Kids Say the Darndest Things

One of the great joys of parenthood is, of course, making stuff up when your kids ask you a question that you can’t answer. It really is the part of parenting that I enjoy the most. The thing I enjoy the second best is hearing the random thoughts, jokes and words of wisdom that come out of their mouths. Here are some of my three sons’ highlights:

I was eating lunch the other day with Son Number Three, who at three years old is a notoriously slow eater. He actually ate his lunch at a reasonable pace and finished before me, and wanting to praise that behavior, I said, “You finished before I did. Good job buddy!”
He replied, “Yeah, I beat you up."
"No, you beat me."

Driving with Son Number Three, he pipes up from the back seat and says, “Daddy, if you need to use the phone with two hands, the car will drive itself.”

“I don’t think so, dude.”

“Mommy does it.”

I guess Daddy needs to have a little chat with Mommy.

One of Number One’s best buddies was over at our house, and all the boys were playing Star Wars. The six-year-old guest runs up to me wearing a Darth Vader cape and brandishing a red light saber and says to me in a very serious voice, “You cannot estimate our powers!”

I think you mean, “Don’t underestimate the power of the Dark Side,” buddy.

Son Number One, while eating lunch, sets his sandwich down, sighs heavily, and says, “Wow. It has been such a long day already, I feel like it’s tomorrow.”

Been there, man.

Son Number Two, while on a bike ride around our neighborhood says to me, “Dad, I’m thirsty.”

“OK. You can get some water when we get back to the house.”

“Yeah. I’m going to have a bagel and some water.”

Huh?

While riding in the car with the whole family, we had a very rare few moments of silence. Prior to the calm, we had not been discussing anything remotely associated with food, so it caught my wife and me slightly off guard when Son Number Three comes out of the blue with, “Mommy, if you give me four cookies, then I could have a cupcake.”

While I appreciate your optimism, I’m not following your logic.

Our boys have always picked strange things to be jealous of their brothers over. Son Number One has allergies, and Number Three was apparently feeling left out when it came time for medicine.

“Mommy, I have allergies.”

“No you don’t.”

“Yes I do. I have two allergies in my eyes.”

We don’t have medicine for that.

Upon entering a public bathroom, Son Number Two says to me, pointing to the opposite wall, “Look dad, confetti.”

“You mean graffiti.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Son Number One and Number Two were attempting to play Frisbee. They were too far apart from each other, and having no luck getting the Frisbee to fly straight, so I offered some advice.

“Get closer to each other like when you play baseball catch so you can control it better.”
“Dad, we don't control Frisbees. Frisbees control themselves.”

I can’t argue with that. That has always been my experience, too.

We had finished dinner and were in the middle of a dessert of fresh fruit. Son Number One had apparently had his fill, and asked to be excused. When I told him that he needed to stay at the table and visit while everyone else finished, he asked for some more strawberries and watermelon. When he had finished his second helping, I asked if he wanted more. He said, “No thanks,” and then asked to be excused again. When I said no again, he asked for more fruit. At that point his mom asked him why he kept eating after he had asked to be excused. He replied, “Well, I don’t want to waste my time just sitting here.”

When it comes to food, growing boys are all business.

Son Number Two, eager to show off his new math skills, exclaimed, “Dad, listen, I can count all the way to one hundred!”

“Let me hear it.”

“One, two, three, four, five, six, I can’t really do it. I can count all the way to ten, though.”

He hasn’t quite mastered the art of under-promise and over-deliver yet.

Our three boys share a room, with the oldest being in his own bed, and the younger two in bunk beds. As I was turning out the light one night, Son Number One made the observation about Son Number Three, “We’re next-door neighbors when we sleep.”

Number Two calls down from the top bunk, “And I’m their up-door neighbor.”

Can’t argue with the logic.

One morning, at four years old, Son Number Two ran excitedly into our room and yelled, “Daddy, my chin weighs six pounds!”

(After lying prone on the floor with only his chin resting on the digital bathroom scale.)

Son Number Two had croup when he was four. After a bout of coughing, he thought for a second and said, “Maybe I’ll cough up this bug and we can see what kind it is.”

I wonder if he got croup from lying on the bathroom floor with his chin on the scale?

I made a special outing with all three boys to get In-N-Out Burger milkshakes. We had ordered and were waiting in the drive-thru line. There was a diesel pick-up truck in front of us, and when I rolled down the window to pay, Son Number One asked, “Why is it so noisy?” I told him it was the truck in front of us, to which he responded, “Oh. I thought it was the blenders.”

How big do you think these milkshakes are going to be?

Speaking of fast food restaurants, I was eating at a Wendy’s with Number One and Two, and we were having a very father-and-sons kind of time, so I thought I would take the opportunity to tell them about the wonderful story of Dave Thomas, Wendy’s founder. I explained to them that he was adopted as a child, and how he always appreciated that fact, so with his financial resources from his business he created the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. The boys listened attentively to my story, thought for a while, and then Number Two looked up at me and said, “Dad?”

“Yes, Son?”

“I have a motorcycle on my shirt.”

Swing and a miss.

And my personal favorite…

I had just come home from a long day at work, and I trudged upstairs to find my boys playing in the game room. When he saw me, the first words out of Son Number One’s mouth were, “I’m the town constable of Uranus.”

It doesn’t really matter what kind of day you’ve had after hearing that. That’s funny right there!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen

Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?

Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

The Tough Mudder

Twenty-five seconds into the course my thighs were on fire. My first thought was, “Oh, no. That can’t be good. I’m going to be running out here for three hours, and I’m already tired! ”

I was wrong. I would be out there for five hours, and I would not be running. Not very much, anyway. About thirty-five seconds into the course I had to stop running and start trudging. Everyone did. We were going straight uphill, and not just any hill. We were at 6200 feet in elevation going straight up a ski slope at Squaw Valley, CA.

Half a minute earlier, on that clear, sunny day, I had been full of energy, jumping around, yelling, chanting, high-fiving, and raring to go. Now I had my head down, watching my feet, power-walking and breathing fast and hard. How quickly things change at 6300 feet.

There were 600 people in my starting group. There were 2400 people already on the course, and another 4800 people that would come behind us, one group every 20 minutes. We all had the same information going in. It would be a 12-mile course with 20 different military-style obstacles. What we didn’t realize was what a truly sadistic course designer has to work with when putting together a 12-mile trail at Squaw Valley. We were in for a few surprises.

At mile marker one, we were face down in the water, belly-crawling across granite under barbed wire that was hanging so low, you had to put your face under water to get underneath it. It was at mile marker one that I realized that hearing or reading “military-style obstacle” is very different than actually tackling a military-style obstacle. They kinda hurt.

Out from under the barbed wire, up on your feet, and headed straight uphill again. Only soaking wet now. Two miles and 1000 vertical feet later and we were at another water obstacle. Jump into the chest-deep cold water, duck under the plywood divider, and climb out the other side. Keep running. A mile later and another 500 vertical feet, we arrived at the High Camp Bath and Tennis Club. It sits at 8200 feet above sea level and is apparently very nice. We didn’t get to look around much. On the tennis courts sat water obstacle number three. Same as number two, but with ice water. You literally had to fight your way through the floating ice cubes to get out.

We went into the water five more times over the course, spaced out so as to keep you wet and cold for the whole run. In between the swims, we got to climb steep walls, hang from monkey bars, shimmy up ropes, crawl through pipes, traverse over and under log walls, and even crawl under a cargo net on some of Squaw’s year-round snow at 8700 feet. The obstacles ended up being a fun diversion from the really nasty part. They were not content to march us straight up to the top and back down again. We went up, then came down, then went up higher, then came down lower, then went up even higher than before, then back down… You get the idea. We made five different “death marches” during the course.

At the half-way point, after carrying a log around a ¼-mile steep rocky loop and depositing it back on the pile for the next victim, we made it to the very top of the mountain on death march number four. Mile marker six was on Squaw Peak at 9000 feet. We had made it to the top of the world. That made the fifth death march a little surprising. Somehow they found a way to go up again after we came down off the top. Go figure.

Two hours later, when I got hit with the 10,000 volt electrical wire, 20 feet from the finish line, I was done being surprised. This was the Tough Mudder, and they don’t mess around.  

With the high-voltage current still bouncing around my synapses, I made it across the finish line to collect my trophy orange head band, my t-shirt, and my celebratory beer. Dos Equis amber and bananas are not known for their complimentary flavors, but at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon, nothing ever tasted so good!

There were three kinds of people on the course that day: The GI Joes, the average Joes, and the gym rats. As for the military personnel, there were a lot of them, and they were right at home. More than a few of their groups felt the need to make the course a little tougher by carrying something. I saw one guy carrying a 2-foot diameter wooden wire spool over his head, a Marine sergeant wearing a 20-pound weight vest, and even a team of Special Forces guys that carried an inflatable raft through the whole course. The US military simply puts out the best of the best. Super tough.

The gym rats on the other hand, are not tough. They are just young and pretty. They have shaved torsos, low body fat percentages, shiny muscles, and they can run really fast when they are warm. They are not cut out for the Tough Mudder. They don’t react well to being wet and cold. They were cramping up all over the place. Us average Joes have been training for this. We’re the ones who constantly have to be in the pool/lake/ocean watching the kids while the gym rats sun themselves on the deck/shore/beach. At home, us folks with young ones are constantly giving a squirmy kid a bath, getting peed on or being thrown up on. We’re wet and cold all the time. That kind of on-the-job training, plus our superior body fat percentages acquired through old age and Little Caesar’s five dollar pizza, gives us an edge.

Water events aside, being a suburban parent has a lot more inadvertent Tough Mudder training components than I had realized. Going over fences after lost Wiffle balls, walking barefoot across Lego minefields, slithering under the dining room table to play in the “fort,” putting fitted sheets on a bunk bed, crawling around on the floor of the SUV looking for the lost sippy cup; it all helps. My dad-ly training even came into play during the log carrying obstacle. The gym rats were foolishly trying to carry their logs on their shoulders. I just cradled that sucker in one arm and rested it on my hip. I’ve been carrying 35-pound kids like that for years.

All in all, it was a great experience. While I might not ever need to experience it again, I am very glad I did it. I was expecting to be completely immobile on Monday, but my legs were in surprisingly good shape. I am pretty well bruised and banged up everywhere else, though. I sneezed midday Monday and almost cried. I have taken more Advil in the last four days than in my whole life prior to now.

I seem to be healing up at an average Joe pace, so I can’t complain. I’m not allowed to anyway. It’s part of the Tough Mudder credo. No whiners.

The really good news is the involuntary flinching from the 10,000 volt shocks has fjgfyfncxvhbcu pretty much stopped.

The crazy Tough Mudder events (www.toughmudder.com) and the crazy people who enter them have raised over $2 million for The Wounded Warrior Project (www.woundedwarriorproject.org), which is a fabulous organization that helps injured service members through their challenges back at home. The NorCal event at Squaw Valley raised more money than any other Tough Mudder event to date. Thanks a million to all who donated to the WWP on my behalf. The Marines from the course send you a big “OORAH!”

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen

Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?

Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Soap, Part II

Our boys have started to take showers on their own. Up until now, we had been giving them baths. The decision to move to the shower was spurred mostly by the fact that all three of them don’t fit in the bathtub together anymore, and giving three individual baths really cuts into my TV time.

I still have to give Boy Number Three baths, but it was about time the older two started pulling their own weight in the personal hygiene department. Plus, we really wanted to see if the shower in their bathroom actually worked. We have lived in our current house for almost three years now, and up until this week, no one had ever used it. When I finally got the handle to turn, after the loud clanging noise subsided, water actually came out of the showerhead, so we were good to go.

After the Body Wash Incident of Early 2011 (See “Soap,” posted February 2, 2011) my wife has been sure to keep me stocked with plenty of good old-fashioned bar soap. Since my wife has inexplicably stuck with the body wash, and the kid’s baths get done with baby shampoo, up until now, our bar soap had been used only by me. So, this week was Boy Number One and Two’s first experience trying to wash themselves with a big bar of soap. Witnessing that slippery learning curve instantly flooded me with childhood memories of soap. I had a strange upbringing, soap-wise.

My dad was a pilot for Delta Airlines. In the early days of his career, with a wife at home raising three small kids, he would always bring the little bars of unopened hotel soap and the small bottles of shampoo home from his trips to help with the household budget. His flight schedule usually had him gone multiple days at a time, so he collected a lot of soap. So much so, that we never ran out. As the years went by, the Hilton/Marriott/Ramada soap harvesting never stopped. I showered with a tiny, fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand bar of soap from my very first shower until I was 18 years old. (Actually, I showered with a different one every other day. They don’t last very long.) As a result, I never had any early childhood regular-sized soap training.

I vividly remember the first time I used a real bar of soap. I was at least 6 or 7 years old, and we were staying with my grandparents while my parents went on a week’s vacation. I stepped into the unfamiliar shower and was immediately transfixed by the GIGANTIC bar of BRIGHT GREEN soap. (The hotel soap was white, tan, or the occasional exciting off-pink.) This was Irish Spring, and it smelled AMAZING. (The hotel soap smelled like almonds, talc, or nothing.) This giant, magical, colorful, brick-sized bar of cleanliness filled the entire shower with some heavenly, yet previously unknown fragrance. Apparently – based on the TV commercials of the 1970s -- it was supposed to remind me of the wonderful smell of a lush green Irish glade near a waterfall where I was walking hand-in-hand with a bonny lass in a turtleneck sweater, but since I had never done that, I didn’t recognize the smell. To me it just smelled strong and wonderfully different.

Then I tried to pick it up and use it. Now, big bars of soap are hard to handle for any six-year-old, but to a lad that had previously only worked with soap the size of a bite-size candy bar, this slimy behemoth was almost totally unmanageable. I must have dropped it, picked it up, and dropped it again a hundred times. The racket coming from the shower got so loud, my grandma came in to check on me, but I was so embarrassed about not being able to work the soap, I told her that everything was just fine, and that I obviously didn’t need any help. She left unconvinced.

After a half-hour of soap hockey, I finally ended up attempting to soap myself up while holding onto the massive slippery green bar with two hands at once. That is a pretty difficult maneuver, and I'm not sure how clean I actually got myself that day. Marginal hygienic success aside, it was one of the most memorable days of my childhood, so taken was I by the giant, fragrant green soap.

If asked to come up with the defining TV characters of their childhood, most guys my age would probably list the likes of Superman, The Fonz, Mean Joe Green, Bo and Luke Duke, etc.

I’m guessing very few would list an actor from a soap commercial. To my list, however, I must include the guy in the snappy turtleneck and sport coat, standing in the field, cutting the bar of Irish Spring open with his pocket knife. When I saw that commercial as a kid, I thought to myself, “Yeah, I was that guy for a day. Fresh and (insert wolf-whistle here), clean as a whistle!”

But alas, that one shower was the extent of my Irish Spring glory as a child. My parents came back from vacation, and it was small soap business as usual again.

There was, however, one major up-side to growing up with miniature soap. As kids, we never had our mouths “washed out with soap,” a la Ralphie in A Christmas Story, sitting with the bar of Lifebuoy in his mouth. My mom was probably afraid we’d accidentally swallow the hotel soap.

My boys won’t be so lucky. I’ve got plenty of full-size bars of Irish Spring. I love that stuff!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen

Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?

Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

This Will Be the Day That I Die

I am pretty sure that I will die on September 18^th, 2011, either during the day, or in my sleep that night. That’s a little disheartening, since it’s only about a week and a half from now. How do I know the exact day I will die? Because my toe hurts. Allow me to explain.

I woke up this morning, and out of nowhere my big toe on my left foot hurt so bad, I almost couldn’t walk. It was fine when I went to sleep, and I’m quite sure that I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary to injure it. So why does it hurt? I have no idea, other than the simple fact that I was born almost 40 years ago and now my body doesn’t work right anymore.

Well, alright, you say, but that still doesn’t explain why you know the day you’re going to die. Just be patient, I’m getting to that. I know the exact day, because I lost some weight a few months ago. Allow me to explain.

In March of this year, I decided that I needed to lighten my load a little, since I seem to be getting on in years, and I was having trouble seeing my toes for the first time in my life. I devised a simple weight loss plan and went to it. I lost about 20 pounds in a little over a month. Apparently, having great success with weight loss either sends one into a euphoric state of stupidity, or I am just naturally an idiot. I’m really not sure which. (That might be a clue right there!)

You see, I didn’t lose weight by exercising. I did it by eating half of what I normally eat, and going from 7000 fluid-ounces of Coke per day down to only 24. It was simple, and it worked great. The problem was, at some point when I was getting close to my weight loss goal, I must have thought to myself, “If I have enough will power to eat only half of that Chipotle burrito, then I should obviously enter an 11-mile obstacle course event billed as the ‘toughest event on the planet.’” I must have thought that, because that’s what I did. I am a fool.

I signed up for a race called the Tough Mudder. The fact that it is an 11-mile run with 20 military-style obstacles designed by a couple of ex-British Special Forces guys isn’t even the worst part. It’s the location. Since I live in Northern California, I stupidly signed up for the Northern California event. Probably sounded like a good idea at the time. They even told me where it would be held. They said “Squaw Valley” very plainly on the website. I know where Squaw Valley is, but the only thing that went through my head was, “Oh, that will be nice scenery!” I am a fool.

For those of you not current on your Northern California geography, or your history of run-down, overpriced ex-Olympic ski resorts, allow me to explain. Squaw Valley is a very large hillside in the Sierra Nevada mountains near Lake Tahoe, with a base elevation of 6200 feet above sea level. I said BASE ELEVATION. It has a summit elevation of 9050 feet. The map of the Tough Mudder obstacle course boasts an elevation gain of 2300 feet. That means that the lowest elevation that the top of the course can possibly be is 8500 feet.

I was vacationing with my family at another breathtaking spot in Northern California this past weekend; this one being on the coast. Most of the coast here in California is at sea level. In preparation for my idiotic event, I went running one morning on an old logging road in the forest. It had some pretty impressive elevation gains, also. I would venture a guess that I saw elevation changes of nearly 100 to 200 feet on my 20-minute run. Unfortunately, I got pretty winded.

Now, if there is one place in the world with a lot of oxygen, it’s a redwood forest at sea level. If there is one place in the world where there isn’t a lot of oxygen, it’s at 8000 feet in the air, anywhere in the world. Which is apparently where I’ll be running on September 18^th, 2011. Up hill. I am a fool.

I have no idea why losing a few pounds by not drinking my body weight in Coca-Cola every day translated into me thinking I was a cross between Lance Armstrong, Rambo and Chuck Norris, but apparently it did. Now, as the cold reality sets in, and I feel my nearly 40-year-old body getting winded while jogging in what amounts to nature’s oxygen tent, and I can apparently hurt myself while sleeping, I must face the facts. This race will kill me.

If you will excuse me, I need to get started putting my affairs in order. Honey, please promise me you’ll remarry, for the sake of the boys. They’ll need a strong father figure in their lives. Hopefully one a little smarter than me.

I’m hoping to die on the course, instead of in my own bed later that night. My bed is close to sea level, so if I die on the hill at Squaw Valley, and I do make it into Heaven, it will be a shorter trip.

At least my demise will be for a good cause. The crazy Tough Mudder events (www.toughmudder.com) and the crazy people who enter them have raised almost $2 million for The Wounded Warrior Project (www.woundedwarriorproject.org), which is a fabulous organization that helps injured service members through their challenges back at home. I can’t think of a better reason to do this! If you would like to help this most worthy cause with a few dollars instead of dying on a hillside like I’m going to do, you can donate to my race at https://www.raceit.com/fundraising/donate.aspx?event=3355&fundraiser=r1386483, or directly at the Wounded Warrior site above. Thanks!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen

Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?

Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Soccer as Birth Control

As an example of how crazy we have become, I will start with communications. When I played soccer as a youth, I am quite certain that my parents probably saw one flyer at the beginning of the year, outlining the practice schedule. There was probably a one page flyer handed out at the first or second practice that outlined the game schedule for the entire season, and that was that. With two pieces of paper, everyone knew where they needed to be and when.

When it was time for soccer practice, I was told to get on my bike and go to soccer practice. Why on Earth would my parents have driven me there, let alone stayed for the entire practice to watch? That was what the coach was for. When practice was over, the coach told us to go home. Simple.

Fast-forward to today. As I write this, I am sitting in a lawn chair watching Son Number Two's soccer practice. The miracle of modern tablet computers makes this possible, but does not answer the question of, "Why am I here?"

When did a child's sports practice become so important to us that we feel the need to have it take up an hour-plus of the parent's time also? I don't have the exact answer for that, but I do know it happened sometime in between when I was a kid and when I had kids of my own.

There has been an obvious shift in how safe we feel the world is, because parents today don't let their kids travel across town by themselves as readily as our parents did. As a result, we are raising a generation of kids who get lost a block from their own houses, but that's a separate subject. The safety issue explains why the parents drive their kids to practice, but not necessarily why they stay to watch. I guess a lot of it has to do with excessive trips. Once I'm here, I might as well just hang around until it's over. The occasional parent runs a quick errand, but for the most part, they just pull up a lawn chair and worry about their child dehydrating, or marvel at why two grown men can’t get nine five-years-olds to stand still in a straight line even if their lives depended on it.

Now, back to the communication issue. In stark contrast to the two paper flyers that handled the logistics for an entire soccer season of my youth, today's soccer leagues run on e-mails. A lot of e-mails. Based on my experiences so far, to run a youth soccer team these days requires approximately three e-mails per day be sent to each parent, starting two months before the first practice and never missing a day throughout the whole season.

There are vital logistical issues to address on an almost hourly basis, such as team banner design and procurement, uniform sizes, proper cleat specifications for the particular league, the heat index, the air quality index, proper child hydration techniques, acceptable soccer ball sizes, fluctuating practice schedules, fluctuating practice locations, raffle ticket distribution and sales, team sponsor procurement, team parent selection, game day halftime snack coordination, team sponsor patronage, game day-post game treat coordination, game day halftime snack and post-game treat food allergy considerations, coach and team parent fingerprinting and FBI background check verification, elementary school extracurricular activity scheduling conflicts, end-of-year party location and party theme, individual end-of-year trophy selection and procurement, game day sideline bench procurement or manufacture, game day sideline bench assembly duty schedule, opening day ceremonies schedule, sideline shade tent ownership queries, game day sideline shade tent assembly duties, coach and team parent end-of-season gift coordination, proper shinguard selection and management, picture and video collection for end-of-season media DVD, game day jersey color, etcetera, etcetera.

I have no good reason for why the amount of perceived soccer team management logistical hurdles has increased exponentially since my youth. Is it because now that we all have e-mail at our fingertips every minute of the day, we can finally take care of EVERYTHING that NEEDS to happen? Would all of these issues have been addressed in earnest if our parents hadn’t been severely hampered by a lack of technology?

Somehow, I doubt it.

Like I said, I don’t know why soccer has become so complex, but I am convinced that its newfound complexity is having a major impact on our society. Specifically regarding how many children we have. I truly believe as new families are growing, and young parents are considering adding a new bundle of joy to the lineup, the logistics of having those kids eventually play soccer has more of a role in the decision making process than almost anything else in the mix today.

"Honey, I realize that we always wanted a girl, but with two boys already in soccer, how can we even think about a third child? We don't even have enough time to keep up with the practices and e-mails with the two kids we already have."

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen

Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?

Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Hacker Grammar Bad

When my sisters and I were growing up, my mom constantly hammered home good grammar and spelling. If we said, “Me and my friends went to the park,” we were immediately corrected with, “My friends and I…”

“Ain’t” was forbidden to be uttered within a six-block radius of her home, and any misspelled words were underlined for correction before homework was allowed to be returned.

This continued through our high school years, and beyond, into college, and even continues today if I have a rare grammatical slip-up while talking with my mother on the phone. Anyway… When I was sent off into the world with my impeccable grammar and spelling, it started to become clear to me right away why my mother was so insistent on using English correctly. Good grammar is one of the trademarks of polite, civilized, educated society. There is no quicker way to be dismissed in business, or to be discounted as a miscreant, than to not know how you should talk good.

Yet, as with so many annoying things your parents did to you, only after you become a parent yourself do you truly understand the value, and truly appreciate their efforts. Poor grammar offends my very senses, and misspellings jump off the page at me as if they were highlighted. Today, I am riding grammatical herd on my boys, just like my mom did with us. “You didn’t throwed the ball, son, you threw it.”

And as with all labors of love, many of the fruits of said labors aren’t realized until much, much later. My mom could have never have known it at the time, but she was helping the next generation fight off computer hackers. Way to go, Mom!

Hackers, as a rule, have atrocious grammar. I’m not sure if this is because they are all phishing from North Korea, China, and Nigeria, and just don’t have the lingo down pat, or if they are simply American-born-and-raised ne’er-do-wells, or both. I guess it really doesn’t matter, as long as they keep tipping their hand with missing verbs. Here’s an example of something I received the other day:

An e-mail from an address that was vaguely official, but not quite, like “manager@creditaccount.com,” with a subject line reading, “Your Credit Card Overdue.” (Good start, guys!)

Dear Customer,
Your Credit Card is one week overdue.
Below your Card information
Customer 7990682142
Number XXXXXX
Card Limit XXXXXX
Pay Date 29 Jun 2011
The details are attached to this e-mail.
Please read the financial statement properly.
If you pay debt within 2 days, there will be no extra-charges.
In 2 days $25 late fee and a finance charge will be imposed on your account.
Please do not reply to this email, its automatic mail notification.
Thank you.

The attachment was a zip file titled “account_information.zip,” that surely contained a password stealing program or a virus of some flavor.

Now, come on, fellas! How stupid do you think I am? I mean, how hard would it be to find someone who can actually speak and read English to proofread your idiotic fake account alert?

The ridiculousness of it amazes me, but at the same time, it is totally understandable. If they had more smarts, they wouldn’t be criminals in the first place. Like the dynamic duo a few years ago that tried to rip an ATM out of the ground with their pickup truck. They attached a chain from their rear bumper to the ATM, and then hit the gas. The ATM stayed put and their bumper ended up on the ground. They had long since sped away from the scene of the almost-crime when the police arrived. The cops simply ran the license plate, found still attached to the bumper that was still attached to the ATM, and drove to their house to pick them up.

For a minute or two, you shake your head and wonder to yourself, “Why didn’t they at least retrieve the plate, let alone the bumper and the chain?” But then, the more you think about what they tried to do, and how they tried to do it, you say to yourself, “Of course they left it behind.”

Same thing is true, I guess, of communist North Korean hackers. If they had enough smarts to figure out how to do it right, they’d probably already be South Koreans. And if the American computer virtuoso-gone-hacker had an ounce of common sense, he would be writing programs for Microsoft instead of writing worms for the Russian mob.

I have to give the Nigerians a little credit, though. I have been getting scam e-mails from them for over ten years now, and at least they embraced their limitations early on.

“Look, guys, we can’t pretend we’re from their bank. They’ll never buy it. We can’t spell, and between all thirty-seven of us in this room, we can’t put together one decent sentence. Let’s just pretend we’re the son of a deposed king from right here in Nigeria. That way the grammar will be excusable. Hold my machete, Motumbo, I’m gonna start typing.”

As more and more of our every-day personal financial transactions are handled online, there is a cosmic leveling of the playing field when it comes to something as old-fashioned and fundamental as good grammar and spelling. The bad grammar of the hacker world is really quite handy. If the e-mails in your inbox were customers at a 7-Eleven, the bad grammar is the ski mask. See it, and you know something bad is about to go down.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to call my mom and thank her. Its cause a her learnin’ me right them hackers ain’t gonna git me!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen

Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?

Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Losing Our Remote Control

Our whole world changed this morning. Our oldest son learned how to use the remote control. Now, granted, he is only a few months away from being seven years old, so before you accuse him of being of below-average intelligence, allow me to explain. He already knew how to use the remote control, in the sense that he could turn the TV on and change the channel. We actually taught him that at an early age out of a desire to sleep in. Our boys naturally get up much earlier than my wife and I really want to, so it was either teach him how to turn on the Disney channel in the morning by himself, or we would need to go to bed earlier. We chose the TV option.

I know some of you out there are now thinking, “How much TV do these people let their kids watch?” I can assure you it is way less than nine hours per day. We actually tried other forms of pre-parental-consciousness morning activities, such as Legos, sword fighting, and wrestling, but watching TV was the only thing that didn’t consistently end in a loud argument or an even louder head injury.

Up until this morning, Son Number One was able to turn on the TV in our upstairs game room and change the channel to 303 for Disney. At 6:00 in the morning, the Disney channel is a safe bet to be appropriate for all age groups. Up until this morning, this was a satisfactory morning activity for Sons One, Two and Three. Up until this morning, I didn’t have to worry about what they might see on the TV screen.

That has all changed now.

We have a whole host of children’s shows that we record on the DVR (that stands for Digital Video Recorder, for those of you over 50 years old) for the kids to choose from when we parents are awake and able to operate the menu to get them going. Apparently, Son Number One has been paying close attention to us when we navigate the recorded shows menu, because that’s exactly what he did this morning.

Our soon-to-be-seven-year-old powered on the big downstairs TV that has its own remote, changed the TV’s input to the DVR, switched remotes, navigated his way through the main menu to the recorded shows menu, scrolled through the list until he found Tarzan, selected it, scrolled through the list of eight Tarzan episodes that were recorded, found the sequel to the episode they had watched the night before, selected it, found “play” among the list of options, and fast-forwarded through the commercials to the beginning of the show.

My wife silently witnessed the entire event from the kitchen, and after she picked her jaw up off the counter and regained some amount of composure, she came to find me upstairs and tell me that we had a big problem. “Number One can work the TV.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t understand. He just played Tarzan from the DVR.”

“He did what?!?”

Now, our shock and apprehension about this new skill our son has developed has nothing to do with Tarzan, or any other show we recorded for the boys. Those are fine. Even the commercials on the Disney channel are pretty harmless, although, my boys really want me to buy an ultrasonic noise maker that is supposed to keep pests like deer and raccoons out of our garden. I’m having trouble getting them to come to grips with the fact that we don’t really need that in our suburban backyard. They’re pretty insistent though. I think it’s because on the commercial it shows the imaginary semi-circles of sound emanating from the cheesy-looking green plastic device. I have tried to explain that they will not be able to see - or even hear - the sound in real life, but they’re not convinced I know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, our apprehension about Son Number One’s remote control skills has nothing to do with his shows. It has everything to do with our shows. We record a lot of police and detective dramas, and I don’t have to tell you that today’s shows are over the top. If our kids get curious one morning and end up witnessing an NCIS autopsy scene, or catch some of the dialogue from Law and Order: SVU, I’m not sure even a team of professional child psychologists could reverse that damage.

Now, AT&T U-Verse has already envisioned this problem, and they were kind enough to include Parental Controls software with the DVR. Apparently, we could simply set up a password, and block access to any of the shows we choose, thereby protecting young impressionable minds from adult language, descriptions of violent crimes, and the dissected spleens of unfortunate sailors. Sounds great in theory, but there are a few problems here in reality.

I’m not sure there’s a really delicate way to put this, so I’ll just come out and say it. We’re afraid if we add any more steps, we won’t be able to operate the TV ourselves. We already have three remotes, and at the very least, a nine-step process to actually watch a show. One more level of difficulty might very well put us over the top. And don’t even get me started on the grandparents! It’s like teaching Chinese algebra to a goldfish every time they come over to babysit and need to operate the TV. One more step in that process will not be good.

I guess we could teach Son Number One to help them with the operation of the Parental Controls, but that seems like a flawed system, somehow...

Maybe we should look at this new development not as a challenge, but as an opportunity to change what we watch and record, moving toward a more wholesome Discovery Channel and History Channel-only type environment. Or maybe abandon the idiot box altogether and move to a books-only lifestyle.

Naw… I think I’ll just start hiding the remotes. I’ll put them with his shoes. He can never find those.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Finally Growing Up

There have been many significant events in my life that signaled to me that I was growing up. Getting my driver’s license, voting for the first time, being able to legally buy beer, getting married, and buying a house all come to mind. Those were definitely milestones on the path, but the big one was, of course, having kids. Or so I thought…

Up until recently, having children of my own was the most obvious (and most pungent) signal of my inevitable maturing. There is an in-your-face responsibility that comes with having kids. They tend to get louder and louder if you’re not taking care of them correctly, like an alarm clock that will not let you be late for work, no matter how many buttons you hit in an attempt to shut it off. Whatever you were planning on doing with your life before having children is suddenly a moot point. If it doesn’t fit with the new directive of caring for the child, it is not in the program. I figured that surrendering to that new reality and embracing it was the final step to adulthood. Not so.

The responsibility of providing for a helpless child is a big-time kick in the pants toward becoming a full-fledged responsible adult, but it is not the final step you must take to complete the transition to 100% adultness. I realized recently that there is one more step required.

Having a 401k, you ask? Hosting Thanksgiving? Buying life insurance? Writing a will?

No. The final step on the road to adulthood is not something you do, but rather, something you don’t do. You have arrived at your final destination of maturity and responsibility when you are able to look at your son’s Razor scooter, and not try to ride it.

When you can walk past an unattended skateboard, look at it, and say to yourself, “No thanks. I have to work tomorrow, and that’s going to be more difficult with a broken arm.”

When you can say that, you have arrived.

This last step towards a man’s adulthood has a definite age component to it. It happens around the age of forty, give or take a few years depending on the guy and his IQ-to-pain threshold ratio. In that regard, I am lucky that I had children somewhat later in life. I am almost forty, but my oldest son is only six and a half. They don’t really start owning incredibly dangerous wheeled toys until around age four or five, so I haven’t had too many pre-forty years with access to lots of ulna-snapping contraptions.

I pity the guys that had kids in their twenties, because the years in between thirty and forty are the most dangerous years of a man’s life. A young man in his teens and twenties will do incredibly stupid things, but this is counteracted by the fact that he has reflexes like a cheetah, and his body is made entirely out of rubber and steel. By his early thirties, the bones, ligaments and tendons have already begun to weaken and degrade, but the fear of becoming old, combined with the false ego of “not being old yet” form the perfect storm of stupidity versus degraded coordination and resilience.

Many are the thirty-eight-year-old men who have not been able to get out of bed the next day after doing nothing more than dancing at a wedding.

“I have shooting pain down my leg, my back is killing me, I can’t twist my neck to the right, and don’t even get me started on my rotator cuff.”

“Well, honey, you did dance for over an hour.”

When that man finally heals up from all the dancing and wakes up one day to realize that he likes being able to walk more than he likes trying to prove he can still jump the curb on a pair of rollerblades, he has made it into the club. Some would call that growing old. I call it growing up.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I promised my son I would teach him how to do a wheelie on his bike. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I’m only thirty-nine. I’m not old yet.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Reclaiming Our Sand-ity

An interview with Bob Finnegan, head of the recently formed Federal Coastal, Tidal and Estuarial Sediment and Natural Mineral Resources Reclamation Department:

We actually started as a joint task force between the Department of the Interior, the EPA, and NOAA, but when we really wrapped our arms around the magnitude of the problem, it was obvious that a new federal department would be necessary. That’s how the FCTESNMRRD was born. We saw an obvious need for a solution when we did our initial study visits to coastal towns and confirmed our suspicions. We witnessed first-hand how much of our nation's precious coastal mineral natural resources were ending up on citizens' driveways and front walks near their garden hoses.

The problem stems from lack of education, and carelessness. Citizens will routinely leave the beach or riverbank with ounces and ounces of sand attached to their legs and swimsuits, and then wash it off at home onto the ground, and just leave it there! We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. We did some simple math and determined that if this reckless behavior on the part of our citizens was allowed to continue unabated, two-thirds of our nation’s beaches would disappear in less than five years. This was a crisis of epic proportion.

It was obvious that we as the federal government needed to set forth some very stringent guidelines. Our newly-formed department has tackled this issue with a three-pronged approach. Home-use sand reclamation tubs, centralized sand reclamation centers, and educational programs.

We are in the process of outfitting every household within five miles of any one of our great country's coasts or waterways with a federally approved sand reclamation wash and collection tub. The tubs employ an easy sixteen-step process to collect, strain, and dry the sand, which takes less than an hour per beachgoer. The filters are useable only once to prevent cross beach contamination, but they are readily available for purchase at any federal sand reclamation station and all Ace Hardware locations for only $24.95 each. The tub manufacturing and distribution has been a real challenge, but we were able to keep costs low on the hundreds of millions of tubs needed by having them made in China and distributed by a logistics company from Norway. If you live near the water, you should be getting yours any day!

The sand reclamation stations are the most vital link in the chain. We need the stations to be conveniently located, since we can't just have citizens trying to return their reclaimed sand to the beach themselves. That would obviously be a disaster! Ordinary, untrained people cannot be trusted to make sure their reclaimed sand gets back to the same beach it came from. Inter-beach mineral cross-contamination is one of our greatest fears. No one wants to think about the potentially catastrophic ecological ramifications of getting sand from two entirely different beaches mixed up.

That is precisely why we have 40,000+ sand reclamation stations nationwide, with more being brought online every day. Depending on the size of the coastal community, each station employs between 100 and 300 new government employees, so you can see the obvious upside for the economy as a whole.

We employ quite a few scientists and chemists to take care of the typing and cross-matching of the sand as it is reclaimed. We actually got a lot of guys from NASA! We spent five years and 400 billion dollars on the front end of this project collecting and cataloging sand and sediment samples at 500-foot intervals along the coastlines and waterways of the entire country. That way, when we receive sand from a citizen, we can make sure to match it to the exact location that it was stolen – sorry… accidentally removed - from.

The scientific equipment and machinery required for this is amazing. We have to sort and identify each individual grain, since careless citizens will often ignore the guidelines and wash sand from two or more different beach outings into the same tub, instead of bringing the reclaimed sand to a collection station after each beach visit. That brings us to the third prong in our approach; Education.

We have a budget of nearly 700 billion dollars for sand and sediment education for the general public. We need to make every person in the entire country aware of this growing sand removal problem and the steps they can take to help. We are boldly tackling everything from proper use of the collection tubs and filters, to collection station rules and regulations, to proper sunscreen and child management practices to avoid sand removal in the first place.

We have even developed a fun mascot for the kids: Sandy the Gender-Neutral Sand Crab, who gets crabby when sand leaves his or her beach. He or she is the cornerstone of our youth outreach programs. We are also preparing to launch our nationwide elementary school curriculum integration project, to make sure proper sand management is learned at a young age.

For the adults, we have a massive project underway to place signs at 200-yard intervals along all of our nation’s waterways and coastlines, prominently displaying the 137 new federal rules and regulations regarding proper sand and sediment management. In order to have a readable font size, the signs ended up being 10 feet tall, and 30 feet long, so we are using cranes and pile drivers to set them in place. While occasionally blocking some established beach-front home’s views, the signs should end up providing some amount of shade for beachgoers, and some new seagull habitat, so we consider it a net positive. We also printed up a bunch of flyers.

The main focus of all our educational programs is, of course, having fun using our nation’s beaches and waterways, but in a sand-responsible manner.

All told, the FCTESNMRRD is off to a great start. The work at the collection stations is slower than we had originally anticipated, but we are making great improvements every day. So far, we have collected, properly identified, and returned over seventeen ounces of sand to its rightful home on the beach. That is just a great feeling for all of us, knowing that all our hard work and all those tax dollars are doing so much good!

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Going Bald

I started to lose my hair about six years ago. At this point, I am at least half way to being totally bald. Apparently it is a slow process. That is probably so you will have time to adjust. (My oldest son is six and a half. I don’t think that is a coincidence.)

I really miss my hair, but not why you might think. None of my reservations about going bald have anything to do with vanity. I will not miss my hair for one minute from a looks standpoint. I just never cared about it very much. If you took a look at my school pictures from K through 12, you would see that I never put much time into trying to have cool hair.

It appears that there was a brief period in the eighties when I actually tried to have a hair style, but unfortunately, like so many other things in the eighties, it was ill-advised. Apparently – and fortunately – it lasted less than a year, because it is captured for posterity in only one of my school pictures. Seventh grade will forever be known as the year of the part down the middle with super-cool feathered bangs. This was the same year that I had braces with headgear, so looking back on it, I was probably trying desperately to compensate for having a stainless steel wire sticking out of my mouth, attached by rubber bands to a “flesh colored” (read: pink) neck strap. That would also explain the rolled up cuffs on my jeans with the black-and-white checkered slip-on Vans with no socks. Trust me, at the time, that seemed to be the height of fashion. But like I said, it was the eighties. Bad choices all the way around.

I either got rid of the headgear, or just got tired of paying attention to my hair, because by the eighth grade photo I was back to short hair. I have kept it short ever since. Up until I went bald, I had never viewed my hair as an asset. I never really thought of it as a liability, either. I think I just never thought much about it at all. It has always been just a line-item on a to-do list. Morning: wash hair. Every two weeks: cut hair. In that regard, my hair is a lot like the front lawn. I don’t give either one much thought; I just water and cut them both on a regular schedule. Like the front lawn, I don’t mind cutting my hair, but past that, I want no other maintenance activities taking up even an extra minute of my time.

So, given that I put my hair in the same category as lawn maintenance, you may be asking yourself, why would he miss it? Seems like it would be a good thing not to have to deal with it anymore. I agree. I was actually pretty excited about the less-maintenance aspect of my hair loss. Until I went outside…

I’m not sure you can fully appreciate this unless you yourself have actually gone bald, but the hair on top of your head is an amazing source of insulation. When I go outside now in the slightest whisper of cold air, I am instantly freezing. If the sun is out and it’s over 65 degrees, I’m burning up. For the first time in my life, I am a wuss. I need a hat at all times.

I was blown away by what a difference having no hair makes on my body temperature. Apparently, it doesn’t take very much hair to keep you insulated, either, since my hair was never over a half-inch long. I guess as long as it’s evenly distributed, length really doesn’t count for too much.

This constant need for a hat has thrown me for a loop. It has introduced a whole new level of planning into my formerly simple life. I used to just go places. Time to go? Let’s see… I’m wearing clothes… OK, I’m ready! Now, when it’s time to go, I have to make decisions. Where are we going? What are we doing? Is it an indoor event? Is there even the remotest possibility that we will be outside, even for a few minutes? Not sure? Better bring a hat just in case.

Now I am forced to find a hat that will “go” with my clothes, or my wife won’t stand next to me. I am forced to choose from a selection of baseball-type caps, since I am not anywhere cool enough to be able to pull off the fedora or the Kangol driver’s cap look, and my cowboy hat always seems a bit much for a backyard barbeque. In hot weather, I always really want to wear one of my wide-brimmed, floppy, “boonie” hats, but they are all some sort of camouflage pattern, so I end up looking like I am there to invade the backyard, not just visit.

You would think the baseball cap would be good enough, but let me tell you, they are not without challenges to the bald man. The adjustable size varieties have the open semi-circle in the back. I found out the hard way that I still need to apply sunscreen to the back of my head to avoid a second-degree half-moon burn. Even if the cap is fitted and does not have the dangerous rear opening, it is still not 100% safe. I have had occasions when I have sat still in the sun for long enough – at a baseball game or an outdoor concert – that I have received six tiny little circular sunburns on the top of my head, through the pin-hole air vents on the top of the cap. Come on!

In the summer time, I just sunscreen my whole head on the weekends. It’s just safer that way.

It is a cruel trick played on the bald man. Whether he cared about his hair when he had it or not, as soon as it’s gone he is forced to accessorize. Coming from a guy who never accessorized anything, and always just had clothes instead of “outfits,” this has been a pretty big adjustment for me. My wife has started to look into online tests for colorblindness, just to make sure I’m not a total idiot. (I think she’s going to be sorely disappointed!)

Well, I’ve got to go. We’ve got a wedding to attend. Honey, which one of these ball caps goes with my suit?

I miss my hair.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

Headline from the recent tech industry trade publication, Really Wired:

“Savvy IT Jock Uses Social Networking to Find his Idiot Boss “Better” Gig, Avoids Being Fired”

The following was taken from our reporter’s recent interview with “Mike” the IT guy:

Look, although I think I’m pretty justified in my actions, some of the things I did could be construed as illegal, or at least really unprofessional, so I don’t want to use my real name. Let’s call me “Mike,” and let’s call my idiot ex-boss “Frank.”

This all happened last Wednesday at the office. I was in the hallway on a ladder with my head up above the acoustical tiles re-routing some network cables in the ceiling near the wall of the break room. I heard my idiot boss, Frank, go into the break room for some coffee, and I overheard him mention in confidence to one of his idiot cronies that the IT staff was bloated, and he was cutting me loose at the end of the day, since I was the last one hired. The IT department was actually hopelessly understaffed, and Frank had been robbing our budget pretty regularly to cover the cost overruns from the marketing department’s monthly “Team Building Trips” to Las Vegas.

Now, I could have probably landed another job at a better company in a heartbeat, but I couldn’t bear the thought of this yahoo slamming my already overloaded IT buddies with the extra burden. I decided to get rid of him. The way I saw it, it was either him or me, and he messed with the wrong geek.

I put my network cable project on hold and went back to my terminal, logged on to GoDaddy.com, and bought the domain “TRGCorp.com.” I then banged out some really quick HTML code to create a dummy corporation’s home page, “about us” page, and “contact us” page. It was really third-grade type stuff. The whole thing took me twelve minutes. For the “corporate vision statement,” I just used the word synergy nineteen times in a paragraph with a bunch of other corporate-speak. “TRG Corporation has a synergistic, forward-focused, strategic synergy,” etcetera, etcetera. Frank eats that crap up.

Then I created two LinkedIn accounts. The first was Chet Manley, TRG’s Director of Global Development. For Chet’s profile picture, I scanned in the face of a male model from Cindy in accounting’s Abercrombie and Fitch shopping bag. Besides kicking butt internationally at TRG, Chet also enjoys golf, scuba diving, heli-skiing and triathlons. The next fake LinkedIn account was a corporate headhunter, Jennifer Fetching, from a major New York placement agency that Frank was sure to have heard of. For Jennifer’s profile picture I just used a Victoria’s Secret model from the active wear section of their website.

I then hit Frank’s LinkedIn account with five e-mails from Jennifer and four from Chet, back-dating them so it appeared as if they had both been trying to get ahold of him for a week. Jennifer was seriously considering him for a VP position at another top-rated global company, and she was very anxious to speak with him, because she knew he was being heavily recruited by TRG. Her last e-mail was deflated, as she explained that the position she had sought him for was gobbled up by another executive. If only they had been able to get in touch with each other earlier.

Chet couldn’t wait to talk with Frank, and was really “pumped” at the opportunity to get him on board with TRG. He had asked around with “everyone who matters,” and Frank was the perfect guy for their new VP slot.

Then I went to Facebook and found Frank’s friend list. I found the name of one of the guys I had heard him talk about playing golf with pretty regularly. His friend, Bob, was offline, so I quickly hacked his account by cloning the email address he had listed and resetting his password. Once I was in Bob’s account, I made sure that my boss was at his desk, and sent him an instant message from Bob saying, “Wow, Frank. I just heard through the grapevine that you were the top pick for the new VP slot at TRG. I’ve been watching them for years. That company is golden. Congratulations on the move! You’re a smart man!”

I then drafted a quick, fake inter-office memo from the CEO to all the upper management stating that “as we all know, TRG Corporation has been a thorn in our side for years, but lately they have been gaining some serious ground on us.” We needed to forward-focus our core competencies, harness our synergies, etcetera, “or TRG is going to end up owning us and all of our clients!”

I e-mailed the memo to Frank from the CEO’s mailbox, and counted to fifty. Then I made a call to Frank’s office and told him that the IT department had just updated the falangy valve on the McGruder switch, and some people were reporting problems logging into their company e-mail. Other people had reported problems with internet services like LinkedIn and other business-related networking sites. “Please check and make sure you are good, and get back to me if you have any problems.” Then I left the building.

I walked three blocks to the 7-11 and paid cash for a disposable cell phone. Then I went to the Starbucks on the next block and sat down in the corner, activated the phone, and called the office.

“Chet Manley for Frank Dumkopf”

Frank was very eager to talk with Chet. Chet explained that he had been out of the country, tying up some Chinese contracts, and was “totally slammed” until now with no time for a phone call. He had done his due diligence on Frank and wanted him on the TRG team, ASAP. Chet explained that he was a mover, not a sideline sitter, and knew that Frank was a man of action as well. Frank gushed about how he had been following TRG for years, and was totally in sync with their corporate vision statement. Chet explained that he was not big on a lot of interviews and meet-and-greets. If Chet sees something Chet wants, Chet gets it. Frank agreed that was the only way to operate. Chet told Frank to name his price. Frank did. Chet stifled a laugh, then told Frank, “Hell, Frank, a man’s gotta eat. Let’s double that! Welcome aboard. I want you at corporate tomorrow morning. Can you do that?”

Frank excitedly told Chet he would be there. I hung up the phone, wiped it down with a napkin, and threw it in the trash. I ordered a coffee and waited about a half-hour, then headed back to the office.

When I arrived, the receptionists and the Human Resources department were buzzing with the scuttlebutt. Frank had cleaned out his desk, sent a one-sentence resignation e-mail to the CEO and the head of HR, and walked out the door ten minutes ago.

“Weird,” I said, as I shrugged my shoulders and headed back to my desk. I logged into the company e-mail server and sent an e-mail from the generic “info@” address to our CEO with the subject line “Frank.” In the body I wrote, “Inconsistencies with marketing budget ‘team building’ expenses and IT budget reason for sudden departure?”

Then I deleted the fake website, cancelled the two fake LinkedIn accounts, logged off, and got back to my network cable project.

Like I said, he messed with the wrong geek.

The really funny thing was, I never put a corporate address on the website. I wonder where my idiot ex-boss tried to report to the next morning?

All of us here at Really Wired say, nice one, “Mike.”

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Garage Sales

Last Saturday we had roughly 3000 garage sales in my neighborhood. We have a local real estate broker named Kiki who takes it upon herself to organize garage sales for five or six adjoining neighborhoods all at once. She provides the marketing and advertising, complete with teenage sign wavers at every street corner inside a six mile radius, all handing out maps to the sales, free water, and wearing matching red “Team Kiki” shirts. It is really something.

Obviously, she puts in so much of her own time, energy and money in order to find clients, either by contact with the local homeowners who might want to host a garage sale, or the shoppers. After witnessing the clientele that arrived in my neighborhood on Saturday, I’ve got to assume she’s in it more for the homeowner contacts than the garage sale shoppers. I didn’t see too many garage sale shoppers that looked like they might be in the market to buy my house. Rob my house… maybe. Buy my house? No.

If you have ever hosted a garage sale, then you know what I’m talking about. There is a certain element that is instantly attracted to the prospect of buying someone’s used shirt for twenty-five cents. Now, don’t get me wrong. My wife is an avid garage saler. She loves a good bargain on kid’s toys and floor lamps. You have met her, too, if you have ever had a garage sale. She was one of the 6 people out of the 200 that showed up that day that didn’t park on your lawn or walk through your flower bed.

We were not having a garage sale this weekend, but two of our immediate neighbors were, so I had the opportunity to sit leisurely and observe some of the shoppers in their natural bargain hunting environment.

The thing that struck me first about people’s garage sale day behavior was the driving. For starters, there were easily 20 times more cars on our street Saturday morning than on a normal day. This only seemed to encourage some of the drivers to go faster than they normally would on a deserted street. Apparently, cars parked at 45 degree angles out into the middle of the street with crowds of people darting back and forth through traffic says to some folks, “I’d better drive really fast into that mess and park hurriedly at a precarious angle to avoid having these other people get all the good deals before I do.”

And I’m not sure what it is about garage sales, but if there is more than one sale on a particular street, that is apparently viewed by the shoppers as an open license to park in front of anyone’s driveway. There is no other day when anyone would find that even a remotely acceptable option, but on garage sale day, anything goes.

On the other end of the traffic hazard spectrum, I also witnessed some incredibly slow moving vehicles that were perhaps more of a danger. Garage sales tend to bring more octogenarians to your street than a church parking lot on bingo night. Many of the older crowd perform what I like to call the “rolling recon” maneuver, where the wife walks in and out of the sales, while the husband, who may or may not want to be there, judging by the expression on his face, stays behind the wheel and rolls slowly down the side of the street, a car-length behind her. He’s the one you really have to watch out for when you’re crossing the street, because he nods off every once in a while.

If you see a large panel van or U-haul truck, these are the professionals. You probably won’t see them though, because they don’t just stumble upon your neighbor’s house at 10:00 in the morning. They plan a very precise route the night before and assault your neighbor’s house at 6:00 am while Bob is still in his jammies and just pouring his first cup of coffee. They knock on his door, apologize profusely for the early hour, and buy every last tool and piece of furniture that Bob has to sell. They were already selling Bob’s stuff at the flea market in the next town by the time you got out of bed.

Now, besides the professionals and the folks like my wife who browse your trinkets and happily give you your full dollar asking price for your kid’s old set of Star Wars action figures, you will find two main groups of buyers. We will call the first group the English as a Second Language crowd, and the second group the Employment as an Unappealing Lifestyle crowd. The ESLs and the EULs.

The ESLs tend to be made up of decent, hardworking, low-wage couples with thirteen kids and questionable immigration status. They buy your old clothes and shoes, and occasionally any furniture or tools that the professionals missed. For the most part they are polite and fair, but occasionally someone will employ the “no habla ingles” negotiating tactic of handing you half of your asking price for a certain item, saying “Is good, yes?” and then pretending not to understand the word “No,” even though it translates perfectly. Do not be fooled. Or, just take $2 for the mirror. Who cares? It’s leaving your garage for good. Any haggling that has occurred does tend to lose its luster when the ESL father comes to pay for the pile of shirts and shoes and starts peeling bills off a stack of money the size of a Stephen King paperback. Just remember, he only has that much cash on him because he doesn’t like banks and all of their questions.

The EULs are the real winners of the day. This is the crowd that thinks Wal Mart is super-fancy. This is the lady with the lit Menthol 100 dangling from her bright pink upper lip as she tries on your winter coats and complains about how hot it is on your driveway. These are the people that will not pay your asking price for anything, under any circumstance. “You want ten cents for this baseball mitt? It’s all worn out! I’ll give you a nickel.” These are the people who get indignant that you would ask fifty cents for a pair of jeans, because they have a hole in the knee, “and they’re not even acid-washed or nothin’.” These are the people who go to their car and bring back an old hair dryer and a pack of Marlboros and try to trade you for the blender you’re selling. These are the people that make you never want to have a garage sale again.

“You want two dollars for this coat? It’s got pink lipstick stains and cigarette burns on it!”

Thanks, Kiki, for making my Saturday a little more interesting. And for inadvertently inviting so many EULs into my neighborhood. They were a real treat. Many of them seemed to take a real interest in our cars, and I even saw a few of them peering inside some of the unattended garages, perhaps looking for bargains of a different kind.

Maybe I will be getting in touch with you sooner than I thought about my next move. Perhaps a neighborhood with a gate, and a no garage sale policy.

Naw! Where would the fun be in that?

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Golfing with Bob

Bob is 93 years old. He can't hear, can't see very well anymore, and can't walk very fast. He has his own golf cart, and when we drive up to the first tee, the starter knows him by name.

I am 39 years old. I can hear and see just fine, and I can run when I need to. I don't own my own golf cart, and the starter doesn't know me from Adam.

We step up onto the first tee box at Morro Bay on a beautiful summer morning with the slight ocean breeze making a gorgeous day just that much better. Bob has lived in this idyllic beach paradise for 60 years. I just visit occasionally.

I swing my club back and forth in large exaggerated arcs, trying to stretch the muscles in my back. Bob laughs at me and says that I'm wasting a lot of precious energy. He does not warm up.

It is the 4th of July weekend, and my family and I are in town to celebrate our nation’s independence with my wife’s family. Bob knows a thing or two about liberty, and what it takes to keep it. He was the pilot of a Navy bomber at an early age during WWII. He fought for the freedom of the civilized world, and returned home in one piece to tell about it.

His commitment to liberty has remained strong his entire life. He has been retired for many, many years now, never having had a boss. He worked for himself his whole life, free to schedule in as much golf as he could get away with. He scheduled in a lot of golf! I only manage to find time for golf when I’m on vacation. I don’t play much.

It’s time for us to tee off on the 480-yard par-five. I'm up first. I square up with my driver and let it rip. My backswing comes way over my head with the club shaft coming parallel with the ground, and my follow through comes all the way around so the club's shaft is vertical behind my back. It's a picture-perfect amateur’s swing. My ball takes flight and rockets out away from the tee box. As I admire its trajectory, it defies my wishes, slicing to the right, leaving the airspace over my own fairway and ending up coming to rest 270 yards away under a small tree on the other side of the cart path. Bob laughs at me and says, "Boy, if I could hit the ball as far as you do, I'd be unstoppable." He takes his driver out of the bag and shuffles up to the box. His backswing barely gets more than 10 degrees behind his legs, and his follow through is non-existent. He hits it 100 yards. It goes straight up the middle of the fairway.

We hop in Bob's cart and drive to his ball. He gets the 3-wood out of his bag and hits it again, 100 yards, straight up the middle of the fairway. He keeps the 3-wood handy as he gets back in the cart, knowing he'll need it again. We drive straight up the middle of the fairway to his ball, which he hits again, 100 yards, again, right up the middle of the fairway.

We then take a sharp right turn off the fairway to find my ball. My ball is under a tree and the tree is between my ball and the green. The smart move is to hit a short sideways shot back onto the safety of my own fairway. Not always one for the smart move, I opt to try and knock down a 3-iron, under the tree, at a slight angle to the green, making up some ground and possibly getting to the edge of the green for a chance at birdie. I let it rip. I am an idiot. My ball skips off the side of the tree I was under, and hits the neighboring tree square in the trunk, sending my ball ricocheting backward at a 45- degree angle onto my own fairway. I have lost 50 yards with my second shot. Bob chuckles and tells me that I’m going the wrong way. I thank him.

We drive the cart away from the green toward my ball. I really get ahold of my 3-wood on my third shot and hit the ball almost 250 yards again, slicing to the right again, landing almost pin-high, but to the extreme right of the green, almost on the tee box of Hole 2.

Bob hits his fourth shot 100 yards, straight up the middle of the fairway.

Bob hits his fifth shot 70 yards, onto the green, 5 feet from the pin.

I chip my fourth shot all the way over the green, landing near, but luckily not in, the sand trap on the left side of the green.

I re-chip for my fifth shot, onto the green, 17 feet from the pin.

I putt my sixth shot to within 6 feet of the hole.

Bob easily makes his 5- foot putt for a bogie six.

I miraculously toilet-bowl my 6-foot putt into the hole for a double-bogie seven.

Bob has beaten me by a stroke on the first hole. This continued all morning.

He never hit the ball more than 100 yards at a time the entire round. I got ahold of one drive on Hole 13 that I swear went 320 yards. Big deal. He beat me by 11 strokes.

Bob shot his age. At 93 years old, he shot a 93. I don't want to talk about my score.

Bob has shot his age every year of his life since he was in his 60's. If you aren't a golfer, suffice it to say, that is something that all golfers – including the pros - wish they could do.

I have had the pleasure of getting beat by the old man for quite some time now. Bob is my wife’s grandpa, and a fantastic Great Grandpa to my boys. When I started playing golf with him, he was in his early 80’s and he beat me by 20 strokes or more every game. I’m not getting any better.

He teaches my boys to putt whenever they slow down long enough for him to hand them one of his ancient wood-shafted putters and show them how to line up to play the break of the game room carpet. Maybe they’ll be good.

On this Independence Day weekend, when I reflect on my many blessings as an American, getting to spend time with Bob is on my top-ten list. He is one of the people in my life that I hold in the highest regard.

He has taught me a lot about the importance of controlling the golf ball over the years, and one day I might just start listening.

He has taught me much more about the importance of liberty over the years, and I have hung on every word.

He has never needed to lecture me greatly about either subject. His actions, his happiness, his success, and the story of his life do the majority of the talking for him.

Thanks, Bob. Happy 4th of July!

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

A Typical Evening at Home

I had a pretty annoying day at work today, so I wasn’t in the greatest mood I’ve ever been in my whole life when I got home tonight. My wife had a “mom’s night out” scheduled with a couple of her girlfriends, so it was just me and the three boys, ages six, five and three, home for dinner. I cooked breakfast for dinner (bacon, eggs and bagels), we split a cupcake for dessert, had a bath, played Legos and went to sleep. I walked in the door from work at 5:15pm and put the boys in bed at 7:45pm. Here is what I heard in between those two times:

Hi Daddy. Did you know that I’m using a sword to fight bad guys? Can we have dinner now? How about now? How about now? I’m really hungry. What are we having for dinner? Can we have over easy eggs? Boo hoo. I don’t want scrambled. My Lego guy has no pants. Can I help crack the eggs? Can I stir them? No, I get to stir them. What makes eggs runny instead of a bird? Why do the eggs cook? How come the flame is blue and not yellow? Wow it’s really raining. I hope our acorn plant grows. My Lego guy has no head. Can I butter my bagel? Wesley has a Chihuahua. Can we go surfing? Can you unlock my light saber? It’s green. That means I’m a good guy. Why can’t I sit there? I don’t want to wash my hands. He just had an accident. He peed on the chair. I don’t want to sit on the pee chair. These eggs are yummy, Daddy! All eggs have a tiny bird in them, you just can’t see it. Do the eggs have cheese in them? These eggs taste like a burrito. Why do I have to sit in the pee chair? What happens when you get bit by a rattlesnake? Hang on, I’m going to eat this pig first. Pig is yummy! Did you know a hawk’s egg is this big? Dinosaur eggs are huge. How big is a brachiosaurus egg? Look, I made a pig and egg pizza. Can you make more bacon? At the movie today, the zucchini and the carrot had invisible hands. He pushed the button on the guy with one eye and down popped a rowboat. Why do mommies sometimes go to dinner with just mommies? When they’re there, there aren’t any kids or daddies. I’ll bet they order bacon. May I please have more burrito eggs? Why don’t daddies take baths? Can we watch TV? This cupcake is so good, it’s my favorite kind. When I have a birthday, I’m going to get this kind of cupcake. Or, just next time we go to the cupcake store. This frosting is delicious! When is my birthday? I’m first for bath. Booty-butt. Booty-butt. How come I have hair like a duck? Don’t wash my owie. What happens when you see a shark? Look how big my feet are. I know who the first president was. He had fake hair. Why do I have to get out? Booty-butt. Booty-butt. My Lego guy needs hands. Have you seen my propeller? I need that piece!! Boo hoo. Yellow is not the same as blue. If you ate Legos, your poop would be funny colors. Legos wouldn’t be as good as pig and burrito eggs. I have to go poop. Good night.

Now, please keep in mind, this was just what came out of my six-year-old’s mouth. Multiply what you just read by three, and you’ve got my evening.

Hmm… I wonder why mommies sometimes go to dinner with just other mommies?

The good news is, I totally forgot all about how annoying work was, and with this fresh perspective on life, I’m in a much better mood.

Pig is yummy!

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

The Mama Bear

We went camping with friends this past weekend at Sugar Pine Point State Park at Lake Tahoe. We were expecting a fun weekend of campfires, hiking, and swimming, but we ended up getting much more than we bargained for. By the time the weekend was through, our kids had some great bear stories and I had a brand new wife.

We arrived Friday afternoon and listened to a ten-minute bear advisory lecture from the park ranger, complete with an affidavit we were required to sign, stating that we understood the bear rules and would gladly be subject to a $1000 fine if we did not keep our food and toiletries locked in the big, green, steel bear lockers provided at the campsites.

OK, OK, we get it. There are bears here. We’ll put the food away. Can we go to our campsites now?

We set up camp in two adjoining campsites and had a fun evening of men setting up tents and making fires, women laughing at the men’s lack of skill in the tent and fire-making departments, and little boys playing in the woods and peeing on trees. Dinner and s’mores and off to bed without a bear in sight. Good times.

I had a book signing back in our home town the next day, so I got up early and drove the two hours back to our house to take a shower. I went off to the bookstore and occasionally received a text message from my wife about something or other to bring back with me that afternoon. When my phone rang around two o’clock, I was expecting to hear about another camping-related item that we’d left behind. Not so.

What I heard my wife say was, “We’ve had some bears. They’re stalking our campsite.”

Hmmm. That’s different than what I thought you were going to say, honey. As the ever-concerned father figure, my first question was, “Is everyone OK?”

After she assured me that everyone was safe and in good spirits I switched to ever-financially-vigilant breadwinner mode. “Is the State Parks Service going to fine us $1000?”

Luckily, the answer to the first question was yes and the second question was no. She then had to hang up because the park rangers had just arrived at our campsite for the second time that afternoon to get the latest bear report. I drove really fast back to the lake.

When I arrived back at the campsite, the rangers were still there. “Have they been here the whole time?” I asked.

“No, we just had a third bear about ten minutes ago,” my wife answered casually, as if close bear encounters were a common occurrence in her life. “I tracked him through the woods until they got here.”

Excuse me? You did what? I have been away for nine and a half hours and when I get back you are tracking bears? What in the hell happened while I was gone?

Here’s the condensed version my wife and our friends, Jeff and Carrie, told me:

They woke up shortly after I had left, had a leisurely breakfast, went on a long hike, and came back to camp and made lunch. They were all assembled together eating at the picnic table in Jeff and Carrie’s campsite, but my wife had left one of our plastic storage bins out of the bear locker and on top of the table in our campsite. No one thought anything of it, since they were close by, until Jeff saw the bear coming through the woods. They watched in awe as the 300-pound black bear walked into our campsite, a mere 25 yards away, and knocked the bin off the table. He (or she) grabbed our big bag of marshmallows and sat down for a delicious and delightfully fluffy snack.

By this time, three adults and five boys had been shoehorned into Jeff and Carrie’s midsize SUV, and were driving away from the bear and toward the ranger station. While they were busy alerting the ranger to their predicament, the bear devoured our entire box of graham crackers.

The rangers came back to the campsite with them and shooed the bear away by yelling at it and banging pots and pans together. When the bear had retreated, the rangers explained the “no food left out farther away than arm’s reach” rule which we had missed during bear orientation the day before. It was at this point that my wife asked the ranger, while crying, if the bear would come back. They reassuringly said, “No.”

Apparently the rangers don’t speak for the bears. They obviously did not take into account the fact that the bear had unfinished business, because he came back about a half-hour later looking for the crucial third and final ingredient to his lunch of s’mores. To the bruin’s dismay, the chocolate bars were locked up tight, and he was out of luck.

Over the initial shock of their close proximity to long-clawed wildlife, Jeff and my wife shooed him away on their own this time while Carrie took the five boys for a nice ride back to the ranger station. Knowing my wife, I think at this point she had gone from being scared to being aggravated that this thing was threatening the safety of her children, not to mention putting a severe damper on the night’s dessert.

When the rangers arrived back at our campsite, they questioned my wife on which way the bear had gone after she and Jeff had shooed it away. Unbeknownst to the rangers, by involving my wife in the hunt for the bear, they had apparently deputized her as an assistant park ranger in her own mind. This became shockingly obvious to everyone a few hours later when a new bear showed up near our campsite. Upon spotting the interloping omnivore, my wife casually asked Jeff and Carrie if they would keep an eye on the boys while she went off and made sure this pesky varmint didn’t cause any trouble around these here parts.

Into the woods she went, armed with the formidable defensive weapons of choice, the universally-feared pot and pan combo. She quietly stalked the bear through the underbrush, making sure she could relay the beast’s exact coordinates to her new comrades-in-arms when they arrived. I guess her plan was to fall back on her extensive deputy park ranger training by banging the pot and pan together if the bear showed any signs of annoyance at being followed.

Thankfully, the actual rangers with actual guns showed up and took over before she was forced to make a move with her deadly cookware. What a difference a few bear sightings can make! My wife went from suburban housewife to Grizzly Adams in the span of two hours. I am convinced that if a fourth bear had showed up before I had arrived, she surely would have slipped off her shoes, clamped a kitchen knife between her teeth, and tried to sneak up on it from behind to teach it a lesson about messing with her kids and her meal plans.

The really funny part is, if I had been there and even hinted at wanting to shoo the bear off, either by myself, or with Jeff by my side, she would have asked in an exasperated and slightly panicked voice, “Are you crazy? Do you want your boys to grow up without a father?”

It just goes to show you, there’s no telling what a mama bear is going to do.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!