Construction Rapido – Año Tres

Two of our three boys are in Mexico right now over spring break. Son Number Two would be there with his brothers, but his high school Europe trip for seniors was scheduled over spring break this year instead of right after graduation.

It was actually a tough decision for him, because of how much he enjoyed Mexico the last two years. His brothers are back in Mexicali with a huge group of other high school and college kids from our church, so at this point, I’d like to formally apologize to the country of Mexico for anything my children may say or do while in your beautiful country. Deep down in their hearts they mean well, I think, but they are complete yahoos, especially when in close proximity to each other.

I would also like to formally apologize to Europe. We’d appreciate it if you’d excuse any questionable teenage behavior with Number Two and his friends, and let him come home on schedule.

The group in Mexicali is building houses and holding mini church camps for the local kids. Son Number One is on a construction team building a house for a family in need, and Number Three is on an “Impact” team, getting his butt kicked in soccer by niños y niñas half his age.

This is Number Three’s second year going on the trip, and Number One’s third year. The stories they bring back are amazing. I mean, building houses and serving poor communities is great, and the families are incredibly grateful, and it changed how my sons view the world and got them to understand how blessed they are to live in America with our abundance and prosperity and access to opportunities and all of that good stuff, but that’s not what is most amazing.

The thing that blows my mind about the trips is how fast you can build a house in a country with basically no laws.

If you ignore the whole child labor law hassle it really opens up the workforce. Granted, your average high school freshman isn’t necessarily a huge asset to a construction team, but you always need grunt labor alongside the skilled labor. Plus, you don’t have to spend a lot of time on human resources issues and paperwork with child labor, because they have no rights anyway.

The houses they build have full electrical, with ceiling lights and wall outlets and everything, but that goes incredibly fast when you can just install all the wires and then immediately cover them all up with drywall without waiting for a city building inspector to show up and check everything first.

The same goes for the framing, plumbing, insulation, windows, roof trusses, shingles, etc. Just build it and move on. Get at least one person on the project with construction knowledge and a plan, add the proper amount of high school monkeys, and you can build an entire house in three days.

Literally. Three days. They usually have another day and a half of exterior and interior trim work and painting, but the house is up, functional, and weather-tight in three days.

The trip leaders keep the Instagram feed stocked with daily photos, so we have proof that the boys are alive and well, the house is progressing, and everyone seems to still have all their fingers. That’s a win.

If my Grandpa was still alive, he’d tell you about the time when as a young married man, he bought an empty lot in town, dug a basement, bought an old house across town, moved it over on a large truck, and set it on top of his new basement. My mom grew up in that house, and we got to go see it a few years ago, still standing.

Things used to be simpler, and they still are in places like Mexico. If you bring some construction know-how to the party, you can get a lot done in a short period of time. And it can be accomplished very inexpensively when you rope a bunch of kids into helping.

But only if you’re able to take away their cell phones.

You see, that’s the other thing that makes this all possible. Along with the absence of building inspectors and over-regulation, the kids don’t have access to their phones for the whole week. They are amazingly able to concentrate on and complete tasks.

If they were allowed to have their phones, that three-day house build would turn into six weeks, with 57,000 “I’m building a house” TikTok dance videos and two million selfies posing with power tools.

I don’t think my grandpa would approve.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Construction Rapido

All three of our boys are in Mexico right now over spring break. They are in Mexicali with a huge group of other high school kids from our church, so at this point, I’d like to formally apologize to the country of Mexico for anything my children may say or do while in your beautiful country. Deep down in their hearts they mean well, I think, but they are complete yahoos, especially when in close proximity to each other.

The group is building houses and holding mini church camps for the local kids. Son Number One and Two are on a construction team building a two-bedroom home for a family in need, and Son Number Three is on an “Impact” team, getting his butt kicked in soccer by niños y niñas half his age.

This is Number Three’s first year going on the trip, but One and Two got to go last year to build a house, and the stories they brought back were amazing. I mean, the family they build it for was great, and they were incredibly grateful, and it changed how my sons view the world and got them to understand how blessed they are to live in America with our abundance and prosperity and access to opportunities and all of that good stuff, but that’s not what was most amazing.

The thing that blew my mind about the trip was how fast you can build a house in a country with basically no laws.

If you ignore the whole child labor law hassle it really opens up the workforce. Granted, your average high school freshman isn’t necessarily a huge asset to a construction team, but you always need grunt labor alongside the skilled labor. Plus, you don’t have to spend a lot of time on human resources issues and paperwork with child labor, because they have no rights anyway.

The house they built had full electrical, with ceiling lights and wall outlets and everything, but that goes incredibly fast when you can just install all the wires and then immediately cover them all up with drywall without waiting for a city building inspector to show up and check everything first.

The same goes for the framing, plumbing, insulation, windows, roof trusses, shingles, etc. Just build it and move on. Get at least one person on the project with construction knowledge and a plan, add the proper amount of high school monkeys, and you can build an entire house in three days.

Literally. Three days. They had another day and a half of exterior and interior trim work and painting, but the house was up, functional, and weather-tight in three days.

This year’s trip leaders are keeping the Instagram feed stocked with enough progress photos that we’re able to tell that the current house is almost finished, and also, everyone seems to still have all their fingers. That’s a win.

If my Grandpa was still alive, he’d tell you about the time when as a young married man, he bought a lot in town, dug a basement, bought an old house across town, moved it over on a large truck, and set it on top of his new basement. My mom grew up in that house, and we got to go see it a few years ago, still standing.

Things used to be simpler, and they still are in places like Mexico. If you bring some construction know-how to the party, you can get a lot done in a short period of time. And it can be accomplished very inexpensively when you rope a bunch of kids into helping.

But only if you’re able to take away their cell phones.

You see, that’s the other thing that makes this all possible. Along with the absence of building inspectors and over-regulation, the kids don’t have access to their phones for the whole week. They are amazingly able to concentrate on and complete tasks.

If they were allowed to have their phones, that three-day house build would turn into six weeks, with 57,000 “I’m building a house” TikTok dance videos and two million selfies posing with power tools.

I don’t think my grandpa would approve.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

What the hECK?

I was recently reviewing my profile on Google Blogger and decided to click on the link to my listed occupation, writer and author.

Much to my delight, I discovered I’m in an elite group of other amazing “writer and author” folks. Most of us listed our interests in our bios.

For instance, a fellow writer and author lady from England listed her interests as: Reading, cooking, gardening...angels, spiritual, paranormal, Finland, cats!

She sounds fun.

A colleague from India listed his interests as: Public relationship Fight againest injustice.

Keep up the Fight, good sir.

It was riveting to read about so many of my professional brethren and what they were up to when not writing or authoring, but one gentleman in particular caught my eye. His listed interests were: Writing, reading, hiking, watching T.V.but within all it's the opportunity to serve as a co-worker with my spiritual guide the Mahanta, the Living ECK Master.

Hmm… interesting. An esteemed colleague of mine from Salem, Oregon has just stumped me, spiritually speaking. What is a Mahanta and a Living ECK Master? Thank God (or whoever), for the internet! I was able to research it all in a matter of minutes.

Eckancar, or ECK: Each of us is connected to God through Divine Spirit (the ECK), which can be heard as Sound and seen as Light. Eckankar offers a spiritual toolkit to help you experience the Light and Sound of God.

(It remains unclear if we’re supposed to be saying each letter in ECK, or if it’s supposed to be one sound, like what you say when you flick something gross off your hand.)

The ECKists are led by none other than Sri Harold Klemp, the Mahanta, the Living ECK Master. (There is a picture of the bespectacled ECK Master, in his polyester suit and wide striped tie. He looks like a 1980’s midwestern insurance salesman.)

Sri Harold offers us: simple daily spiritual exercises that can give you the experience of the Sound behind all sounds, and the pure Light of God; techniques for personal experience with dreams, past lives, Soul Travel, and your spiritual destiny.

The super-modern-looking ECK website boasts: tens of thousands of ECKists around the world and Eckankar spiritual study groups in hundreds of cities. This global community is supported by a worldwide spiritual center in Minnesota.

(please keep in mind, I am not making any of this up)

In Chanhassen, Minnesota we will find The Temple of ECK, which would obviously also be a good name for a rock band.

The Temple of ECK in Chanhassen, Minnesota, is the worldwide center for the teachings of the Light and Sound of God. Located at the heart of the Eckankar Spiritual Campus, it is a local community church and a Golden Wisdom Temple. Seekers of truth come here for the spiritual study of past lives, dreams, and Soul Travel.

Speaking of Soul Travel, that adventure just happens to be featured in this weeks’ ECK-tastic Spiritual Exercise of the Week.

First Landmarks of Soul Travel

One way to leave the body via Soul Travel is to lie down after dinner when you are drowsy. Plan to nap for five minutes, and watch the process of falling asleep. If you try the exercise with your spouse, agree to meet outside the body a few minutes later. Then watch carefully as your mate steps free of the physical body and enters the spiritual one in a burst of radiant light.

Sri Klemp then goes on to describe the journey:

The moment Soul leaves the body, It finds Itself in a blue-grey zone near the Physical Plane. This zone is an approach to the Astral Plane. The sensation of moving from the Physical to the Astral body is like slipping through a large iris of mild wind currents; this iris is the Spiritual Eye. Soul enters this neutral zone of blue-grey tones in Its Astral form, a sheath which looks like a thousand sparkling stars.

And the all-important launch zone for the trip:

This buffer zone, or corridor, between the Physical and lower Astral Planes resembles the underground silo of an enormous rocket that is perhaps two hundred feet in diameter and more than two thousand feet deep. The ceiling of this circular pocket is open and may display a brilliant canopy of white light, or you may see a night sky sprinkled with specks of twinkling stars. There may even be a pastoral scene by a river, whose waters murmur their pleasure at life.

I think it’s entirely possible that someone slipped some acid into Harold Klemp’s meatloaf at the Greater Twin Cities Insurance Brokers Association dinner and he later fell down an abandoned well.

Instead of seeking medical attention, he seems to have started a religion.

In a completely unrelated matter, I’d like to announce my new religion. You are all invited to join. It’s called AKC. You may say each letter, or you can choose to make the sound of having a chicken bone stuck in your throat.

AKC will be just like ECK, only cheaper. For the low price of only twenty percent of your gross income per year (before deductions or taxes, of course, praise the Spirit Soul), we will worship all the recognized major dog breeds, and I will instruct you to nap on a daily basis. (Spiritual Soul travel naps, obviously, but with astral canine companions.)

Dog is my copilot.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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Thou Shalt Not Floss

Our three boys spent the last week off at church camp. The two younger ones were here in town, while Son Number One went all the way down to Los Angeles with his high school group.

He and I got up before dawn on Saturday to head off to the busses. His bag was ninety-nine percent packed the night before. When we woke up, he was supposed to brush his teeth and then pack his toiletries and his phone charger.

Off we went to the church to get him loaded up onto his bus. “Do you have everything?” I asked him.

His ears filtered my question through his small, inoperative fourteen-year-old brain, and he answered, “Yes! Quit asking me!”

I wrestled a hug out of him and sent him on his way. Fast forward to last Thursday afternoon when I picked him up. We had no contact with him all week, since the youth group leaders took everyone’s phones away on the bus trip there, and gave them back on the bus trip home. That made packing his phone charger the morning of the trip kind of a moot point.

What wasn’t supposed to be a moot point was packing his toiletries. As we were walking to the car and he was busy answering my questions about the week with super-descriptive one-word answers, he suddenly remembered something noteworthy.

“I forgot my toiletries bag, so I couldn’t brush my teeth all week.”

*record scratch*

“What?” I asked, hoping I had misheard his incredibly long sentence.

“Yeah, I totally thought I packed it, but it wasn’t there.”

“I watched you pack it,” I said.

“I know, I thought I did. I thought I put it in the same pocket as my phone charger.”

“I think you did, too. Did you take everything out of the bag to look?”

“Trust me, dad, I looked a bunch of times.”

“So, you just didn’t brush your teeth all week?” I asked, still not having fully wrapped my brain around what was coming out of his mouth, besides the halitosis. “Did you at least floss?”

“I chewed a lot of gum.”

Oh, great, those four out of five dentists will be thrilled. *sound of a blood vessel bursting in my brain*

“Did you tell somebody?”

“I’m not going to use someone else’s toothbrush. That’s gross.”

*sound of an even larger blood vessel bursting in my brain* “Um… not to use someone else’s toothbrush. To get you your own!”

“No. No one’s going to have an extra toothbrush, dad. Geez.”

*more blood vessels breaking, calming breaths*

“Why didn’t you at least ask someone to borrow floss? That’s a one-time use product.”

“I told you, I chewed a lot of gum.”

“Where did you get all this gum?”

“Our group leader took us on a walk to a gas station to get snacks. I bought a two-liter of root beer, too.”

“That’s nice. Do you know what else they sometimes sell at gas station convenience stores?... You know what, never mind.”

I opted to simply drive out of the parking lot in silence and continue the silence all the way home, for fear of having a full-blown stroke while operating a moving vehicle. I tried to think about dogs playing fetch. That’s a nice thought.

When we got home, he grabbed his sleeping bag and pillow and asked if I would get his duffel bag.

“Sure,” I said, still thinking about Labs and border collies leaping in the air for sticks and Frisbees. I carried it by the shoulder strap and was halfway to the front door when I looked down and saw it.

*second record scratch of the day*

I walked into the house where my wife was already getting super-descriptive one-word answers to her questions.

“Please tell me this whole thing was just some kind of elaborate and really stupid joke,” I said, falsely hopeful. “You brushed your teeth all week, right?”

*first record scratch of the day for my wife*

“You didn’t brush your teeth?” she asked.

“No, I couldn’t. I forgot my toiletry bag.”

“This one?” I asked, trying very hard not to have a totally paralyzing stroke, even though I was not driving anymore. “This one, here, in the end pocket of your duffel bag? The MESH end pocket!? The pocket on the outside of the bag that I can see right into without opening the bag or even needing to unzip it? This toiletry bag right here under your phone charger!?!?!?”

“What? There is no way that was in there the whole time. I totally looked, like, a bunch of times.”

As I stared into my wife’s beautiful eyes for some shred of logic or reason, I heard the sweet, welcomed sound of the rest of the blood vessels in my brain exploding.

No, no. Don’t call me an ambulance. Just get me some gum.

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!

I Swear I Pray, I Swear

The Ebola virus in the United States? Are you kidding me?

When I first heard the news that the CDC was in charge of importing Ebola virus patients from Africa into the United States on purpose, I swore. Then I prayed.

Then I heard that someone flew into the U.S. from Africa on their own, and later went to a hospital in Texas and died from Ebola. More swearing and praying.

Then I saw pictures captured by a Dallas news helicopter of the Ebola victim’s apartment complex, showing their genius maintenance staff apparently cleaning his Ebola vomit off of the sidewalk. No hazmat suits whatsoever, and they were spraying the sidewalk with a PRESSURE WASHER!! Thanks, fellas, for not only probably infecting yourselves, but also for weaponizing the scary-ass virus into steamy aerosol form. Mostly swearing at that point.

Then I heard that his nurse in Texas has been confirmed as the first person to contract the Ebola virus inside the United States. Mostly praying. Some swearing.

In my lifetime I have heard a lot about the separation of church and state. I don’t consider that a big problem. Maybe we should concentrate more on a separation of stupidity and state, particularly when it comes to importing biblical-type plague diseases like the Ebola virus. Doctors Without Borders may not have any borders, as the name suggests, but countries do, and for a lot of really good reasons.

Forget the Ebola virus for a minute (if you can). I think we’re all taking this separation of church and state issue a little too seriously. Here’s my take on humanity: Everyone is somewhat religious. There is no such thing as an atheist.

Now, at this point, all the self-professed atheists are throwing up their hands and swearing at me. Upon hearing the swearing, any super-religious folks within earshot of the self-professed atheists are scowling in disapproval. Little do these people know, they have much more in common than they think.

Everyone prays and everyone swears.

Don’t believe me? I’ll prove it to you.

Ever seen that cop swing in behind you in your rearview mirror? Everyone’s praying.

See the blue lights come on? Everyone’s swearing.

How about golf? I know swearing and praying are almost mandatory in golf, but bear with me.

Ball hooks toward the houses – Ardent atheists are praying.

Hear the echoing “THWACK” of a Titleist hitting house siding – curse words will be universally muttered.

Want to hear those same curse words a little louder and clearer? Just listen closely for the distinctive tinkling sound of that golf ball going through a window.

Not compelling enough? OK, here’s the kicker.

Take the most dyed-in-the-wool atheist you can find, go to their house, and secretly clog their toilet. (Don’t ask me how, that’s up to you to figure out.)

Note: If your local atheist has a solar-powered, poop incinerating, waterless “eco-toilet” instead of the normal water-filled kind, please find another atheist.

The next time your atheist friend flushes that (standard) toilet, he or she will be praying like Tammy Faye Bakker in a room full of TV cameras as they watch the tainted water rise to within an eighth of an inch of the rim.

Now take Churchy LaRue, that sweet little old lady who sits in the front pew with her hands raised high in the air every Sunday. She will cuss like a sailor in a bar fight when that water keeps rising and crests the edge of the bowl.

There you have it. As far as the perceived need for a separation of church and state, and why the argument is overblown, the clogged toilet is the clearest Constitutional evidence offered to date. Seems fitting, doesn’t it?

As far as separation of stupidity and state. That’s pretty easy to solve. Just fire everyone in federal, state, and local government and start over.

As far as the Ebola virus goes, well… that actually might be the best (or worst) Constitutional evidence yet. Self-proclaimed atheist or not, I think as far as Ebola goes, we’d all better pray it doesn’t go far.

Then we’d better get on the phone to Washington, D.C. and start swearing at someone.

It wouldn’t hurt to send up a prayer for that nurse in Texas, too.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 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!