Be Best Life! - Repost

I remember it like it was yesterday – that wonderful Christmas in 2016 when I received the best Christmas gift of all time. Unfortunately, the last two Christmases were – and I fear, all future ones will be – marked by the sad reality that no gift will ever compare to the joy I received that day from Son of Wang. At least my family and I will always have his words of wisdom, and I want to share them again with you.

So, I urge you, dear reader – no matter howvexed your nonutility be, if your food has become depraved or you need to have protection against the tide, have no fear. The Supersealer will not help in any way, but the box will make you laugh until it hurts.

 “The simplicity is comfortable.”

Enjoy!

I got the best Christmas gift EVER this year. It’s a crappy ninety-nine-cent as-seen-on-TV plastic bag sealer that is really hard to operate and works poorly. I could care less about the bag sealer. I am in love with the little cardboard box it came in.

The WORKWONDER SUPERSEALER is made in China by a Chinese company that obviously has two copywriters. One of these people has some background in using the English language. We’ll call him Bob. The other has to be the owner’s son, and after disappointing performances in many different departments, copywriter was the least harmful position his dad could think of to stick him. We’ll assume the owner’s name is Mr. Wang. Mr. Wang doesn’t know any English either. Bob is obviously terrified of Mr. Wang and won’t tell him that Son of Wang partied continuously for four years at the international university in Beijing and knows no English whatsoever.

In a few places on the box, Bob invites me to Just slide SUPERSEALER across bags to seal in freshness!

Son of Wang tells me, Relaxed onepulls, guarantees quality to retain freshness. Based on what we get from Son of Wang in his main paragraph, I guarantee Bob helped him with the last half of that sentence.

Here’s Bob’s effort on selling us on the amazing benefits of the SUPERSEALER:

Finally an inexpensive and easy way to perfectly reseal unused poutions of food. This amazing new SUPERSealer creates an airtight seal that locks in freshness.

You simply slids SUPERSealer along the edge of any bag and it’s sealed airtight. It’s that easy. You’ll not only save on storage bags, but you can save even more buying bulk at warehouse clubs. Just use your SUPERSealer to reseal any unused portions over and over again!

I never claimed that Bob was great. I just said he has some background in English. He’s not the best speller, but I do have to give him credit for using American sayings like, “locks in freshness,” and “it’s that easy.” That would suggest that he has a better than average grasp on American English than your standard WORKWONDER employee.

Here’s what Son of Wang had to offer us. I swear, I am not making any of this up, and keep in mind, folks, this is written on the SAME BOX as Bob’s paragraph.

Have sometimes been able to affect your state of mindbecause of a lot of situation such as damp , becomingmildewed , depraved , water leaking from in the dailylife, have used you feel very vexed , good under this , have had the convenient plastic bag of new model seal implement , have all have made stable , no matter howvexed your nonutility be. Collection such as all food , clothing and other articales of daily use , postage stamp, you have put plastic bag lining inside as long as with them , seal machine has taken form lightly with convenient adheaive tape of new model as soon as the fault , one have protection against the tide , mould proof, the herm etic sealing bag retaining freshness. Such is simple , the simplicity is comfortable, be best life!

After reading the box about a hundred times (and laughing out loud every single time), I have to assume this conversation took place at the WORKWONDERS office prior to printing the box:

“My dad wants you to proofread my copy, Bob. What do you think?”

“This is the most unintelligible thing anyone has ever written. What the hell, Wang?”

“My dad is the owner. I’ll have you fired.”

“Looks great. Let’s print that box!”

Thank you, Son of Wang, for giving my family our new motto:

Be best life!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

The 2018 Do-it-Yourself Christmas Letter

What is the matter with you? You’ve done it again, haven’t you? It’s December 19th and you haven’t written your annual Christmas letter yet. And now there’s no time left to concoct a fairy tale that might be able to put some lipstick on the pig that was your year.

Sure, just like your hopes for the future, things look bleak. But have no Christmas fear! While I can’t do anything about your annoying in-laws or your Aunt Ethel’s impending fruitcake delivery, I can certainly help in the communications department.

The 2018 DIY Christmas letter is here, just for you.

So, pour yourself another glass of mommy or daddy’s special holiday cheer, bubble in the appropriate choices with a #2 pencil, fill in the blank if needed, and you’re all set.

No need to thank me. It’s just what I do.

Christmas 2018

Dear

O   relative or loved one,

O   tolerable neighbor,

O   marginal acquaintance,

O   begrudging work or social obligatory holiday recipient,

Merry Christmas from the

O   Smith

O   Gonzalez

O   Lee

O   Johnson

O   Other _______________

family!

We can’t believe

O   how time flies.

O   winter is here again so soon.

O   how depressing this year has been.

O   we have to send this damned letter to so many of you.

What a year! We

O   are so blessed.

O   are, we must admit, a little tired.

O   are relieved it’s finally over.

O   seriously need to just sell the kids and move to an island.

2018 started with

O   joy in our hearts

O   a ridiculous amount of snow and ice

O   anxiety

O   a whole lotta mood-altering substances

and is ending with

O   gratitude and peace.

O   even more *%@#&$ snow.

O   dread.

O   jail time, most likely.

Dad can’t seem to

O   sit still,

O   stop complaining,

O   snap out of his funk,

O   put a cork in it,

and he

O   continues to volunteer at the church and the shelter.

O   won’t shut up about gas prices.

O   lives in his pajamas.

O   was on a bender and MIA at least half the year.

Mom hasn’t

O   lost a step

O   lifted a finger around the house

O   shut up

O   been seen

since her

O   record-breaking hip replacement recovery time.

O   epic hangnail incident.

O   lottery numbers were “only three away” from the “big money.”

O   parole officer reported her for not checking in this summer.

Sister lives

O   near us now.

O   day to day.

O   on borrowed time.

O   above a strip club.

She

O   moved back with her family for a big promotion.

O   pretends to be holding it together, but a relapse is obviously coming.

O   is the president of her biker gang, and the DEA has been investigating their activities.

O   was named employee of the month at Big Tony’s Gentlemen’s Club and Laundromat.

Brother is

O   switching parenting roles with his wife and staying home with the kids

O   never too far from the couch

O   making one bad decision after another

O   spiraling out of control

while his

O   wife continues to climb the ladder at her amazing job.

O   unemployment checks continue to roll in.

O   bookie keeps contacting us regarding his whereabouts.

O   childhood hopes and dreams slowly circle the giant toilet bowl of life.

The grandkids just keep growing

O   up

O   outward

O   bolder

O   weed

and we wish

O   we could slow time down somehow to enjoy it all a little longer.

O   they would lay off the McCrap and eat a vegetable every once in a while.

O   their parents would actually call their insolent little butts on it.

O   the court system would be tougher on minors.

We hope this letter finds you

O   thriving and loving life

O   before Christmas

O   relatively sober

O  

this year, and we want to

O   extend our warmest holiday wishes to you and yours.

O   let you know we are still alive, despite what you might have heard.

O   make sure we keep in touch, so we have a “what not to do” example for the kids.

O   be done writing now.

If you ever find yourself in town,

O   please come by, we’d love to see you!

O   don’t hesitate to let us know you were here.

O   just remember, we’re away a lot.

O   I’ll bet you’ll be wondering how you got here, you lush!

Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

You’re welcome. Now just sign, copy and send. You’re all set.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Death by Cabover

Because I used to be a power forward for the Portland Trailblazers, I am still a pretty big deal in the NBA community, and as such, I was given an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the Sacramento Kings’ Golden 1 Center last night. One of the neat features of the arena is a series of air vents located under the seats, spaced every so often in each section. You can text the arena during a game and ask them to heat up or cool down your section as needed.

We had a chuckle when someone asked if they could look at the data of the text requests and graph them by gender. Everyone on the tour, both male and female, agreed that it would probably be roughly 99.95% women requesting a temperature change.

It brought to mind one of my very first columns ever, titled “Hot Chicks and Cool Dudes,” where I explored my Universal Truth that men are comfy in a thirty-degree temperature range, which is the same for all men, and women are only comfortable in a three-degree range that is different for each woman, and can vary wildly throughout the day.

That got me thinking about one of my other Universal Truths – Times You Almost Died. Us men are far, far dumber creatures than women, and that Universal Truth shines brightly when you ask someone to tell you about a time they almost died. Most women will be hard-pressed to come up with one or two stories, but every guy in the world will have ten stories right off the top of his head, and two of them happened last week.

And THAT got me thinking about one of my stories: The Old Ford Cabover Incident.

In college I worked for a landscape products company called JJ’s. It was owned by Jack and Joanne Lord, but it was named JJ’s prior to them buying it. No kidding. Anyhow, they were fantastic folks, and over the course of my first year working there, I trained to become a delivery driver and got my Class B driver’s license so I could drive the big dump trucks. We had two main deliver trucks – a newer International truck and an old Ford cabover.

A “cabover” truck gets its name from having the entire cab of the truck sit directly over the top of the engine, instead of having the engine out in front like we’re used to. The mark of the cabover design is the fact that the driver’s windshield is basically the very front of the whole truck. When you want to access the engine to do any maintenance, you unlock the cab release and the entire cab – seats, steering wheel, dashboard, pedals - everything – tilts forward on a big hinge located just behind the front bumper, exposing the engine underneath. Needless to say, you don’t leave your coffee sitting on the dashboard when you need to tilt the cab, unless you really like cleaning coffee off the inside of the windshield. Anything loose in the cab – maps, empty soda cans, sunflower seeds, etc. – ends up on the windshield when you tilt the cab up to get to the engine. (Note to millennials – “maps” are what we used to get ourselves lost before Waze was invented.)

One fine, sunny day I loaded up the old Ford cabover with six tons of decorative river rock, and headed out to make the delivery. JJ’s was set back off a two-lane highway on the outskirts of San Luis Obispo, and a long sloping gravel driveway went down one side of the property and teed into the highway. I bounced down the driveway in the old Ford, whistling a happy tune, and pressed on the brakes at the start of the downhill run about twenty or thirty yards prior to reaching the highway tee.

Seat belts are an amazing invention, and I highly recommend to all my young male readers that you always wear yours, even when inside your own home. My seatbelt was the only thing that prevented me from crashing headfirst through the windshield of that old truck and being ground to a messy pulp on the gravel driveway that day, as I realized halfway through my exciting semi-circular ride around the hinge axis that some idiot had forgotten to lock the cab latch.

My seatbelt kept me attached to the driver’s seat, but try to imagine everything in the cab of your truck staying in the same place relative to you, but having the entire cab lift up and try to do a front somersault. While you’re driving.

Braking down the hill caused the entire truck cab to flip to its full-open position, so if a truck mechanic happened to be running alongside, he would have had excellent access to the engine. As the driver, I was left hanging upside-down from my lap belt, chest being compressed into the steering wheel, with my face inches from the windshield, watching the gravel driveway race by less than six inches away from the glass. It was exciting.

My feet were now behind me and above my head, and even though the pedals were still there, I really didn’t have a good way to press them anymore. As my truck picked up speed downhill toward the busy highway, I hung upside-down watching the road go by my face and wondering just what to do about this little predicament, and also wondering if I was the idiot who forgot to lock the cab latch.

I might also have been screaming.

Prior to making it all the way into oncoming traffic, enough blood was forced into my brain due to gravity to kick-start an idea. The air brake button was located in the center of the dashboard, which, in my current cab configuration, meant it was off to the right, out away and slightly below my right ear.

I found it and pulled it out as fast as I could. By the grace of God and the Ford engineers of the 1960s, the air brakes can still be controlled from the dashboard, even if the dashboard isn’t where it’s supposed to be.

With the high-pitched squeal of beautiful, life-saving compressed air, all the tires instantly stopped rolling and started sliding on the gravel road. I was probably only going fifteen or twenty miles an hour at that point, and my seatbelt held fast, but the weight of the big truck combined with the twelve thousand pounds of rock in the back trying to come to an abrupt halt managed to stretch my torso and elongate my spine enough that my face was able to be completely pressed against the windshield as the old Ford C-Series beast slid to a stop. I was two inches taller when I finally got my heart restarted and rolled my way off the door and back onto solid ground.

Men die from heart attacks far more often than women, but I don’t think that’s because our hearts are weaker, or even because of all the extra bacon. I think we simply do quite a bit of preliminary damage to them over our lifetimes with all the minor heart attacks along the way.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Florida Offshore Phishing

Not many people take full advantage of the fun side of internet phishing scams, and I must say, they are missing out on some truly satisfying entertainment.

Back when Al Gore had just invented the internet, the first professional phishermen were the Nigerians. They were pioneers in the art of internet skullduggery, so much so that their name is forever associated with the “deposed king of (insert African country name here), let me share my millions with you, just give me your banking information” email scam.

Many, many years ago I worked for a company that – and millennials, you will not believe this, but I swear it’s the truth – had one email address for the whole company. As the junior engineer, I was the most tech-savvy (meaning I knew how to spell “tech”), so I was in charge of the account. Every morning I would fire up the modem (a device that served mainly to make your internet connection slower than you ever thought imaginable) and log in to our account, print out the emails (on paper!), and disperse them to my coworkers. This was back in 1826.

One morning, much to my delight, we received an email from the son of the (recently murdered in a coup) Crown Prince of Nigeria. He was anxious to wire me ten million dollars because he would be tragically killed just like his dad if he was caught with the money. I would hold onto the cash while he snuck out of his war-ravaged kingdom, then we’d meet here in the U.S., split the windfall, and then, presumably, party like rock stars and become BFF’s.

There was just one catch. He had no access to any money, so it was up to me to front him a little dough to, as he so eloquently put it, “greeze the palms” of the local banking officials.

I then spent two weeks looking forward to each morning when I would respond to his emails pretending to be a doddering old fool who was super-excited about the opportunity but not really sure how to carry out all his complicated banking instructions.

At some point, right around the time I was asking if I could come to Nigeria to help with the greezing, and asking him if I could stay at his house while I was there since I didn’t know if any of the hotels were up to my standards, I was passed off to the Nigeria Scamming Department Manager. Sadly, as with most American middle managers, he had less finesse than the low-level scam starter guy that had initiated contact, and over the next few days the manager guy became increasingly less patient with me.

He finally ended our budding financial relationship in an all-caps email demanding to know what the hell was wrong with me and why I couldn’t follow simple instructions. (Perhaps because I never could quite figure out what he meant by my “bank account number,” and gave him several different options, including the bank’s phone number, their address number on the outside of the building, and also the exact number of accounts the bank had, after I called the bank manager to inquire.)

I could almost see him banging away on the keyboard in a spitting rage. It was one of the most delightfully entertaining two weeks of my life.

I had a few fleeting moments of that same joy yesterday and today, when I was contacted via phone - from a number in Florida - by the “Google Gmail Security Team.” A nice gentleman named Dave, with a heavy Indian accent, explained that my Gmail account had apparently been hijacked by spammers, and it would be shut down and locked within twenty-four hours if we didn’t fix it right away.

Oh, my! What a predicament we have found ourselves in! Especially since Google doesn’t call people. Whatever shall we do?

I kept him on the phone as long as I could, but I was driving, so I couldn’t take the necessary steps at my computer terminal to secure my account from the insidious hackers. It turned out he was located in Wilmington, Delaware, and not Florida, and he seemed to think the weather in Wilmington was “pretty mild,” that early December day. I guess Dave doesn’t really understand where Delaware is located.

Sadly, I had an appointment to get to, so I had to ask Dave for a callback number. He gave me an 800 number that, upon later Googling, could either have been associated with an opportunity to buy an apartment in Delhi, or a web design and internet marketing firm in Pasadena. Hmm…

I thought my fun was over, but in a wonderful turn of events, Dave called back this morning. Great news, Dave! I’m home and can get to my computer terminal. Let’s fix this vexing issue!

All I had to do was log out of my Gmail, get to my home screen, hit the Windows key and the letter R simultaneously to bring up the run command prompt, and simply type in “iexplore 216.115.218.200/505877301”. Once I did that, we could get this problem solved. He had to get off the line briefly to get the last string of digits. I guess they don’t always get that far, and he needed to ask his manager what the code was today.

I told Dave that I typed it all in just like he said, and I could almost hear him salivating in “Delaware.” He asked what I was seeing, hoping that I was looking at their screen cloning site located at the 216 IP address. I told him my screen had gone blank.

Dave, ever the Gmail security professional, had to come up with a series of blank screen troubleshooting tips while I quizzed him on why the Google logo was all gray today instead of colored, and how the Wilmington weather was this morning, and if he was calling me on his old Florida cell phone, or if their office had been blown down the coast in the last hurricane, and if he’d ever been out to Topeka, Kansas where the main Google campus is located, and if so, while he was there, had he tried the world-famous “Google Burger,” which I had been told was a tofu burger stamped in the letter G, with red ketchup, yellow mustard, blue lettuce, and green tomatoes, on a gluten-free ciabatta roll.

After powering down my device didn’t work, an increasingly frustrated Dave finally accused me of wasting my own time. I assured him that this was not at all a waste of my time, but he apparently had better things to do with his day, so he wished me - what I’m pretty sure was sarcastic - good luck with my soon-to-be frozen Gmail account.

I thought for sure my fun was over, but lo and behold, ten minutes later, Steve from Gmail Support called me from the exact same number.

Halleluiah!

I asked how Dave was doing, but it turned out that Steve was really in Florida, and didn’t know Dave, or anything about a recent call. I told Steve he needed to contact the folks at Guinness after our call, because he just set a land speed record, but he had no idea what I was talking about.

It seems Steve was calling because Google noticed that my Gmail account had apparently been hijacked by spammers, and it would be shut down and locked within twenty-four hours if we didn’t fix it right away.

Oh, my! What a conundrum, Steve!

I asked if I should get to my run command and type in “iexplore 216.115.218.200/505877301”, but Steve hung up on me before I could finish reading the number string.

I am currently sitting at my desk praying that I get a call from Mike who works at Gmail Google Security Support in the greater Florida-Delaware region.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

A Letter from Your Loving Father

Our family lives very close to the epicenter of the California Gold Rush. We happen to have moved here for the schools (and the abundant Chipotle locations), but a long time ago a bunch of people moved here for the gold. Ground zero for the gold frenzy was a little town called Coloma. All three of our boys got to go on fourth grade field trips to Coloma, to stay three days and two nights and learn all about the life of a gold miner.

One of the things the teachers ask the parents for, besides a ton of money for the trip, is a letter written to your fourth-grader as though they were an actual forty-niner in the gold fields.

For reasons unknown to me, my wife decided I should be the one to write those letters. Apparently, she doesn’t read this column.

Son Number Three just found the one I wrote for him last year, and I thought I’d share, as an example of how my wife is not paying attention.

August 16, 1849

Dearest Son Number Three,

Your ma and I hope this letter finds you alive and well in California. We sure hope you made it all the way out to the diggins in Coloma, and you’re not dead on the Missouri Trail somewhere.

I know the trip to the Mother Lode couldn’t have been easy for you, what with your wooden leg and all. Hopefully you still have it attached, and you didn’t run into any weirdo leg robbers, or God forbid, a pack of angry beavers. I know I taught you well with the shotgun, so hopefully you gave any highwaymen or uppity rodents a backside full of buckshot.

We miss you here on the farm in Indiana, especially now that your older brothers have up and left us as well. Son Number One ran off with a traveling circus act that came through Fort Wayne earlier this summer. He claims to be making decent money, but his official job title is Head Pooper-Scooper for the elephant show.

Son Number Two has gone off to run a barge company on one of the Great Lakes. The good Lord only knows what possessed him to become a sailor, but he seems to enjoy it. He brings iron ore from Michigan to Wisconsin and returns with tons of cheese. Go figure.

We had high hopes for all three of you, but so far we have one son who picks up giant piles of elephant dung and another who is a cheese boat captain. Hopefully you will make something of yourself out in Coloma and save the family name.

One piece of advice for you when it comes to gold diggin: Don’t handle any quicksilver. Stay away from it altogether. A lot of the uneducated prospectors out there will tell you it’s the best way to attract the gold dust and collect it, and it does work great for that, but they will all end up with mercury poisoning. As they get sicker they will make gurgling noises when they talk, they will shiver and shake, their pee will be a funny color, and eventually they will all go bat-guano crazy. Then they’ll die.

Ma says hello.

Best of luck. Try not to get shot by a claim jumper.

Love,

Pa

I have no idea why my wife puts me in charge of these things.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Thankfulness 2018

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a day traditionally filled with family, love, overeating, and passing out on the couch in front of the football game.

Along with those things, as with many families, we have a tradition around the dinner table of naming the things for which we are thankful. Invariably, people (including myself) go with the big low-hanging fruit – family, friends, church, employment, good health, food, clothing, shelter, etc.

Nothing against all those very important things, but I think it’s a shame that we don’t have time to name everything we’re really thankful for before the mashed potatoes go ice cold and the gravy develops an impenetrable skin.

So, here’s my small list of some of the smaller things:

Aerosol cheese

The inventor of aerosol cheese

Ziploc bags

Opposable thumbs

Rolling luggage

Shopping carts that drive straight

AC/DC

Deodorant

Paying for things with my phone

Netflix

Fireworks

Boats

Labrador retrievers

Car backup cameras

Han Solo & Chewbacca

The “What is this song?” feature on Google

Dave Barry

Tabasco Green Pepper Jalapeño sauce

Pork products

Fletch

La Croix

Turkey stuffing

Libraries

Getting to be a coach

Getting to be on a couch

Magnum, P.I.

Garbage disposals

Spellcheck

Duct tape

C.J. Box

Elevators

Forever stamps

Toilet paper

Simon & Simon

The plastic things on the ends of shoelaces

Compound interest

Indoor plumbing

Solar panels

Cupcakes

Zippers

See’s Candy Nuts and Chews

Discount printer ink that actually works

Bluetooth

Fortune cookies

Microwave popcorn

Every day without a school project

Helmets

The five-second rule

Dog treats

Pizza

Tacos

The National League

Nachos

Bill Murray

Caller ID

Books

Any time the house doesn’t smell like boys’ shoes

Amazon Prime

Gravy

WiFi

Dr. Seuss

Fingernails

Every day it’s not windy

It’s the big things in life, but it’s also the little things in life.

Have a great Thanksgiving,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Alaina's Voice

** Note – This week’s standard humor column has been preempted by a senseless tragedy that hit far too close to home **  

Our friends, Hannah and Arik Housley, lost their beautiful, wonderful, kind, talented, loving, amazing eighteen-year-old daughter in the November 7^th shooting in Thousand Oaks, California.

They will bury her tomorrow. Sandy and I are absolutely heartbroken for them.

Hannah and Arik are amazing people, and with the help of their wonderful family they are starting a foundation in Alaina’s honor, to keep her beautiful voice alive.  

From AlainasVoice.org

Alaina Maria Housley was born July 27, 2000

She lived, laughed, loved, read, smiled, and sang. She had a kind heart, a gentle soul, and was so giving. She coached children, volunteered to serve veterans, and helped everywhere.

Alaina Maria Housley died on November 7, 2018 when someone entered the Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks, California while she was line dancing and shot her, and eleven other people, taking their lives.

Alaina may be gone in body, but she will be our voice of song, voice of strength, voice of spirit, and our voice of CHANGE.  It's time for change. It’s time to advocate for goodness, love, and life. It’s time to advocate to our country’s leaders to unite us, not divide us.

We will raise Alaina's Voice.

Sandy and I ask that you please pray for the Housleys, and consider including Alaina’s Voice in your holiday giving this year.

AlainasVoice.org

With nothing but love for you all,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

Post-humorously Elected

The 2018 midterm elections are behind us and once again, during this tumultuous and confusing process, the nation looked to the great state of Nevada for guidance and direction.

Nevada has always been our national beacon of light in times of darkness. Our North Star, keeping the country focused on what matters. What counts. What is truly important to us all.

Roulette, cocaine, and hookers.

Wait, that can’t be right…

In any event, yesterday, Nevada showed us the way forward yet again. They went ahead and elected a dead guy.

We have a long and rich tradition in our larger metropolitan (read: corrupt) areas of allowing dead people to vote, but very rarely do we vote for a dead guy. But that’s the fun of Nevada!

Dennis Hof defeated educator Lesia Romanov yesterday in the race for Nevada's 36th Assembly District by a vote of 63% to 37%.

As per Nevada assembly district election law, at least one person in each race has to be an actual pimp, and that was Dennis in this case. Apparently Lesia is just a teacher or a school principal or something lame like that.

Dennis Hof owned and operated a half-dozen brothels around the state and was running on the platform of “Make Nevada Nevada again,” (it had been previously changed to Nebraska, and people were getting confused), “I Will Protect Our Water,” (meaning, I will protect our rights to have your water delivered to you by a licensed sex worker), and “I Can’t be Bought,” (meaning, I already have all the hookers and cocaine).

Unfortunately for Mr. Hof, he died on October 16^th after an extended weekend of celebrating his 72^nd birthday at one of his brothels. (Remember to ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for birthday activities, and seek immediate medical attention if you experience a birthday celebration lasting longer than four days.)

But the fact that their pimp was inconveniently dead was not going to deter the proud Nevadan District 36’ers from voting him into office in an overwhelming fashion. Well done, 36’ers, well done!

This is certainly a strange situation, and one that raises many questions, the most obvious one being, how bad was Lesia Romanov’s campaign platform that she could actually lose big to a dead pimp?

If she did nothing other than change her late-October campaign speeches to, “Look, I can breathe and wiggle my fingers,” it seems like she should have been able to get closer to at least half the votes.

Who knows how these things work!

Anyway, Nevada, the rest of us just want to thank you for, yet again, showing us the path. You may have just pioneered a new voting strategy of having dead people vote for dead people, completely eliminating the need for a live electorate or candidates. That could dramatically reduce campaign ads being mailed to our houses! That is some next-level visionary stuff.

Whether that dream comes to fruition or not, above all else, I just personally want to thank you for electing a dead guy.

I truly wish all politicians could be as ineffective as he’ll be.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Frightfully Safe

I hope everyone had a safe and sane Halloween last year. It is my sincere wish (as well as the wish of our National Safety Council and the American Academy of Pediatrics) that none of you or your children were injured, sickened, traumatized, frightened, scared, worried, startled, disturbed, rattled, jolted, displeased, inconvenienced, set on fire, or over-exercised.

You may be saying right now, “Well, yes, Smidge. As a matter of fact, my children were slightly startled in one brief instance last year, and I’m still hopping mad about it.”

If that’s the case, you probably did Halloween wrong. You may not be current on all the latest Halloween safety tips and procedures. Unfortunately, that makes you a bad parent. But before Child Protective Services needs to get involved, we’ve all decided to give you one more chance this year.

Please spend as many hours as necessary (minimum six) reviewing the list below so you’re ready to be a good parent tonight.

HALLOWEEN SAFETY TIPS FROM THE GOVERNMENT

Select a safe area for trick-or-treating.  Choose streets that are well lighted and landscaped so you can be seen.  Avoid trick-or-treating on streets you are unfamiliar with, and try to go out before it gets dark.

Were you trick-or-treating after 3:30 P.M.? Shame on you. Did you go to the porch of a house that didn’t have perfectly manicured front hedges? That was incorrect.

Always keep the adult who is watching you in sight.  Never go into a stranger’s home while trick-or-treating.  Never get into a stranger’s car or go anywhere with a stranger.

Cross the street only at intersections and crosswalks.  Do not walk out from behind parked cars or try to cross in the middle of the block.

Did you let your kids jump into the stranger’s van to go get the candy that they forgot at their other house? That was wrong. Don’t do that. Did you cross your neighborhood streets at any place other than an intersection? You are an idiot.

Wait until you get home to eat your treats.  Your parents should inspect each item carefully, looking for needles, open packages and other signs of tampering.  Do not eat homemade items prepared by strangers.

This is equally important – If you did find needles, it is not OK to re-use them.

Plan costumes that are bright and reflective. Make sure that shoes fit well and that costumes are short enough to prevent tripping, entanglement or contact with flame.

Consider adding reflective tape or striping to costumes and trick-or-treat bags for greater visibility.

If any part of your child’s costume was a dark, non-reflective, or ill-fitting garment, your children probably already realize you don’t love them.

Because masks can limit or block eyesight, consider non-toxic makeup and decorative hats as safer alternatives. Hats should fit properly to prevent them from sliding over eyes. Makeup should be tested ahead of time on a small patch of skin to ensure there are no unpleasant surprises on the big day.

If you have found the first properly-fitting decorative hat in the history of the world, please let the rest of us know where you bought it. Any makeup or face paint that says “made in China” is radioactive. Seeking medical attention at this point is futile since you already touched it. Smear it all over and enjoy what time you have left.

When shopping for costumes, wigs, and accessories look for and purchase those with a label clearly indicating they are flame resistant.

This is especially important for wigs, since every trick-or-treater attempts to stick his or her head inside your jack-o’-lantern, as is customary and traditional.

(Side Note: While fire retardancy is a paramount issue on All Hallows Eve, “The Flaming Wigs” would obviously be a great name for a rock band.)

Do not carry or wear sharp objects that may poke others or damage eyes.  Objects like swords, wands, canes, etc., should be left at home.  Do not carry toy guns that look like real guns.  A citizen or a police officer can mistake a toy gun for a real gun.

Did your child lose an eye last year? That plastic Harry Potter wand was the problem in that instance. Were your kids pinned down behind your neighbor’s SUV for hours in a firefight with local law enforcement officers? Next time simply leave the toy guns at home.

Carry a flashlight to light the way and to alert motorists of your presence.  Never carry candles or any other flammable object.  Do not use candles for decorations or displays.  They can easily be knocked down or can set fire to a nearby curtain or costume.

Did you set yourself, your curtains, and your neighbor’s curtains on fire last year? The candelabra you were using to light your way was the problem. Most cell phones have a flashlight app now. Look into it.

Motorists need to be extra careful on Halloween.  Watch out for careless children who may run into the street without looking.  Expect the unexpected, and anticipate the actions of others.

If you were not “expecting the unexpected” last night, I am incredibly disappointed in you. Sit down and make a list of all the unforeseen issues that might arise tonight so that you may stop sucking at life.

Small children should never carve pumpkins. Children can draw a face with markers. Then parents can do the cutting.

Correction – No one should ever carve pumpkins. It’s a slimy, messy job that attracts fruit flies and makes your hands stink like pumpkin guts. We should all stop.

Consider using a flashlight or glow stick instead of a candle to light your pumpkin. If you do use a candle, a votive candle is safest.

Candlelit pumpkins should be placed on a sturdy table, away from curtains and other flammable objects, and not on a porch or any path where visitors may pass close by. They should never be left unattended.

In summary, a concrete and stucco porch is no place for a small flame encased inside a wet, sticky, flame-retardant gourd. Keep the fire inside your home, on a surface made entirely of combustible materials.

A good meal prior to parties and trick-or-treating will discourage youngsters from filling up on Halloween treats.

We’re not sure who wrote this, but they obviously had never met a youngster before.

Consider purchasing non-food treats for those who visit your home, such as coloring books or pens and pencils.

Definitely consider doing this if you’re tired of not having toilet paper in your trees, eggs on your house, and soap on the windows of your cars.

Hopefully this list will help you have a much safer and more enjoyable Halloween tonight. I know that was a lot of information at once, but if you are ever in doubt, just use common sense. You can start by asking yourself five simple questions.

Have I fastened my child to his trick-or-treat buddy with reflective tape?

Yes?

Great.

Is my child carrying anything other than a piece of Styrofoam that I bubble-wrapped for safety?

No?

Perfect.

Is the sun still high in the sky?

Yes?

Winning.

Are there any dangerous jack-o’-lanterns with insane open flames inside them within a two hundred-foot radius of my child?

No.

You are doing great.

Have we come into contact with any candy whatsoever?

No?

You are a great parent!

Enjoy your Halloween done right this year!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Beer Proves the Metric System is Useless

When I was in grade school, they tried to teach us all about the metric system under the now laughable guise that the U.S. was going to convert over any minute now.

I learned even more about it in college, and the metric system is great, provided you are using it to solve metric system math problems. That’s because everything is a multiple of ten. Easy peasy.

The metric system is not so great when you are trying to give someone directions, however. People look at you funny when you say, “It’s just about a 1.6 kilometer down the road.”

And it doesn’t work for weights, either, as illustrated in this actual conversation at a meat counter:

“May I have 907 grams of lean pastrami, please?”

“Get out of my deli.”

A thousand grams is a kilogram, or a “kilo,” but only drug dealers know what a kilo is, and they’re bad people who should be in jail.

The military uses the metric system, but only because the enemy doesn’t understand it, so no one can listen in on a radio conversation and gain any intel.

Army guy on radio - We’re moving in on the Tangos. Six clicks to the west.

Army base – Roger

Enemy 1 – Where are they going? What is a Tango? What is a click?

Enemy 2 – A Tango is us. A click is one kilometer.

Enemy 1 – Why are we Tangos?

Enemy 2 – I have no idea.

Enemy 1 – What is a kilometer?

Enemy 2 – I have no idea. But don’t worry. Those guys are 3.728 miles east of us. They’ll never find us here.

Enemy 1 – Oh, good. I was getting wor…

Army guy on radio – Tangos down.

The only real civilian use for the metric system is fun runs. Everyone is familiar with the 5K, but that’s where it ends. The non-fun runs are either named or listed in their mile length. People run marathons, not 42.16K’s.

“Hey, I heard you ran a half marathon last weekend.”

“Yes, I ran the 21.08K on Saturday.”

“I’ve never liked you.”

Our government – possibly a branch of the military trying to keep us from knowing how much we were drinking, for some reason – decided to sneak in the metric system on our wine and liquor bottles a long time ago.

Your standard wine bottle and the most common liquor bottles are 750ml. ML is the abbreviation for milliliter, or in layman’s terms, one millionth of a liter. (In alcohol slang, milliliter is often shortened to “mil,” which lends credence to the theory that the military was behind this.)

But do you know what we call a 750ml bottle of booze? A fifth.

A fifth of what, you might ask?

A fifth of a gallon, that’s what. But when you do the complicated booze math (which becomes much more complicated with much more booze), you find out that a fifth of a gallon is really equal to 757ml.

That’s right! The government stole 7ml of your Jim Beam. Remember that next time you vote!

For all their immense and far-reaching flaws, at least the government knew better than to mess with the beer bottles. That’s probably because beer has a long tradition of awesome measurements that they didn’t want to mess with. Or, they knew that beer drinkers are much more apt to riot than wine and spirt lovers. Could go either way.

The ultimate beer keg is called a Tun. It holds 252 gallons, or the equivalent of one night’s worth at Ted Kennedy’s house.

The next size down is a Butt, which is half a Tun. *Please insert hilarious joke about your ex here*

A half a Butt is usually known as a cheek, but in the case of beer casks, it’s known as a Hogshead. This is obviously one of the coolest units of measure, and consists of 63 gallons of foamy goodness.

A Barrel is half a hogshead, and a Firkin is a fourth of a barrel. Now here’s where the beer math starts to get spooky.

You see, in the non-metric system of measurements, there are 12 inches in a foot, and 5,280 feet in a mile, which is 1,760 yards. A yard is also a container you can drink beer out of, if you love to look like an idiot and slosh warm beer all over your shirt. None of those things have to do with this, though, so ignore all that.

Ounces are both a measure of weight and volume in our amazing system. There are 16 ounces in a pound, and a firkin of beer weighs 63 pounds, which is the exact number of gallons in a hogshead! You might think that’s a coincidence, but that just proves you don’t understand the true genius of this system and how it relates to beer.

You see, there are 16 weight ounces in a pound, and there are also 16 fluid ounces in a pint. Beer weighs 8 pounds per gallon, and there are also 8 pints in a gallon!

Do you understand now? What that means is that a pint of beer weighs exactly one pound. A pound!

This is why the metric system is useless. No one would ever say, “Let’s 0.45 kilogram these beers and get outta here.”

Come to think of it, that’s probably where “pounding headache” came from, too.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Cookie Nough

Recently, the administrators at our middle school decided that they hate all the parents of all the kids at the school, so they held a cookie dough fundraiser to punish us.

The evil geniuses who invented the modern school cookie dough fundraiser knew how to get kids fired up about pestering their parents into giving up all their afternoon/evening free time to take them “to the neighborhood across the street where we don’t know anyone because I’ve already gone to every single house in our neighborhood and I still need to get five more sales to get the super balloon.”

At least, the evil geniuses certainly knew how to get Son Number Two fired up. Son Number One could not have cared less about the super balloon.

The stupid, cheap, Chinese, dollar store prizes associated with every level of cookie dough salesmanship suck Son Number Two in like a ping pong ball into a shop vac. He’s been to the Dollar Tree a million times, so he knows damned well how much the crap in the little student catalog actually costs, yet it never occurs to him to just ask me for five bucks. Instead, he wants to go knock on a hundred and eighty doors.

And do you know what’s even better than that? I found out yesterday that the administrators at our elementary school decided that they hate all the parents of all the kids at the school, too. Guess what Son Number Three brought home? Yep, the cookie dough fundraiser package. Are you kidding me!? I just got done with this nightmare.

And guess who Son Number Three thinks is really cool? Yep, Son Number Two. So guess what Son Number Three wants to do?

Yep. “Dad, I want to sell thirty so I can get the *insert the name of some useless plastic toy that will break within the first three minutes of him owning it, that would cost roughly seventy-two cents to purchase, but will require two hundred hours of my life to obtain*.”

We just did this!!! We’re going to have to drive to a neighborhood in another school district and just mumble the name of the school we’re fundraising for.

And let’s just forget the fact that I don’t want to do this for a second. Why do I have to do this at all? I don’t even understand the need for public school fundraisers in the first place. We live in America. We have more money than all the other countries combined.

We have so much money, we feel compelled to give a lot of it away to other countries every year. I assume those countries that receive foreign aid from the U.S. use some of it for their schools, but they also use a lot of it for stuff like new home furnishings and vacations for their top officials, too. How do we know this to be true? Because our top officials taught them how to get away with it.

And here I am in the U.S., watching my tax dollars going to buy President-for-Life Otawanabe of Guyana a new Barcalounger, while simultaneously having to stand on the sidewalk with my best “I’m sorry I brought him to your house” expression on my face while my son begs our neighbors for eighteen bucks in exchange for $1.29-worth of cookie dough. That’s just no way to live.

So, here’s my idea. Let’s stop all the foreign aid programs immediately. Instead of sending blank checks all over the world, we’ll set up the World School Checking Account. Any elementary, middle, or high school on the planet that needs money can just write a check. Money for anything – no questions asked - from a single box of copier paper to an entirely new campus with fifty state-of-the-art buildings – whatever. Get them whatever they need, and the checking account will still have loads of money to spare.

That way, every kid on earth can get a good education, and eventually none of those countries will need foreign aid anymore, and I can stop schlepping with my kids all over town begging for money in exchange for dough.

Anyway, I’ll probably be over to your place with Son Number Three around dinnertime.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Lacrosse

I registered Son Number Two for lacrosse yesterday. It wasn’t easy.

I mean, the website and registration process and everything was fine. That’s not what I meant. It wasn’t easy getting to this point. You know, because of baseball. Allow me to explain.

You see, lacrosse seems to be a spring sport, which conflicts with the standard springtime baseball season. Everyone knows baseball is America’s game, so I wasn’t really sure what Son Number Two even meant when he said he wanted to play something called lacrosse during baseball season.

He said something about baseball not being fast enough. I told him it speeds up tremendously when you misread a routine fly ball with runners in scoring position. He just rolled his eyes. Then he said something about baseball not having enough action. I told him nothing has more action than an 0-2 curve ball with two outs and the bases empty, but he just looked at me funny.

After many confusing conversations, it finally became clear that he wished to actually not play baseball in the spring and play lacrosse instead. I rushed him to the pediatrician, and explained the situation, but the lady at the front desk was as confused as I was, and kept repeating some nonsense about how kids wanting to choose a new sport was natural.

I kept repeating the whole no baseball part to her, but she just wasn’t getting it. Finally, the doctor came out, shined a light in his eyes, told me his brain was working fine, and made us go home.

We need a new pediatrician.

Exasperated, I told my wife all about what our middle son was suggesting and what the whackadoos at the doctor’s office said.

That’s when I found out she’s also crazy.

Now, finding a new doctor is one thing, but finding a new wife and kids seems a bit extreme, so I was forced to begin to wrap my head around this whole no baseball thing and start to consider lacrosse instead.

Being from the west coast, I had never even heard of lacrosse until my son brought it up. It turns out quite a few kids already play it, but they all seem to live on the east coast. Further research showed some east coast high schools and colleges even offer lacrosse, I assume as an elective.

Reluctantly, I purchased a lacrosse stick for him. If you’re from the west coast like me, I’ll describe it for you. It’s a four-foot-long metal stick with a plastic hoop on top, about the size and shape of a parking meter. The hoop is strung with what appear to be shoelaces, to form a net, and apparently, it’s really cool to leave a bunch of the shoelaces longer than they needed to be so they hang down off the back, like Predator’s dreadlocks.

The stick looks like a fantastic device to catch crawdads with, but when I tried to catch and throw a ball with it, it was totally useless. You know what’s good for catching a ball? A baseball glove. And for throwing a ball? Your arm.

Anyway, off we went, useless Predator stick in hand, to the free clinic put on by the local lacrosse club. Much to my amazement, there were some high school kids there who could actually throw and catch a ball with their lacrosse sticks. And they appeared to be from the west coast. They could even run with the stick straight up, keeping the basket over their heads, and the ball stayed in the shoelace net, which was also impossible at my house.

Then the coaches picked up sticks and started throwing and catching. Holy cow! They could throw the ball approximately seven hundred miles per hour and hit very small targets accurately from many yards away. I was dumbfounded.

As I sat on the sidelines, mesmerized by how one coach picked up a ball off the ground by somehow just slapping it with his stick, the league president started showing us the standard boys’ lacrosse equipment.

Shoulder pads, elbow pads, big protective gloves, and a very serious-looking helmet.

Wait a second... you mean to tell me this is going to be a bunch of boys racing around the field banging into one another and hitting each other with the sticks?

Where do I sign him up?

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

Alert FEMA, there's a Stormy on the Horizon

My phone went crazy in my pocket today, buzzing like a giant insect and making a sound very similar in tone and annoyance factor to the noise made by my radio during an emergency broadcasting system test. At first, I thought I might be having another episode, so I was relieved to learn that it was just a test of the new Presidential Alert System for wireless devices.

Oh, that’s nice… Wait… the WHAT?

Oh, sweet mother Mary and Joseph! Do you mean to tell me that the U.S. government just gave President Trump unfettered access to text me? That can’t be good.

Looking into the news story, it turns out the Department of Homeland Security posted a reminder about the test on Twitter on Tuesday. I guess Twitter is how all branches of the government now communicate. They apparently attempted to reassure phone users that their numbers are not being shared with anyone. Umm, yeah, not being shared with anyone except YOU GUYS!

Reading further, the story said, While users can choose not to participate in messages of missing children and natural disasters, they are required to receive presidential alerts, which are sent out at the direction of the White House and activated by FEMA.

Rules outlined in a 2006 law states that the White House can issue a presidential alert only if the public were in peril, or during national emergencies. The alert cannot be a personal message on behalf of the president.

Well, that’s a relief! It can’t be a personal message from the president. But wait a minute… it says I’m allowed to opt out of emergency messages regarding natural disasters, but not out of messages from the president about national peril, which will come from FEMA? Correct me if I’m wrong here, but FEMA is our natural disaster organization. They are in charge of stepping in during a natural disaster and making it much worse.

So what other situations beside natural disasters could require the president to need to get in touch with me immediately? What will constitute “public peril” with our revolutionary new alert system?

I mean, the entire free world is obviously propped up and functioning only because of the amazing democracy and general badass-ness of the United States. So, ostensibly, anything that could upset that delicate balance of our constitutional liberty would then threaten the stability of our government, thereby threatening the stability of our entire nation, thrusting each and every citizen into peril. I mean, what would constitute more public peril than the crumbling of the governmental foundation we rely so dearly upon?

Truth be told, this new development wouldn’t be nearly as concerning if it was happening on another president’s watch. A quick search on the history of the cell phone tells us, surprisingly, that Richard Nixon could have been the first president to use a wireless Presidential Alert System.

The first call from a handheld mobile phone was made all the way back in 1973 on a Motorola phone, which was the approximately the size of twenty-six iPhones duct taped together. It took ten hours to charge and had a call time of just thirty minutes. That didn’t matter, though, because it was so heavy you could only hold it to your ear for a minute and a half.

Nixon could have sent out wireless emergency messages, but they would have only been received by three Americans – two Motorola executives and their golfing buddy who received one as a gift when they got tired of calling each other.

Cell phones have been improving on an exponential pace ever since, as has cell phone ownership, so later presidents would have had a progressively bigger audience. Still I think the Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43 administrations would probably have been conservative in its use, had it been around. I’m not so sure about the Clinton presidency. I think we all might have received emergency presidential photos of his interns, asking us to rate them in overall hotness.

We know for sure that the Obama administration could be trusted with this newfound power of communication, because the news story tells us that the wireless alert system actually launched back in 2012, and as far as I know, today was our first Presidential Alert.

Something makes me doubt it will be our last.

We know the first tweet ever sent was in 2006. I’m not sure when the first presidential tweet was sent, or if it was from Bush or Obama, but I do know when the latest presidential tweet was sent. About thirty seconds ago. The next one will be along any minute.

I’m assuming there was a constitutional amendment in the works requiring all citizens to follow the president on Twitter, but now that point seems to be moot. Anything that affects the White House will trickle down to affecting the whole country, right? The citizens need to believe in their leader in order to have a strong country, right? I mean, even someone attempting to besmirch the president’s good name could constitute public peril if it was allowed to get out of hand, right!?

Fire up the texter, boys! We’ve got Presidential Alerts to send.

Maybe all the alerts go through FEMA because her name is Stormy?

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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

HIPAA Critical, Part III

Son Number Two turned twelve a few months ago, and you know what that means – yes, that’s right, Medical Independence!

Yes sir, nothing points out the fact that the collective IQ of our governing officials is below room temperature better than HIPAA, which stands for Hypocritical Idiots Pounding Abundant Alcoholic Beverages and Possibly Smoking Crack While Passing Insane Health Insurance Bills They Will Never Be Affected By Because They Don’t Live Under The Same Rules As The Commoners. (They cut out some of the letters because the acronym was getting too cumbersome. By the way, “Cumbersome Acronym” is obviously the name of my next rock band.)

The fully-lobotomized bureaucrats who authored the HIPAA bill, presumable with Crayons and drool, included the fun new law that anyone who has reached the ripe old age of twelve should now be in complete control of their medical decisions.

This was not news to our family, since we’d been through this once already with Son Number One. (He’s now thirteen years old, so under the HIPAA regulations he now has his own apartment and a Volkswagen Jetta.)

One easy way to know if your child has HIPAA’d up at twelve, is that their name will disappear from your list of family members on your medical provider’s website. That’s because, due to their newfound medical independence, you no longer have access to their medical records, even though you will be their legal guardian until they are eighteen, or if you are the parent of a hipster, thirty-five.

Now, sure, my twelve-year-old is probably better prepared to make his own medical decisions than Deklan, the thirty-two-year-old bearded chai-sucking blogger living in his parent’s basement, but that’s not really saying much, is it? Son Number Two is still twelve, after all, so his idea of a good medical decision after, let’s say, experiencing a blow to the head, would be to see if he could eat a whole ten-pound bag of granulated sugar with a spoon.

Captain Independence had gone into the doctor for something right before his magic HIPAA birthday, and a few weeks later when I logged on to attempt to pay the bill for the office visit, he had disappeared.

Under the HIPAA regulations, the doctor’s office is prohibited by law to set up his personal medically-independent online account over the phone. It must be done in person with the medically-independent twelve-year-old. In the meantime, I couldn’t pay his bill online because it simply didn’t exist on the website.

I must be honest. I didn’t lose any sleep over that.

When it came time for his regular checkup a few days ago, we went through the ridiculous charade of having him set up his “own” online medical account with the help of the nurse.

Now, I don’t ever expect anything logical to come out of a bureaucrat’s mouth, and neither should you. These are people who have never held down any real job more complicated than running the sour cream gun at a Taco Bell. Their entire existence revolves around clinging to their government job like a rabid squirrel on a caramel popcorn ball, so none of their decisions make any outward logical sense.

I do, however, expect people with real jobs, such as, let’s say, doctors and nurses, to make logical and reasonable decisions, and say logical and reasonable things. I expect these folks to do so during standard, everyday situations, and also in the face of complete government absurdity.

That being said, there we were in the examination room, with the nurse walking Son Number Two through how to set up his username and password on the in-room computer. “Type your username in here,” she said.

I told him what it should be so I would remember it.

She glanced at me with what appeared to be frustration on her face. Then she turned back to him and said, “OK, now your password.”

Again, I told him what it should be.

As a parent of a twelve-year-old, you can imagine how taken aback I was when the nurse turned to me and actually uttered the words, with a sigh, “Just so you know, this is supposed to be his own private account.”

*sound of a small blood vessel exploding in my brain*

I was so shocked I simply couldn’t help myself. I responded, “Just so YOU know, that’s just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” (Which is a true statement, and keep in mind, I have a teenager who talks.)

She then began sputtering about regulations and how they technically have to follow them, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah, but I cut her off.

“Never mind the fact that he is incapable of making good homework or personal hygiene decisions, let alone good medical decisions. Forget that part of this nonsense. Did you know that I can’t pay his bill without being able to access his ‘private account’? Do you have any idea what his username and password would be right now if I didn’t tell him what to write?”

“No.”

“Me neither. And do you know who else wouldn’t know? Him, in about fifteen seconds from now. And even if he had ‘remembered’ that he made his password ‘thisPasswordissuperlitty2,’ he would have spelled ‘Password’ wrong in the middle, so it wouldn’t have mattered. So, if you really want it to be his ‘private account,’ I'm actually all for that. Keep sending him the bill, and we’ll keep not paying it, and then you can send his medically-independent ass to collections and see how much money a judge will let you try to squeeze out of a twelve-year-old.”

Thankfully, they were basically done and we were able to leave before any more blood vessels popped in my head. I didn’t want to have to be admitted for treatment of a HIPAA-induced stroke.

I know the nurse was just trying to do her job in the face of governmental idiocracy, and I appreciate that, but c’mon, people! No matter what they tell you to do next, let’s make sure that common sense doesn’t get too uncommon out there!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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

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