what?” and her face seems a little redder than normal. Maybe she should think about quitting her job and going on a quest to find her wine mate. I’ll suggest that to her. That might get me some extra points in the “Help others” category, too.
I can’t figure out why she seems so upset. After all, this was her idea.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Holiday Observations
I had the chance this holiday season, as I hope many of you did, to slow down a little from my normally busy routine and enjoy life a little more. As this year has wound to a close, I was able to reflect a bit on life, and the holidays, and I have made some observations.
Here are a few of my deep thoughts for you to ponder:
The number of days remaining until Christmas is inversely and exponentially proportional to my desire to get within three miles of the mall.
It’s really too bad that the guy who came up with “Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg” isn’t getting royalties. That really caught on with the kids.
My wife asked me this year what kind of deals would need to be offered to get me to go to the 4:00am door-buster sales on “Black Friday.” After a little thought I decided that if Target was willing to pay me about $2000 to take something out of the store, I might go.
There is a tipping point in late November when my attitude about the homeowner who leaves his Christmas lights up year-round changes from mild disgust to unabashed admiration.
The LightKeeper Pro is the best invention, ever invented by anyone, ever.
When people refuse to say, “Merry Christmas,” but go with, “Happy Holidays,” what holidays are they talking about?
If we supposedly evolved from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys? (I didn’t necessarily say they were all observations about the holidays… just observations I made during the holidays.)
Fruitcake is a lot like the Broadway musical “Cats.” People either love it or hate it. There is no middle ground.
There is quite a bit of build-up to Christmas Day, but no good mechanism for dealing with the bone crushing anticlimactic feeling of the day after Christmas. Perhaps this is why the English invented Boxing Day. Sadly, we’ll never know, because no one knows what Boxing Day really is.
Junior Miss sizes are not the same as Women’s sizes. When a guy buys his wife pajamas in a size she wears, but that size turns out to be a Junior Miss size, those pajamas will not fit that guy’s wife.
On an unrelated note, my local department store should do a much better job of delineating between the Junior Miss section and the Women’s section, so a guy can figure out where he’s standing.
Putting lottery scratcher tickets in your spouse’s Christmas stocking can either be a pretty fun, cool gift, or the most worthless, let-down of a gift ever.
The person that came up with the idea of replacing the wrapped box with the gift bag and tissue paper should get a Nobel Prize.
We had carolers come to our door this year. As I understand it from the old song, they used to demand figgy pudding. This group asked for $5 toward some drinking water project in Africa. What’s up with that? Still, it’s probably for the best. I don’t even know what figgy pudding is, but I had five bucks.
“I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” is a great concept if you’re staying home. If you’re travelling, however, it’s a different story entirely. I can assure you that when you’re caught in a blizzard on Interstate-5, off the port bow of an eighteen-wheeler blowing road-slush directly onto your windshield, and your wipers can’t keep up, you’re dreaming of a very dry, very hot Christmas.
Have a safe, happy, and productive New Year, everybody!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Here are a few of my deep thoughts for you to ponder:
The number of days remaining until Christmas is inversely and exponentially proportional to my desire to get within three miles of the mall.
It’s really too bad that the guy who came up with “Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg” isn’t getting royalties. That really caught on with the kids.
My wife asked me this year what kind of deals would need to be offered to get me to go to the 4:00am door-buster sales on “Black Friday.” After a little thought I decided that if Target was willing to pay me about $2000 to take something out of the store, I might go.
There is a tipping point in late November when my attitude about the homeowner who leaves his Christmas lights up year-round changes from mild disgust to unabashed admiration.
The LightKeeper Pro is the best invention, ever invented by anyone, ever.
When people refuse to say, “Merry Christmas,” but go with, “Happy Holidays,” what holidays are they talking about?
If we supposedly evolved from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys? (I didn’t necessarily say they were all observations about the holidays… just observations I made during the holidays.)
Fruitcake is a lot like the Broadway musical “Cats.” People either love it or hate it. There is no middle ground.
There is quite a bit of build-up to Christmas Day, but no good mechanism for dealing with the bone crushing anticlimactic feeling of the day after Christmas. Perhaps this is why the English invented Boxing Day. Sadly, we’ll never know, because no one knows what Boxing Day really is.
Junior Miss sizes are not the same as Women’s sizes. When a guy buys his wife pajamas in a size she wears, but that size turns out to be a Junior Miss size, those pajamas will not fit that guy’s wife.
On an unrelated note, my local department store should do a much better job of delineating between the Junior Miss section and the Women’s section, so a guy can figure out where he’s standing.
Putting lottery scratcher tickets in your spouse’s Christmas stocking can either be a pretty fun, cool gift, or the most worthless, let-down of a gift ever.
The person that came up with the idea of replacing the wrapped box with the gift bag and tissue paper should get a Nobel Prize.
We had carolers come to our door this year. As I understand it from the old song, they used to demand figgy pudding. This group asked for $5 toward some drinking water project in Africa. What’s up with that? Still, it’s probably for the best. I don’t even know what figgy pudding is, but I had five bucks.
“I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” is a great concept if you’re staying home. If you’re travelling, however, it’s a different story entirely. I can assure you that when you’re caught in a blizzard on Interstate-5, off the port bow of an eighteen-wheeler blowing road-slush directly onto your windshield, and your wipers can’t keep up, you’re dreaming of a very dry, very hot Christmas.
Have a safe, happy, and productive New Year, everybody!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Mrs. Claus
I must admit something to you. I’m not Santa. I know, I know… This comes as quite a shock to a lot of you, but I can’t live a lie. I’m not him. My wife is.
Around our house, my wife makes it all happen. With most holidays, but especially around Christmas, she is on top of the preparations and planning way in advance while I am barely aware that the holiday is occurring even while I’m in the middle of celebrating it.
It’s not that I’m apathetic about the holidays. On the contrary, I love them. It’s just that I’m really, really busy. I have approximately eight minutes of free time each day, which leaves precious little time for me to sit down and think about holiday planning.
Also, since we’ve had the kids around the house, my brain has gotten quite a bit smaller. At least, it feels like it has. I used to plan out an entire week’s worth of activities in advance, keep it all in my head, and never forget a thing. I’d go to Home Depot with a 30-item shopping list in my head, and leave 10 minutes later with absolutely everything I needed for my project. Nowadays, I forget why I was going downstairs by the time I’m on the fourth step. I need to write everything down, no matter how small the list. If I take our three boys with me to a store, I have to write down where I parked the car, so we don’t spend an extra 15 minutes in the parking lot on the way out, and it takes the better part of an hour to buy two nails and a paint brush.
Also, any space remaining in my new, reduced-capacity brain that used to store information has been usurped by a rapid-fire question processing function. When my sons are around I am constantly fielding a torrent of questions like:
“How come Superman can fly, but the Roadrunner can’t?”
“How come there are so many different kinds of hammers?”
“How do they make ceilings?”
“Why are lights bright?”
“Where’s that one Lego? You know… the one with the thing on it.”
“Why doesn’t water go sour?”
“What’s in your ‘adult drink’?”
“How can you hear me with ear plugs in?”
So, with my lack of free time and my severely reduced brain capacity, I have had to whittle down my holiday planning involvement to the bare bones. At this point, I am really only in charge of the car.
You see, most of our holidays involve travel, but we used to fly everywhere. Now since the airlines have started to crack down on what really constitutes a “lap child,” we have been forced to look into other alternatives. I mean, really! Since when is a six-year-old too big to share a seat with me? Come on! He’s only four and a half feet tall. Anyway, apparently now they want us to buy five tickets! Who am I, John Rockefeller? I think not. In light of that unfortunate fact, we are spending quite a bit more time in the car these days. And since I like to enjoy my holidays, I try to keep the car in good operating condition.
My wife will say, “4th of July,” and all I will think about is coolant and Freon levels. My wife says New Years, and all that comes to my mind is windshield wiper fluid and snow chains. Memorial Day… trailer lights. Labor Day… shocks and struts. Thanksgiving… wiper blades and tire pressure.
So, unless the pre-holiday task involves automobile maintenance, it usually falls to my wife. Luckily, I married Mrs. Claus.
If it was left up to me, the Christmas tree would go up at about 9:00 pm on December 24th. Again, please don’t misunderstand. It’s not because I’m scroogish, that’s just when I would get around to it. As it happens, she has me scheduled to drag our majestic pre-lit 8-foot faux Douglas fir out of the storage shed the day after Thanksgiving. I usually balk at that schedule on principle, but still always end up doing it while the calendar is still on November.
She then schedules me to put up the exterior Christmas lights. She knows better than to ask me to do this until it is at least December. You all know how I feel about that task.
In the mean time she has decorated the tree with the kids, baked 2000 cookies and made enough homemade almond roca to fill a mid-sized car from floorboard to roof. She makes cute Christmas ornaments and knick-knacks for friends and family, and assembles treat trays for all the neighbors. Our house has something Christmassy in every single room, including little Christmas bears hanging from the ceiling fan pull-chains. There is no spot in our house where you do not have direct line-of-sight on at least four snowman figurines. It’s an indoor winter wonderland! She organizes excursions to see Christmas lights, and every morning in December the boys get a small gift from a 6-foot by 3-foot “advent calendar” quilt hanging on our wall that she made herself. She truly is Mrs. Claus.
Speaking of gifts, she is in charge of that task for a whole host of different reasons. I like to think it’s just because I’m busy and she has more time to shop, but when I’m really honest with myself, that’s only one of the many, many good reasons. She probably took stock of some of the more notable gifts I’d surprised her with over the years and decided that there was really no way a man with such poor taste and judgment should be allowed to ruin Christmas for everyone. We have small children, after all. We want them to look back on their upbringing fondly. We can’t have their childhood memories of Christmas be filled with depressing scenes of unwrapping hand-me-down socks and sticks of beef jerky.
As far as the boys go, she has brilliantly figured out the Gift Answer Averaging System. Since children between the ages of two and six are wildly unpredictable with their answers about what they want, she has devised a clever way to decipher their desires. Over the course of many months, she repeatedly asks each one of them what they would like Santa to bring them for Christmas. She starts the questioning in the early spring. At first, I thought that was a little early, but after watching the process work, I am convinced she’s on to something. A three-year-old will almost always answer with the name of the toy or object that they played with last.
“What do you want Santa to bring you this year?”
“A squirt gun.”
(Ten minutes later)
“What do you want Santa to bring you this year?”
“A flower pot.”
Every once in a while, though, they have a moment of clarity, and will actually tell you what they really want. The trick is knowing which answer to use. By asking them so many times during the course of the year, she is able to compile a data set that she can then scan for repeat answers. Mrs. Claus happens to have a Masters in Statistics, and she uses it. She’s a genius.
I am only in charge of one gift at Christmastime. It is my job to take the boys shopping to get their mommy a present. My wife has either enough stubborn pride or misguided faith in me that she does not remind me of this task. Consequently, since it does not involve car maintenance and is not on any of my spouse-provided to-do lists, I usually forget and end up frantically pulling the kids out of bed late in the evening, two days before Christmas, to go shopping. For some reason, they’re pretty grumpy when we shop.
That reminds me – it’s pretty late and we haven’t bought her gift yet! I’d better go wake up the kids and get going. If the stores are closed, we can always go to the casino gift shop. Either that or the all-night auto parts place. I still need to buy new wiper blades, too. Hey, wait a second…
Do I hear two birds getting hit with one stone?
Merry Christmas, Mrs. Claus!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Around our house, my wife makes it all happen. With most holidays, but especially around Christmas, she is on top of the preparations and planning way in advance while I am barely aware that the holiday is occurring even while I’m in the middle of celebrating it.
It’s not that I’m apathetic about the holidays. On the contrary, I love them. It’s just that I’m really, really busy. I have approximately eight minutes of free time each day, which leaves precious little time for me to sit down and think about holiday planning.
Also, since we’ve had the kids around the house, my brain has gotten quite a bit smaller. At least, it feels like it has. I used to plan out an entire week’s worth of activities in advance, keep it all in my head, and never forget a thing. I’d go to Home Depot with a 30-item shopping list in my head, and leave 10 minutes later with absolutely everything I needed for my project. Nowadays, I forget why I was going downstairs by the time I’m on the fourth step. I need to write everything down, no matter how small the list. If I take our three boys with me to a store, I have to write down where I parked the car, so we don’t spend an extra 15 minutes in the parking lot on the way out, and it takes the better part of an hour to buy two nails and a paint brush.
Also, any space remaining in my new, reduced-capacity brain that used to store information has been usurped by a rapid-fire question processing function. When my sons are around I am constantly fielding a torrent of questions like:
“How come Superman can fly, but the Roadrunner can’t?”
“How come there are so many different kinds of hammers?”
“How do they make ceilings?”
“Why are lights bright?”
“Where’s that one Lego? You know… the one with the thing on it.”
“Why doesn’t water go sour?”
“What’s in your ‘adult drink’?”
“How can you hear me with ear plugs in?”
So, with my lack of free time and my severely reduced brain capacity, I have had to whittle down my holiday planning involvement to the bare bones. At this point, I am really only in charge of the car.
You see, most of our holidays involve travel, but we used to fly everywhere. Now since the airlines have started to crack down on what really constitutes a “lap child,” we have been forced to look into other alternatives. I mean, really! Since when is a six-year-old too big to share a seat with me? Come on! He’s only four and a half feet tall. Anyway, apparently now they want us to buy five tickets! Who am I, John Rockefeller? I think not. In light of that unfortunate fact, we are spending quite a bit more time in the car these days. And since I like to enjoy my holidays, I try to keep the car in good operating condition.
My wife will say, “4th of July,” and all I will think about is coolant and Freon levels. My wife says New Years, and all that comes to my mind is windshield wiper fluid and snow chains. Memorial Day… trailer lights. Labor Day… shocks and struts. Thanksgiving… wiper blades and tire pressure.
So, unless the pre-holiday task involves automobile maintenance, it usually falls to my wife. Luckily, I married Mrs. Claus.
If it was left up to me, the Christmas tree would go up at about 9:00 pm on December 24th. Again, please don’t misunderstand. It’s not because I’m scroogish, that’s just when I would get around to it. As it happens, she has me scheduled to drag our majestic pre-lit 8-foot faux Douglas fir out of the storage shed the day after Thanksgiving. I usually balk at that schedule on principle, but still always end up doing it while the calendar is still on November.
She then schedules me to put up the exterior Christmas lights. She knows better than to ask me to do this until it is at least December. You all know how I feel about that task.
In the mean time she has decorated the tree with the kids, baked 2000 cookies and made enough homemade almond roca to fill a mid-sized car from floorboard to roof. She makes cute Christmas ornaments and knick-knacks for friends and family, and assembles treat trays for all the neighbors. Our house has something Christmassy in every single room, including little Christmas bears hanging from the ceiling fan pull-chains. There is no spot in our house where you do not have direct line-of-sight on at least four snowman figurines. It’s an indoor winter wonderland! She organizes excursions to see Christmas lights, and every morning in December the boys get a small gift from a 6-foot by 3-foot “advent calendar” quilt hanging on our wall that she made herself. She truly is Mrs. Claus.
Speaking of gifts, she is in charge of that task for a whole host of different reasons. I like to think it’s just because I’m busy and she has more time to shop, but when I’m really honest with myself, that’s only one of the many, many good reasons. She probably took stock of some of the more notable gifts I’d surprised her with over the years and decided that there was really no way a man with such poor taste and judgment should be allowed to ruin Christmas for everyone. We have small children, after all. We want them to look back on their upbringing fondly. We can’t have their childhood memories of Christmas be filled with depressing scenes of unwrapping hand-me-down socks and sticks of beef jerky.
As far as the boys go, she has brilliantly figured out the Gift Answer Averaging System. Since children between the ages of two and six are wildly unpredictable with their answers about what they want, she has devised a clever way to decipher their desires. Over the course of many months, she repeatedly asks each one of them what they would like Santa to bring them for Christmas. She starts the questioning in the early spring. At first, I thought that was a little early, but after watching the process work, I am convinced she’s on to something. A three-year-old will almost always answer with the name of the toy or object that they played with last.
“What do you want Santa to bring you this year?”
“A squirt gun.”
(Ten minutes later)
“What do you want Santa to bring you this year?”
“A flower pot.”
Every once in a while, though, they have a moment of clarity, and will actually tell you what they really want. The trick is knowing which answer to use. By asking them so many times during the course of the year, she is able to compile a data set that she can then scan for repeat answers. Mrs. Claus happens to have a Masters in Statistics, and she uses it. She’s a genius.
I am only in charge of one gift at Christmastime. It is my job to take the boys shopping to get their mommy a present. My wife has either enough stubborn pride or misguided faith in me that she does not remind me of this task. Consequently, since it does not involve car maintenance and is not on any of my spouse-provided to-do lists, I usually forget and end up frantically pulling the kids out of bed late in the evening, two days before Christmas, to go shopping. For some reason, they’re pretty grumpy when we shop.
That reminds me – it’s pretty late and we haven’t bought her gift yet! I’d better go wake up the kids and get going. If the stores are closed, we can always go to the casino gift shop. Either that or the all-night auto parts place. I still need to buy new wiper blades, too. Hey, wait a second…
Do I hear two birds getting hit with one stone?
Merry Christmas, Mrs. Claus!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The Do-it-Yourself Christmas Letter
Since it is getting dangerously close to Christmas, I thought I would help you out if you have not written your Christmas letter yet. Let’s face it; time is no longer on your side. There is no way you’ll get anything meaningful written and out to your loved ones in time for Christmas now. Any other year, you’d be up a creek. But this year, ol’ Smidgey Claus has got your back. Please feel free to use this handy do-it-yourself template to create a quality Christmas letter in nothing flat. Just fill in your last name(s) in the blanks and circle the appropriate choices, and you're in business.
Christmas 2010
Merry Christmas everyone,
We here at the ______________ house have had another (great/disappointing) year. Recently, Dad received a (promotion/severe reprimand) at work, and he is still on (cloud nine/thin ice). Earlier in the year he took up (golf/drinking) and is getting really good at it. He still spends quite a bit of his free time (volunteering/womanizing) at the local (homeless shelter/homeless shelter), and has proclaimed that this year has easily been the most (rewarding/depressing) of his life.
Mom threw out her (glasses and contacts/hip) this year after getting (laser eye surgery/drunk and falling) and has been (pleased with the results/grouchy) ever since. She continues her part-time (volunteering/mandated community service) in the city and added (teaching illiterate adults to read/another 120 hours) to her (activities/sentence) when she (heard about the program from a friend/mouthed off to the judge). With all of her (giving/griping), she still finds time to (feed us/yell at us) and keep us (warm and happy/guessing). She is a real (angel/piece of work).
Sister (graduated high school/stole a car) in June and was accepted into the (university/penitentiary system) in September. She has been doing (well/poorly) in her (classes/anger management therapy sessions). She has received (a nomination/little hope) from (her teachers/the warden) for (the dean’s list/early release). She is now (playing tennis/appealing her case) at the (collegiate level/appellate level) and has been (in the top five/shot down by the judges) repeatedly. We couldn’t be more (proud of/disappointed in) her.
Little Brother joined (the army/a cult) in the spring and completed his (basic training/new employee day) at (Fort Benning/KFC). He has been stationed (overseas/at the mall) and is on the fast track for (promotion/nothing). His (commanding officer/sixteen-year-old boss) is (pleased/apathetic) about his (natural initiative/lack of initiative), and he has received several citations for (meritorious service/marijuana possession). We are hoping he gets a transfer (back to Fort Benning/to the Mumbai KFC) so we can see (more/less) of him. We can’t wait to see him (again/leave).
As for me, I finally realized my dream and got the (Ferrari 599 GTO/X-Box 360) this year. I was in (Heaven/the living room) every day this summer as I (raced professionally/ate my way) through (the streets of Milan/numerous bags of Cheetos). My (Italian girlfriend Sonia/gaming buddy Lance) recently accepted my (proposal/challenge) for (marriage/a Halo rematch), and we are going to be (married/completely useless and pale) by this time next year. I am truly living the life I’ve always (dreamed/been warned) about.
Well, that’s about it for the latest news on the _____________ family. Please (come see us/stay away) whenever you’re in town. As we count our numerous (blessings/glasses of 100-proof eggnog), we hope this letter finds you feeling as (blessed/drunk) as we feel this holiday season.
Merry Christmas!
You’re welcome! Now just sign, copy and send. You’re all set.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Christmas 2010
Merry Christmas everyone,
We here at the ______________ house have had another (great/disappointing) year. Recently, Dad received a (promotion/severe reprimand) at work, and he is still on (cloud nine/thin ice). Earlier in the year he took up (golf/drinking) and is getting really good at it. He still spends quite a bit of his free time (volunteering/womanizing) at the local (homeless shelter/homeless shelter), and has proclaimed that this year has easily been the most (rewarding/depressing) of his life.
Mom threw out her (glasses and contacts/hip) this year after getting (laser eye surgery/drunk and falling) and has been (pleased with the results/grouchy) ever since. She continues her part-time (volunteering/mandated community service) in the city and added (teaching illiterate adults to read/another 120 hours) to her (activities/sentence) when she (heard about the program from a friend/mouthed off to the judge). With all of her (giving/griping), she still finds time to (feed us/yell at us) and keep us (warm and happy/guessing). She is a real (angel/piece of work).
Sister (graduated high school/stole a car) in June and was accepted into the (university/penitentiary system) in September. She has been doing (well/poorly) in her (classes/anger management therapy sessions). She has received (a nomination/little hope) from (her teachers/the warden) for (the dean’s list/early release). She is now (playing tennis/appealing her case) at the (collegiate level/appellate level) and has been (in the top five/shot down by the judges) repeatedly. We couldn’t be more (proud of/disappointed in) her.
Little Brother joined (the army/a cult) in the spring and completed his (basic training/new employee day) at (Fort Benning/KFC). He has been stationed (overseas/at the mall) and is on the fast track for (promotion/nothing). His (commanding officer/sixteen-year-old boss) is (pleased/apathetic) about his (natural initiative/lack of initiative), and he has received several citations for (meritorious service/marijuana possession). We are hoping he gets a transfer (back to Fort Benning/to the Mumbai KFC) so we can see (more/less) of him. We can’t wait to see him (again/leave).
As for me, I finally realized my dream and got the (Ferrari 599 GTO/X-Box 360) this year. I was in (Heaven/the living room) every day this summer as I (raced professionally/ate my way) through (the streets of Milan/numerous bags of Cheetos). My (Italian girlfriend Sonia/gaming buddy Lance) recently accepted my (proposal/challenge) for (marriage/a Halo rematch), and we are going to be (married/completely useless and pale) by this time next year. I am truly living the life I’ve always (dreamed/been warned) about.
Well, that’s about it for the latest news on the _____________ family. Please (come see us/stay away) whenever you’re in town. As we count our numerous (blessings/glasses of 100-proof eggnog), we hope this letter finds you feeling as (blessed/drunk) as we feel this holiday season.
Merry Christmas!
You’re welcome! Now just sign, copy and send. You’re all set.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
The Cool Yule Tool
This past Saturday, I performed one of my most cherished and anticipated holiday chores. I put up the Christmas lights on the front of my house. (Those two sentences truly highlight for me the overwhelming world-wide need for a sarcasm font.)
I should back up a bit and start at the beginning. If you are a long-time reader, then you already know how I feel about the icicle lights we put up – and by “we” I mean “I” – on the house each year. I hate them.
Now, for you new readers, please don’t misunderstand. I love the look and feel of the lights on the house, and I love all things Christmas, but I hate my lights. It’s not the lights that are lit that I hate. I love those. It’s the five-foot section of lights in the middle of the string that don’t light that I despise from the very depths of my soul.
Long-time reader of “Just a Smidge” or not, it might be best if you (re)read my December, 2009 post entitled “The Five Feet of Christmas I Despise” to get the full story. Go ahead, I’ll wait…
OK, so are we clear? We’re talking real, honest, loathing here.
Now let’s get back to this past Saturday morning…
Have there ever been times in your life when you have stopped and wondered why the you of the past was working against the you of the present? A perfect example of what I’m talking about occurred on Saturday.
I pulled out the two big plastic tubs labeled “XMAS LIGHTS” and popped the lids off. I stood in the garage in disbelief, staring down at a spaghetti-style mess of tangled light strings stuffed into plastic shopping bags. “Why would 2009 Marc have done this to me?” I asked myself. I extracted the first wadded up ball of icicle lights from the tub and slowly untied them into a straight line on the garage floor. I held my breath and plugged one end into the wall socket. There it was. The stomach acid-forming five-foot section of unlit bulbs, right there in the middle of the first string I pulled out of the tub.
I cursed under my breath, and a little over my breath, and retrieved another wadded-up string. This one was different when it was plugged in. The five feet in the middle worked fine, but both ends were out.
I tried to regulate my breathing as my temples began to throb and my right eye began to twitch. Why on Earth would 2009 Marc have done this to me? Why didn’t 2009 Marc throw these out? He had to know that 2010 Marc might have a stroke if he saw more bad light strings come out of the tubs. Did 2009 Marc wish 2010 Marc ill? He knows we’re the same guy, right? Why do I hate myself? Why????
I pondered what to do next. My 2009 alter ego had endured a humiliating Christmas season spent with a house that was 7/8 lit and 1/8 lame, resulting in 100% ugly, and amazingly, had done nothing to remedy the situation for the next year. Here it was, 2010. And there I was, standing in the garage, staring down at two malfunctioning light strings, trying to stop my eye from twitching.
I needed to make a decision. The way I figured it, I had two choices. It made no sense at all to put these lights back up on the house. Why would I intentionally make my house look like the Christmas equivalent of an abandoned Chevy Nova? No, the lights would not go up. I could either go inside and tell my wife that I would not be decorating the house this year, or I could put up some of the first string, wait until no one was looking, “fall” off the ladder in order to intentionally break my arm, and spend the rest of the day at the hospital.
I didn’t like option two at all, and after pondering option one for a minute, I decided it would likely end the same as option two. I was badly in need of a third option.
I was just about to start calling around for Mexicana Airlines one-way ticket pricing when it hit me like a ton of bricks. “The LightKeeper Pro!”
I had heard about this unbelievable tool last year when I was calmly discussing my five-foot outage issue with someone at work. He had heard from a friend of a friend about a mystical gun-shaped tool that fixed Christmas lights in the blink of an eye, just like magic. For some reason, 2009 Marc stored it away in his memory, but neglected to actually buy one for 2010 Marc. That guy is really starting to irk me.
I stopped dialing my travel agent, and dialed my local Ace Hardware instead. Justin answered the phone, and I inquired if he happened to have any LightKeeper Pros left in stock. He said that he had only a few left, and he had already sold 15 of them that morning. It was only 10:00 am. He promised to keep one at the counter for me if I promised to be there in ten minutes. I made it in four.
Apparently, this past Saturday was national “Men Putting Up their Christmas Lights Day.” I sped past no less than 30 other poor souls holding tangled strings of lights. Some of them were still on their ladders. Others already had their bags packed and their Mexican sombreros on. I said a short prayer for all of them as I raced toward my hopeful salvation.
I slid sideways into the Ace parking lot, dove from my car, hurled open the doors, and pounced on Justin. He informed me that he had indeed saved a LightKeeper Pro for me, and asked if I could please let go of him and let him up. I dusted him off and gladly paid him $21.64, and raced home with the tool that I hoped would be the key turning point in my relationship with Christmas lights.
It did not disappoint.
Please know, I do not say this lightly. (Get it?) The LightKeeper Pro is the best thing that has ever been invented, anywhere, anytime, by anyone. The space shuttle, canned beer, baby wipes, the microchip, the wheel, bottled beer, air conditioning, disease resistant crops, nuclear fission, draught beer, soap, penicillin, the printing press, spandex, and even the home keg-erator all take a back seat to this marvelous, magical, marvelous, marvelous tool.
You simply pick any one of the tiny bulbs in the section that isn’t working, plug it into the front socket on the LightKeeper Pro, pull the trigger, and presto, the section lights up. I have read up on how it works, but I wouldn’t dream of boring you with the technical stuff. The only thing you need to know is that it works. It is amazing.
I happily hung up all my lights. Half of them didn’t work. I didn’t care. I hung them up anyway, and 10 minutes later, with the help of my new LightKeeper Pro, the entire house was lit continuously from one end to the other. There are really no words to describe the sense of sheer relief that this marvelous, marvelous tool has brought to my life. This small, hand-held, light-weight, twenty dollar tool not only saved my house from another year of neighborhood shame, but it may very well have saved my marriage and even my life in the process!
To top off the day, as if my new-found tool-of-the-millennium wasn’t enough, when I was hanging the lights my six-year-old came outside and announced that he would like to rake the leaves in the front yard… for fun.
Some days are better than others.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
I should back up a bit and start at the beginning. If you are a long-time reader, then you already know how I feel about the icicle lights we put up – and by “we” I mean “I” – on the house each year. I hate them.
Now, for you new readers, please don’t misunderstand. I love the look and feel of the lights on the house, and I love all things Christmas, but I hate my lights. It’s not the lights that are lit that I hate. I love those. It’s the five-foot section of lights in the middle of the string that don’t light that I despise from the very depths of my soul.
Long-time reader of “Just a Smidge” or not, it might be best if you (re)read my December, 2009 post entitled “The Five Feet of Christmas I Despise” to get the full story. Go ahead, I’ll wait…
OK, so are we clear? We’re talking real, honest, loathing here.
Now let’s get back to this past Saturday morning…
Have there ever been times in your life when you have stopped and wondered why the you of the past was working against the you of the present? A perfect example of what I’m talking about occurred on Saturday.
I pulled out the two big plastic tubs labeled “XMAS LIGHTS” and popped the lids off. I stood in the garage in disbelief, staring down at a spaghetti-style mess of tangled light strings stuffed into plastic shopping bags. “Why would 2009 Marc have done this to me?” I asked myself. I extracted the first wadded up ball of icicle lights from the tub and slowly untied them into a straight line on the garage floor. I held my breath and plugged one end into the wall socket. There it was. The stomach acid-forming five-foot section of unlit bulbs, right there in the middle of the first string I pulled out of the tub.
I cursed under my breath, and a little over my breath, and retrieved another wadded-up string. This one was different when it was plugged in. The five feet in the middle worked fine, but both ends were out.
I tried to regulate my breathing as my temples began to throb and my right eye began to twitch. Why on Earth would 2009 Marc have done this to me? Why didn’t 2009 Marc throw these out? He had to know that 2010 Marc might have a stroke if he saw more bad light strings come out of the tubs. Did 2009 Marc wish 2010 Marc ill? He knows we’re the same guy, right? Why do I hate myself? Why????
I pondered what to do next. My 2009 alter ego had endured a humiliating Christmas season spent with a house that was 7/8 lit and 1/8 lame, resulting in 100% ugly, and amazingly, had done nothing to remedy the situation for the next year. Here it was, 2010. And there I was, standing in the garage, staring down at two malfunctioning light strings, trying to stop my eye from twitching.
I needed to make a decision. The way I figured it, I had two choices. It made no sense at all to put these lights back up on the house. Why would I intentionally make my house look like the Christmas equivalent of an abandoned Chevy Nova? No, the lights would not go up. I could either go inside and tell my wife that I would not be decorating the house this year, or I could put up some of the first string, wait until no one was looking, “fall” off the ladder in order to intentionally break my arm, and spend the rest of the day at the hospital.
I didn’t like option two at all, and after pondering option one for a minute, I decided it would likely end the same as option two. I was badly in need of a third option.
I was just about to start calling around for Mexicana Airlines one-way ticket pricing when it hit me like a ton of bricks. “The LightKeeper Pro!”
I had heard about this unbelievable tool last year when I was calmly discussing my five-foot outage issue with someone at work. He had heard from a friend of a friend about a mystical gun-shaped tool that fixed Christmas lights in the blink of an eye, just like magic. For some reason, 2009 Marc stored it away in his memory, but neglected to actually buy one for 2010 Marc. That guy is really starting to irk me.
I stopped dialing my travel agent, and dialed my local Ace Hardware instead. Justin answered the phone, and I inquired if he happened to have any LightKeeper Pros left in stock. He said that he had only a few left, and he had already sold 15 of them that morning. It was only 10:00 am. He promised to keep one at the counter for me if I promised to be there in ten minutes. I made it in four.
Apparently, this past Saturday was national “Men Putting Up their Christmas Lights Day.” I sped past no less than 30 other poor souls holding tangled strings of lights. Some of them were still on their ladders. Others already had their bags packed and their Mexican sombreros on. I said a short prayer for all of them as I raced toward my hopeful salvation.
I slid sideways into the Ace parking lot, dove from my car, hurled open the doors, and pounced on Justin. He informed me that he had indeed saved a LightKeeper Pro for me, and asked if I could please let go of him and let him up. I dusted him off and gladly paid him $21.64, and raced home with the tool that I hoped would be the key turning point in my relationship with Christmas lights.
It did not disappoint.
Please know, I do not say this lightly. (Get it?) The LightKeeper Pro is the best thing that has ever been invented, anywhere, anytime, by anyone. The space shuttle, canned beer, baby wipes, the microchip, the wheel, bottled beer, air conditioning, disease resistant crops, nuclear fission, draught beer, soap, penicillin, the printing press, spandex, and even the home keg-erator all take a back seat to this marvelous, magical, marvelous, marvelous tool.
You simply pick any one of the tiny bulbs in the section that isn’t working, plug it into the front socket on the LightKeeper Pro, pull the trigger, and presto, the section lights up. I have read up on how it works, but I wouldn’t dream of boring you with the technical stuff. The only thing you need to know is that it works. It is amazing.
I happily hung up all my lights. Half of them didn’t work. I didn’t care. I hung them up anyway, and 10 minutes later, with the help of my new LightKeeper Pro, the entire house was lit continuously from one end to the other. There are really no words to describe the sense of sheer relief that this marvelous, marvelous tool has brought to my life. This small, hand-held, light-weight, twenty dollar tool not only saved my house from another year of neighborhood shame, but it may very well have saved my marriage and even my life in the process!
To top off the day, as if my new-found tool-of-the-millennium wasn’t enough, when I was hanging the lights my six-year-old came outside and announced that he would like to rake the leaves in the front yard… for fun.
Some days are better than others.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Assembly Required
My oldest son, Number One, recently celebrated his sixth birthday, and received a transforming robot “kit” from his grandparents. On the outside of the exciting multi-colored box it showed the robot, standing proud and looking for adventure, and it displayed the two other “modes” that he could turn into, namely an airplane and a scorpion. It was solar powered and motorized to move on its own. The outside of the box looked like any 6-year-old’s dream. The inside of the box was another matter entirely.
We knew there was “assembly required,” because one of the fun features of the toy was that you got to “build it yourself.” I was excited about having a father-son activity where he could gain experience building something mechanical. He tore open the box and spread the contents out and on the table. I took one look at the inventory, and in as calm a voice as I could muster, asked him to put his hands on his head and slowly back away from the toy. The plan had changed. The largest thing in the box, by a wide margin, was the instruction manual. That’s never a good sign.
There were three plastic bags containing screws so small you could lose them all at once with a good sneeze. There were tiny plastic gears, a half-inch in diameter, with little drive shafts, no thicker than a paper clip. There was a one-inch-square solar panel connected to the smallest motor I have ever seen. The motor was no more than 3/8 of an inch long and less than ¼ inch round. It was tethered to the solar panel with two four-inch-long wires roughly the thickness of human hairs.
There were two rafts of plastic parts, containing roughly 80 parts each, all still attached to their spider web of molded plastic anchor points. Some of the parts were so small I was really not sure where I needed to cut to get them free. “Is that a part that I need, or is that the piece I’m supposed to cut off? I can’t tell!”
I was flabbergasted by how complicated and technical this child’s toy was, so I took another look at the box. It advertized that the toy was for ages 10 to adult, with the added caveat that no child under 4 was to get within a 50-foot radius of any of the small parts. I agreed wholeheartedly with the lower age limit, but not because I was worried about a choking incident. There was no part of the entire assembly large enough to choke a child. An infant could have swallowed the motor whole, no problem. I figured the warning was simply to give you a fighting chance of ending up with all the pieces you needed to make it work. To that end, it should really have read “no child under 18.”
I took serious issue with the 10 and up rating, however. I am 38 years old, I have an engineering degree, and I have been designing and assembling mechanical apparatuses professionally for over 20 years, and I had grave reservations about my ability to complete the task. I contend that there is no 10-year-old on this planet with the patience, forethought, dexterity, motor skills, mechanical knowledge, or even the proper tools to assemble one of these things.
There would be no father-son activity today. Involving a 6-year-old in this project would have been like asking Mike Tyson to tune your Stradivarius violin. Wrong guy for the job. I locked the door to the room and went to work.
Step 1 had me pressing the pinion gear onto the motor shaft. The gear was half the size of a pencil eraser, and the motor’s shaft was the diameter of a gnat’s eyelash. It was a “press fit” so the gear wouldn’t slip on the shaft, and I had to push it down as hard as my fingers could press to get it on, without accidentally bending the miniscule shaft. Ten-year-olds were disqualified on the first step.
In steps 12 through 18 I threaded two of the tiniest wires I have ever seen through an obstacle course of plastic needle-holes, snapping the assembly together as I went, making sure not to sever either of the wires accidentally by pinching them or looking at them the wrong way.
In step 35 I assembled a quadruple-reduction, eight-gear transmission inside a shrouded plastic housing. It was the plastic robot equivalent of the ship in a bottle, only the ship was the size of your fingernail, and the bottle wasn’t see-through.
In step 114 I had to go to the garage and find my straight shaft #0 Phillips head screwdriver in my specialty tool kit. Do you have a straight shaft #0 Phillips head screwdriver? No? Well, you would have been dead in the water at step 114.
In step 254 I assembled a double offset cam and linkage system that would have made Leonardo da Vinci weep with joy.
In step 316 I wept. Not with joy.
In step 496 I split an atom.
In step 513 I snapped together the last piece, and marveled at how small it was.
The entire robot, tip to toe was only 3-1/2 inches tall. It took me 1-1/2 hours to assemble it. That’s almost a half-hour per inch.
I unlocked the door and went out to display my accomplishment with pride.
“What took you so long?” was the only response from my wife.
I went back in and re-locked the door until I calmed down.
When I had regained my composure, I came back out and handed Number One his new toy. He and his middle brother, Number Two, went outside to set it in the sun, and cheered as they watched it walk down the sidewalk. Then they brought it inside and tore one of its legs off while calmly discussing who should be allowed to play with it next. It lasted 7-1/2 minutes.
Maybe we don’t need that leg for airplane mode…
This was quite a “toy.” I was just barely old enough to assemble it, and my boys were at least a decade too young to play with it. I think the box should really read, “Must be a 45-year-old aerospace engineer to assemble, and must be at least 35 to operate.”
I’ll give it one thing, though. At least it didn’t require any batteries.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
We knew there was “assembly required,” because one of the fun features of the toy was that you got to “build it yourself.” I was excited about having a father-son activity where he could gain experience building something mechanical. He tore open the box and spread the contents out and on the table. I took one look at the inventory, and in as calm a voice as I could muster, asked him to put his hands on his head and slowly back away from the toy. The plan had changed. The largest thing in the box, by a wide margin, was the instruction manual. That’s never a good sign.
There were three plastic bags containing screws so small you could lose them all at once with a good sneeze. There were tiny plastic gears, a half-inch in diameter, with little drive shafts, no thicker than a paper clip. There was a one-inch-square solar panel connected to the smallest motor I have ever seen. The motor was no more than 3/8 of an inch long and less than ¼ inch round. It was tethered to the solar panel with two four-inch-long wires roughly the thickness of human hairs.
There were two rafts of plastic parts, containing roughly 80 parts each, all still attached to their spider web of molded plastic anchor points. Some of the parts were so small I was really not sure where I needed to cut to get them free. “Is that a part that I need, or is that the piece I’m supposed to cut off? I can’t tell!”
I was flabbergasted by how complicated and technical this child’s toy was, so I took another look at the box. It advertized that the toy was for ages 10 to adult, with the added caveat that no child under 4 was to get within a 50-foot radius of any of the small parts. I agreed wholeheartedly with the lower age limit, but not because I was worried about a choking incident. There was no part of the entire assembly large enough to choke a child. An infant could have swallowed the motor whole, no problem. I figured the warning was simply to give you a fighting chance of ending up with all the pieces you needed to make it work. To that end, it should really have read “no child under 18.”
I took serious issue with the 10 and up rating, however. I am 38 years old, I have an engineering degree, and I have been designing and assembling mechanical apparatuses professionally for over 20 years, and I had grave reservations about my ability to complete the task. I contend that there is no 10-year-old on this planet with the patience, forethought, dexterity, motor skills, mechanical knowledge, or even the proper tools to assemble one of these things.
There would be no father-son activity today. Involving a 6-year-old in this project would have been like asking Mike Tyson to tune your Stradivarius violin. Wrong guy for the job. I locked the door to the room and went to work.
Step 1 had me pressing the pinion gear onto the motor shaft. The gear was half the size of a pencil eraser, and the motor’s shaft was the diameter of a gnat’s eyelash. It was a “press fit” so the gear wouldn’t slip on the shaft, and I had to push it down as hard as my fingers could press to get it on, without accidentally bending the miniscule shaft. Ten-year-olds were disqualified on the first step.
In steps 12 through 18 I threaded two of the tiniest wires I have ever seen through an obstacle course of plastic needle-holes, snapping the assembly together as I went, making sure not to sever either of the wires accidentally by pinching them or looking at them the wrong way.
In step 35 I assembled a quadruple-reduction, eight-gear transmission inside a shrouded plastic housing. It was the plastic robot equivalent of the ship in a bottle, only the ship was the size of your fingernail, and the bottle wasn’t see-through.
In step 114 I had to go to the garage and find my straight shaft #0 Phillips head screwdriver in my specialty tool kit. Do you have a straight shaft #0 Phillips head screwdriver? No? Well, you would have been dead in the water at step 114.
In step 254 I assembled a double offset cam and linkage system that would have made Leonardo da Vinci weep with joy.
In step 316 I wept. Not with joy.
In step 496 I split an atom.
In step 513 I snapped together the last piece, and marveled at how small it was.
The entire robot, tip to toe was only 3-1/2 inches tall. It took me 1-1/2 hours to assemble it. That’s almost a half-hour per inch.
I unlocked the door and went out to display my accomplishment with pride.
“What took you so long?” was the only response from my wife.
I went back in and re-locked the door until I calmed down.
When I had regained my composure, I came back out and handed Number One his new toy. He and his middle brother, Number Two, went outside to set it in the sun, and cheered as they watched it walk down the sidewalk. Then they brought it inside and tore one of its legs off while calmly discussing who should be allowed to play with it next. It lasted 7-1/2 minutes.
Maybe we don’t need that leg for airplane mode…
This was quite a “toy.” I was just barely old enough to assemble it, and my boys were at least a decade too young to play with it. I think the box should really read, “Must be a 45-year-old aerospace engineer to assemble, and must be at least 35 to operate.”
I’ll give it one thing, though. At least it didn’t require any batteries.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Warm Thanks
The other night, we came home to a cold house. The heater was supposed to be on, and the house was supposed 68 degrees, but it was only 60 degrees upstairs. Now, I know you people from Minnesota are laughing at me right now, but just bear with me. That’s cold for us Californians. Anyway, the thermostat appeared to be working, and it seemed to think that the heater was on, but it wasn't. I pushed it up to 75, and still nothing.
I announced to my wife that I would need to "go take a look at things" to which she rolled her eyes and groaned. She does that sometimes when I announce that I need to fix something. I never know why. Anyway, out I went to the circuit breaker panel and flipped the heater’s breaker back and forth. Nothing.
Unfortunately, that was all I had. I was out of ideas. Why hadn’t that worked? What now? Hmmm… There was one other thing I might be able to do. I could go look at the actual heater in the attic…
So, up the stairs I went, ladder in hand. My wife saw me with the ladder and immediately got that look in her eyes that you get when you see a sad-looking homeless dog shivering in the rain. It’s her “Marc is going up a ladder again,” look of pity. The look is always followed by her grabbing the phone and keeping her fingers poised over the 9-1-1 buttons. I pretended not to notice her lack of faith in me.
I set up the ladder under the access hatch, closed my eyes, tried to mentally block out all the previous ladder related falls, and then up into the attic I went. I made it up successfully, and flipped on the light. There it was. The beast, sitting docile, not making a sound. If you have never seen a forced-air heater in an attic, it resembles a large sheet metal box. There are no levers, no knobs, no digital readouts, and no hatches. There are, however, 200 wires that go in and out of the box from approximately 87 different places, but that’s it. There are absolutely no large buttons that said “reset” or "push here if the heater is not coming on when it's supposed to." Believe me, I looked. Those would have been helpful, but I guess heaters don’t have those. Since the act of staring at the heater had exhausted all of my HVAC repair knowledge, I was at a loss.
As I sat and stared at the unit some more, wondering what to do next, it rumbled to life. I had not touched a thing. I would like to believe that my superior mechanical troubleshooting skills were sensed by the unit, and deciding it was no match for me, it acquiesced, but who knows with this type of thing?
I contemplated my options. Now what? Do I take credit for this, or do I tell the truth? Since a lot of my fix-it projects end less than impressively, I could use a win. Most of the time, whatever I was trying to fix stays broken, and I end up inexorably damaging something else expensive in the process. So do I go down the ladder and score some serious man points? My wife knows far less about our heater than I do, meaning she is vaguely aware that we own one, and I happen to know a lot of impressive mechanical terms. I could march downstairs and announce that I have masterfully handled the repair. I had immediately recognized that the McGruder valve was sticking, the Johnson rod was off-center, and the dual-chamber mixing system was all out of whack. I took care of all that, and while I was up there, for good measure, I also recalibrated the framisator valve and oiled the falangee nut.
I could pull it off. I would look like a stud and she would brag about me. It felt wrong, though. Partially because my folks raised me not to lie, but more importantly, I had the distinct sense of foreboding that any claim of HVAC mastery would come back to bite me in the butt. I could picture being asked to take a look at one of our friend's heaters in the dead of winter, with their kids freezing in the house.
"The repair guy said it would be two days, but the baby is so cold he's looking a little blue."
"Oh, don't worry, I'll send Marc right over. He fixed our McGruder valve the other night in 30 seconds! I guarantee he'll have you warm again in no time!"
"Uh, honey... There's something I should to tell you."
After some quiet deliberation in the attic, morals and good judgment got the better of me, and I went downstairs to tell my wife that it was working again, and I had no idea why. She just said, “I’m glad you’re not hurt.”
Huh. I never know why she says stuff like that.
Anyway, my decision to go with the truth was validated big-time the next day when my wife called me to say it wasn't working again. If I had gone with the "I fixed it" charade, I would have been chastised for not doing an adequate job and expected to rush home and perform my magic again. Since I went the honest route, I was able to handle the situation with two simple words: “Call Al.”
It was Saturday, and Al the HVAC guy couldn’t be there until Monday, so we were going to be without heat for two days. They turned out to be the two coldest days so far this year, where the temperature got all the way down into the mid 40’s overnight. (Insert Minnesotan laugh track here). Luckily, our California home was built with a decorative fake fireplace in our living room. It’s the kind of fireplace that is supposed to be used pretty much only when you have guests over for the Christmas party. It is permanently behind glass, has ceramic log-like features, and you light it by flipping a wall switch. Basically, it’s an indoor gas barbeque with a window. We fired that baby up, and it somehow managed to keep the lower part of the house livable (by California standards) for the weekend. We bundled up with extra blankets at night, and made it through the frigid weekend by the skin of our teeth.
Al arrived two days later, and the moment he stepped in the door, the heater came on and worked normally. Al, being a professional, said the same thing I did. “I have no idea what’s wrong.” He poked around for a while and said he would order a part, just in case. I think it was the McGruder valve… just as I had suspected. Maybe I could be an HVAC guy after all.
Al and the mystery part won’t be back until after the Thanksgiving holiday, so we’re on our own for the big weekend. We have lots of family coming to stay with us, so we have our fingers crossed for the heater to keep magically working, but I’m a little worried. It quit again yesterday, with the forecast for last night at 25 degrees. In sheer panic mode we managed to get it running again by flipping some breakers back and forth. We were warm last night, but I get the feeling that McGruder valve isn’t going to last much longer.
If it doesn’t though, we’ll still be thankful for the fireplace.
And the walls.
And the roof.
And each other.
And if we happen to get cold and start feeling too sorry for ourselves, we’ll just pause and remember those American men and women who don’t get to be home with their families this year.
Our soldiers are out there, on foreign soil, without heat or A/C in climates far more harsh than anything we have in this country. Even in Minnesota. None of them get to kiss their kids goodnight tonight, or share a good meal with their parents tomorrow, and many of them don’t even have walls or a roof, either. I tend to think about things like that a little more during the holidays, and it helps me keep our little heater “problem” in perspective.
I really don’t have a worry in the world.
So to all our soldiers out there, from all of us here in our lukewarm house, we say, “Thanks.” When we count our blessings tomorrow, you’ll be at the top of the list of things we’re thankful for. God bless you all.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
I announced to my wife that I would need to "go take a look at things" to which she rolled her eyes and groaned. She does that sometimes when I announce that I need to fix something. I never know why. Anyway, out I went to the circuit breaker panel and flipped the heater’s breaker back and forth. Nothing.
Unfortunately, that was all I had. I was out of ideas. Why hadn’t that worked? What now? Hmmm… There was one other thing I might be able to do. I could go look at the actual heater in the attic…
So, up the stairs I went, ladder in hand. My wife saw me with the ladder and immediately got that look in her eyes that you get when you see a sad-looking homeless dog shivering in the rain. It’s her “Marc is going up a ladder again,” look of pity. The look is always followed by her grabbing the phone and keeping her fingers poised over the 9-1-1 buttons. I pretended not to notice her lack of faith in me.
I set up the ladder under the access hatch, closed my eyes, tried to mentally block out all the previous ladder related falls, and then up into the attic I went. I made it up successfully, and flipped on the light. There it was. The beast, sitting docile, not making a sound. If you have never seen a forced-air heater in an attic, it resembles a large sheet metal box. There are no levers, no knobs, no digital readouts, and no hatches. There are, however, 200 wires that go in and out of the box from approximately 87 different places, but that’s it. There are absolutely no large buttons that said “reset” or "push here if the heater is not coming on when it's supposed to." Believe me, I looked. Those would have been helpful, but I guess heaters don’t have those. Since the act of staring at the heater had exhausted all of my HVAC repair knowledge, I was at a loss.
As I sat and stared at the unit some more, wondering what to do next, it rumbled to life. I had not touched a thing. I would like to believe that my superior mechanical troubleshooting skills were sensed by the unit, and deciding it was no match for me, it acquiesced, but who knows with this type of thing?
I contemplated my options. Now what? Do I take credit for this, or do I tell the truth? Since a lot of my fix-it projects end less than impressively, I could use a win. Most of the time, whatever I was trying to fix stays broken, and I end up inexorably damaging something else expensive in the process. So do I go down the ladder and score some serious man points? My wife knows far less about our heater than I do, meaning she is vaguely aware that we own one, and I happen to know a lot of impressive mechanical terms. I could march downstairs and announce that I have masterfully handled the repair. I had immediately recognized that the McGruder valve was sticking, the Johnson rod was off-center, and the dual-chamber mixing system was all out of whack. I took care of all that, and while I was up there, for good measure, I also recalibrated the framisator valve and oiled the falangee nut.
I could pull it off. I would look like a stud and she would brag about me. It felt wrong, though. Partially because my folks raised me not to lie, but more importantly, I had the distinct sense of foreboding that any claim of HVAC mastery would come back to bite me in the butt. I could picture being asked to take a look at one of our friend's heaters in the dead of winter, with their kids freezing in the house.
"The repair guy said it would be two days, but the baby is so cold he's looking a little blue."
"Oh, don't worry, I'll send Marc right over. He fixed our McGruder valve the other night in 30 seconds! I guarantee he'll have you warm again in no time!"
"Uh, honey... There's something I should to tell you."
After some quiet deliberation in the attic, morals and good judgment got the better of me, and I went downstairs to tell my wife that it was working again, and I had no idea why. She just said, “I’m glad you’re not hurt.”
Huh. I never know why she says stuff like that.
Anyway, my decision to go with the truth was validated big-time the next day when my wife called me to say it wasn't working again. If I had gone with the "I fixed it" charade, I would have been chastised for not doing an adequate job and expected to rush home and perform my magic again. Since I went the honest route, I was able to handle the situation with two simple words: “Call Al.”
It was Saturday, and Al the HVAC guy couldn’t be there until Monday, so we were going to be without heat for two days. They turned out to be the two coldest days so far this year, where the temperature got all the way down into the mid 40’s overnight. (Insert Minnesotan laugh track here). Luckily, our California home was built with a decorative fake fireplace in our living room. It’s the kind of fireplace that is supposed to be used pretty much only when you have guests over for the Christmas party. It is permanently behind glass, has ceramic log-like features, and you light it by flipping a wall switch. Basically, it’s an indoor gas barbeque with a window. We fired that baby up, and it somehow managed to keep the lower part of the house livable (by California standards) for the weekend. We bundled up with extra blankets at night, and made it through the frigid weekend by the skin of our teeth.
Al arrived two days later, and the moment he stepped in the door, the heater came on and worked normally. Al, being a professional, said the same thing I did. “I have no idea what’s wrong.” He poked around for a while and said he would order a part, just in case. I think it was the McGruder valve… just as I had suspected. Maybe I could be an HVAC guy after all.
Al and the mystery part won’t be back until after the Thanksgiving holiday, so we’re on our own for the big weekend. We have lots of family coming to stay with us, so we have our fingers crossed for the heater to keep magically working, but I’m a little worried. It quit again yesterday, with the forecast for last night at 25 degrees. In sheer panic mode we managed to get it running again by flipping some breakers back and forth. We were warm last night, but I get the feeling that McGruder valve isn’t going to last much longer.
If it doesn’t though, we’ll still be thankful for the fireplace.
And the walls.
And the roof.
And each other.
And if we happen to get cold and start feeling too sorry for ourselves, we’ll just pause and remember those American men and women who don’t get to be home with their families this year.
Our soldiers are out there, on foreign soil, without heat or A/C in climates far more harsh than anything we have in this country. Even in Minnesota. None of them get to kiss their kids goodnight tonight, or share a good meal with their parents tomorrow, and many of them don’t even have walls or a roof, either. I tend to think about things like that a little more during the holidays, and it helps me keep our little heater “problem” in perspective.
I really don’t have a worry in the world.
So to all our soldiers out there, from all of us here in our lukewarm house, we say, “Thanks.” When we count our blessings tomorrow, you’ll be at the top of the list of things we’re thankful for. God bless you all.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Cyclical Failure
I think if I had to boil down the essence of American fatherhood into one scene or activity, it would be the day out in the street when the father, running behind the child’s bike, lets go of the seat and watches proudly as his child rides a two-wheeler for the first time without the training wheels.
I could picture the scene in my mind. I would be sitting in my red leather chair in my study, wearing my crushed velvet smoking jacket and ascot, reading a classic novel. My son would knock respectfully at the door, and ask to speak to me about his bicycle. Having inherited my incredible balance and agility through his DNA, he would instinctively know he was ready to go from four wheels to two. He would beg me to remove the training wheels and I would ask him, “Are you sure you’re ready?” in that really cool fatherly way, where I know he’s ready, but I want to instill in him a sense of measured restraint and responsibility for his own actions, so I ask the question anyway in a concerned, caring, thoughtful, and deep voice.
He says, “Yes!” excitedly, because he knows all about my concerned, thoughtful voice, so he knows that I know that he knows that he’s ready. I give him a wink. Without saying a word, the wink says, “You’re turning out to be a fine lad, and you’re making me proud.” That one wink says it all. It’s a wink he’ll remember and cherish for the rest of his life.
We bound out to the garage where he sees that I have already removed his training wheels the day before, because I’m such an intuitive, thoughtful, caring dad that I can see these things coming. He smiles from ear to ear as he realizes how lucky he is to have me as his father. Out in the street, I run behind him holding the back of the seat for a few minutes, and then, using my innate dad skills, I recognize the perfect time to let go, and he rides off on his own, in a glorious display of two-wheeled balance and agility. I stand in the middle of the street beaming with pride as the neighbors erupt in applause for my son’s new achievement and for my superior dadliness.
That didn’t happen.
For starters, I don’t have a study, an ascot, or a son who knocks respectfully on anything, let alone a door. My wife and I have three boys, and crashing through doors head-first is about as restrained as they get. Anyway, my oldest son, Number One, as we refer to him, is about to turn six years old. I felt that it was about time he learned how to ride a two-wheeler, even though he had absolutely no interest in doing so. His younger brother, Number Two, is four and a half. He had plenty of interest in learning to ride a two-wheeler, but a distinct lack of balance, grace, agility, and good sense. He does have, however, a heaping helping of persistence.
I asked Number One to try.
He said, “No thanks.”
I told him we were going to take his training wheels off and give it a shot.
He cried.
A half-hour later I finally convinced him it would be a good idea, and he said, “OK.”
I tried to hold his seat.
He fell over.
I tried to hold his shoulders.
He fell over.
I tried to hold the handle bars.
He ran over my foot. Then he fell over.
He said he was finished.
I said, “OK.”
I limped back to the garage.
Number Two announced that he was ready to give it a spin.
I iced my foot.
He begged.
I said, “Maybe later.”
He pleaded.
I said, “OK.”
I took the training wheels off of Number Two’s bike and out to the street we went.
I tried to hold his seat.
He fell over.
I tried to hold his shoulders.
He fell over.
I tried to hold the handle bars.
We ran into a parked car.
He asked me to stop helping him.
Number One looked at me and said, “Dad, you’re really bad at that. You dropped me every time, and you ran him into a car.”
I had no argument in my favor. Now, in my defense, they were completely leaning to one side, not pedaling, not steering, not helping in any way, but the end result was, in fact, that I had ran Number Two into a car. The results speak for themselves.
I gave up and went inside. Number One went back to playing tether ball, but Number Two was not to be deterred. He decided that if his dad couldn’t help him, he would just have to figure it out on his own. For the next three days, every opportunity he had, he was out on his bike without training wheels, trying to learn to ride. Occasionally I would offer helpful advice, and he would give me a perfunctory “OK, Daddy” that really meant, “I’ll take it from here, old man. You may go now.”
When I returned home from work the next day, I was greeted by a positively beaming Number Two, who was tearing up and down the street on two wheels. He had done it. And, he had done it all by himself! I found myself more proud of him than if I had helped. He had overcome the giant hurdle of a useless coach and won the game on his own. He was truly an all-star.
He was also very, very aware of the fact that he could now ride a two-wheeler and his older brother couldn’t. So aware of that situation that I began to question his true motives. Had he done it so that he could accomplish a personal goal, or had he done it to stick it in his brother’s face? Hmmm.
The answer began to clear up at dinner that night. Our boys know that bragging is forbidden at our house, but, if you don’t mind me saying, they’re smarter than average in my opinion. My four-and-a-half-year-old knows that stating facts is not necessarily forbidden, so he decided to make some observations.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Yes?”
“I’m four and a half.”
“Yep.”
“Did you like how I rode my two-wheeler today?”
“Yes I did. I was very impressed.”
“Hey, Dad.”
“Yes?”
“He’s almost six.”
“I know that.”
“I like riding my two-wheeler.”
“That’s enough.”
“What?!?”
Can you guess who asked me to remove his training wheels that night? Two days later, Number One was back on top, no longer the kid whose younger brother could out-ride him.
I set out to teach my boys how to ride a bike. Three days later they had learned absolutely nothing from me, but I had learned a valuable lesson from them. Sibling rivalry is going to be a wonderful tool for me. It’s way more effective than anything I can say. Number Three doesn’t stand a chance!
As Number Two zoomed up to me that evening on his super-cool green motocross bike, I gave him the knowing wink. That one wink that says it all.
He just stared at me blankly. Oh, well.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
I could picture the scene in my mind. I would be sitting in my red leather chair in my study, wearing my crushed velvet smoking jacket and ascot, reading a classic novel. My son would knock respectfully at the door, and ask to speak to me about his bicycle. Having inherited my incredible balance and agility through his DNA, he would instinctively know he was ready to go from four wheels to two. He would beg me to remove the training wheels and I would ask him, “Are you sure you’re ready?” in that really cool fatherly way, where I know he’s ready, but I want to instill in him a sense of measured restraint and responsibility for his own actions, so I ask the question anyway in a concerned, caring, thoughtful, and deep voice.
He says, “Yes!” excitedly, because he knows all about my concerned, thoughtful voice, so he knows that I know that he knows that he’s ready. I give him a wink. Without saying a word, the wink says, “You’re turning out to be a fine lad, and you’re making me proud.” That one wink says it all. It’s a wink he’ll remember and cherish for the rest of his life.
We bound out to the garage where he sees that I have already removed his training wheels the day before, because I’m such an intuitive, thoughtful, caring dad that I can see these things coming. He smiles from ear to ear as he realizes how lucky he is to have me as his father. Out in the street, I run behind him holding the back of the seat for a few minutes, and then, using my innate dad skills, I recognize the perfect time to let go, and he rides off on his own, in a glorious display of two-wheeled balance and agility. I stand in the middle of the street beaming with pride as the neighbors erupt in applause for my son’s new achievement and for my superior dadliness.
That didn’t happen.
For starters, I don’t have a study, an ascot, or a son who knocks respectfully on anything, let alone a door. My wife and I have three boys, and crashing through doors head-first is about as restrained as they get. Anyway, my oldest son, Number One, as we refer to him, is about to turn six years old. I felt that it was about time he learned how to ride a two-wheeler, even though he had absolutely no interest in doing so. His younger brother, Number Two, is four and a half. He had plenty of interest in learning to ride a two-wheeler, but a distinct lack of balance, grace, agility, and good sense. He does have, however, a heaping helping of persistence.
I asked Number One to try.
He said, “No thanks.”
I told him we were going to take his training wheels off and give it a shot.
He cried.
A half-hour later I finally convinced him it would be a good idea, and he said, “OK.”
I tried to hold his seat.
He fell over.
I tried to hold his shoulders.
He fell over.
I tried to hold the handle bars.
He ran over my foot. Then he fell over.
He said he was finished.
I said, “OK.”
I limped back to the garage.
Number Two announced that he was ready to give it a spin.
I iced my foot.
He begged.
I said, “Maybe later.”
He pleaded.
I said, “OK.”
I took the training wheels off of Number Two’s bike and out to the street we went.
I tried to hold his seat.
He fell over.
I tried to hold his shoulders.
He fell over.
I tried to hold the handle bars.
We ran into a parked car.
He asked me to stop helping him.
Number One looked at me and said, “Dad, you’re really bad at that. You dropped me every time, and you ran him into a car.”
I had no argument in my favor. Now, in my defense, they were completely leaning to one side, not pedaling, not steering, not helping in any way, but the end result was, in fact, that I had ran Number Two into a car. The results speak for themselves.
I gave up and went inside. Number One went back to playing tether ball, but Number Two was not to be deterred. He decided that if his dad couldn’t help him, he would just have to figure it out on his own. For the next three days, every opportunity he had, he was out on his bike without training wheels, trying to learn to ride. Occasionally I would offer helpful advice, and he would give me a perfunctory “OK, Daddy” that really meant, “I’ll take it from here, old man. You may go now.”
When I returned home from work the next day, I was greeted by a positively beaming Number Two, who was tearing up and down the street on two wheels. He had done it. And, he had done it all by himself! I found myself more proud of him than if I had helped. He had overcome the giant hurdle of a useless coach and won the game on his own. He was truly an all-star.
He was also very, very aware of the fact that he could now ride a two-wheeler and his older brother couldn’t. So aware of that situation that I began to question his true motives. Had he done it so that he could accomplish a personal goal, or had he done it to stick it in his brother’s face? Hmmm.
The answer began to clear up at dinner that night. Our boys know that bragging is forbidden at our house, but, if you don’t mind me saying, they’re smarter than average in my opinion. My four-and-a-half-year-old knows that stating facts is not necessarily forbidden, so he decided to make some observations.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Yes?”
“I’m four and a half.”
“Yep.”
“Did you like how I rode my two-wheeler today?”
“Yes I did. I was very impressed.”
“Hey, Dad.”
“Yes?”
“He’s almost six.”
“I know that.”
“I like riding my two-wheeler.”
“That’s enough.”
“What?!?”
Can you guess who asked me to remove his training wheels that night? Two days later, Number One was back on top, no longer the kid whose younger brother could out-ride him.
I set out to teach my boys how to ride a bike. Three days later they had learned absolutely nothing from me, but I had learned a valuable lesson from them. Sibling rivalry is going to be a wonderful tool for me. It’s way more effective than anything I can say. Number Three doesn’t stand a chance!
As Number Two zoomed up to me that evening on his super-cool green motocross bike, I gave him the knowing wink. That one wink that says it all.
He just stared at me blankly. Oh, well.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
A Hero's Scrambled Eggs
My older sisters and I grew up eating a hero’s breakfast, only none of us knew it at the time – not even the cook himself.
On special occasions, my dad would cook us breakfast. His normal household duties did not include meal preparation, and for that, we were all grateful. (Just kidding, Dad.) His go-to morning meal was something he called “Van Inwegen’s Special.” With a last name like Schmatjen, it’s almost impossible that we would be eating something called “Smith’s Homefry Special,” or “Johnson’s Grits.” We go in for the weird names.
Van Inwegen’s is a skillet-type affair consisting of scrambled eggs mixed with ham, potatoes, cheese, and assorted vegetables. It’s heavenly.
My dad learned how to prepare this enticing dish while in the Air Force. He was stationed with Earl Van Inwegen, and in their spare time, these steely-eyed missile men did what all tough-as-nails, ice-in-their-veins fighter pilots do when they’re not going Mach-2 with their hair on fire – they traded recipes. I’m not sure what Captain Schmatjen had to offer as a trade, but Van Inwegen’s sure was good!
Years later, my dad was reading Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf’s autobiography, and came across the story of a hero. Early in the Vietnam War, Schwarzkopf was the commander at a forward fire-base called Duc Co, with American and South Vietnamese troops. They had taken heavy casualties, they were surrounded, and no one they could raise on the radio was willing to come help them. They could not care for their wounded, and the situation was looking grim.
The following is the passage from the book:
We were surrounded. In the space of two days, more than forty paratroopers had died and at least twice that number were seriously wounded. We radioed Pleiku and asked for medevac. “We’re sorry,” the response came back, “we can’t fly out there. Too risky.” Duc Co was in a basin, and airplanes trying to land had to come in over a high ridge where the enemy was dug in. But an Air Force pilot, Lieutenant Earl S. Van Eiweegen, heard about us that night in a Saigon bar and volunteered for the job. The next morning we carried our wounded on stretchers to the airstrip and waited.
The instant his two-engine C-123 turboprop appeared, the enemy opened fire. I didn’t think Van Eiweegen and his three-man crew would make it. By the time the airplane touched down, it had been shot full of holes and was leaking hydraulic fluid from three or four places. The crew tried to lower the tail ramp, but it wouldn’t go down. So we loaded the men on stretchers through the doors on both sides of the airplane as Van Eiweegen kept the props turning. Meanwhile the airstrip came under mortar attack. More people were hurt, and we threw them on the airplane, too. Van Eiweegen sat in the cockpit with his copilot, waiting patiently until I gave the signal. Then he turned the airplane around and took off over the same ridge, getting shot up some more. Even though the plane was seriously damaged, he bypassed Pleiku and took the wounded straight to Saigon, where he knew they’d receive more sophisticated care. His flight was the most heroic act I’d ever seen.
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
The Autobiography
It Doesn’t Take a Hero
1992
You may have noted the slightly creative spelling of Earl’s name in the General’s book. All I can say about that is, in an article by Schmatjen, citing a book by Schwarzkopf, in the passage about Van Inwegen, someone’s name is getting misspelled! I’d like to buy a vowel, Pat. My dad joked that when he flew with Earl, they were the only self-encrypted air crew. No Russian radio officer would ever believe Schmatjen and Van Inwegen were their real names.
All spelling aside, when Norman Schwarzkopf says your flight was the most heroic act he’d ever seen, that’s really saying something!
My dad was surprised to read about his old friend in Schwarzkopf’s book. Not surprised because of the heroism, but because it was the first time he had heard the story. He was stationed with Earl Van Inwegen AFTER this had happened, and in all their time together, he had never mentioned it, even in passing.
The internal fortitude, courage, and selfless sense of duty that makes a man like Earl volunteer for a mission like that - and complete that mission in such a manner - is the stuff that made this country great. You will find that stuff, more often than not, in our nation’s veterans.
They call it by different names – duty, honor, service, commitment. I call it heroism. And I’m more grateful for it than I will ever be able to show them.
So on this eleventh day of the eleventh month, when we take time to honor our nation’s veterans, remember the story of Earl’s flight to Duc Co. And remember that he volunteered to go get those men. I know General Schwarzkopf won’t ever forget that, and neither will I.
That kind of quiet, humble heroism is indicative of our nation’s finest men and women, who volunteer to serve, and who deserve our utmost gratitude and respect.
Thank you all for your service, and God bless every one of you.
And thanks for the recipe, too, Earl. Those eggs are delicious!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
On special occasions, my dad would cook us breakfast. His normal household duties did not include meal preparation, and for that, we were all grateful. (Just kidding, Dad.) His go-to morning meal was something he called “Van Inwegen’s Special.” With a last name like Schmatjen, it’s almost impossible that we would be eating something called “Smith’s Homefry Special,” or “Johnson’s Grits.” We go in for the weird names.
Van Inwegen’s is a skillet-type affair consisting of scrambled eggs mixed with ham, potatoes, cheese, and assorted vegetables. It’s heavenly.
My dad learned how to prepare this enticing dish while in the Air Force. He was stationed with Earl Van Inwegen, and in their spare time, these steely-eyed missile men did what all tough-as-nails, ice-in-their-veins fighter pilots do when they’re not going Mach-2 with their hair on fire – they traded recipes. I’m not sure what Captain Schmatjen had to offer as a trade, but Van Inwegen’s sure was good!
Years later, my dad was reading Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf’s autobiography, and came across the story of a hero. Early in the Vietnam War, Schwarzkopf was the commander at a forward fire-base called Duc Co, with American and South Vietnamese troops. They had taken heavy casualties, they were surrounded, and no one they could raise on the radio was willing to come help them. They could not care for their wounded, and the situation was looking grim.
The following is the passage from the book:
We were surrounded. In the space of two days, more than forty paratroopers had died and at least twice that number were seriously wounded. We radioed Pleiku and asked for medevac. “We’re sorry,” the response came back, “we can’t fly out there. Too risky.” Duc Co was in a basin, and airplanes trying to land had to come in over a high ridge where the enemy was dug in. But an Air Force pilot, Lieutenant Earl S. Van Eiweegen, heard about us that night in a Saigon bar and volunteered for the job. The next morning we carried our wounded on stretchers to the airstrip and waited.
The instant his two-engine C-123 turboprop appeared, the enemy opened fire. I didn’t think Van Eiweegen and his three-man crew would make it. By the time the airplane touched down, it had been shot full of holes and was leaking hydraulic fluid from three or four places. The crew tried to lower the tail ramp, but it wouldn’t go down. So we loaded the men on stretchers through the doors on both sides of the airplane as Van Eiweegen kept the props turning. Meanwhile the airstrip came under mortar attack. More people were hurt, and we threw them on the airplane, too. Van Eiweegen sat in the cockpit with his copilot, waiting patiently until I gave the signal. Then he turned the airplane around and took off over the same ridge, getting shot up some more. Even though the plane was seriously damaged, he bypassed Pleiku and took the wounded straight to Saigon, where he knew they’d receive more sophisticated care. His flight was the most heroic act I’d ever seen.
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
The Autobiography
It Doesn’t Take a Hero
1992
You may have noted the slightly creative spelling of Earl’s name in the General’s book. All I can say about that is, in an article by Schmatjen, citing a book by Schwarzkopf, in the passage about Van Inwegen, someone’s name is getting misspelled! I’d like to buy a vowel, Pat. My dad joked that when he flew with Earl, they were the only self-encrypted air crew. No Russian radio officer would ever believe Schmatjen and Van Inwegen were their real names.
All spelling aside, when Norman Schwarzkopf says your flight was the most heroic act he’d ever seen, that’s really saying something!
My dad was surprised to read about his old friend in Schwarzkopf’s book. Not surprised because of the heroism, but because it was the first time he had heard the story. He was stationed with Earl Van Inwegen AFTER this had happened, and in all their time together, he had never mentioned it, even in passing.
The internal fortitude, courage, and selfless sense of duty that makes a man like Earl volunteer for a mission like that - and complete that mission in such a manner - is the stuff that made this country great. You will find that stuff, more often than not, in our nation’s veterans.
They call it by different names – duty, honor, service, commitment. I call it heroism. And I’m more grateful for it than I will ever be able to show them.
So on this eleventh day of the eleventh month, when we take time to honor our nation’s veterans, remember the story of Earl’s flight to Duc Co. And remember that he volunteered to go get those men. I know General Schwarzkopf won’t ever forget that, and neither will I.
That kind of quiet, humble heroism is indicative of our nation’s finest men and women, who volunteer to serve, and who deserve our utmost gratitude and respect.
Thank you all for your service, and God bless every one of you.
And thanks for the recipe, too, Earl. Those eggs are delicious!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
The Just a
Smidge Anthology (Volume I) has arrived!
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Get your copy today for only $0.99!
Go get your copy of "The Tree of Death, and Other Hilarious Stories" for your mobile device’s free Kindle, Nook, or iBooks app. You’re going to love it!
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
A Rat's Tale
Halloween has come and gone, and you probably heard some scary stories. But I’ll guarantee I have one that tops anything you’ve ever heard. Bold claim, you say? Well, read on, my friend, and know that this story is only scary because it’s 100% true.
It was a day like any other day. I was at the office, and heading into the men’s room to take care of some important corporate business. We have a small office, and the bathrooms are “one-holers.” As I stepped through the doorway and flipped on the light, I caught some movement out of the corner of my left eye. I looked down mid-stride, and just milliseconds after my left foot hit the floor, a large, black rat coming at a dead run out from under the cabinet ran directly over the top of my shoe.
Every muscle in my body reacted at once, and while emitting an involuntary, yet very manly, high-pitched yelp of surprise, I recoiled in an impressive reverse long-jump back out of the bathroom. Carl Lewis would have been proud. My right hand was still on the door handle, and the door slammed shut as I vaulted backward to safety.
Our bathrooms are located in a small alcove that connects our offices to our manufacturing shop area. There is a men’s room and a ladies’ room side-by-side on one wall. There is an open breezeway-type door into the offices on the adjacent wall, and a door out to the shop opposite the breezeway.
My extremely masculine exclamation of surprise combined with my acrobatics in the alcove brought two of the salesmen over to see what all the fuss was about. I explained that I had just inadvertently trapped Goliath, the killer rat in the men’s room, and he now needed to be extracted.
We went out to the shop and enlisted John, the shop foreman, to help with the rodent removal. Being steely-eyed men of action, we quickly devised a simple plan. The two salesmen would man a large piece of cardboard in the breezeway, to keep Jumbo from getting into the office and wreaking havoc. John would hold the shop door open, and I would steady my nerves and go back in to the restroom and drive the beast out.
In I went, ready for anything. Our two bathrooms are very simple, consisting of one toilet, one wall-mounted sink, and one short, moveable cabinet on wheels. He was nowhere in sight, so I knew he was back where he had started, under the cabinet. I grabbed the long-handled plunger and gave the side of the cabinet a solid whack. Out came Jabba-the-Rat, bigger than I had remembered, and brandishing long, sharp teeth. He saw that I had a weapon, however, so he made his escape out the door of the men’s room and into the alcove. To his left was a solid wall of cardboard. To his right, an open door to safety. So, naturally, he made a hard right, and ran directly into the ladies’ room.
John, thinking fast, slammed the ladies’ room door shut. We had successfully herded an enormous rat from one bathroom to another. We had a few laughs as we contemplated ending our quest there. The potential ramifications of that decision, however, seemed more dire in the end than another encounter with the beast, so we forged ahead.
We went with our same simple plan, but with one change. We closed the other bathroom door this time. In I went, armed with my plunger of death, ready to do battle with a scared and angry Frankenrat. The ladies’ room is laid out in a mirror image of the men’s room, with the same sparse furnishings. He was not scurrying around on the floor, so he was obviously back in his favorite (and only) hiding place, under the rolling cabinet. I gave it a whack. Nothing. Another whack. Nothing. With nerves of tempered steel, I rolled the cabinet away from the wall, plunger raised, poised to bludgeon the largest rat in the world.
He was not under the cabinet. He was not in the cabinet drawers. He was not behind the toilet tank, which was the only other possible place to hide, if it was even remotely possible that at twelve pound rat could fit in a half-inch space. He was not in the bathroom. Four sets of eyes had seen him enter, yet he had vanished.
Although no one could truly envision it, we all knew there was one other possibility of escape from the bathroom. The very reason for the bathroom does indeed have a hole that goes to the outside world. As we all shook our heads in denial of the only remaining scenario, I walked over and peered into the toilet. There, sitting at the bottom of the bowl, perfectly visible against the stark white porcelain background, was a single, solitary rat poop.
I laughed a nervous, half-scared laugh. The others crowded into the bathroom to gaze into the toilet. They laughed the same shaky laugh of doom. The rat had been in the toilet. Now it was not in the toilet. There are only two ways out of a toilet, and we knew he hadn’t come out the easy way. None of us could really wrap our heads around it. We are intelligent men, and facts are facts, but this was too ominous to fathom. After some thought, it was clear. There was just one thing to do… Flush.
I hit the lever, and we watched the tiny rat poop swirl away. John was the first to speak.
“He’ll probably pop out of the men’s toilet.”
We all looked at each other. Naw. No way! But we had just come to the half-hearted conclusion that the giant rat had gone down a toilet. Why couldn’t it come up? After all, the two toilets were in essence back-to-back on either side of a common wall, sharing a common sewer pipe.
We hustled out of the ladies’ room and I flung the men’s room door open just in time to witness a huge, jet-black, soaking-wet, mad, scared, holy terror of a rat rocket two feet into the air, straight out of the men’s toilet bowl.
I stood frozen in the doorway as he landed back in the water with a sickening splash. He scratched and clawed out two full circular laps around the inside of the toilet bowl until he had enough speed to launch himself out onto the floor
When the dripping wet rat hit the linoleum, all hell broke loose.
I jumped/fell/careened backward out of the doorway waving my plunger in a desperate attempt to fend off the evil beast. He came out through the doorway, and made another hard right turn past the scrambling salesmen who were yelling incoherent epithets and making a desperate attempt to hurl themselves through the breezeway and back into the office. The hell-rat appeared to be trying to make his way back into the ladies’ room, but unfortunately for both of them, John was standing in the way.
The soaked rat was heading straight for John’s right leg. With his leg now being controlled by the primal instinct that is hard-wired into the back of man’s brain, John kicked out, hard and fast. His steel-toed boot caught the freakishly oversized escaped lab rat square in the face, lifting him off the ground and sending him flying across the alcove, slamming into the opposite wall three feet off the floor, leaving a wet, smudgy rat silhouette on the sheetrock. He hit the wall hard and fell to the linoleum… not the least bit fazed.
Up he came with a wild, crazed look in his eye, still running, this time toward the closed shop door. I let the plunger come crashing down toward him in a tomahawk fashion, missing him by mere inches, and leaving a two-foot-long black rubber streak on the door that we would later not be able to remove. The mange-ridden beast made a wild, slippery u-turn and picked up speed heading straight at the breezeway. The second salesman had just rolled onto the carpet, free of the doorway, when Lucifer, the New York sewer rat scrambled through the breezeway behind them and made his way unfettered into the office.
John and I gave chase, as the salesmen scrambled to their feet. As we poured into the office area, we caught sight of our quarry, but Ratzilla was moving quickly. The enormous rat from the bowels of Hades was now twice as fast and agile on the claw-friendly office Berber carpet. He made a right turn into the engineering department, and in a really personally offensive move, disappeared behind MY desk.
That was the last we ever saw of him.
We searched behind every desk, cabinet, workstation, and credenza in the entire department and never again laid eyes on the wet, slimy, massive, bulletproof, degenerate, mean-spirited rodent from hell. We have no idea where he went.
If Houdini did something we don’t know about that angered God, I’ll guarantee He sent him back to earth as a big, black rat. He had vanished into thin air only three minutes after I had first set eyes on him while entering the bathroom to use the facilities.
Funny thing, though. I didn’t have the urge to go to the bathroom again for a whole week!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
It was a day like any other day. I was at the office, and heading into the men’s room to take care of some important corporate business. We have a small office, and the bathrooms are “one-holers.” As I stepped through the doorway and flipped on the light, I caught some movement out of the corner of my left eye. I looked down mid-stride, and just milliseconds after my left foot hit the floor, a large, black rat coming at a dead run out from under the cabinet ran directly over the top of my shoe.
Every muscle in my body reacted at once, and while emitting an involuntary, yet very manly, high-pitched yelp of surprise, I recoiled in an impressive reverse long-jump back out of the bathroom. Carl Lewis would have been proud. My right hand was still on the door handle, and the door slammed shut as I vaulted backward to safety.
Our bathrooms are located in a small alcove that connects our offices to our manufacturing shop area. There is a men’s room and a ladies’ room side-by-side on one wall. There is an open breezeway-type door into the offices on the adjacent wall, and a door out to the shop opposite the breezeway.
My extremely masculine exclamation of surprise combined with my acrobatics in the alcove brought two of the salesmen over to see what all the fuss was about. I explained that I had just inadvertently trapped Goliath, the killer rat in the men’s room, and he now needed to be extracted.
We went out to the shop and enlisted John, the shop foreman, to help with the rodent removal. Being steely-eyed men of action, we quickly devised a simple plan. The two salesmen would man a large piece of cardboard in the breezeway, to keep Jumbo from getting into the office and wreaking havoc. John would hold the shop door open, and I would steady my nerves and go back in to the restroom and drive the beast out.
In I went, ready for anything. Our two bathrooms are very simple, consisting of one toilet, one wall-mounted sink, and one short, moveable cabinet on wheels. He was nowhere in sight, so I knew he was back where he had started, under the cabinet. I grabbed the long-handled plunger and gave the side of the cabinet a solid whack. Out came Jabba-the-Rat, bigger than I had remembered, and brandishing long, sharp teeth. He saw that I had a weapon, however, so he made his escape out the door of the men’s room and into the alcove. To his left was a solid wall of cardboard. To his right, an open door to safety. So, naturally, he made a hard right, and ran directly into the ladies’ room.
John, thinking fast, slammed the ladies’ room door shut. We had successfully herded an enormous rat from one bathroom to another. We had a few laughs as we contemplated ending our quest there. The potential ramifications of that decision, however, seemed more dire in the end than another encounter with the beast, so we forged ahead.
We went with our same simple plan, but with one change. We closed the other bathroom door this time. In I went, armed with my plunger of death, ready to do battle with a scared and angry Frankenrat. The ladies’ room is laid out in a mirror image of the men’s room, with the same sparse furnishings. He was not scurrying around on the floor, so he was obviously back in his favorite (and only) hiding place, under the rolling cabinet. I gave it a whack. Nothing. Another whack. Nothing. With nerves of tempered steel, I rolled the cabinet away from the wall, plunger raised, poised to bludgeon the largest rat in the world.
He was not under the cabinet. He was not in the cabinet drawers. He was not behind the toilet tank, which was the only other possible place to hide, if it was even remotely possible that at twelve pound rat could fit in a half-inch space. He was not in the bathroom. Four sets of eyes had seen him enter, yet he had vanished.
Although no one could truly envision it, we all knew there was one other possibility of escape from the bathroom. The very reason for the bathroom does indeed have a hole that goes to the outside world. As we all shook our heads in denial of the only remaining scenario, I walked over and peered into the toilet. There, sitting at the bottom of the bowl, perfectly visible against the stark white porcelain background, was a single, solitary rat poop.
I laughed a nervous, half-scared laugh. The others crowded into the bathroom to gaze into the toilet. They laughed the same shaky laugh of doom. The rat had been in the toilet. Now it was not in the toilet. There are only two ways out of a toilet, and we knew he hadn’t come out the easy way. None of us could really wrap our heads around it. We are intelligent men, and facts are facts, but this was too ominous to fathom. After some thought, it was clear. There was just one thing to do… Flush.
I hit the lever, and we watched the tiny rat poop swirl away. John was the first to speak.
“He’ll probably pop out of the men’s toilet.”
We all looked at each other. Naw. No way! But we had just come to the half-hearted conclusion that the giant rat had gone down a toilet. Why couldn’t it come up? After all, the two toilets were in essence back-to-back on either side of a common wall, sharing a common sewer pipe.
We hustled out of the ladies’ room and I flung the men’s room door open just in time to witness a huge, jet-black, soaking-wet, mad, scared, holy terror of a rat rocket two feet into the air, straight out of the men’s toilet bowl.
I stood frozen in the doorway as he landed back in the water with a sickening splash. He scratched and clawed out two full circular laps around the inside of the toilet bowl until he had enough speed to launch himself out onto the floor
When the dripping wet rat hit the linoleum, all hell broke loose.
I jumped/fell/careened backward out of the doorway waving my plunger in a desperate attempt to fend off the evil beast. He came out through the doorway, and made another hard right turn past the scrambling salesmen who were yelling incoherent epithets and making a desperate attempt to hurl themselves through the breezeway and back into the office. The hell-rat appeared to be trying to make his way back into the ladies’ room, but unfortunately for both of them, John was standing in the way.
The soaked rat was heading straight for John’s right leg. With his leg now being controlled by the primal instinct that is hard-wired into the back of man’s brain, John kicked out, hard and fast. His steel-toed boot caught the freakishly oversized escaped lab rat square in the face, lifting him off the ground and sending him flying across the alcove, slamming into the opposite wall three feet off the floor, leaving a wet, smudgy rat silhouette on the sheetrock. He hit the wall hard and fell to the linoleum… not the least bit fazed.
Up he came with a wild, crazed look in his eye, still running, this time toward the closed shop door. I let the plunger come crashing down toward him in a tomahawk fashion, missing him by mere inches, and leaving a two-foot-long black rubber streak on the door that we would later not be able to remove. The mange-ridden beast made a wild, slippery u-turn and picked up speed heading straight at the breezeway. The second salesman had just rolled onto the carpet, free of the doorway, when Lucifer, the New York sewer rat scrambled through the breezeway behind them and made his way unfettered into the office.
John and I gave chase, as the salesmen scrambled to their feet. As we poured into the office area, we caught sight of our quarry, but Ratzilla was moving quickly. The enormous rat from the bowels of Hades was now twice as fast and agile on the claw-friendly office Berber carpet. He made a right turn into the engineering department, and in a really personally offensive move, disappeared behind MY desk.
That was the last we ever saw of him.
We searched behind every desk, cabinet, workstation, and credenza in the entire department and never again laid eyes on the wet, slimy, massive, bulletproof, degenerate, mean-spirited rodent from hell. We have no idea where he went.
If Houdini did something we don’t know about that angered God, I’ll guarantee He sent him back to earth as a big, black rat. He had vanished into thin air only three minutes after I had first set eyes on him while entering the bathroom to use the facilities.
Funny thing, though. I didn’t have the urge to go to the bathroom again for a whole week!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen
Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!
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