The Deal of the Century

So, there I was, putting six million miles on my car, driving all over the place yesterday buying used snowboard boots. You see, we have a thirteen-year-old, Son Number Three.

The next time you come across a thirteen-year-old boy, have them sit down for a few minutes and observe their feet. You can actually see them growing. If you can keep them still long enough, you’ll witness their toes popping right out the front of the pair of sneakers their parents bought a week ago.

Over this past year and a half I have been slowly but surely outfitting all three boys with boards, boots, and helmets so that I never have to fill out another ski rental form, hopefully for the rest of my life. If you are willing to do the searching, and you get lucky, you can get almost brand-new gear for less than a few rental fees.

Yesterday was going well, and I was able to score one pair of boots that will fit Son Number Three now, and one pair that will fit him fifteen minutes from now. I was back home in the afternoon and very tired of driving. I plopped down on the couch and got on Facebook Marketplace one last time to check the listing on a pair of his old boots I was selling, that his growing toes, luckily, had not rendered useless.

Then I saw a listing I hadn’t seen that morning.

“$40, Auburn, CA. K2 snowboard, Salomon bindings, size 11.5 boots, helmet, gloves.”

Huh? $40? For which thing? He’s listing everything at once. For $40? That can’t be right. Let me read that again…

OK, so it shows a picture of all the stuff. The boots are even strapped into the bindings… it isn’t saying anything about separate sales. Just lists everything and says $40…

This can’t be right… Let me just text this guy… and then I saw it. “Listed 26 minutes ago.”

Oh, holy crap! This is brand new. This just showed up. No one has seen it yet. This could be for real!

Auburn is 18 miles from my house, right up I-80.

Me on Facebook messaging app – “Hi Larry, is this package still available?”

Immediate response from Larry, which is unheard of on Facebook Marketplace – “Yes.”

OK, OK, play it cool, man. Don't spook him... “Great. Is there any chance you're available right now? I happen to have some time right now and can jump in the car right now.”

I would have left my own open-heart surgery to get in the car. For those of you who don’t ski or snowboard, allow me to explain. What I was looking at in the picture was no less than $1000 worth of gear, purchased new. Sold used at reasonable prices on Facebook Marketplace, it was anywhere from $200 to $400 worth of gear.

I didn’t even want the snowboard. I wanted the bindings, maybe, but it was really just the principle of the whole thing. And if the boots really were a men’s 11.5, Son Number Three would probably be able to use them sometime next week.

I hit send on the text and then endured five minutes of agony.

Larry – “Yes, let me know when you're getting in the car and I'll text you my address.”

Why the hell wouldn’t you just tell me your address now?!? OK, OK, remain calm. Play it cool…

Me – [already in the car and doing 90 mph toward Auburn] “OK, great. Just getting in the car now. What's your address? No big deal. It's all good. Everything is cool and casual. Totally all good and cool.”

Larry – [sends me address]

Me – [has minor in-car early celebration dance-a-thon as I type the address into Google maps while punching it up past the triple-digit mark.] Kids, don’t try this at home, but I honestly figured if I got pulled over, I could show the cop what was happening and probably get a code-three police escort the rest of the way.

Eighteen miles and three minutes later I slid around the corner onto Larry’s street and then forced myself to slow down and drive like everything was cool. I pulled up to Larry’s house very calmly and casually, and did my best not to sprint to the door.

Larry came out of the house to meet me, carrying everything that was in the picture, all hooked together in one big bundle. Sure enough, it was a K2 snowboard ($500 new), big enough for Number Three to grow into, Salomon bindings ($300) that were perfect for me, Burton Moto boots ($250) that really were a men’s 11.5, an XL helmet ($100) that will actually fit one of our XL heads, and a pair of Burton gloves ($40), just for fun.

Stay calm. Everything is cool…

“This looks great, Larry. I think this will work for my youngest son.”

“Well, it was my son’s stuff, but he shattered his heel jumping off the roof of a church,” said Larry, with some obvious residual disgust regarding the incident still showing on his face.

“Wow, no kidding.” Your son sounds smart…

“Yep, so he hasn’t used any of it in a few years.”

“Oh, wow, that’s too bad.” Your son isn’t home right now, is he? He can’t be OK with this price…

“I don’t know too much about this stuff,” said Larry, “but it all looks like it will still work for your son.”

“Yep, I think it will.” Deep breaths. Remain calm…

**moment of truth** “So, you said $40?” I asked, very cool, calm, and casual.

“Yep,” said Larry.

Me, reaching into my pocket while trying not to scream, “Holy crap!”

“Here you go.” OK, well, I should go before your son hobbles out here swinging a crutch and yelling NOOOOOO!!!

“We’re actually moving to North Carolina soon,” said Larry.

OK, great. Please just take these two twenties from me so I can run to my car and drive away before anyone inside your house realizes what you’ve done... “Wow. Good for you. Good luck with the move and safe travels.”

“Thanks,” said Larry, claiming his prize money. “You too.”

My travels will be a lot safer once I’m done sliding out of your neighborhood and back on the freeway and I’m sure your son isn’t chasing after me… “Thanks. I’d better get back. Take care.”

Just walk casually back to the car… Don’t run… Be cool… OK, start the car…

[sound of my screeching tires]

What a thrill! I think I finally understand the extreme couponing phase my wife went through a long time ago, when we ended up with twenty-six bottles of ranch dressing for seventeen cents. It wasn’t that we needed any ranch dressing, it was that it only cost seventeen cents. She knew how much it would cost retail and simply couldn’t leave that ranch dressing on the shelf.

I get it now, honey! And you’ll be happy to know the boys are all set for this winter.

Assuming we can keep them off the church roof.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

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COVIDiots

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

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

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

Multiple calls. At multiple locations.

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

What happens to be clogging these sewer pipes in Roseville?

Shirts.

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

No accidental misspellings here. Shirts.

“Shirts?” you ask again, still confused.

Yes, shirts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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Slovak Style Link

God bless the internet.

Never in the history of man has it been easier for two neighbors to be toxically rude and disrespectful to each other without ever having to actually speak in person. And that’s just one example of the amazing benefits the internet has brought us. If I could kiss Al Gore right now, I still wouldn’t.

We could go on for days about how the world wide web has improved interpersonal communications, but today I want to focus on the benefits it brings us in terms of our personal style, wealth, and ability to attract women. Specifically, I want to gush about how the internet has introduced me to Mr. Martin Železník, Slovakian Men's Style Coach.

I was just a regular, boring old day on LinkedIn, until I got the connection invitation that would change my life forever.

Hi Marc,

Nice to “meet” you,

I see you’re a speaker. I help men make more money and triple attention from women by developing their own authentic personal style.

If that's something you're interested in, let's connect.

Martin Železník l Men's Style Coach

This could be the break I’ve always needed. I mean, who doesn’t want more money, but TRIPLE ATTENTION from women!? That would be insane! Where do I sign, Martin?

Wait, I’d better not be too hasty. This is the internet, after all. I need to learn from my past mistakes with all those deposed but still super-rich Nigerian princes. Does Martin even care about me at all, or is this another scam?

Let’s look a little deeper into his LinkedIn profile.

His signature line reads:

Martin Železník l Men's Style Coach

I help men make more money and double their confidence in any situation by developing their own authentic personal style

Slovak Republic

Double confidence and triple attention from women, PLUS more money. This is sounding almost too good to be true, but there is a picture of Martin Železník right there to reassure me. The picture, however, is not insanely reassuring, by American standards, in the style/confidence/women’s attention/money category.

Martin has a thin, weaselly, “I’m super sure that I’m super cool” smile, and thin blonde hair cut close at the sides with an ocean wave-looking section on top that is gelled enough to preserve the individual comb tracks and could likely withstand a forty-knot wind. He does not appear as if he could grow any discernable amount of facial hair.

His shoulders are at a quarter turn, but his head is cocked back to the camera, as if to say, “Hey, what’s up, ladies? As you may have noticed, I have quite a bit of style and personal confidence. I also have an American LinkedIn account. Yes, it’s true.”

Captain Style Coach is rocking a blue Oxford-style button-down shirt, a beige V-neck sweater, and what appears to be a heavy black wool suit jacket of some kind. He scores bonus Slovakian style points by popping the collar on his jacket.

Based on the picture, I have to assume that if Members Only jackets were available in the Slovak Republic, Martin would own as many as he could afford.

All that being said, I’m not current on what is hip and trending in Slovakia at the moment, so maybe Martin is the Tom Selleck of Eastern Europe. I’m inclined to believe he’s on the level, because he seems to really care about helping me develop my own authentic personal style, based on his second communication.

Hi Marc,

Thanks for connecting with me.

I specialize in helping men make more money and double their confidence in any situation by developing their own authentic personal style.

I’m curious, Marc, what do you want to communicate with your clothes?

Wow! I have only recently connected with Martin and he’s already blowing my mind with insightful personal authentic style queries. And he cares enough to ask the tough questions. What do I want to communicate with my clothes?

I took a second to total up the amount of time in the last forty-seven years that I have spent thinking about my clothes. It’s in the neighborhood of ten to fifteen minutes total, so it’s safe to say I have no idea what I’ve been trying to communicate with them. I have given it some serious thought now that Martin has encouraged me, and I have come up with the following.

What I seem to be currently communicating with my clothes is, “Hello. I am a middle-aged man. I am not homeless.”

But is that what I want to communicate? Martin is getting me out of my middle-aged, non-homeless comfort zone and forcing me to come to grips with that tough question. I really don’t know what I want to communicate right now, but one thing is for sure – my current clothes-related communications are not helping me at all in the money/confidence/women attention department. Martin is a Slovakian style genius!

But what to do about it?

As if Martin could read my mind, he just sent me this urgent communique:

Hi Marc,

I’m offering all of my new LinkedIn prospects a free style diagnosis of 1 outfit of your choice to find out how is your current style and appearance helping you reach your goals.

Would you like to take advantage?

My style and appearance are related to my goals!?!? Holy crap, Martin, you are turning my whole world upside down right now. Hell yes, I would like to take advantage.

Free style diagnosis, here I come! I am currently wearing a black San Francisco Giants T-shirt with less than two holes in it, and khaki shorts. I can’t wait to find out if that’s correct or not. I’m really looking forward to doubling my confidence and increasing my income by an unspecified amount.

I’m not entirely sure what will happen when my wife finds out that I am experiencing triple attention from women, however, or how that will impact my confidence/money escalations, but we’ll cross that authentic personal style bridge when we get there.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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Alaska

I am going to Alaska for a week and I’m only allowed to bring two pairs of pants. They are apparently very strict in Alaska about what you can and can’t bring with you. They gave us a packing list that we must follow to the letter. All of our clothes must fit into a 10” x 17” x 24” carry-on. Thankfully they are allowing me to bring five pairs of underwear, but that’s it. Not one pair more!

I guess maybe it’s not really the whole state of Alaska that is regulating my wardrobe. I think the list actually came from the fishing lodge. My wife’s folks are taking us to an all-inclusive fishing resort in southeastern Alaska. “Southeastern Alaska” is another way of saying, “the funny little hanging down part on the right side of Alaska that is really basically just the western coast of Canada.” So really, my wife’s folks are taking us to western British Columbia, so we should be able to get good strong beer but we don’t need our passports.

Whoever it is that is telling me I can only bring five pairs of socks, I think they are possibly concerned about the float plane. They are not the only ones. We fly on Alaska Airlines into Ketchikan, which is located on the southern tip of the U.S. portion of western British Columbia, Canada, where we will spend the night. In the morning, as the fishing lodge’s brochure tells us, a float plane will pick us up at our hotel. I’m not quite sure how that works, but I must assume our hotel is floating on a wharf in the middle of a large body of water. I can’t wait to sleep there. The float plane then takes us directly to the floating fishing lodge. Yes, the entire fishing lodge is also floating. Apparently everything in Alaska has to float. That could be why they limit the amount of pants you bring to their state. Too much heavy luggage and the entire state could go under.

Float plane… Hmm… The only parts of the float plane trip I am really worried about are the takeoff, the flight itself, and the landing. Everything else should be fine. A float plane is basically a fuselage with boat parts and plane parts that is not good at being either a boat or a plane. Who thought that was a good idea? I mean, I’m all for adventure and everything, and life is about taking risks, but let’s face it; you’re going to try to take off from and land this thing on the ocean. Do you know what a concrete runway never does? It never goes up and down. Do you know what never jumps up in front of planes taking off and landing on concrete runways? Humpback whales, that’s what.

As far as the flight itself goes, the boat parts of the float plane do absolutely nothing to help the plane fly once it’s in the air. In fact, they create quite a bit of what pilots call “drag.” Too much extra weight - let’s say from carry-on luggage containing excessive amounts of pants and underwear - and that drag can become a problem, causing the pilots to do something they call “swearing,” and something else they call “ditching.” You do not want to be in the same plane as a pilot who is saying the word “ditch” or anything through his teeth that rhymes with it.

I am thinking only of my children. I am not personally scared of float planes, or of any other type of obviously dangerous multi-use craft that appear to be the unholy spawn of a drunken hookup between Boeing and Boston Whaler. I am far too manly for that. The thing is, there is a very minute chance that something could go horribly, horribly wrong with the virtually foolproof task of removing a top-heavy catamaran from the choppy, wavy ocean at high speed using a propeller and wings, flying that boat in the air for miles and miles over a large, wide island that you cannot land on even if you wanted to, and then putting it safely back down in the whale-infested ocean. I mean, I’m sure it will all go fine, but on the off chance it doesn’t, I would simply prefer not to orphan our children in one fell swoop if we can avoid it. So I’ll try to get separate float plane trips for me and my wife, but if we have to fly together, I will personally go through each passenger’s 10” x 17” x 24” bag and count their pants.

My wife, on the other hand, was never worried about the float plane ride. (At least, not until now.) Since we’re talking about Alaska, and we’re talking about my wife, naturally she was worried about bears. She heard “Alaska” and thought, “No way. Too many bears.” Then she heard “floating lodge” and changed her mind. No problem! We’re out in the water. Bears can’t get us. Let’s go!

I heard “floating lodge,” took one look at the aerial photograph on the website (no doubt taken from a flying catamaran of death), and noticed that the lodge was in fact floating in a nice, protected horseshoe bay, but it was only twenty or thirty feet from the shore on one side. It might have even had a little gangplank.

I didn’t bother to mention to my wife that not only can bears swim really well anyway, they could probably walk to the lodge. I want her to come with us.

Neither of us have ever been to Alaska, and we’re looking forward to it. After looking at a map, it turns out it’s pretty big. I have relatives who live there, (in the real Alaska, not western B.C.), and when we were invited to come along on the fishing trip, my first thought was, “Hey, cool, maybe we can go see my cousins.” Then I looked on a map and realized that was like living in Florida, going to Wisconsin on vacation, and while you were there, trying to swing by California to visit someone.

Maybe we can catch a quick ride over to see them on the float plane.

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!

Vanity Sizing

The other day we visited some friends that were having a garage sale. My buddy’s wife had ransacked his closet and had a lot of very nice clothes out for sale. Figuring that I would get the friends and family discount, I dived right in. It was at that moment that I discovered perhaps the most disturbing and diabolical issue facing America today.

I was amazed by the variety of different brands of clothing that they were selling. It became obvious that our friends shop for clothes at higher-end retailers than I do. I get all my clothes from Costco and Target. This was my chance to score some good quality clothing at rock-bottom prices! The problem arose with the sizing.

The pants were OK, because all pants are sized in inches with a waist measurement and an inseam measurement. I know my numbers for those. I wish I could buy my pants as “large” or “XL,” but I understand the need for having a true measurement system, what with all the short, fat men and the tall, skinny men, and the short, skinny men, and the medium-sized slightly overweight men out there. The waist/leg discrepancies are widely varied.

Men’s torsos, on the other hand, come in six general sizes. Small, medium, large, XL, 2XL, and NFL linebacker. If you want to, you can get a lot more refined than that if you are shopping at one of those stores that have people that actually help you. They have shirts that use numbers, just like the pants. Shirts that are only sized in numbers might seem like a logical way to go for all shirts, but that would really be adding unnecessary complication. I would then have to remember my shirt numbers. I think I’m a 46 with a 17 neck, but I’m not really sure. Long or regular? Come on! I already have to remember my pant numbers, as well as my address, my zip code, and my phone numbers. That is plenty. I can’t have my life get any more complicated.

I wear an XL shirt, and I have since high school. Up until this point, if the shirt said XL, it fit me just fine. Not so, however, with the higher-end shirts at the garage sale. I pulled out one of my buddy’s golf shirts that had “L” on the collar. Normally I would have passed it right by, but it looked like the right size. Sure enough, it fit great. Hmm… That’s weird. I pulled out another one that said “XL” on the collar. Normally I would have bought it without trying it on, because I am a man, and we don’t like trying on clothes. This XL, however, looked more like a medium to me. I pulled it on over my t-shirt and sure enough, it was tiny.

I remarked at how small the “XL” was, accusing them of selling it because they had accidentally shrunk it in the wash, when I was corrected and told that it was actually a result of vanity sizing.

Vanity sizing!?! For a men’s golf shirt!?! Come on! For dudes?

As limited as my fashion knowledge is, I have actually heard of vanity sizing for women, and in their case, I can almost understand it, based on their seemingly endless preoccupation with their dress size. They don’t seem to mind that they are anywhere from a size 2 to 14 depending on the brand. That is probably due to the fact that they love to try on clothes. Men, on the other hand, do not love to try on clothes. We don’t even like to try on clothes. Actually, we hate to try on clothes. We don’t even like being in the store.

I don’t even understand the concept of vanity sizing with men’s clothes, since apparently, the change in sizing goes both ways. Some companies are catering to men who want to seem smaller than they really are. We will call that group the wo-men. Others brands are catering to men who want to pretend they’re bigger than they really are. We’ll call them the gro-men.

This must end. Whoever you are, and wherever you are, you corporate clothing company executives in charge of this sort of thing, I implore you, please stop. Whatever small percentage of wo-men and gro-men are out there that you are trying to garner favor with by messing around with sizes in some crazy plan to stroke their egos by making them feel either smaller or bigger than they really are, you need to think about the rest of us. The rest of us are actually grown men, and as I’ve stated, we hate trying on clothes.

We had a deal. We expect a “large” from your company to be the exact same size as a “large” from your competitor. We expect to be able to buy shirts and jackets out of catalogs and online, because we are not always near a Cabela’s or an L.L.Bean. We expect to be able to take a blue shirt off the rack, because we need a new blue shirt, and if the tag says “XL,” to be able to proceed immediately to the register and buy it in order to get out of the department store as fast as possible. If the sleeves are a little longer or shorter than our other shirts, we’re willing to live with that in exchange for not having to go into a dressing room and try it on. Provided, that is, that you kept up your end of the bargain and made the torso part of the shirt the size you said you did.

The common sizing rules are what knits this country together. When you start messing around with that covenant so some yahoo can feel good about buying one size smaller or larger than he actually should for some God-only-knows-why idiotic reason, the system starts to unravel. Darn it, if you keep this up, the very fabric of our society will be hanging by a thread! (Note to the general public – Sorry for all the clothing-related puns there, but I was trying to use language that fashion people would relate to. It seamed like a good idea at the time.)

Maybe, instead of punishing the rest of us by messing around with the sizes, you could keep the sizes the same and market a high-priced line of fake size labels that these ridiculous hyphen-men could iron into the collars of their shirts. You could market these tags in whatever magazines these wo-men and gro-men read. I’m assuming Vogue and Soldier of Fortune, respectively, would be a good start.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

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