Just a Smidge: getting old

Showing posts with label getting old. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

I'm "Watch the Grass Grow" Old

I am unhappy to report that I have found the surest sign of my aging, to date.

I mean, don’t get me wrong – there have been plenty of signs along this road. For instance, it’s been a long time since I could get on or off the couch without making some sort of groan, grunt, sigh, or popping sound.

I can’t tell the shampoo from the conditioner in a new shower, and I never think to inspect everything with my glasses on before I get in. If there is a third option for body wash, it’s all over. The Lord only knows what I washed and “shampooed” with that morning.

I keep Advil in most every room of the house and all the cars, I really can’t watch TV without the subtitles, and don’t even get me started on strange cars parking in front of my house!

Obviously, I’m getting old, but I wasn’t aware just how old until we got rid of our backyard play structure. A few months ago, a young couple with two little girls became the next caretakers of the behemoth wooden tower-o’-fun, and we were left with a large open area at one end of our backyard.

Many ideas about what to do with the space were brought up by my wife, all of which sounded either prohibitively expensive or prohibitively difficult. She finally agreed to my relatively simple suggestion of “lawn,” and so began my latest project.

Simple does not always mean easy, and I am not going to lie to you – digging trenches for the sprinklers to service the mere 540 square feet of new lawn almost did me in. Normally, digging sprinkler pipe trenches is not a big deal, if you live in a place that uses dirt for the ground.

Our neighborhood doesn’t use dirt. We use round, river rock cobblestones to hold up our houses here. You can’t dig in our neighborhood with a shovel. The shovel just makes a ping noise and stops dead on a rock the size of softball, two inches underground. That rock is surrounded by other rocks, ranging in size from golf ball to volleyball, which continue no matter how far you dig down with your pickaxe and digging bar.

The small spaces between the rocks are usually filled in with dirt, but in this case, they were mostly filled in with tree roots, since the whole 540 square feet of would-be lawn is under a massive tree of unknown species. (I have never known what any of our trees or bushes actually are, and I don’t care, as long as they don’t fall onto the house. So far, so good. I think the rocks hold them in place.)

I only needed to put in nine sprinkler heads, but the trenching ran me out of Advil in every room in the house and two of the cars. When I had recovered enough to stand up almost straight, and the new pipes were in the ground and buried, we brought in some beautiful new rock-free topsoil and leveled it all out.

I spread the new grass seed and raked it into the amazing new dirt ten days ago, and in those ten days I have found out how old I really am. I have probably inspected the new lawn area between 50 and 75 times since the seed went on. I have told people I don’t even know about my new grass sprouts that started to happen five days ago. The people I do know are now avoiding me, but I don’t care, because I’m in my backyard staring at my “lawn.”

When I was able to, I even got down on my hands and knees to inspect the little shoots and look across all of them at eye-level.

I had no idea the amount of joy I would get from seeing that one bare patch over there start to show some green yesterday.

I mean, what the hell?

This kind of thing sneaks up on you. One minute you’re skateboarding through life without a care in the world, and the next you’re mad that they rearranged the grocery store. It was fine the way it was.

But it wasn’t until this week that I realized I was “watch the grass grow” old.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go check and see if that middle section has filled in any since this morning. It’s warm today!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

I'm Not Mad, I'm Just Old

You know the old saying, “Looking down your nose at someone?”

It means you disapprove of them or the way they’re acting, or you consider them inferior or unworthy.

I think the origins of that saying may have just been a misunderstanding, because I am starting to look down my nose at everyone.

You see, it all starts somewhere between forty and fifty years old, when your perfectly good eyes decide they have been working too hard for too long and it’s now time to relax.

You’ll be cruising right along, enjoying your carefree life, when all of a sudden, one evening in a dimly-lit room, the directions on that label or the serial number on that sticker don’t seem to be printed very clearly.

You’ll blame inferior fuzzy Chinese inkjet printing for a few days, or weeks, until you realize that holding that label a little farther away from your face brings that very clearly-printed text into focus.

Hmm… That’s odd.

You’ll just get into the habit of reading things farther away from your eyes for the next few months, or years, pretending that you’ve always done it this way, until one fateful day you discover your arms are somehow shorter than they used to be. You can no longer hold the fine print far enough away from your face.

You think about getting one of those trash grabber claws to hold things out further, but then you notice a pair of your wife’s magnifying reader glasses sitting on the counter.

You don’t need glasses, because you can still see things in the room and you can read street signs just fine. Your eyes are great, and besides, you’re not old. But you say to yourself, “I wonder what things look like with those? Probably so crazy-magnified with my strong vision that they’ll make me want to throw up. But I should try them just to see…”

And then you put them on…

Holy crap, this counter has crumbs all over it. Where were those a second ago? And my God! I can read this note sitting on the counter so CLEARLY! But then you look up out into the living room and everything out there is blurry now and giving you a headache.

And just like that, the transition has begun. You will need magnifying glasses from here on out.

You will buy yourself twenty-five cheap pairs of readers from Amazon and spread them all over your life so that you’ll always be able to read the words, and thread the needle, and see the slot for the screwdriver. But you won’t need or want them to watch TV, or drive, or talk to someone.

So now you’re carrying readers around with you everywhere you go and complaining about how dimly lit the restaurant is. And while you’re perusing the menu and discussing the entrees with your tablemates, you have a problem. You need the readers to see the menu, but not to see the people. So, what do you do…?

You put your readers out on the end of your nose. Now you can tilt your head back to read the menu with your readers, and tilt your head forward to see your friends, over the top of your glasses.

And in that moment, the transition is complete. You are old.

You now look and act like every old person you’ve ever seen in a movie or when you were younger, tilting their head back and forth and peering over their glasses at they speak to the person interrupting them from reading the newspaper.

You always thought those old people looked so disapproving of whomever they were talking to, because they were literally looking down their nose at them. But now you realize, they were just trying to see them clearly and were tired of taking their readers on and off.

You have become them.

And then it hits you – Oh, man, what are people thinking I’m thinking??

So, I just want to make it clear on behalf of myself and all my fellow reader-needers out there – we’re not looking down our noses at you just because we’re looking down our noses at you!

We’re just trying to see you as clearly as we can see our phone, our book, or our food. So please, don’t read anything into it.

Unless, of course, you’re being an idiot. Then we’re definitely looking down our noses at you – both ways.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, July 17, 2024

I'm in a Pickle

My mother-in-law is turning 80 years young in a few months. She taught our family the game of pickleball. She also taught me that saying cheesy things like “80 years young” is far more beneficial to our relationship than saying “80 years old.”

Pickleball, as you may have noticed, is gaining popularity at a rapid rate. Play it once, and you’ll be hooked, unless you are a tennis player.

If you play tennis, and are serious about it, which every tennis player seems to be, you will not like pickleball ever, because you will refuse to try pickleball, because pickleball is loud and adds annoying extra lines to what are supposed to be TENNIS courts, and it’s loud, and the people who play it laugh and shout, and there is no place for that kind of thing on a tennis court, because tennis is a serious and quiet sport and pickleball looks and sounds fun and loud and there is absolutely no place for fun anywhere near tennis courts!

But, if you actually enjoy having fun, chances are great that you’ll like pickleball. A lot of its popularity comes from how scalable the game is. A group of very athletic twenty-somethings can have a lightning-fast game of doubles on the court next to the group of ninety-somethings with only one original hip joint between the four of them, enjoying a much slower-paced game of the exact same rules on the exact same size court.

We are currently spending the week down in beautiful Morro Bay, California, at my mother-in-law’s house. She is the treasurer for the Morro Bay Pickleball Association, which has four dedicated pickleball courts annoyingly close to two dedicated tennis courts. So close, in fact, that you can sometimes almost hear the tennis players disapproval of all the fun over the noise of all the fun.

The MBPA consists of a very large group of retired people all over the age of 70, who can all kick my ass in pickleball.

That’s the hard lesson I had to learn when I started playing. I don’t think we could name another sport that exists that my mother-in-law could beat me at. She is an incredibly active 79-year-old, but I still have every sports advantage over her, simply because of our age, size, and strength gap.

I really can’t think of another sport – even the ones I’ve never played. I mean, neither of us have ever played jai alai – neither of us even really know what it is – but I guarantee I come out on top if we played a match, or game, or set, or whatever they call it.

But then there’s pickleball - the great equalizer. It’s the one physical activity that legitimately qualifies as a sport that I’m aware of where nothing about your size, strength, or age is going to help you gain an advantage over the lady who plays for three hours a day, even though she’s 79, weighs 90 pounds, and has no cartilage in any of her joints anymore.

And I had come to terms with that fact, after playing with her and her friends enough. It was OK. Pickleball is just like that. I don’t play or practice enough to be very good, so it’s OK if I get beat by old ladies. That was fine.

But then the little kids showed up.

There we were the other day, enjoying a loud, fun time and annoying the adjacent tennis players, when a grandpa showed up to the pickleball courts. He had his two grandsons with him, and they were only six and eight years old.

To our surprise, grandpa took the court with the six-year-old as his doubles partner.

An unsuspecting couple who appeared to be in their early sixties were on the other side of the net. They got destroyed.

Grandpa was good, but his grandson was amazing. Covering the whole back court and hitting a two-handed forehand and backhand, he could place it anywhere he wanted. If the couple was playing back, he’d drop it right over the net. If they were too far forward, he’d make them pay for their foolish behavior by lobbing a beautiful shot over their heads right to the back line.

His eight-year-old brother was laying on the side of the court at the net, casually watching the action. I asked him their ages and which one of them was better. With absolutely no braggadocio in his answer, he said, “I’m a little better than he is.” Just stating the facts.

So, what that meant was, if I found the best doubles partner I could come up with from my circle, which would probably be one of my very athletic teenage sons or my mother-in-law, we still would not have stood a snowflake’s chance in hell against these two elementary-school-age brothers.

I have made my peace with taking staggering losses from my soon-to-be 80-year-old mother-in-law, but I draw a hard line at getting embarrassed by a second-grader and his kindergartner brother.

Maybe I’ll take up tennis.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

48 at 52

I turned 52 years old on Friday, and before you ask, no, that was not the reason for the three-day weekend. I don’t think congress has even looked at my proposed amendment yet, which is ridiculous.

On or around my birthday, I have traditionally added one piece of “wisdom” (using that term very loosely) to this list. When I turned 51 last year, however, I officially changed that format to begin reducing the amount of “wisdom” on this list by one thought per year. Let’s face it, when I turn 100, the last thing you want to have to do is read 100 rambling, nonsensical ideas from my no longer functioning brain.

So, here it is – 48 at 52. We’ll keep subtracting one each year until the wheels come off. You’re welcome.

1. The clearest evidence that capitalism beats communism is that we have at least three private citizens who own multiple space rockets. Suck it, North Korea.

2. Until you have kids and a mortgage, you will never understand the awesomeness of date night at Home Depot.

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

4. There is an obvious and urgent need for a national four-way stop sign training program. If only there was some central agency in charge of making sure drivers knew the rules of the road…

5. With the circumference of a circle, Pi is always a fixed number. With the circumference of a person, pie is rarely a fixed number.

6. The truth is like poetry, and nobody really likes poetry.

7. Here’s one of the main differences 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. Love is great and all, but the strongest force in the universe is clearly the one that holds 5-gallon buckets together in the stack.

9. Around mid-November each year, my feelings toward the “Christmas lights stay up on the house all year” crowd changes briefly from mild distain to all out jealousy.

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

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. You find out a lot about a person by how they deal with airports.

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 never 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. Figure it out, people!

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. There are very few things in life that can make you feel as special as the phrase “or current resident.”

23. You can give any kid – from age 2 to 22 – as many reminders about the departure time as you want, but they will never start looking for their shoes until you are sitting in the car.

24. For my money, nothing says “I never want to have a real job” quite like a face tattoo.

25. Closing the door to avoid waking someone up but accidentally waking them up by closing the door is irony. If it doesn't fit that model then it’s not irony. It's just a coincidence or unfortunate. I’m looking at you, Alanis Morissett.

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. Nothing good has ever happened below 90.1 FM.

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 waterboarded.

30. You can't take bell peppers off a pizza.

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. I’m not saying I did this, and I’m not saying I didn’t do this – I’m just saying you should avoid doing this.

32. It’s hard to 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. The fact that there is such a thing as the American Cemetery Excellence Award is proof that there is no industry that will not self-congratulate.

34. Quantity of repetition does not equal truth.

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 dry my hands with?

36. There is a big, and usually obvious, difference between something that was designed and something that was just built.

37. Its not interchangeable. (take all the time you need)

38. If you have multiple sons, there is a fine line between upraising and uprising.

39. If a pest control company has a permanent “now hiring” sign painted on their truck, chances are it might not be a great place to work.

40. Scientists recently discovered that female dragonflies will fake their own death to avoid mating with males. I’ll bet all the married scientists were like, “Yup.”

41. You know when you pull into a parking space next to someone who is parked at a crazy angle, so it forces you to park at that same crazy angle, then you come back to your car and the other car is gone, so it just looks like you chose to park at the crazy angle for no reason? You always hope that the people who saw your car by itself understood that someone else forced you to do it, but you know damned well you yourself never gave the first guy the benefit of that doubt.

42. The challenge with raising independent, free-thinking adults is that you have to live with independent, free-thinking 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’re drunk (and you have pee on you now)

44. There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

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 ruining your perfect bun. I feel your pain.

46. If you are looking to try it, kombucha is an acquired taste. Meaning you have to acquire one of those long skinny cheese graters and completely scrape all the taste buds off your tongue. Then you can drink it.

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.

48. It’s time to stop warning people that "message and data rates may apply." If people don't understand how their text and data plans work by now, they should have to learn the hard way.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Concert-ing My Age

My wife and I went to a concert this past weekend with a group of good friends. She and I have been to a handful of concerts over the last few years, and I must say, I’m not loving the crowds and the noise quite so much anymore. Or at all.

At a normal concert, you get a wide age range that shows up, but the concert this weekend was special. We went to see Tainted Love, which is a semi-local band that does nothing but cover ‘80s and ‘90s top forty songs. Specifically, the songs we grew up with.

So, we discovered on Friday night that there’s a very obvious and almost universal demographic that shows up to a Tainted Love show, consisting of people who graduated from high school somewhere in the late ‘80s to early’90s.

Meaning us. And also meaning, we were all old.

When we got there, it struck me that they had missed a huge opportunity not having the show sponsored by a proctologist.

“Thank you, Roseville! It’s great to be here, and remember, if you haven’t scheduled your first colonoscopy, it’s time! Go see Dr. Phillips at Sutter Proctology. Speaking of doctors, here’s Bad Medicine by Bon Jovi!”

Or if that’s not the vibe the band is going for, at the very least they could be sponsored by a chiropractor or a financial company selling annuities.

Besides missed ad revenue opportunities, I made a few more observations on Friday night:

As an over-50 concertgoer, I like my shows to start on time. I know it goes against the rock and roll lifestyle, but dammit, be punctual. I was annoyed early on when we showed up to closed venue doors and a mile-long line. The tickets said the doors would open at 7:00pm and the show would start at 8:00. It was 7:30. We learned in line from some other annoyed over-50’s that the website contradicted the tickets and had 7:30/8:30 listed.

At that moment I learned that I think 8:30pm is a tad late to be firing up a concert. I’m not going to lie – I like to be in bed by 9:30 these days. To the band’s credit, probably because a couple of the main guys looked to be around my age, they started right at 8:30.

I also learned that I like my rock and roll on the muffled side now. We bought the tickets back in November, so my wife and I gave each other really cool earplugs that another old friend (take that any way you want) told us about. I was even showing them off at dinner before the concert. When the band started (thirty minutes late!) I could hear the music just fine. I pulled one of them out of my ear during the show to see how well they were working, and I was appalled at how loud it was. That was new.

But probably the most humorous observation I made on Friday night was how lame the fights are at an over-50 rock show. You’ll be shocked to learn that alcohol still remains the major – and possibly sole – catalyst for concert shenanigans and general ballyhoo, but things are a little different at a Tainted Love show than an AC/DC concert.

We had a situation unfold in front of us where two guys were pushing and shoving and threatening to throw down, but the potential fight was quickly diffused by my wife and my dentist.

I am not making that up.

Rock on!

(You. You rock on. I’ll be at home.)

See you soon,

-Smidge

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Who Needs a Doctor?

It’s that time of year again at Casa de Smidge, when we get new health insurance cards along with a warm, heartfelt letter from Sutter Health, welcoming us into their community of doctors, nurses, and happy patients, as if we haven’t been with Sutter Health for the past twenty years.

All three of our kids were born at Sutter, yet somehow, they see fit to welcome us in every year. Son Number One is going off to college in a month, for goodness sake. We’ve been with you for a while now!

Anyhow, my wife and I share (or shared) a PCP, which is insider medical lingo for Pretty Cool Physician, if I’m not mistaken. I say “shared” because we just found out she is retiring, or just leaving Sutter, or possibly both. I don’t remember.

So, along with our annual welcome letter, we need to find a new doctor (or doctors if we can’t agree again). I was happy to see that the boys’ pediatrician was still the same. Dr. Wong is the best! However, sitting at my desk, seeing his name on their health insurance cards got me thinking.

Not only is Son Number One eighteen years old now, but he’s also heading off to Nevada for college. Eighteen seems like the logical age to stop seeing a pediatrician, because “pediatrician” is literally Latin for “pediatric physician.” Also, I don’t think Dr. Wong makes house or dorm calls in other states.

That got me thinking, how do I go about finding a new doctor for my son in another state? And that got me thinking about when I went off to college, hundreds of miles away from my former pediatrician. Who was my doctor? I couldn’t remember.

And then it finally dawned on me why I couldn’t remember. Because I went off to college and never went to another doctor for an annual physical until I was thirty-five. Sure, I went to the hospital emergency room a few times, but who didn’t, am I right? But I never had an actual doctor.

Generally, men ages eighteen to thirty-ish never even think about the doctor. Or checkups. Or health. Or much of anything, actually. We’re just sort of there, participating in the moment’s current activity and otherwise not having a whole ton of deep thoughts or planning.

When I finally realized that, I relaxed a little and decided I didn’t need to worry about Son Number One. I stood up from my desk and stretched, and was immediately reminded of my real priority.

The stretch reminded me that I tweaked my back a little last night.

Coughing.

I’m fifty-one and I literally hurt my back coughing. So, yeah, I’m worrying about the wrong Schmatjen male here. Son Number One will be just fine, but I need to find a new doctor, stat.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

We Need the EurApp

Son Number One is in Paris as we speak.

Paris, France. Not the one in the God forsaken middle of nowhere California desert, although I think that one is spelled differently now so people stopped confusing the two and ending up on the wrong continent.

He’s on an amazing Europe trip with his former high school physics teacher – a seasoned traveler who has been running an awesome summer travel program for the past twenty years.

Tomorrow morning they take a train to Burgundy. Or Bordeaux. Or Boone’s Farm. One of the towns named after a fine wine, anyway. After that, they head for Spain and then Portugal.

We think he’s been having a good time and seeing the sights, because we can watch him move around on Life360, but it’s proving hard to get information out of him. We’re not sure if we’re seeing where he’s going, or where the pickpocket who has his phone is going.

Here’s an actual text exchange between us and him:

Son Number One: [Arrives in Paris]

Son Number One:

Mom: Did you make it? Are you at the hotel? How was the flight?

Number One: ya

Number One:

Me: Good to hear you made it. Have fun and send us some selfies from the cool stuff.

Number One: ok

Number One:

Mom: OK, I’m going to need a proof of life photo, please.

Number One: [Sends picture of crappy side street his hotel is on. No humans in photo]

Mom: OK, thanks…

Number One: ya

Number One:

Me: [Seeing that he is at the Eiffel Tower] Hey, how is the Eiffel Tower?

Number One: cool

Number One: [sends picture looking up the tower from the ground]

Me: Cool!

Number One: ya

Later that evening we told Sons Two and Three that he had been to the Eiffel Tower.

“Yeah,” said Number Two. “Cool that he got to go up to the top.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, he sent me a video. And also one from the crypt.”

“Crypt?”

“Yeah, he’s doing a lot of cool stuff. He’s sending me tons of pictures and videos.”

“Umm… can we see them, please?”

“Sure. Here you go. They’re all on Snapchat.”

[Videos of amazing sweeping panoramic views from the top of the tower, videos of him and his buddies on an ancient tunnel and crypt tour, picture of his buddy holing the Eiffel Tower in the palm of his hand, pictures of his amazing dinners, etc., etc., etc.]

OK, wow.

Apparently, it’s not that he can’t be bothered to share his experiences with his lame parents. It’s that his lame parents were lame enough to ask him to share his experiences on a lame app like regular old stupid text messaging.

If we had Snapchat it would be like we were on the trip with him, apparently.

Parenting in 2023 is a wild ride. The kids and their tech move fast, and you have to keep up if you want to meet them where they are. So, my wife and I talked, and decided to change how we were approaching this.

We’re just going to have Number Two keep showing us whatever he gets.

Neither of us want to try to figure out Snapchat.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

How Old Am I, Anyway?

The other day I went to the bank to withdraw all of our money, because my wife and I are getting ready for graduation season. We have a senior graduating from high school, and he has friends graduating, and we also have a lot of family friends with graduating seniors, so basically, we’re giving away our money like it’s free advice.

While I wasn’t exactly excited about being broke, at least the bank was rockin’. I parked in the shade, grabbed my phone from the center console, and walked across the parking lot. As I got up to the building, I could hear faint music playing from their outdoor speakers. As I entered the bank, the music got a little louder and clearer and I recognized the song as “Volcano Girls” by Veruca Salt.

They’re a ‘90s alt-rock band that I like, and I was immediately impressed by my bank’s music choices. I said hello to the info desk greeter girl, and she responded with a quirky smile. There was no one in line, so I was immediately waved over by a teller on the end of the row, at the low station that has a chair.

I happily plopped down in the chair and told the young lady behind the bulletproof glass that I wholeheartedly approved of their soundtrack. She smiled and laughed.

I said, “Veruca Salt. Good stuff.”

She laughed again and said, “Veruca Salt was the name of the girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

“Yep,” I said, “That’s where this band got their name. Anyway, well done.”

She gave me the second quirky smile I had received since walking into the bank, before she asked me what she could help me with. We were about halfway through withdrawing all of our money in various specific graduation gift denominations when I noticed my phone was getting hot against my thigh in my pocket.

I reached down and placed my hand on it and immediately felt it vibrating. Actually, more like pulsating. When I did, the cool bank soundtrack got a little muffled.

About a millisecond later I had come to the full and rather horrifying realization that I was the one providing the cool bank soundtrack. It was my phone playing “Volcano Girls” from my pants pocket.

“Oh my God, it’s my phone playing the music!” I said to the teller as I frantically yanked my phone from my pocket.

“Yes,” she laughed. “I thought you knew that.”

“No, I did not,” I confessed in the deafening silence of the stoic and professional bank setting after I had managed to stab the pause button on my fully lit Amazon Music screen. “I totally thought that was coming from the bank.”

I did not bother to ask her why she thought I would be OK with knowingly walking into dead silent banks and libraries and such, blaring ‘90s alt-rock from my pants. I was too busy being amazed/embarrassed/dismayed at the fact that I’m all of a sudden the deaf old guy who doesn’t know it’s his phone making all the racket.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I guess I have to get to an early bird dinner special and be in bed by eight o’clock.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

The Key to Our Security

I found a great new reality show that I’m really enjoying. There’s only three episodes, but I am loving watching them over and over again. Unfortunately for you all, I can’t really recommend the show, because it’s all footage from my Ring doorbell camera.

Allow me to explain.

We went on vacation last week, and our good friends’ son, who is a teammate of Son Number Two, and a young man we know and love, moved into our house to dog sit for us. He’s about to be a senior in high school, which makes the show even more entertaining.

In the first episode, our main character comes over to the house for the first time. He spends quite a bit of time at the front door fiddling with the lock before he actually went into the house. Our dog thought it was awesome, and continually barked “I’m so happy you’re here! Please come in!” at the window.

I wasn’t quite sure what he was waiting for, since I knew he wasn’t scared of the dog, but eventually he went in the house and I didn’t think much of it, until Episode Two.

Our main character is a social animal, much like our Labrador, and he had a number of friends over during the week. One of his friends, who is also a teammate of Son Number Two, ended up taking over for him one afternoon/evening when our main character had to work a long shift at his summer job. Episode Two of my new favorite show began on our front porch with our main character painstakingly teaching his stand-in dog sitter how to lock and unlock our front door using the key.

It was only then that I realized how important to the series Episode One had been. Prior to coming to our house, neither of these monkeys had ever used a key to unlock a door. They had both grown up with keypad-entry front doors. Episode One was our main character figuring out how the whole confounding key/lock system worked. I was mesmerized.

Just when I thought the series was limited to only two episodes, our good friends’ girls from down the street came over to walk our dog with her sister. (To clarify, our dog and their dog are sisters. The neighbor girls are also sisters. All were involved.)

The key that our main character had in his possession works normally. The key that our friends down the street have was cut a little wonkily. It opens the door just fine, but you have to jiggle it a little bit to get it to turn at first. This added an exciting dimension to Episode Three, and extended it well past the length of the first two episodes combined.

In all, four different girls attempted to unlock our front door before finally gaining entry. After retrieving our dog and her leash, it actually took even longer for them to re-lock the door, apparently not learning much about the ingredients of success on the entry. It was magical entertainment.

Apparently, we are the only house left among our friends that still has keyed doors. It seems, in the not-too-distant future, this will be a new level of security, along with a new level of convenience. Soon, we won’t have to carry our keys around with us. We can simply lock our doors and leave the keys hanging on a hook on the porch.

I’m sure at some point advanced thieves will figure out some code scanning software that can read the keypad door locks and produce the codes. It’s probably already an Android app. The thing is, anyone advanced enough to use the code scanning software will also be young enough to apparently not know how keys work. It’s a lot like how we adults can now write coded messages that teenagers can’t crack simply by writing in cursive.

My old, keyed door lock will soon be more secure than a keypad combination lock, at a fraction of the cost.

What an informative and entertaining show I discovered!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

An Open Letter to the Postmaster General

Dear Postmaster General,

For starters, I have absolutely no idea what your title means. I assume I’m writing to the person in charge, but maybe yours is an honorary title and you’re reading this from your yacht in the Caribbean while the actual CEO of the post office does all the work? (If that is the case, please have your yacht captain forward this to the CEO.)

If you are the one in charge, I have some questions about the title. “Postmaster” seems fairly self explanatory. You’re the master of all things postal. I get that. It’s the “General” that I’m confused about. Is that General as in encompassing all things, or is yours a formal military position?

If you are, in fact, part of the military, could I make a request that you change your staffing immediately. The civil servants delivering the mail now are, shall we say, a tad on the apathetic side. We could really turn that around by replacing them with Army Rangers.

Every kid in America, and probably most of the adults, would be thrilled to see the Blackhawk touch down in the middle of the cul-de-sac and the Rangers pour out from both sides to do a coordinated strike on the mailbox cluster. Costs may increase slightly, but efficiency will go through the roof. Something to think about.

Anyhow, I’m writing today on a postal matter that obviously needs your attention. I recently turned fifty, and out of nowhere my doctor’s office sent me a specimen collection kit in the mail.

The sending of the specimen kit to me is not the postal issue. The specimen kit, as of now, is harmless. However, if I follow their instructions, it won’t be harmless for long.

They want me to mail them my poop.

Now look, I don’t know if this is a prank or not, but the kit and the paperwork look fairly official. Apparently fifty is the age I need to start worrying about my colon. Add that to the long list of body parts I need to worry about, I guess. If the kit is bogus, it certainly is elaborate, so I’m treating it like it’s real. That being the case, this is obviously something you should be aware of.

Did you know about this? If this is real, I can’t imagine this is the first time this mail-order poop request has gone out. Again, I have no idea what your job entails, but I would rank preventing mailing of poop as probably a pretty high priority for your office.

The instructions are detailed and clear, and the poop collection stick and containment bottle seem well made, but let’s face facts. They want me to send my poop through the mail. That’s crazy.

How did something like that ever get approved by your office? Are you trying to tell me in all the years this has probably been taking place that not one less than desirable situation ever occurred with a poop mailing? I find that hard to believe.

You know FedEx and UPS would just be a hard no. How is the USPS allowing this? Are you asleep at the wheel? Just bad at your job? Or are you being paid off by the poop specimen lab lobbyists? That’s it, isn’t it!? You’ve used your powerful position for personal gain at the expense of the poor poop-toting mailmen. That’s how you can afford that gigantic yacht!

On second thought, you might not want to get the Army Rangers involved. I’m starting to understand the apathy I’m seeing in the civil servants you currently employ. If the Rangers ever found out they were transporting cardboard envelopes of poop, you might end up with a Blackhawk full of disgruntled soldiers landing on your shiny yacht.

I wonder if they’d land it on the poop deck, just for emphasis?

Probably best not to think about it.

Disappointedly,

-Smidge

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Walking is Hard Work

I would like to lodge a formal complaint against anatomy, physiology, exercise as a whole, or any combination thereof. I’m not sure who I should complain to here on earth, however, and I’m not about to complain to God about how my body works. That would be like complaining to Samsung about how my cell phone works. It’s so incredibly complicated and so, so far past my capacity for understanding it, that I have literally no leg to stand on there.

Speaking of legs to stand on, that’s what my formal complaint centers around. Since there’s no earthly authority in charge of this, I believe at this point that I’m just lodging a formal, public whine. So be it.

Here’s my problem: I’m a recovering engineer. No, not my engineer-ish social awkwardness. The other problem. The fact that after a technical college education and a lengthy career in engineering design and implementation, I understand the physical laws of the universe fairly well. At least, the physical laws of motion.

For example, and to my point, work is work. It doesn’t matter if I move one pound up ten feet in the air all at once, or if I move that same one pound up one foot a day for ten days. When I get to ten feet, the amount of work I’ve done is the same for both scenarios. The difference is in the amount of power that was required. Power involves a time component. Work does not. The social awkwardness problem comes in when I think people want an explanation of that concept at dinner parties.

The complaint, or whine, that I am lodging is that walking versus running should work the same. My problem is that I have recent empirical proof that it does not.

We just got back from Washington D.C., where we walked for six straight days. My main/only form of exercise is running. And when I say running, I mean jogging. And when I say jogging, I mean slowly. I run three miles, three days a week. That’s nine miles a week. I think that’s pretty good for a fifty-year-old guy who likes chocolate more than he should. At least, I thought it was pretty good.

Here's my complaint: None of my running prepared me for the walking, and the walking didn’t translate back to the running. Allow me to explain.

My feet hurt in D.C. My legs hurt. I was tired at the end of the days. My feet and legs don’t hurt after running. By the laws of the universe, if I can run three miles in a day, I ought to be able to walk at least nine or so, right? I mean, I don’t really know what the conversion is, because I’ve never timed my walking pace for a mile, but it’s got to be at least three to one against my running, right. I do both very slowly!

We walked a lot, but I don’t think we ever got anywhere close to walking nine miles in one day on the trip. The Smithsonians are big, but they’re not THAT big.

Anyway, we do all that walking, amazed at how tired we are from it, then come home and take a nice two-day break before resuming normal activities. If all the walking was inexplicably wearing me out so much, I should have been getting in better shape, not worse, right? Well, let me tell you, my first attempt at running was pathetic. Or should I say, pathetic-er than normal.

I was sucking wind! It felt like I hadn’t been doing anything for a month. And our sample size of test subjects is not just limited to one overweight, marginally-athletic fifty-year-old man. Our super-trim, very athletic sixteen-year-old, Son Number Two, was right there with me doing all the walking in our nation’s capital. He came home to a lacrosse scrimmage and was a pathetic mess trying to run up and down the field as a midfielder. It was sad.

I am not OK with doing all that work and getting seemingly no return on it whatsoever. Work is work in physics. It should be the same in physiology!

OK, enough whining. I obviously need to get back to work.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

50 at 50

I turned 50 years old yesterday, and I feel great. My hip only hurts most of the time, and I was able to get out of bed with only a minimal amount of groaning and old man noises. The dog looked at me funny, but she always does. I took her for a run and I didn’t collapse in a heap, so I’m going to consider that a win.

Now, getting old obviously has some disadvantages, but they do say that with age comes wisdom. Unfortunately, I wish that were more true. Nonetheless, in honor of hitting the half-century mark, I have added to my list of thoughts, observations, and acquired “wisdom.”

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

1. The clearest evidence that capitalism beats communism is that we have at least three private citizens who own multiple space rockets. Suck it, North Korea.

2. The recent advent of axe throwing places that serve alcohol makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I think they could be the thing that gets this country back to our original motto: America – Dammit, you are free to be as dumb as you want to be under the law.

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

4. Things would go a lot smoother out there if everyone just drove while driving.

5. With the circumference of a circle, Pi is always a fixed number. With the circumference of a person, pie is rarely a fixed number.

6. The truth is like poetry, and nobody really likes poetry.

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

9. Around mid-November each year, my feelings toward the “Christmas lights stay up on the house all year” crowd changes briefly from mild distain to all out jealousy.

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

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 a stump out of your front yard with a chain and your truck, first make sure the roots aren’t wrapped around 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.

22. There are very few things in life that can make you feel as special as the phrase, “or current resident.”

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. We guys are much, much dumber.

24. Nothing says I never want to have a real job quite like a face tattoo.

25. Guys: Sitting down to put on your pants is one very clear tipping point toward old.

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 has saved you from being murdered at least a thousand times by barking at the front window, and 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 waterboarded.

30. You can't take bell peppers off a pizza.

32. It’s hard to 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. The fact that there is such a thing as the American Cemetery Excellence Award is proof that there is no industry that will not self-congratulate.

34. Quantity of repetition does not equal truth.

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. There is a big, and usually obvious, difference between something that was designed and something that was just built.

37. Its not interchangeable. (take all the time you need)

38. If you get a paper cut while reading a book about Navy SEALs, you’re not allowed to say ouch.

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

40. Scientists recently discovered that female dragonflies will fake their own death to avoid mating with males. I’ll bet all the married scientists were like, “Yup.”

41. We would be in much better financial shape as a nation if we just instituted my new $100 Million Rule. No matter what the project – bridge, building, plane, ship, department of department compliance, whatever – you get a one-time check for $100 million and if you can't get it done for that, too bad. It obviously wasn’t meant to be. No more money for you, ever.

42. The challenge with raising independent, free-thinking adults is that you have to live with independent, free-thinking 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’re drunk

44. Be wary of any celebrity’s restaurant endorsements if that same celebrity also endorses an antacid.

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.

48. It’s time for text-in radio contests to stop saying, "message and data rates may apply." At this point, if people don't understand how their text and data plans work, they should learn the hard way.

49. You can give a teenager reminders about your departure time every fifteen minutes for hours ahead of time, but they still will not start looking for their shoes until you are sitting in the car.

50. Love is great and all, but the strongest force in the universe is clearly the one that holds 5-gallon buckets together in the stack.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

An Open Letter to AARP

Dear folks over at AARP,

I’d like to start by saying, bite me.

Allow me to explain. AARP is for old people, and I’m only 49. Yet, you felt compelled recently to send me an AARP membership invitation entitled, “Welcome to the ‘50’s Club.’”

Sure, my 50^th birthday is next week, but that still doesn’t excuse this egregious affront to my youthfulness. Again, your organization is for old people. Really old people. Women with blue hair and men who sit on their front porch and yell at the neighborhood kids to stay off the lawn.

I have teenage boys, for goodness sake. I’m not old!

I don’t even understand what you want with me, besides, of course, my subscription money. You’ve listed all these amazing benefits of membership, and none of them apply to me. Discounts on meal delivery services? Last time I checked, Meals-on-Wheels was free. (At least, they’ve never charged me.)

Thirty percent off on eyewear? Sure, my eyes gave up trying years ago, but I get my magnifying readers at the dollar store, so I’m good there.

Discounts on dining? I’m not interested in the early bird specials, thank you very much. I don’t eat dinner at 4:00 like your actually old members do. I eat dinner at 4:30 like young people do.

And you bill yourselves as the “proven advocate for protecting Social Security.” I don’t want Social Security. I’ve never wanted it. It’s socialist. It’s right there in the title. I’ve never wanted the government taking my money from me and “saving” it for me for my own good. In case you haven’t been paying attention, the government has a 100% track record of being really bad at saving money.

I can save for my own retirement, thank you very much. And speaking of retirement, might I remind you of what AARP stands for? I realize you pulled a KFC and don’t talk about what your letters mean anymore, but in case you forgot, it was the American Association of Retired Persons.

Why are you even contacting me? I’m miles away from being retired, so how the hell do I even qualify? Also, thanks for rubbing it in my face that apparently there are young people my age out there who have already retired. That’s just hurtful and mean.

One thing, though – you mention health tips and advice a lot in the brochure… do you have any advice for what to do about aching hips? I’m not saying that I’m old, or even that my hips hurt, but I assume that a lot of your actually old members have hip issues, and I’d like to know what is recommended for relief.

You know, for future reference, of course.

So, to sum up, I’ll skip the amazing free insulated car trunk organizer you are offering and just go about my youthful, young man business.

But seriously, any advice you could give me on the hip thing would be great.

Sincerely, a very young almost-50-year-old,

-Smidge

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

49 at 49

I turned 49 years old two days ago. I was feeling a little down about entering the last year of my 40s, but it didn’t last past the afternoon. I ended up needing to make a trip to Walmart that day, and five minutes of mingling with the regular clientele had me feeling just fine about my life. I would highly recommend this form of self-care.

Now, getting old obviously has some disadvantages, but they do say that with age comes wisdom. Unfortunately, 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. I have coined a new term based on 2020-2021: “Bummerang” – When the same bad news or depressing situation keeps returning again and again and again.

2. The recent advent of axe throwing places that serve alcohol could very well be the thing that brings this country back from the brink of bubble-wrapped, snowflake entitlement and saves the America we know and love.

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

4. Things would be a lot better if everyone just drove while driving.

5. I don’t understand the debate about vaccinations. It’s sort of like worrying that birds are getting into your cat's dish and eating the food. It seems like an issue that will eventually just take care of itself.

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

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 Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos both own multiple space rockets. Suck it, North Korea.

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

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 a stump out of your front yard with a chain and your truck, make sure the roots don’t have ahold of your water main. Trust me.