Productive Hijackings

In 2001 we had the September 11th hijackings and part of the aftermath was the ingenious idea of putting the TSA in charge of airport security. Almost instantly I was not allowed to travel with my toenail clippers.

In December of 2001 ol’ Richard Reid tried to light a bomb hidden in his shoe and now I have to walk through the metal detector in my socks.

Then in 2006 some idiots in England were plotting to take a plane down with a liquid bomb, so now when I fly I can only bring enough shaving cream and toothpaste with me to shave half my face and brush most of my teeth.

If the TSA is going to continue to be the pro-active, forward thinking organization we have come to know and love, then I have a few helpful suggestions for any would-be terrorists out there. Not helpful to the terrorist so much as helpful to you and me.

Here is a list of things I wish someone would try to hijack a plane with:

- The loud talking cosmetics saleswomen with the big hair

- The “carry-on” that just doesn’t seem to fit in the overhead bin no matter how hard she shoves, or how loud she talks about it

- The in-flight magazine with the crossword puzzle already completed

- The sweaty guy with BO

- The super-important business man who gets audibly indignant about delays

- The un-disciplined 6 year old who repeatedly kicks the back of my chair

- The parent of the un-disciplined 6 year old who repeatedly kicks the back of my chair

- The 400 pound guy who only buys one seat, but uses part of mine too

- The cutesy snack mix that occasionally subs for good old-fashioned peanuts

- The older lady who asks at least six different gate agents if they still need to see her ID

- The beef stroganoff

- The safety briefing

- The tray table that won’t stay up

- The exit row seat that won’t recline

- The baggage handler that just doesn’t care anymore

- The guy next to me snoring in my ear

- The “contains only two sips” miniature can of soda

- The in-flight movie that’s edited for time and content

- The talkative couple who are on their way to Vegas and are super excited about it, and

- The drunk guy who tries to tip the flight attendant


I really feel that we could all travel a little bit safer if a few of these grave security concerns were addressed. Won’t you please help?

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2008 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 Have a Dream - A Father's Version

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 I will be able to sleep in. That one day I will not be woken by the sound of a wooden kitchen spoon banging on my door at 5:30 am.

I have a dream that I will one day be able to wear a shirt for more than ten minutes without getting baby spit-up on it.

I have a dream that one day I will not have to watch four effeminate Australians dance poorly and sing about fruit salad and a big red car. That one day I can stop having to sing along with the four effeminate Australians.

I have a dream that my three little boys will one day be able to play with someone else’s children without someone going to time out or the emergency room.

I have a dream that my children will someday get up in the middle of the night, go pee, and go right back to bed without waking me up to tell me about it.

I have a dream that someday soon I will be able to walk through my own house barefoot in the dark without fear of plastic dinosaur puncture wounds.

I have a dream that I will no longer have to count to three. That someday I will only need to get to two.

I have a dream that someday I will stop finding two-week-old fruit snacks in the leather seats. That I will quit having to vacuum pulverized goldfish crackers out of the floor mats.

I have a dream that one day I will remove my last car seat, never having to contort myself to install it in another car again.

I have a dream that one day my children will travel with only one suitcase each, and they will carry that suitcase themselves. That one day they will not require 32 tons of accessories per child.

I have a dream that some day soon I will be able to stand at my toilet and pee without having a little boy come up behind me and try to stick his head between my legs because he thinks it’s funny.

I have a dream that one day I will be able to open my own cupboards freely, without first having to Houdini a child-proof plastic locking device. That one day we may be able to have breakables below the five foot line.

I have a dream that someday soon I will be able to set my drink down on the coffee table without a care in the world. That someone somewhere would produce a reliable stain repellant for carpet.

I have a dream that one day I will no longer have to play the “Identify the Foul Smell and its Source” game. That one day, I will no longer stockpile poop-filled diapers in my laundry room until the “odor reducing” container is full enough to go to the trash.

I have a dream that the day will come when I will no longer find any long-forgotten sippy-cups of curdled milk underneath my couch.

I have a dream that I will once again be able to eat my whole meal at a restaurant without once uttering the words “inside voice,” or, “Please don’t stab your brother with your fork.”

I have a dream that someday what is on my plate will cease to be much more desirable than what is on his plate. That his green things will stop being “yucky” while mine are “yummy.”

I have a dream that one Saturday morning in the future my boys will be able to run into my room and jump on me in bed without one of them kicking me in the goodies.

And when this happens, I will sing:

Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Because our boys will be growing up and done with all those annoying childhood problems. Teenagers are easier, right?

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2008 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!

Hands-Free Phones and Other Results-Free Laws

We here in California are just finishing up our first month under the new “Hands-Free” cell phone law. We are still allowed to talk on the phone while driving, and we are still allowed to hold the phone in one or both of our hands while driving, we just can’t hold the phone up to our ear while driving. This confuses me a little. If I hop in my car, hit the road and hold a book up to my ear for the entire drive, I’m well within my rights under California law. Substitute that book for a phone, and I’m an outlaw. Interesting.

I think the idea is to reduce accidents. A few years ago I was hit by a guy who ran a stop sign. He wasn’t on the phone at the time, he was just a really bad driver. Maybe we should outlaw those. A long time ago, I got hit by a guy on the freeway in LA. He wasn’t on the phone either, he just dropped his cheeseburger in his lap. When he went for it, he lost control of his car and bounced off mine. Maybe we should outlaw cheeseburgers.

On second thought, this is America. We can’t outlaw cheeseburgers. It’s every American’s right to eat cheeseburgers. However, I believe we have a very serious freeway/cheeseburger/lap/collision issue that needs to be dealt with in a responsible manner by our legislators. I propose the hands-free cheeseburger amendment of 2008.

If holding a phone to one's ear has become such a menace to society, then the cheeseburger issue must follow suit! How many lives could be spared, how many dollars could be saved if we could just get a handle on the “burger sliding out of the bun due to slippery lettuce” issue. Or the “sauce dripping on the pants because of the unseen hole in the bottom of the wrapper” problem. Or the “two handed pickle removal while steering with one elbow” maneuver. So many different burgers, so many different problems.

A hands-free burger initiative could tackle all these very serious concerns and get them under control so our roads can once again be safe. If just one fender is spared, if just one pair of chinos is left unstained to be worn a second day in a row, it will all be worth it.

Now, I have no idea what the hands-free cheeseburger device will look like. What I do know however, is that if we can just get this legislation rolling, the American entrepreneurial machine will kick in to high gear, and we’ll have a new industry in no time. Bluetooth will no doubt be the leader with the quick launch of the “Blue Cheese Tooth” burger holder or the “Cordon Bleutooth” burger holder. Apple will be close behind with the introduction of the iBurger. It will hold five times the amount of burger and automatically reduce the calorie count to single digits, but it won’t be compatible with any of your favorite burger joints, and it will cost $499.00 I can’t wait to be the first to get one.

Now of course, all the hands free devices in the world won’t help people stay out of accidents as long as we continue to ignore the real problem on our roads. Crappy drivers. It doesn’t really matter what our oh-so-insightful government takes away from us next. Until we can figure out how to legislate away crappy drivers, nothing is going to change out there. I had another idea about more police patrolling our roads and tougher standards at the DMV, but that’ll never catch on. Makes way too much sense.

Oh well, got to go, this is my exit. Watch it jerk! I’m typing here!

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2008 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!

Hot chicks and cool dudes

One of the main differences between men and women can be seen in the simple truth about ambient temperature. Men are comfortable in a thirty-degree temperature range, and the range is the same for all men. From 56 degrees Fahrenheit to 86 men will do just fine. Some may be a little sweatier or chillier than others, but no one is complaining. This range is hardwired in the male DNA and stays the same from birth until death.

Women on the other hand, are comfortable in only a three-degree range, and not only does that range vary widely from women to women, but throughout the course of an individual women’s day, week, month, year, and lifespan, it will jump all over the board.

These are indisputable facts. You just can’t argue with science. This disparity in the comfort zones of the sexes invariably leads to problems when men and women attempt to share an office, car, home, bed, table at a restaurant, tent, etc. The issue is most often solved by adjusting the temperature to fit the female’s needs. As long as the three-degree range is still falling in the male comfort zone, everyone gets along. If there are two or more women sharing the same space, the inevitable problem is usually solved with layers. It is not uncommon to visit an office where the secretary in the blouse with the personal electric desk fan is working right along side the HR manager in the parka with the personal electric space heater.

Financial issues can arise from this problem when men and women get married and buy a house that contains a thermostat. Men will do some rudimentary math, and pick one temperature to keep the house livable, foolishly assuming that this temperature will be acceptable for the entire season. Little do they know that the temperature they picked will not even be acceptable for an entire seven minutes. Women who normally complain that the clock radio is too complicated can decipher a thirty-eight-button, eleven-switch thermostat in a matter of minutes and operate any home’s A/C system like they were seated at a NASA control center. In many cases the temperature swings during the day are so violent that a man can actually see the money being sucked out of the double-pane windows.

I think the temperature issue is a physical manifestation of a psychological difference in the sexes. Women are genetically programmed to worry about more things than men are. I have no idea why, but again, you can’t argue with science. When women have no life-threatening situations to deal with, they will inevitably begin to search out things to be concerned about, often making things up to fret over. Hair, weight, money, age, wrinkles, relationships with friends, relationships with co-workers, me-time, us-time, down time, play dates, date night, pre-partum, partum, post-partum, carpet, color palates, window treatments, balanced diets, safety recalls, consumer reports, outdoor tableware, biological clocks, school districts, undercooked poultry, guest lists, footwear, closet organization, furniture, pediatricians, and the list goes on and on. And on.

With men, pretty much twenty-nine days out of the month if the cars are running OK and the house isn’t on fire, it’s all good.

So I hypothesize that women, being less comfortable inside about all the little things in life, try to micro-manage the external temperature settings to feel more comfortable outside. A way to gain some measure of control over their surroundings when life seems otherwise wildly out of control. Either that, or it’s a hormone thing and they actually are less comfortable. What do I know?

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2008 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!

The Name

It's spelled Schmatjen. It's pronounced "Smidgen", like a smidgen of this, and a smidgen of that. No one in the family knows why. It's German, but some kind of strange hill-people German that were more Austrian or Swiss or Drunk than actual Germans.

So we all went by "Smidge". Once you pronounce it for people, that's your nickname. No getting around it, and all in all it's a pretty good deal for a kid. There is never really any doubt about what you might get called later in life. If you're destined for a certain nickname, it's nice to know ahead of time that it's going to be palatable. No chewing your nails wondering what fate might befall you on the playground. Through a twist of fate will I forever be branded "Stinky" or "Monkey Butt"? Nope. Not with a last name like Schmatjen. All that being said, I went through college known as "Schmeg". Thanks Jeff!

In the Schmatjen clan, there is a general rule that because of the last name's inherent spelling and pronunciation issues, the first names had better be fool-proof. So, inexplicably, my folks named me Marc with a "C". I'm not sure what they were thinking at the time, but looking back on it, it seems ill-advised. I have always liked it, but it invariably adds and extra dimension to the name explaining process that we Schmatjens constantly go through. I have learned from this experience, and have named all three of my boys very common and traditionally-spelled names. Constantinople, Madagascar & Lyb'ya are the apple of my eye!

One upside to having Schmatjen as a last name is that any other Schmatjen that you catch wind of is 100% definitely related to you. Take that, Smith and Johnson! I am proud to have had three sons that will some day perpetuate the Schmatjen name. Not because I am overly fond of it, but more because having more Schmatjens out in the world increases the chance, however minutely, that one of us will become famous and the rest of us can stop having to explain how to pronounce/spell the damn name!

See you soon,

-Smidge


Copyright © 2008 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!