Cinco de Murder Hornets

I’m just going to come out and say it. Worst Cinco de Mayo ever. Not only are we all still locked in our houses for fear of the mysterious COVID-19, that may either give you a mild case of the sniffles or kill you instantly, but now we have murder hornets to worry about. Gone are the carefree days of taquitos and cheap Mexican beer variety packs.

The insect no one asked for, the Asian Giant Hornet, affectionately nicknamed the Murder Hornet, has arrived in Washington state. They are a treat. They grow to almost two inches long – you read that correctly – and between two and fifty murder hornets can wipe out a hive of thousands of honeybees in just hours. In one recorded attack on a hive, each hornet killed one bee every fourteen seconds, “using powerful mandibles to decapitate its prey.” The massive hornets literally bite the heads off the bees.

Fortunately, Asian honeybees have figured out a solution to this problem. They clump together by the hundreds around a single murder hornet and vibrate – yes, vibrate – which somehow, through mysterious bee vibration witchcraft, produces heat. It can get up to one hundred and fifteen degrees inside a vibrating ball of Asian honeybees, which cooks the hornet, but not the superiorly heat-resistant bees.

Unfortunately, however, we don’t have Asian honeybees. We have European honeybees here in the United States, which don’t possess the same instinct, or perhaps ability, to vibration-cook a hornet. So, our bees just try to sting them, which doesn’t work, because the murder hornets have an armored suit not unlike a tiny flying stormtrooper. Our stupid bees are still busy trying to sting them unsuccessfully when they get their heads bitten clean off.

And forget our bees, for a second, which are the pollination keystone to virtually all our food. Never mind all that. Murder hornets can kill people. Yay!

It’s not all bad news, however. The arrival of the murder hornet could start a new food and drink craze here. The Japanese eat them, which is said to leave a “pleasant tingling and numbing sensation” in the mouth.

No thanks.

They also make Murder Hornet Liquor. Apparently, when you drown a murder hornet in alcohol, right before it dies it releases all its venom. The clear liquor is then aged until the venom turns it amber, then sold for ridiculously high prices at bars, mostly to middle-age men, who – this is my shocked face regarding any story out of Japan involving middle-age men – believe it makes them “more sexually potent.”

Yeah, that’s how that works, middle-aged Japanese guy. Good call.

Putting aside the exciting new food service industry and male enhancement options available to us, you may be asking yourself, “How and why has the Asian Murder Hornet of Death arrived on U.S. soil?”

Great question, concerned citizen. Scientists are “mystified.” The hornets can’t fly over from Asia, and experts think they probably didn’t arrive by cargo ship because they are so aggressive – and freakin’ huge – the crew surely would have encountered them.

I’m not sure why the scientists are mystified. The answer to how and why the murder hornets are here is obvious. They were obviously brought here from Wuhan, China as a COVID-19 deflection tactic.

Deep inside the Wuhan virus lab, the following meeting obviously took place:

Look, guys, we need to do something to get the heat off us. The U.S. is not letting up about this whole COVID thing.

What can we do?

Hmm… another virus?

No, too risky. The last one was gnarly.

Right. Good call. What about another invasive species? Those have been great.

Yes! Now we’re talking. OK, what do we have left here in Asia that we haven’t sent?

Well, let’s see. We already sent the Burmese python. That’s been eating everything in Florida for years.

The Zebra mussel has been clogging their pipes and dams for a while now, and we already sent the Asian longhorn beetle. It’s killing healthy trees like a spider monkey with a chainsaw.

How about a fish?

Nah, we already sent the Asian carp. It jumps into moving boats and knocks people unconscious. Hilarious! But I just don’t feel right about sending another fish after the whole Northern Snakehead thing. That is one crazy mother. Four feet long with a mouth full of teeth and no natural predators is one thing, but the fact that it breathes air and can crawl across land from lake to lake is ridiculous, even by Asian animal standards. That was uncool.

Yeah, I almost feel bad about that one. Hmm… let’s see… Oh! I’ve got it! Murder Hornets!! They have those stupid European honeybees over there. The hornets will have a field day.

Yes! Great call. Pack your bags, Lee, while we make you a fake passport. You’re going to Seattle!

It all seems perfectly clear, doesn’t it?

But proof or not, we still got the shaft on Cinco de Mayo and now we have murder hornets to deal with. I guess we could get some Asian honeybees, but that might backfire.

They would probably just end up killing all our sheep or something with gigantic vibrating bee balls.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Insincerely Yours, COVID

This is a message of hope, fellow COVID quarantiners, directly from my email inbox to you. If you thought you were in this alone, nothing could be further from the truth. Hundreds of thousands of people are here for you and me in these challenging times.

They work at places like your credit card company and your local auto dealership.

Why, just the other day I heard from the nice folks at Sunrun Solar, a company I ended up not buying our solar panels from, letting me know that their “top priority is the health and safety of our customers and employees,” and also that they are open for business.

Good to hear, in case I ever don’t need solar panels from them again.

Early on in the pandemic, Southwest Airlines contacted me to let me know “while many things are changing, our commitment to your Safety and providing travel flexibility has not changed.”

That’s a load off my mind, here at home, where I am required by law to stay.

TurboTax reached out to let me know their “hearts and thoughts go out to each and every one of you,” and also, “you have our commitment to continue providing you with the products and services you depend on.”

TurboTax is my rock in these taxing times.

Barclays got ahold of me to tell me that “staying in touch with you is important to us.” I’m pretty sure I don’t have a Barclays credit card. Nevertheless, they let me know that “as the situation with COVID-19 evolves, things are changing rapidly,” and wanted to be sure I had “all the information you need to manage your account as easily as possible.”

Shouldn’t be a problem.

Verizon Wireless sends me daily emails, checking in to make sure I know their commitment to me has never been stronger. They also selflessly let me know about all the money they have given to charities around the globe. We have teenagers, so I guess I should say, all of my money they’ve given to charities around the globe. To really show me they care, they’ve also been giving me free data that expires in a month.

Since none of us have left the protective umbrella of our home Wi-Fi signal since the beginning of March, free wireless data is super handy right now. For Verizon.

Our life insurance company, Legal & General America, shot an email over the other day to tell me that “as the global impact of COVID-19 evolves, we remain committed to the health and well-being of our customers.”

Umm, yes, I would assume so. You’re a life insurance company after all.

And what string of email platitudes would be complete without hearing from the fine folks at Lifetouch School Photography? Of all the emails I received, theirs was by far the most uplifting in its selflessness. “At Lifetouch, we love being a place where you can capture memories, stay connected to your loved ones, and build community. In the midst of COVID-19, and school closings, we will continue to be that place where you can share & connect.”

Yep, as soon as school closed, I immediately logged onto my Lifetouch account to maintain my sense of community connection. Their email had handy links to “some helpful articles on how to navigate this season together.”

Strangely, the links all went to Lifetouch’s own website, where the “articles” mostly encouraged me to take lots of pictures of my kids while I’m at home. Also included above and below each helpful season-navigating article were links that would allow me to purchase old school photos of my kids that I never asked Lifetouch to take in the first place, that they are conveniently keeping for me in their archives.

That was nice, but a thought kept occurring to me. I mean, I know they only sent me this email because they care deeply about my health and wellbeing, but why would a company that wants to take my kids’ pictures for me be encouraging me to do it myself?

And then I remembered… Oh, yeah, Lifetouch is owned by Shutterfly. It all makes sense now.

Like I said, this is a message of hope. We aren’t navigating these troubled waters alone. Your inbox is proof that plenty of people out there care deeply about you and your plans for your stimulus check.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

COVIDiots

This just in from a confirmed source in the Roseville, California municipal system: Some people are almost too dumb to breathe.

That wasn’t actually the news item – that’s just my takeaway. You’ll agree with me soon enough.

Please understand, I am not making any of this up. The Roseville municipal system put out an alert to the city employees to be aware that they have fielded multiple calls of hopelessly backed-up sewer pipes.

Multiple calls. At multiple locations.

How many is multiple? I don’t know, but a single one of these incidents is far more than ever should have occurred.

What happens to be clogging these sewer pipes in Roseville?

Shirts.

“Shirts?” you ask, confused. “Did you mean to put the R in there?”

No accidental misspellings here. Shirts.

“Shirts?” you ask again, still confused.

Yes, shirts.

“What do you mean, shirts?” you ask, still trying to wrap your normal brain around this information. “Like pieces of shirts?”

No, whole shirts. Details were not given as to the types of shirts involved - whether they were the T-, under, button-down, polo, sweat, or Hawaiian variety, but one thing was universal in the reports – it was the whole shirt.

“How does a whole shirt get into a sewer pipe?” you might ask aloud, still violently perplexed. “Surely, no one would try to flush an entire shirt down the toilet.”

Yes, yes, that’s exactly what’s been happening – on multiple occasions in multiple locations – in the town of Roseville. People are wiping their butts with a whole shirt, and then somehow flushing the entire shirt down the toilet.

So many things remain unclear regarding this story. One would be inclined to assume this situation is arising due to the nationwide psychotic phenomenon of COVID-19 toilet paper hoarding and the resulting scarcity of TP, however, we are dealing with people who intentionally flush an entire shirt down their own toilet, so I don’t think we are safe in assuming anything here.

However, for the sake of argument, let’s say the shirt flush was a result of being out of traditional toilet paper. Are they also out of facial tissues? Paper towels? Fast food napkins? Baby wipes? Newspapers? Magazines? Printer paper? Old toilet paper or paper towel rolls? Gift tissue paper? Leaves? Cotton balls? Swiffer duster refills? Post-it notes? Old receipts? Junk mail? Corn cobs? Small pets?

And those things off the top of my head are just better alternatives to traditional toilet paper than a shirt. But what about the bidet option? I mean, Roseville is in America, so no one there has a bidet, but the phenomenon of running water being able to clean body parts is not foreign. At least, not to you and me. It might be to a shirt flusher.

I’m just saying, chances are these toilet paperless future shirt flushers were sitting on the commode looking at a shower or a bathtub the whole time, and apparently, they were completely unable to put number two and two together.

Also unclear is the question of the shirt itself. Regardless of type, was it the shirt they were wearing when they went into the bathroom, or did they plan ahead and bring a separate wiping garment?

And again, back to the fact that the shirts are being flushed whole. Let’s suppose you are so unimaginative that you have decided your only option is to wipe your butt with your shirt – are you also so insanely dense as to not tear it into smaller strips first? Obviously, the answer is yes.

These are strange times in our history, made ever so much stranger by the startling revelation that there are people among us, some maybe in the next town over – a town you used to think was completely normal – who turn out to be whole-shirt flushers.

Is it a sign of an impending apocalypse that will start in our sewers? Only time will tell.

I am choosing to look at it as a reminder - a reminder that no matter how odd and disjointed our lives may have become, we non-shirt flushers are doing just fine, comparatively.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

COVID-19 Shutdown Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 33

Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 33

Hope was lost on Day 4. Now all that we have is the endless grind.

Today is our last day of what the school district laughingly referred to as “spring break.” In the before-time, spring break was scheduled to be only one week. We had dreams of travel and adventure. Those dreams are now but a distant and crushed memory of what once was. Just darkness ahead now. The darkness of remote learning.

After my exceedingly polite letter to them asking for the elimination of spring break this year due to the extenuating circumstances, the school district actually extended our new worthless, trapped, virus-ridden “spring break” an extra three days. A cruel, possibly vindictive joke that only forced us to come up with three more days of spring break home school courses until the distance learning begins again tomorrow.

We covered lawn maintenance, car maintenance, pool maintenance, irrigation system maintenance, bicycle maintenance, vacuum cleaner maintenance, coffee maker maintenance, electric wine opener maintenance, garage paint can collection maintenance, shower drain maintenance, and today, toenail maintenance.

The curriculum for my Appreciation for the Cinematic Arts of the ‘80s & ‘90s class was derailed by an academic mutiny, led mostly by my wife. I think I lost her trust at Uncle Buck and, amazingly, failed to regain it with Crocodile Dundee I and II. Whatever. It’s not like anything matters anymore.

The mutineers have decided that we will instead watch every single Marvel Avengers movie (approximately three hundred of them) in timeline order. We are halfway through and, consequently, our couch has developed an impenetrable layer of popcorn residue that is either serving as a protective barrier against wear and tear, or slowly destroying the cushions underneath us. Time will tell.

Meals have devolved into a standard routine of serve-yourself brunch, snack at random, and usually cereal for dinner, with dessert popcorn during the nightly Marvel movies. At first, we were ashamed of what we’ve become. Now we embrace it.

If the boys start to annoy us too much now, we’ve taken to keeping them in the game room by getting “high COVID readings” on my new “COVID meter” (one of our old Blackberry phones). We tell them there’s a viral outbreak in the kitchen or the family room, or wherever, and I put on my welding helmet and Latex dish gloves, hold a can of Lysol, and tell them to shelter in place until I have disinfected the stricken room. Then my wife and I have a few drinks on the patio before we give them the all-clear.

In an effort to limit our store trips, we have been attempting to eat as much as possible from our pantry and our freezers. We have a large chest freezer in the garage that slowly filled up to the top with frozen delicacies over the years. We are more than halfway down into the frozen cavern now, and ice axes have been deployed. Any attempt to retrieve food at this point looks like an arctic expedition.

Tonight, we are having a Stouffer’s Party Size Macaroni & Cheese that no one can remember purchasing, paired with some Van de Kamp’s Crunchy Fish Sticks that would have expired in 2009 had they not been completely encased in ice all these years.  

Or cereal.

Stay strong, people!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Exotic Homeschooling with Joe

These are incredible times. These are trying times. These are awesome times.

We are in the midst of an unprecedented worldwide shutdown of our everyday lives, and when the schools closed, we parents were called upon to become homeschool teachers. None of us can lie and say that has gone well, but we’re re-learning math and generally giving it our best shot, on the days we’re not hiding from the children and day-drinking in the garage.

Thankfully, however, in these trying times, either fate or incredibly awesome timing by Netflix executives has ensured that our children are not the only ones getting an online education during the quarantine.

When the homeschool day is done, and the kids have gone to bed, us parents have been blessed with exactly what we needed: the ability to instantly feel great about the direction our lives are going. We have been given the amazing opportunity to learn about the human dumpster fire that is the world of private American big cat owners, the men who love them, the sister-wives who may or may not be able to leave them any time they want, and their totally murdered-and-fed-to-a-600-pound-feline dead husbands.

We have been given Tiger King.

It is unclear how our amazing teachers are going to assess and grade our children’s homeschool progress and learning, but I can assure you, if our children can soak up their school work with as much zeal as the world has devoured the first season of Tiger King, every single one of them will have straight A’s.

So, in the spirit of our continued online education, here are twenty things I have learned from Tiger King:

1) Don’t do meth.

2) There are more privately-owned tigers in America than there are tigers out in the wild. On the one hand, that’s sad. On the other hand, U.S.A, U.S.A, U.S.A.!

3) Seriously, don’t do meth.

4) Don’t snort or smoke meth, and also don’t ever marry Carole Baskin. She’ll straight up kill you.

5) It is possible to be a gay man and also have a peroxide-highlighted mullet and own multiple fringy leather jackets. I was under the impression all gay men were fashion conscious, but then again, I have never been to Nowhere, Oklahoma.

6) Hiring a cross-country hitman is relatively cheap in Oklahoma, as long as they are also provided with a lot of cocaine, and you don’t mind if they actually do the job or not.

7) Zoo-based sex cults are a real thing, at least in the Carolinas.

8) You can be a cocaine drug lord, go to prison for murdering a DEA informant and being party to cutting said informant up into little pieces with a circular saw, get out of jail only twelve years later, somehow still own your own private “zoo” in Miami with all sorts of big cats like tigers and leopards, and be one of the most well-adjusted people in the cast of characters on Tiger King.

9) Sometimes, a really quality documentary requires two directors. A second one to actually direct the documentary, and a first one to live on the zoo and shoot years-worth of film, never backup any of the footage offsite, and then loose it all in an arson fire that also kills a bunch of alligators.

10) Every person who owns large cats is bat-shit crazy.

11) Every person who owns large cats has killed someone, enslaved someone, and/or done a ton of drugs. Usually all three.

12) Sometimes it takes a while to understand that working at an illegal tiger zoo operation owned by an intensely egomaniacal man with a frosted mullet and a sidearm might not be the right career choice for you. Sometimes that realization comes long after a tiger bites your arm off. Also, don’t do meth.

13) Wearing a bandana under a flat-brimmed Oakley baseball cap makes you look like a complete tool, even before you open your mouth to prove that you are, in fact, a complete tool. (I already knew that one, but this show majorly reinforced it.)

14) Meth can not only destroy everything you and your dentist worked so hard to protect, but it can also apparently cause you to make very questionable decisions in the bedroom.

15) Carole Baskin totally did it.

16) Gay, redneck, tiger-owning, mulleted, polygamist country singers will, in fact, sell you pizza topped with expired Walmart meat they got for free, just to keep costs down at the park.

17) Ligers are actually a real thing, and not just Napoleon Dynamite’s favorite made-up animal.

18) It is possible to have a worse haircut than Joe Exotic, if you happen to be a redheaded, jet ski-riding, lemur-having snitch boy.

19) Anyone you know personally whom you think is weird, is not weird by a mile compared to big cat owners.

20) Carole Baskin’s current husband should be a lot more worried than he probably already is.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

An Open Letter to the School District

Dear folks in charge of the decision making down at the School District,

It has come to my attention that you are still planning to have “spring break” next week. I am writing to ask that you seriously reconsider that plan, because frankly, it’s stupid.

Spring break is meant to be a time of joy – a time to “break away” from the harsh rigors of school and the grueling six whole weeks of continuous study we’ve had to endure since ski week in February.

That would be great and all, if we could leave the house, but there’s a little viral wrench in the works this year. I know you know about it, because you guys send me six or seven emails a day expressly telling me that you are aware of the situation, you are proud of how you’re handling it, and you care deeply about my family’s health and safety.

Well, Mr. and Mrs. School District, I’m not a hundred percent sure that last part is correct. Do you really care?

You see, the governor has told us that we’re not allowed to go anywhere or do anything. I’m not sure if you school district big wigs got special travel dispensation, but the rest of us are supposed to remain locked inside our houses for the foreseeable future, which most certainly includes your so-called “spring break” next week.

Even if we could leave the house and go somewhere, all the places we were planning to go have closed. Exactly what are we supposed to do with our children on this “spring break” of yours? Take them to the grocery store? Nope. I’m pretty sure that’s not allowed under state law anymore.

Field trip to the Chevron? “Hey, kids, let’s go get gas! Stay in the car, though. Maybe if you’re good we’ll go through the car wash.”

I don’t think so, and these scenarios are what make me skeptical about your claim that you care about the health and safety of my family. Health includes mental health, and the only thing keeping our mental health even remotely intact right now is the existence of some sort of school schedule for our three boys.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that homeschooling is going well. It’s not. It’s not even going remotely well. But at the very least, their online schoolwork is an activity they’re required to accomplish during the day. That means they stay busy for at least part of the day, and more importantly, out of our hair and off of each other. Some days it may only be for fifteen or twenty minutes, but it’s something.

And if you cared at all about their safety, you’d definitely cancel this whole spring break nonsense. Have you people even ever seen two testosterone-y teenage boys and their crazy twelve-year-old brother caged up inside a house with nothing to do? If not, have you ever seen footage of a prison riot? Same thing.

We, as their parents, genuinely fear for their safety, because if they don’t kill each other, my wife and I might just finish the job. Possibly as early as day two. They are that annoying.

And please don’t suggest to me that we should let them play more video games. Screen time is not the answer if you are truly concerned about their health. Screen time is the answer if we’re looking to have them rapidly oscillate between lobotomized drooling and hyperactive insanity, but that’s not exactly the picture of mental health now, is it?

And don’t try to give me any nonsense about the hard-working teachers needing a break. My wife is one of those hard-working teachers, and she is not looking for a break from her students – she’s looking for a break from her own kids. Spring “break” will be the exact opposite of that.

A vast majority of our district teachers are in the same boat. They have kids, too. It’s not an excessive burden on them to teach through what would have been the break. They are all helping keep each other’s kids busy during the day. It’s a circle of life kinda deal.

And the teachers in our district who don’t have kids at home need to keep working just as much, but for a different reason. They’ve had to quickly ramp up to online teaching the past few weeks, and they’re as stressed out as the rest of their colleagues. Normally, a break would do them a world of good, if they were actually able to travel. However, if you make them stay home with nothing to do, they are just going to develop severe drinking problems.

Restaurants are allowed to deliver alcohol now! That’s not good. These teachers are trapped inside like the rest of us, and the fact that they still have to go to work each day, albeit in their pajamas, is the only thing keeping them from slipping off the edge. If you take away the responsibility of needing to be coherent during the day, it’s going to be a nine A.M. margarita-fueled disaster zone.

So, I beg you, for the good of all mankind in our district, please stop the inevitable spring break madness before it even begins. You can even take full credit for the great idea of “pushing on with valuable learning during these unprecedented times to maintain fluid educational continuity,” or however you want to word it to make yourselves sound amazing. You guys are good at that.

Just please, please don’t make me have to buy a monthly pass at the Chevron drive-thru car wash for field trips. I fear we’ll scrub off the Suburban’s entire top coat of paint just trying to keep our sanity next week without a school schedule.

Yours in educational excellence through continued partnership,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

COVID-19 Shutdown Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 12

Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 12

Yes, we are on day twelve without school. I am counting the weekends, because weekends have no meaning when you know the kids won’t leave on Monday morning.

I’m not going to lie and say homeschooling is going well. We have already abandoned hope of any sort of educational advancement during these bleak times. We will be satisfied if the kids get out of this just not being dumber.

And please don’t get me wrong. Their teachers are doing a great job. At least, I think they are. I am basing that solely off volume of communications, not content. They are assaulting my inbox with email after email about this and that and the other thing. I would give you specifics, but I stopped reading the emails on Day 4. It was just too much. I have a life to lead over here!

We assume that our boys are reading the emails and doing the work, but it would simply be too much work for me to follow up. Instead, every once in a while, I just yell down the hall, “Did you get that email from your teacher just now?”

They say incoherent things back that I can’t and don’t want or need to understand, and I check the “homeschooled them” box for the day.

Son Number Three coughed yesterday morning. We quarantined him in the closet for the remainder of the day, not because we are worried about the coronavirus, but because he is very loud and we took the opportunity to mute him for a while. It’s our mental health that we’re concerned with, not the virus.

Meals are getting weird. In the before-time, when we had jam-packed schedules full of school and sports, we still managed to get an organized dinner on the table at least a few nights a week. Somehow, with all this amazing “free time” we’ve been given, dinner just can’t seem to bring itself together. We still have a fair amount of actual food in the pantry and refrigerator, but we keep pairing some snack mix with a can of olives around three o’clock, after the noontime cereal wears off. This pushes dinnertime out well into Cinema class (see below), which inevitably leads to popcorn for dinner, which is fine, because popcorn is a vegetable. Prove me wrong.

  

As part of my ever-evolving (some have called it lazy, but I can’t be bothered to argue with them) homeschool curriculum, I have added an Appreciation for the Cinematic Arts class in the evenings. This shelter-in-place seems to be the perfect opportunity to homeschool my kids about the magic of the silver screen in the eighties and nineties. Each night they enthusiastically tug at the duct tape binding their wrists and ankles as we watch another golden oldie, including, but not limited to, Groundhog Day, Adventures in Babysitting, The Great Outdoors, Fletch, Uncle Buck, Teen Wolf, Beetlejuice, Kindergarten Cop, Predator, and What About Bob.

They are loving it! Also, in order to properly scare them into staying home during this pandemic crisis, we showed them Outbreak. Highly recommended.

Even though we still have food, my wife keeps pestering me to go to the store. I don’t understand this, since I’m pretty sure I made my feelings on the subject very clear. I don’t want to go to the store. Last time I went I had to stand in line for an hour to get in, even though I wasn’t going to buy toilet paper. I don’t even like standing in line to go to things I actually want to go to. The grocery store certainly does not qualify for that list. Our corner gas station continues to sell milk, so I see no need to go back to that hellish line.

She showed me the grocery list she’s been compiling, trying to get me to believe we really needed things like green beans and broccoli, but I saw right through the lie. She’s almost out of chardonnay.

I don’t need to go to the store. I can wait her out. She’ll go. She might try to muscle though some pinot grigio for a few days, but she’ll crack.

I must sign off now and go get Weekend at Bernie’s cued up and ready for the nightly Cinema class.

Stay strong, people!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

The Just a Smidge Homeschool Schedule

I don’t want to brag or anything, but we are handling this new nationwide “distance learning” directive like a boss over here at Smidge Central.

Do we need the boys to leave the house to get their education every day?

Heck no! We can totally do all that stuff right here at home. A home that used to be much, much larger, as I remember it.

We spent the weekend coming up with our new homeschooling schedule – and by weekend, I mean five minutes on Sunday night over a couple drinks. The schedule has since been honed to razor-sharp perfection, and we are running like a Swiss watch over here on day three.

Since this has been such a massive win for us, educationally speaking, we just wouldn’t feel right keeping it to ourselves. So, we have decided to post our homeschooling schedule here for you to adopt in your own home.

The Just a Smidge Homeschool Schedule

From whenever you wake up until 8:00 A.M.

Reading time (we think – we are taking this opportunity to sleep in until 8:00 because that NEVER happens, so we’re not really sure what they’re doing, but we told them to read and we also really don’t care that much as long as they let us sleep.)

8:00 – 9:00

Culinary – boys complain about having to make their own breakfasts

9:00 – 9:30

Work Experience – boys complain about having to vacuum and do dishes

9:30 – 11:30

Classroom – boys complain that the assignments from the teachers are dumb and don’t make sense. I ask them if they read the directions. They say stupid things and then shut up after they finally read the directions. Repeat. I also use this time to attempt to figure out the logistics of expelling one or more of my children from homeschool. Does that mean they have to live in the backyard? If so, I’m totally fine with that. We own tents.

11:30 – Noon

Culinary – boys complain that they aren’t hungry for lunch yet, but they are lying, because they are boys and therefore always hungry. They make themselves cereal and chips.

Noon – 1:00 P.M.

Reading time – boys complain that they already read a ton before we got up and their books are boring and this is dumb and why can’t we go play since there is no school. They also complain about being hungry. They shut up once they actually open their books and get sucked back into the amazing stories that await them on every page.

1:00 – 2:00

Physical Education – boys go to the garage and mostly punch each other and put each other in headlocks while they are supposed to be lifting weights, doing pullups, or running around the block. As long as they stay out in the garage for an hour, we give them full credit.

2:00 – 5:00

Free Play, including one hour of screen time – boys always start their three-hour free play time with their one hour of screen time, because they have already figured out that the one hour will likely be extended indefinitely since it’s the only peace and quiet I’ve had all day and I need to get some damn things done around here!

5:00 P.M.

Guided Culinary – dinner prep with the boys playing active roles in all major food preparation activities. We are having cereal again because I just can’t anymore.

6:00 P.M.

Survival Skills – get away from me if you want to live. Also, make sure you get yourself to bed at a reasonable hour. It’s a school night.

Anyway, like I said, we’re pretty much owning this whole homeschooling thing. Use this amazing schedule with our compliments.

Best of luck!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Ask Smidge - The Viral Edition

As you know, America, and dare I say, the entire civilized world, is currently panicking about the coronavirus. Trustworthy answers are scarce, so naturally many of you have turned to the only truly trusted source for information left – the Ask Smidge advice column.

Our asksmidge@gmail.com inbox has been overflowing with questions from concerned citizens, like yourselves, who just want straight answers about the dangers we face from this hideous, devastating, completely unique in every way, threat to our very existence.

You ask, we answer! (As always in a fact-based and completely non-controversial manner.)

Smidge,

What is the name of this thing? Is it the Corona virus, the coronavirus, the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19?

Curious in Coeur d’Alene

Dear Curious,

It’s all of them. It actually started as four different viruses that were all ganging up to take over the world. When they meet, they form a totally new strain. There are actually six million different strains now, they’re just not telling us. And speaking of names, Coeur d’Alene translates to “heart of an awl.” Love your city, but that name is kinda dumb.

Smidge,

Why are they calling it the “novel coronavirus?”

Confused in Carson City

Dear Confused,

They call it that because each day someone sends you a novel on how to wash your hands. They are considering renaming it the J. R. R. Tolkienvirus.

Smidge,

Why are people hoarding toilet paper? I don’t understand the connection between the flu and toilet paper.

Shopping in Sheboygan

Dear Shopping,

There is no connection. These people are also buying and hoarding paste as well as toilet paper. They are making large toilet paper forts inside their homes, then they sit in the forts and eat paste. And their boogers.

Smidge,

I have been to five stores and can’t find any toilet paper. What is the matter with people? And where can I get some TP?

Frustrated in Fargo

Dear Frustrated,

I feel your pain. The stores are all sold out, but the good news is that the CDC and the WHO (the band, not the health people) both recently endorsed looting and pillaging at this time, as long as proper “social distancing” rules are observed. Stay safe out there!

Smidge,

Why are stores sold out of soap? Shouldn’t this coronavirus thing maybe account for a small increase in soap purchases? Didn’t people wash their hands before this?

Soapless in Seattle

Dear Soapless,

No, most people are gross. This situation is many people’s first encounter with soap. Case in point, they tested a bunch of McDonald’s order touchscreens and every one of them tested positive for fecal bacteria. And boogers. If you see someone hoarding toilet paper and soap, you can have some fun by telling them that you heard peeing on an electric fence is the best way to become immune to the coronavirus. Enjoy!

Smidge,

I’m getting conflicting information at my local bar. Does the Corona virus come from Corona beer?

Switching to Pacifico in Pacifica

Dear Switching,

No, Corona beer does not carry the virus. Not the beer itself. The bartender who handed you the beer after eating at McDonald’s carries the virus.

Smidge,

Are the people who want their Instagram posts to go “viral” the same people who can’t understand why politicians can’t stop the coronavirus?

Wondering in Waikiki

Dear Wondering,

Yes. They are toilet paper fort-building booger eaters.

Smidge,

My stock portfolio is taking a major hit with this whole thing. What can I do?

Worried in Wichita

Dear Worried,

Sell everything and dump it all into any company that makes toilet paper, hand sanitizer, or soap. Hurry.

Smidge,

Should we continue to shake hands with each other? I want to be careful, but I don’t want to be rude.

Cordial in Cambridge

Dear Cordial,

No, stop shaking hands immediately. But not because of the coronavirus. Because half of the country is out of toilet paper and soap.

Smidge,

They just canceled school for an entire district near us, and our school district just canceled every non-classroom event, including outdoor sports. This is madness. What on earth are we doing? What has happened to common sense?

Frustrated in Fairfield

Dear Frustrated,

Don’t worry. We’re planning on holding a mandatory meeting of all school district administrators soon. We’re holding the meeting on a cruise ship.

Smidge,

What ever happened with the swine flu, the bird flu, SARS, MERS, that Zika virus, and acid rain?

Questioning in Queens

Dear Questioning,

What a great question.

Stay safe out there, folks. Wash your hands as often as you can with rum, tequila, or lighter fluid, and stock up on coffee filters and fast food napkins. (Just not the ones from McDonald’s!)

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Leap Year - Repost

We had a February 29th a few days ago. There isn’t supposed to be a February 29th. Not normally, anyway. It’s a leap year. The whole concept of leap year, and our calendar in general, is very strange. I have never agreed with how our calendar works, and I have decided that it is time to stop the madness. I hereby propose that the world adopt the Smidge Calendar.

Our current calendar is complicated. This stems from the fact that the earth takes 365.2422 days to go around the sun.  If we didn’t do the leap years, we would lose six hours off the calendar every year. That’s 24 days off in a hundred years. Not good. I mean, what if your birthday was in that lost month? No party for you. What if the lost month turned out to be October, and we lost Oktoberfest? Totally unacceptable.

A long time ago, Julius Caesar, a huge fan of Oktoberfest and birthdays, introduced leap years to correct for the 0.2422 day problem. Julius decided they would do a leap day every four years no matter what. That is actually too many, since the day fraction is 0.24 and not 0.25, so things started getting out of whack. Fifteen hundred years later, after people got tired of spring starting in the middle of summer, someone with a big brain and an abacus developed a formula. To be a leap year, the year must be evenly divisible by four. If the year is also evenly divisible by 100, then it is not a leap year, unless it is also evenly divisible by 400. Simple, right?

Well, that’s all fine and dandy, and I don’t really have a problem with the leap year math. It’s necessary. What is not necessary is having our months all different. Why have some months with 30 days, others with 31, and one with variable days? It’s too complicated. When I was a kid, my dad taught me a way to tell how many days a month has in it. You count on your knuckles. Start on the knuckle of your index finger as January. Count the months down your fist, landing alternately on your knuckles, and the valleys between your knuckles. When you get to your pinkie knuckle (July), start over on your index knuckle (August). If you are on a knuckle, the month has 31 days. If you are in a valley, it has 30, unless it’s February, then you have to refer to the complicated formula.

The knuckle trick is handy (get it?), but it shouldn’t be necessary. With the Smidge Calendar, you will never need to count on your knuckles like an ape again. My months will all have 28 days. Gone will be the days of not knowing what day of the week the 12th of March is. The days will always be the same number. The month will always start on Monday the 1st. Sundays will always be the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th. Simple and easy.

Holidays will always be on the same day. You will always know when Thanksgiving is going to fall, and with the new calendar, we can move some of the more flexible holidays to always fall on a Monday or a Friday. Boom, more three-day weekends. You’re welcome!

Now, with 28-day months, we'll need to have 13 of them, to make a year.  We’ll have to come up with a name for the new month. We'll make it fun and have a national contest, and pick the most popular submission. This will be a worldwide calendar, of course, but we'll retain naming rights. This is our idea, and everyone else can just get on board. It won't be a hard sell, due to the New Year’s factor.

Thirteen months at 28 days each only gets you 364 days. The all-important 365th day will occur on what is currently known as January 1st. However, it will be known only as New Year’s Day. It will not have a number. It will not be a Monday. It will simply be "New Year’s Day," and it will be a freebie. No work will occur. Nothing will be accomplished. It's a phantom day that doesn't exist on the calendar. Relax and enjoy!

Since we can't do anything about the 0.2422 day problem, we will continue with the current leap year formula, and any leap year will have an extra bonus day, known as New Year’s Weekend. Two totally free days every four years (unless the year is evenly divisible by 100 but not 400, obviously). Winning!

While you will be encouraged to do nothing on New Year’s Day and Weekend, inevitably, a certain amount of children will be born on these phantom days. This is where the Smidge Calendar also has a bonus financial planning aspect. Any parent having a child on New Year’s Day will get to choose whether their new child's official birthday will be December 28th or January 1st. This will allow them to decide which tax year they would like their new deduction and tax credit to fall in. Just a happy bonus feature of a new and improved system.

In fact, I don't mean to brag, but the Smidge Calendar has no discernible flaws. It's way better that the current random 12- month system. The only potential downside I can see is a slight long-term hit to the calendar industry, since calendars will now be reusable.

Now, before all you accountants out there have a conniption fit, screaming about financial quarters, please try to relax. We'll still have quarters, they're just 13 weeks long now. You're supposed to be good at math, so deal with it. Like I said, no flaws.

I anticipate immediate adoption of the Smidge Calendar as soon as the word gets out. The only thing left to do is figure out where to put the new month. I'm thinking between September and October. They always seemed like they needed to be separated a little more. We could call it Smidgetober. It would be a fun month. We could introduce Smidgetoberfest, the Oktoberfest pre-party.

Just food for thought.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

School Officials in Our (Hot) Pocket

This just in from the news desk, heiress to the billion-dollar Hot Pockets fortune, Michelle Janavs, has just been sentenced to five months in jail for attempting to get her two daughters into college by paying now infamous William “Rick” Singer, the Newport Beach “college admissions consultant,” over three hundred thousand dollars in cash and frozen food.

Janavs paid Singer one hundred thousand dollars to facilitate the bribing of a high school testing official and two hundred thousand dollars to buy a USC administrator’s approval of a bogus sports admission.

Police were already investigating Singer and his phony foundation, but may not have found out about his dealings with Janavs, had it not been for the eighteen-wheeler of Hot Pockets that backed up to his office one afternoon. Apparently, he had requested a portion of his illegal compensation in the form of the delicious microwavable frozen snack food.

Initially, authorities feared the worst when the surveillance teams reporting Singer buying twenty full-size chest freezers over the course of week. Thankfully, he had not graduated to mass murder and body storage, and the police simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief and had a new lead to follow when the Hot Pockets truck arrived.

The trail to the Janavs family’s huge front door was a short one. Conspicuously missing from the tests allegedly taken by the Janavs girls were the tell-tale ever-present greasy fingerprints and marinara stains. And authorities were immediately suspicious about the USC admission under the guise of being an elite beach volleyball player, since both daughters, having been raised from a babies on nothing but Hot Pockets and ranch dipping sauce, each weigh close to seven hundred pounds.

Facing five months in jail, Michelle Janavs’ legal team has worked out a special arrangement with the California Institution for Women and Day Spa in Corona, California, where she will be housed. Michelle’s team of personal physicians submitted a three-thousand-page document to the courts detailing her fragile health condition.

Essentially, due to a lifetime of eating nothing but Hot Pockets, she could die almost instantly if she consumes anything else, other than diet soda, of course. “We need to maintain her saturated fat and sodium levels at their normal six thousand percent of the recommended daily value,” said her lead doctor, “or the consequences could be dire. Hot Pockets, and Hot Pockets alone are the best way to do that.”

“Prior to arriving here in Corona, Mrs. Janavs will have a minimum of four hundred sixty-five boxes of Hot Pockets delivered for her personal consumption, plus any she plans to trade for cigarettes and shivs,” CIWDS warden Janet Stevens told us. “We are having to add a second walk-in freezer here to accommodate her special dietary restrictions.”

“We’re excited about her coming here,” an anonymous guard at the prison shared with us. “Given her history, we figured she’d be up for bribing us, which she totally was. She’s bringing in an additional four full trucks worth to take care of all the guards’ families. It’s going to be amazing. We love Hot Pockets!”

Happily, not all clouds have a silver lining. Some are lined with a crispy crust and seven thousand-degree mozzarella cheese.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

This Column is Going Downhill

Our regularly scheduled column has been rudely preempted by Ski Week.

Yes, that’s right, I said Ski Week. Instead of celebrating the glorious birthdays of Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison on two separate Mondays in February, like we all did when we were young, our school district changed things up. Apparently, they think we’re all rich.

They tacked on three extra president’s days to the previous two, and lined them all up in a row this week. This phenomenon is nicknamed “Ski Week,” so the idea, apparently, is that we’re all supposed to head up to the slopes and spend the education-free week on a ski vacation. I guess I forgot to let our school district know that we don’t have thirty-eight thousand dollars lying around for just such an occasion.

And our school district failed to check with any of the surrounding districts to see if they were also populated by the idle rich and doing the same thing. Turns out they’re not. Since my wife teaches in a neighboring district, our ski week, could we afford it, would be momless.

Sure, we might be able to shave a few thousand bucks off the total cost with one less lift ticket and no overpriced ski lodge chardonnay, but if you think I’m taking these three monkeys skiing by myself, you’ve obviously been drinking something a lot stronger than wine.

So, what I’m telling you is, the kids in Rocklin, which unfortunately includes MY kids, have the ENTIRE damn week off. And not only that, but this particular week has weekends on BOTH sides of it! Do you know what that means? It means my three boys have been here at home with me now for five whole days in a row already, and we still have four more whole days, also in that row, left before they go back to school.

Those of you with kids, or those of you who have met kids before, should now understand the fact that I’ve got nothing done in the last five days, and that trend will continue for the next four. In particular, I haven’t been able to write this column. I haven’t been able to do anything useful. (Author’s note to aspiring writers: Take notice of how I deftly implied that this column is actually useful through the trickery of italics, even though there is absolutely no historical evidence that would support that claim.)

So, to all of you who are not currently on a weeks-long ski vacation, I apologize for not having a column for you today. I don’t know why our school district is choosing not to celebrate the President’s Days as our forefathers intended, but one thing is certain – our distinguished eighth and ninth presidents are rolling over in their ornate, gold and diamond-encrusted graves.

As for you folks who are swooshing down the slopes this week and sipping expensive ski lodge cocktails in plush leather chairs in front of magnificent fireplaces while I spend another day eating cold pizza and refereeing at the World Brothers Wrestling Federation, I’ll say this:

I am NOT sorry that I don’t have a column for you this week. You’re probably too busy to read it anyway, what with all your swooshing, and expensive sipping, and plush fireplace sitting, and stacking gold coins in your Rolls Royce, and snorting caviar, and whatever else it is you people do.

But I’m not bitter. I would never wish for you to have a skiing accident and break a bone or anything like that. That’s just not right.

But I do kinda wish you’d fall off your wallet in the lodge and get a mild sprain.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

Snacking Dangerously

Son Number Three brought this permission slip home from his sixth-grade cooking elective class the other day:

Over the next few weeks we will be working on a unit focused on making healthy after-school snacks. We will be learning knife skills in class so that the students can prepare fruits and vegetables. Students will be placed in small groups of 4-5 and will work directly with me to learn how to properly hold and handle a knife, as well as how to slice, chop, and dice. In order to participate in the hands-on knife skills training, all students must bring a signed permission slip.

   ___   I would like my child to participate in knife skills training.

   ___   I do NOT want my child to participate in knife skills at this time.

I have a lot of issues with this permission slip, starting with the fact that someone in our school district thought that a permission slip was needed in the first place. My son is in the sixth grade. He’s eleven years old. He has his own monogrammed folding pocketknife that he carries around with him (off campus, of course). If he doesn’t know how to slice a cucumber without hurting himself by now, then let’s just let the natural learning and selection process run its course.

I checked the yes box, and added a note asking if they would also be learning proper knife throwing techniques. I mean, if you’re going to make me sign a permission slip before my kid is allowed to do something as crazy as chop a bell pepper, then let’s really use the parental permission to its fullest. This could be a combination cooking and bladed weapon self-defense class, for example. Appetizers and axe throwing? Brunch and bayonets? I just feel like we’re missing a real opportunity for some higher learning, here.

You know, it wasn’t too long ago that sixth graders were running the radial arm saw in woodshop, and no permission slip ever went home for that. Of course, the radial arm saw gets its name from the fact that it’s great at removing your arm, just above the radius. (The original name, “ulnar arm saw,” didn’t work because everyone thought you were saying “underarm saw,” which obviously refers to a gas-powered thirty-inch-bar chainsaw.)

We have drifted a long way from the days of being taught woodworking skills by an eight-fingered man, but it’s very clear that we’ve gone over the edge the wrong way in the name of safety. That being said, my biggest problem with this permission slip has nothing to do with the knives.

Apparently, the only “healthy after-school snacks” being presented as options to my impressionable young son are fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables!? This is a travesty. I ask you, Rocklin Unified School District, what about the Totino’s Pizza Rolls? You call this a responsible and informed education??

And you want to talk about safety concerns? Let’s talk about a pizza roll that just came out of the oven. The potential for third- or even sixth-degree burns from the explosive molten-lava-marinara and cheese filling cannot be understated. If our military could somehow develop a rapid delivery system to effectively weaponize hot Totino’s pizza rolls, conflicts around the globe could be ended tomorrow. Try to say that about fruits and vegetables.

Pizza rolls - now that’s a situation that should require a permission slip!

And safety goggles.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

Miami Pop Rocks

The Super Bowl was in Miami this year. I don’t want to talk about the game. As a lifelong Forty-Niners fan, it was far too painful to watch the fourth quarter, a quarter in which, traditionally, both teams play. My team decided not to play the fourth quarter for some reason, and I still don’t want to talk about it, so please, just let it go.

Let’s talk about the halftime show, instead. J Lo’s butt joined Shakira’s butt on stage at the fifty-yard-line to entertain us for fourteen minutes. The butts wore skimpy outfits and danced around the stage. The butts swayed. The butts hung on tight to poles and spun down to the stage again. At the end of the show, the swinging butts even knocked all the rest of the dancers off their feet with two powerful sideways butt moves. The butts put on a pretty good show.

Not many people are aware of this, but the owners of the butts, J Lo and Shakira, are actually fairly talented singers. The NFL consented to let them have microphones as long as their butts were constantly visible to the cameras, as per the butt contract, and the two ladies were even allowed to sing a little during the show.

It is not a shock that the NFL would put on a halftime show centered around butts. We’re not exactly talking about America’s moral compass here. Let’s not forget the halftime show centered around Janet Jackson’s boobs. The NFL has a low bar, family entertainment-wise, and they continue to sneak under it to pick up all the dollar bills on the stage.

So, the butts weren’t surprising. Shakira is from Colombia, which also makes perfect sense, since the Super Bowl was in Miami, Florida, a town that operates completely under Colombian national law. I assume J Lo was invited because she is from New York - a nod to where the state of Florida imports the rest of its citizens from.

There were two male performers invited up on stage as well. J Balvin is another Colombian pop star, so he was probably required to be on stage under Colombian entertainment law, as a chaperone for Shakira’s butt.

The other choice for male entertainment was baffling. A guy in a diamond-encrusted silver trench coat wearing a silk dinner napkin as a hat showed up on stage with a microphone, as if he was a legitimate entertainer. It was bad enough until I was informed he goes by the name Bad Bunny. I am not making that up.

He crept around the stage, squatting down in his matching diamond-encrusted sneakers, doing a half-rap song in Spanish. Apparently, Bad Bunny is from Puerto Rico, where I guess you are not required to have any talent in order to become a famous singer, or a famous outerwear BeDazzler, or whatever it is he’s famous for.

I’m not sure why the Colombian government of Miami agreed to have a Puerto Rican join the show. They literally, and I’m using literally correctly here, could have gone outside the stadium right before the show, thrown a churro blindfolded, and hit someone better to be on stage than Bad Bunny.

Bad Bunny, however, was not my problem with the halftime show. My problem was the whole thing took place inside Hard Rock Stadium.

Hard Rock.

Not Hard Butts Stadium. Not Easy-Listening Latin Rap Stadium. Not Whatever-the-Hell Bad Bunny Does Stadium.

Hard Rock Stadium. You have one clear choice for a halftime show at Hard Rock Stadium: AC/DC.

They blew it.

If AC/DC had played, the Niners would have won. I blame Bad Bunny. I don’t want to talk about it.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

High School Knowledge Week - Repost

I am in the middle of school visit season, and as such, I ran out of time to write a new column for this week. So, in honor of school visit season, I thought I’d re-share a post about a school visit a couple years ago. Everything still holds true today. Enjoy!

I went back to high school today. Not my own high school, but a very similar one. It felt the same. The smell of gym socks and mysterious cafeteria “food” has not changed much in thirty years.

It’s career week at Rocklin High, and they invited me to speak about being an author. I wanted to speak about being a bullfighter, but they said it was better to stick to things I’d had direct experience with, so whatever. Author it is.

I really had a fun time sharing my knowledge and insights with the students about authoring, but I also felt like I left a lot on the table, advice-wise. I mean, I gave them plenty of advice about being an author, such as, “If you want to be able to afford food and clothing, be a dentist instead,” and “Never name your evil villainess after your mother-in-law if you can help it.”

But I really wished I could have gone a step further and given them general high school life advice. The format and time constraints of the day wouldn’t allow for it, but there was definitely more wisdom I wanted to impart, such as:

- Talk to the girl. She’s nervous and self-conscious just like you are, even if all you see is her being amazing and you having zits. If she wants nothing to do with you, smile and say, “OK, no sweat. I hope you have a great day.” Or cover her front yard in toilet paper at midnight. Either way you want to play it is cool.

- Pay attention, you idiot. The things they are teaching you do not suck and are not lame. This is all stuff you will need in life. Except algebra. Algebra does suck and is lame. No one uses algebra in their job.

- Here’s a good joke for your math teacher:

What does the little mermaid wear to math class?

An algebra.

You’re welcome.

- While you are here, learn to form grammatically correct sentences on paper and with your face. If you can’t do that, you will always work at the car wash.

- Drive while driving. And drive as little as possible while you’re in high school. You think you’re amazing at it, but you’re not. You suck at it. So much.

- Stand up straight, look people in the eye, have a firm handshake, and speak clearly. In other words, stop being you and start acting like a human. It’s time.

- Quit wearing beanie hats unless it is below 45 degrees. Never wear them indoors, unless you work in a walk-in freezer.

- Be extra nice to your joints – your knees in particular. Trust me.

- Go to any other country before you start college. Just go. You don’t need any money.

- Get your hair out of your eyes. For you boys, it makes you look like a lazy slob. For you girls, it makes you look like Cousin It. Not good, either way.

- Go to any other country after you finish college. Just go. You still don’t need any money.

- Sit up straight.

- Your parents know a lot of useful information, and they want you to have it because they love you. You don’t know anything useful at all. Listen to them and stop being a turd.

- And no, having “likes” on your selfies is not useful. Stop taking selfies and learn how to cook a steak properly.

- Pronounce words correctly.

- You will get out of college exactly what you put into it. So be sure to study. Also, be sure to learn how to do an upside-down keg stand properly. Both are vitally important to college.

- Seriously, stop wearing beanie hats.

- Get a job if you don’t have one yet. You are not too busy. Throw your cell phone away and you just freed up 80% of your day.

- Once you learn something, start your own business with zero dollars in your bank account. If you fail, big deal. You’ll still have zero dollars. If you succeed, you’ll have more than zero. It’s just simple math.

- Deodorant. Always.

- Don’t say, “To be honest with you...”

It gives the impression you aren’t being honest all the other times.

- And above all else, remember -  Us adults are just as lost as you, but we have mortgages. Stay in high school. You have no idea how good you have it.

I’m going back tomorrow to talk to more students. Maybe I’ll find time to fit some of this good stuff in.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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

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