Once Upon a Time, 2019

I have been lucky enough over the last six years to get to help young elementary students write stories each week. In the past I’ve worked with kindergartners, but this year I got to write stories with first graders. At the end of each year, I compile them all into a real book that their parents and grandparents can buy.

Here are a couple samples from this year’s edition. Prepare yourself for a trip deep inside the mind of the American first grader… Enjoy!

Chocolate Surprise (alternate title: Extremely Questionable Dentist)

Once upon a time there was a boy named Sparkle who was eighteen inches tall and always busy looking for one of his friends. He was friends with a three-foot-tall girl named Elsa who had fire power. They were both friends with a tall girl, who was at least seven feet tall, named Lilly, who loved playing with all her friends more than anything in the world.

One morning Lilly and Elsa were helping Sparkle find his friend. They found him at the beach in Hawaii where they also found one hundred baby kittens in a treasure box. When Elsa opened the box, all the kittens jumped out and some of them even jumped onto the faces of the three friends. While the friends were trying to get the kittens off their faces, some of the little furry cats got away and ran up a large hill.

Once all the kittens had jumped out of the chest, the friends saw brown treasure in the bottom of the box that the kittens had been sitting on. The whole box was filled with chocolate pennies!

Just then, a giant cat came bolting out of a cave near the water and ran up the big hill after the kittens. All of a sudden, a spaceship crash landed in the volcano that was next to their beach. The three friends grabbed the chocolate pennies and ran for the volcano, climbed up, jumped into the spaceship after the space man had gotten out, quickly fixed it, and took off into space.

They flew the spaceship for a whole two seconds until they arrived at Planet Forest, where they landed. As soon as they landed, strange forest creatures attacked their ship, took it completely apart, grabbed the three friends, and threw them all the way back to Earth, where they landed in New Mexico. Luckily, Lilly had hung on to the chocolate treasure, none of which melted on reentry.

Meanwhile, back in Hawaii, the spaceman had climbed out of the volcano, saddled up the giant cat, and rode it all the way to New Mexico to go beat up the friends for stealing his spaceship. As soon as he arrived in Santa Fe, the fight began.

The massive cat ran over and scratched all three friends on their faces. Elsa took immediate action and used her fire power to set the giant cat's tail on fire. The cat screeched and ran a mile away, with his tail burning all the way.

But as he ran past, his flaming tail swished back and forth wildly, and it hit all three friends, picking them up, and throwing them all the way back to Hawaii, where they landed next to their house and their pet pony.

To celebrate, they ate all the chocolate pennies at once, then felt a little weird, so they went to the dentist. He told them that they all had cavities which could turn them evil if they didn’t take care of them, so they all decided to get them filled with candy, which was a special the dentist was offering that week.

The end.

Unexpected Love Song (alternate title: Ratt Sings Cheap Trick?)

Once upon a time there was a monster named Horn, who was microscopic and lived in the ocean. He was friends with a carrot named Backpack who lived in the mountains. They were both friends with snake named Sprinkles who was only two inches long and lived in the forest.

One morning the three friends were waking up from a sleepover at Sprinkles’ house in the forest. Suddenly, they saw a giant rat inside the house, coming right for Sprinkles the snake. The mean old rat bit Sprinkles right on the tail. Backpack the carrot sprang into action and grabbed his friend Sprinkles and pulled him into the snow outside the door.

Horn, the microscopic ocean monster, grabbed the big rat by the tail, swung him around in the air three million times, then slapped him across his ugly rat face and sent him flying five thousand hundred million feet away. [Just under ninety-five million miles]

Horn and Backpack took Sprinkles the snake to the animal hospital which was two hundred feet away from the house, and the veterinarian used his magic powers to heal the little snake's tail.

When they got back to Sprinkles’ house, they went inside and sat down to rest, but all of a sudden Sprinkles started to yell. The rat had returned somehow and had snuck out of a hole in the wall and jumped onto the little snake's back.

This time it was Backpack's turn to teach the big rat a lesson. The carrot reached under the sink and got a huge rat sticky trap and threw it at the big rat that was attacking his friend. The rat became hopelessly stuck to the trap, and the three friends picked it up and took it to the rat jail that was only ten miles away.

But the rat was so strong that eventually, he unstuck himself, and broke out of the special rat jail, and ran the whole ten miles back to Sprinkles’ house. Instead of attacking them again, he sat outside the house and sang a very special song about love.

As soon as the three friends came outside to hear the lovely song, the rat attacked them again. The song had been a trick!

Sprinkles, who had had just about enough of this rat, grabbed it by the tail, and began slamming it into the ground. The rat was undeterred, and he got away from the snake and chased the three friends away from the house. But the three friends were much faster than the rat, and they led him all over everywhere on a wild goose chase, and eventually the rat got lost and ended up at a Target store.

Since the rat had a little cash on him, he decided to buy gentlemen’s pants, shirts, hats, and a fake mustache and beard. He dressed up in his new clothing and went back to their house, pretending to be a person, and when they answered the door, he tossed a fishing hook into the house, hoping they would bite it.

Horn the microscopic ocean monster bit down on the hook, because he wasn't fooled, and knew the gentlemen at the door was really the rat in disguise. When the rat started to pull on the hook, Horn was planning to clobber him again, but the snake yelled, "Stop it! We know it's you. You're not being nice."

The rat said, "I’m sorry! I was only trying to get you closer so we could be friends, because I never had any friends."

They invited him in to be friends and then the four of them had a play date at the park with juice boxes and tomato soup.

The end.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 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!

47 at 47

I am turning 47 years old in a couple days, which is hard for my brain to accept, since it regularly tells my body I’m still 25. My knees, my back, and my hamstrings, however, agree with the calendar.

They say with age, comes wisdom. I wish that were more true. Nonetheless, in honor of living through another trip around the sun, I have added to my list of thoughts, observations, and acquired “wisdom.”

Here it is - one for each year. You’re welcome, America.

1.  There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who prefer the toilet paper to come off the top of the roll, and those who are wrong.

2.  If beds were advertised the same way as tents, a queen-size mattress would “sleep nine adults comfortably.”

3.  The three-second rule has a lot of leeway depending on if what you dropped was the last one.

4.  People who say things like, “We’re going to cross-functionalize and parallel task your mission-critical bandwidth,” don’t understand what they’re saying any more than you do.

5.  And I don’t understand why disappointed is not the opposite of appointed.

6.  Pi and the circumference of a circle have a similar relationship to pie and the circumference of a person.

7.  Here’s the main difference between men and women: Men can look at an ad for women's underwear and get excited. I’m not talking about women in underwear, just the underwear itself. Women do not get excited looking at pictures of boxer shorts.

8.  You are wholeheartedly fooling yourself if you think the government is efficient at anything except taking your money.

9.  The clearest evidence that capitalism beats communism is that the Red Bull beverage company put a man in space. Take that, North Korea. Anheuser-Busch can probably shoot down your nukes.

10.  If you give enough money to the right charities, you will never have to buy address labels again.

11.  Owning a pool in the winter is like making payments on your new snowmobiles all summer.

12.  You cannot use the phrase, “To be honest with you...”  without giving the listener the impression you aren’t always being honest.

13.  When pulling out a stump with your truck, make sure the roots don’t have ahold of your water main. Trust me.

14.  When packing thirteen suitcases into the car for your wife, is it impossible to have ten of them be “on top” so she can get to them easily.

15.  If one of my boys saw their brother in a fight, I'm certain they would jump in and help. I'm just not sure which side they'd be on.

16.  You can ask someone to do something, or you can tell them how you want it done, but you can’t do both.

17.  A good indicator of where you are in life is this: Does the advertisement of free food still affect your decision making?

18.  Fabric softener sheets go in the dryer, not the washer. Just FYI. I’m not saying I didn’t know that.

19.  There is no “t” or “t” sound in the word across. There is no “b” or “b” sound in the word supposedly. Please pronounce accordingly.

20.  Men are far more likely to clean things with spit than women are.

21.  Money and toilet paper have something in common – They’re both easy to take for granted until you run out. Also, in totally opposite, but equally dire situations, they can be substituted for each other.

22.  Drive while driving. Always.

23.  If you ask any guy to tell you a story about a time he almost died, he will have four stories just off the top of his head, and one will be from this year. If you ask women the same question, most of them will look at you like you’re crazy.

24.  One sure sign of getting old – When you start sitting down to put on your pants.

25.  Children and ceiling fans are simply incompatible. It’s science.

26.  In life, it is very important to remember where you are and why you're there. That way, when your podiatrist tells you to drop your shorts, you’ll ask some questions first.

27.  Your dog thinks it has saved you from being murdered at least a thousand times by barking at the front window, yet you remain completely ungrateful.

28.  Hold out as long as you can before putting on your first pair of magnifying “reader” glasses. The second you do, your eyes give up like a marathoner crossing the finish line.

29.  People who don’t use their cruise control on the freeway should be pulled over and water-boarded.

30.  There are 21 words in the English language that need to be used more. They are: bailiwick, hootenanny, skullduggery, scofflaw, ballyhoo, shenanigans, donnybrook, catawampus, chicanery, cajoled, hullabaloo, besmirch, boondoggle, haberdashery, melee, befuddled, flummoxed, hoosegow, wiseacre, tomfoolery, and kerfuffle. Please begin immediately.

31.  Pointing out that Van Gogh’s “girlfriend” was actually a prostitute during a fifth-grade art docent lesson is not helpful for anyone involved. Again, I’m not saying I did this; I just want you to know.

32.  You cannot claim to be a grown woman, fully capable of taking care of yourself, and also claim that you do not know how to operate a toilet seat.

33.  We, as humans, all share a universal reaction – the automatic flinch when the driver hits the button and starts rolling up the car window under your arm.

34.  Don’t waste your time trying to have a logical conversation with a teenager. Their brains are physically incapable of sustained logic. Instead, just give them healthy food in large quantities and cross your fingers that they leave your house at some point in your lifetime.

35.  To be or not to be is not the question. The real question is, which towel in the guest bathroom am I allowed to use to dry my hands?

36.  Give a boy enough time with any object, whether it be a stale Cheerio, a bouncy ball, a doll, or a book, and he will eventually turn it into a weapon.

37.  Getting passport photos taken at Walmart seems ironic.

38.  In order to properly keep up with the hair from a shedding dog, you should own enough Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners to equal the dog’s weight. For instance, a seventy-pound Lab requires six Roombas (running twenty-four hours a day).

39.  The idiots who wear their pants down below their butts and have to waddle with their legs spread to keep their pants from simply falling to the ground are also the idiots who are most likely to try to run from the police at some point. That makes me smile.

40.  The people of Earth can be easily divided into two categories: People you would let watch your kids for five minutes, and people you wouldn’t.

41.  The person who invented the hotel shower curtain rod that curves out away from the tub so the shower curtain doesn’t stick to your arm should receive the Nobel prize.

42.  The problem with trying to raise independent, strong-willed children is that if you are succeeding, you have to live with independent, strong-willed children.

43.  Guys, do you ever have trouble figuring out if you’ve had too much to drink? Here’s a handy guideline:

“There is no way I can scratch that itch on my ankle while I’m standing here peeing, so I will not try.” – You’re still OK

“I can totally do it without peeing on myself.” – You are drunk

44.  A kid’s definition of “pool toy” is different than an adult’s. We think of pool toys as something designed to be played with in a pool. They define “pool toy” as anything they own, if it happens to be brought into the pool. Like a bike or a sandwich.

45.  No matter who you are, no matter where you're from, there is one shared experience that binds us all together as one people: The sheer horror of the ketchup or mustard water falling from the unshaken bottle and contaminating your food forever. I feel your pain.

46.  I just said, “I don’t want you two on top of each other on the couch. Find something else to do,” to two of my sons. I guess I should be grateful, because it probably won’t be too long before I’ll need to say that to one of them and his girlfriend.

47.  If you have to choose, it makes more sense to become a strong swimmer than a strong runner. You don’t automatically die when you stop running.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 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!

Google Nesting Place

It was recently announced, in what can only be seen as the beginning of the end of the world, that Google has made the obvious strategic move to team up with Nest.

Google will now be inside your thermostat.

I'm not sure that's a great idea. Do I need to point out the massive failure that was Google+ again? If they can't set up and manage a simple thing like a world-wide social media and networking site to compete with Facebook, what makes them think they are qualified to determine what temperature to keep my living room?

Do they even realize that my wife lives in the house? Sure, Google probably has a lot of smart people behind the scenes, but if they are foolish enough to think they can remove the manual aspect of temperature management inside my home, they obviously didn’t get too much common sense with all that book learnin’!

I mean, do the Google engineers even comprehend the fact that 72 degrees is apparently a completely different temperature, depending on what temperature it is outside. Or in the car?

Do the geniuses at Google understand that my wife thinks 72 degrees is not the same temperature in the summer as it is in the winter?

Do they know that having it be two degrees colder or warmer in an adjacent room or near a window can completely negate whatever temperature it is on the couch?

Something tells me the Google Nest won’t understand the gravity of the situation when my wife says, “It’s cold in here.” The Google Nest can’t possibly learn to read her body language and tone of voice.

Should it immediately spike the thermostat to 95 degrees and retreat to the garage for two hours, or should it bring her a blanket, kiss her on the forehead, and ask about her day? I’m not sure the Google engineers will be able to write that decision tree into the code with any success.

As I understand it, computers work mainly by computing things. I would assume the Google people need to somehow write some code of some kind to run the thermostat, and I assume that code will need to compute different variables.

Off the top of my head, in the last thirty seconds, I developed this short, very incomplete list of variables they’ll need to consider in order to choose the correct temperature for my wife:

Tone of voice

Posture

Current temperament and mood

Sarcasm level

Actual outside temperature

Perceived outside temperature

Actual current inside temperature

Perceived inside temperature

Season

Weather

Dew point

Relative humidity

Current temperament and mood of children

Wind speed and direction outside

Temperature of garage she just spent seven seconds in

Clothing layers and thickness

Square inches of exposed skin near the ankles or wrists

Shoes vs. boots

Do the boots have fur?

Actual draftiness

Perceived draftiness

Activity level in the last hour

Sock type and thickness

Are the socks “cozy” or just regular?

Hydration level

Pre/During/Post dinnertime?

Amount of wine consumed

I just can’t see them figuring all that out.

But, never mind all that. There’s one central problem that will cause all the rest of these problems to be moot: The Google Nest will be mounted to the wall.

How is it possibly going to duck out of the way of a flying shoe if it’s foolish enough to suggest that she might want to put on a sweater?

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 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 Shutterfly, Regarding Lifetouch

Dear Shutterfly,

Last November was the first time I heard your name associated with the venerable, dare I say, tour de force of a company that is Lifetouch School Portraits.

It happened when Lifetouch sent me an email with promo codes to create free Shutterfly photo books.

A few days later, Lifetouch sent another email explaining that “We were a little too excited to deliver your free Shutterfly photo book offer so you may have received a code that doesn’t work.”  I guess they included new promo codes that may or may not have actually worked. I’ll never know, because I never tried them.

I never tried the original promo codes either, because the pictures Lifetouch was offering to put into a free Shutterfly photo book were taken by Lifetouch.

I don’t even have to go back and look at them. I just know.

Son Number One will have a forced, pained smile on his face, like he just stepped barefoot onto a bunch of seashells.

Son Number Two’s hair will be all over the place and his glasses will be visibly smudged and probably on his face crooked. His smile is a fifty-fifty toss-up.

Son Number Three will have some sort of food or condiment prominently displaced somewhere on his face or head, and his “smile” will either look pained, quizzical, confused, nervous, or, like last year’s picture, strangely rodent-ish. It will look like anything other than his actual beautiful, joyous smile.

I’m not sure why I would want any of that in a photo book, free or otherwise.

Lifetouch screwing up the codes didn’t surprise me one bit, because I have a long history with them. I have written them many helpful letters over the years (thirteen to be exact) giving them tons of free advice on how to take passable pictures of children, how to improve their business model, and how to just generally not suck at what they do.

As far as I know, no one at Lifetouch has ever read a single one of my letters. They certainly haven’t taken any of my free advice, like, maybe wiping the macaroni and cheese off the kid’s face before snapping the picture, and stuff like that.

You might not have as much direct personal experience with them, but the fact that they screwed up the free promo code email should have been a major warning sign for you.

But instead of running away as fast as you could, apparently you just went ahead and purchased Lifetouch. And according to Forbes, you paid $825 million for them! You really should have called me first. That was not a good idea.

If you really wanted to get into the school picture business so badly, I honestly believe you could have cornered the market for less than ten or twelve thousand dollars by hiring retired postal employees to take pictures at the schools with their personal cell phones. Seriously.

Anyway, today I received a desperate plea from “Lifetouch + Shutterfly” that my Fall Portraits would soon expire, and I was given helpful portrait ID numbers and access codes for all three boys so I could purchase them and have you preserve them forever.

Sounds like you guys over at Shutterfly are trying to figure out how to get back some of those wisely-spent millions. And how do I know those codes will even work?

Never mind that – back to my original point here, Shutterfly. The pictures you want me to buy were taken by Lifetouch. If I wouldn’t buy the individual paper pictures, why would I buy a hardcover book of them? Or a coffee mug? Or a pillow? Or a wrapped canvas wall hanging?

He has mustard on his face!

I have to look at food on his face almost every time he’s actually in the room. Why would I want to immortalize it on my wall, as well?

He’s smiling like he just backed into an electric fence!

Why would I want to put that on a pillow? Pillows are supposed to make people comfortable!

Have your financial people call me. We should talk.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 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!

Desperately Searching for Talent

Thanks to all you boys and girls who signed up ahead of time and came out to audition today for the elementary school talent show. And a special thanks to all you kids who added your names to the list five minutes ago, even though it has been posted in the office for three weeks now. Glad to have you here.

We will take the auditions in the order that you signed up on the list. What's that, ma'am? Your daughter who signed up a half hour ago has tennis lessons today and can't stay past 3:00? Well, I'm not sure what to tell you, since there are about thirty kids who signed up ahead of her and it's already 2:45.  Maybe she could come back after tennis, or be late to practice? No ma'am, I have not been told that I'm particularly unreasonable. I'm sorry to hear that. We will miss her version of “I’m a Little Teacup.”

OK, everybody, let’s get started. First, I see, we have Kayden from the 6^th grade playing piano.

[sound of individual piano keys being played in an order that does not necessarily suggest music to the listener]

Wow, OK, thank you for that Kayden. Out of curiosity, how long have you been taking piano lessons? Six years, is that right? Well, thank you for sharing your gift with us today.

OK, next up we have… oh, goody, another piano player. Jade is here from the 2^nd grade.

[sound of Beethoven coming from a broken down old elementary school piano as an eight-year-old virtuoso’s fingers fly over the keys]

(Praise Jesus) Thank you, Jade! That was magnificent, sweetheart! Kayden, you might want to get the name of Jade’s teacher. No reason, just in case yours ever decides to retire or something.

Now we have Suzy and Kendall from the 5^th grade performing a dance routine.

[alleged dance routine takes place intermittently]

Thank you, ladies. One note that I think deserves mentioning – most dance routines out there involve quite a bit of actual dancing. Yours seemed to contain quite a bit of standing and vague, almost imperceptible, arm movements. What’s that? It was for artistic effect? Oh, OK. Is that why you picked such a sad, slow song? Gotcha. OK, thanks for coming today. What’s that? No, no decisions will be made today. (at least no out loud decisions) We will let you know soon.

OK, looks like we have another dance routine. Kylie from the 3^rd grade is here. Take it away, Kylie.

[rap song blares and a dance routine starts that would make the folks in a Prince video blush]

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold the music! Um… Kylie, honey, that kind of dancing is a little inappropriate for elementary school. What’s that, mom? Uh, OK, that might be how she dances at home, but you understand this talent show is being held here for the students, right? And that song can’t be played at school, anyway. What’s that? Well, I guess we could try to find a clean version of it, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t have too many words left. OK, go ahead and see what you can come up with. Moving on.

[two excruciating hours later]

OK, thank you for that. One note – try to sing to the back of the room. No, I don’t think you did. We have your microphone turned all the way up and we can barely hear you. Yes, sing to the back of the room. You are only singing to the back of your own throat.

Great, OK, looks like only one more audition and then we can go home (and seriously reconsider our life choices while we have a stiff drink and try to determine how we are going to put this show together…).

OK, hello Avery from the 4^th grade. What song will you be singing? OK, and do you have the music? You’re going to sing it a cappella? Umm… OK, well, good luck. Let’s hear it.

[sound of the most soulful, rich, powerful, silky-smooth adult singing voice coming from a four-foot-tall girl, which makes every adult in the room weep with awe and joy]

Thank you so much, Avery, for adding your name to the list at the last minute. And thank you for going to this school!

(We’ve got ourselves a talent show!)

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 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!