The Jigsaw is Up

I always knew my wife was smart. She’s an accomplished mathematician, a master statistician, and a wonderful teacher. She can even keep the official score at a baseball game. Also, she’s a whiz with whodunits. Here’s a typical one-hour murder mystery TV viewing experience with me and her:

Show begins:

Me – Glued intently to the screen

Her – Barely paying attention while playing on laptop and/or phone

5 minutes into show:

Her: “Bob did it.”

Me: “Who’s Bob? Did what?”

So, this weekend, when I discovered she was brilliant, it came as no surprise. It did come as a shock, however, when I realized she was using her powers for evil. She is brilliantly devious. I did not see that coming.

Truth be told, I can see now that she has been manipulating me for our entire marriage. I am sad to say I just figured it out this last weekend, but it’s all so clear to me now. My epiphany came on Sunday while I was on a ladder, 15 feet off the ground, painting our shutters.

Son Number One had a sleep-over at a friend’s house Saturday night, and I drove over to pick him up on Sunday morning. That was just the situation that my wife was looking for. In fact, I think my going to pick him up was no accident. The sleep-over itself might have been part of the master diabolical plan for all I know. Nothing would surprise me at this point.

I arrived back at the house with our son, and there it was. The setup. I have seen it before a hundred times, and it all seemed so innocent. The paint cans were out on the workbench in the open garage. The hand-held power sander was plugged into a 50-foot extension cord, strung out to the front yard. The extension ladder was extended, leaning up against the house at a funny angle. And there was my loving wife, standing below the ladder. Pretending to be just about to climb up.

We have three pairs of decorative window shutters on the front of our house. The lowest pair is easily 15 feet off the ground, and you have to walk up the steep concrete roof tiles to get to them. The other ones are higher, and can only be accessed directly from the ladder, leaned up against the house. It’s a toss-up which ones are more precarious to get to.

“Hi, honey. I decided I would paint the shutters today. It shouldn’t take me more than an hour. Do you think this ladder looks OK like this? I’m not really sure how to set it up to get up there. I’m a little nervous about it, really. That roof looks so steep and slippery. Oh, well, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

I hadn’t even been out of the car for two minutes and I was standing on the steep, scary roof tiles, sanding the peeling paint off our decorative shutters. That was at 10:00 A.M.

It was at 5:00 P.M., when I was putting the first coat of paint on shutter number five of six, that it all became clear to me. Son Number Two had been hounding me from below all afternoon about helping him with a birdhouse project that he wanted to make out of Home Depot paint stir sticks. I kept putting him off, telling him I would help him when I was finished with the shutters. He was getting impatient, and it was a little hard to blame him, since he’s six years old and he’d been waiting for seven hours.

My wife, (probably feeling guilty, now that I can see it all so clearly), offered to help him with his project since I was tied up. Off they went to the garage, and up I stayed, paintbrush in one hand, ladder death-grip in the other. Ten minutes later he was back playing on the front lawn underneath me.

“Why aren’t you doing your project with your mommy? Did she have to go do something else?”

“No, we’re done already.”

“What do you mean? It’s only been ten minutes.”

“Yeah. She went really fast.”

I had some idea of what his project was going to entail, so I was very curious. Down the ladder I came, and when I looked in the garage, I knew immediately that I had been lied to for years and years. There, sitting on my workbench, was a birdhouse made out of paint stir sticks. By my estimation, at a minimum, she had used my back saw and miter box, brad nails, my cordless drill, my combination square, and the wood glue. There sat a bird house, firmly clamped in three of my bar clamps, letting the glue dry.

She never came out to ask me what tools to use. She never came out to ask me how to use the tools. She never came out to ask me where the tools were. She never came out to ask me anything. I didn’t even think she knew I owned bar clamps, let alone where they were or how to use them. But there it was. The evidence.

She’s handy!

Big deal, you say. She’s handy with tools. A lot of women are.

You don’t understand. For ten-plus years I’ve been tricked. Let’s say my wife wanted shelves put up in the bathroom. Did she ask me to put shelves up, letting me give input on design and schedule? No. She simply spread the shelf pieces and directions all over the bathroom, got most of the tools required for the job and some that were all wrong for the job, (on purpose, now that I can see it all so clearly), and then proceeded to ask me a question like, “Should I use the Sawzall or the claw hammer to make a hole in the wall for the shelf mount bracket?”

“What are you talking about? Neither. It should just screw into a stud. Let me see the directions.”

I was walking past the bathroom from my office to the kitchen when she asked me the question. Two and a half hours later, she’s getting home from the gym just about the time I’m finishing hanging the last shelf.

That scenario, in one form or another, has been happening for our entire marriage, but it took me until this past weekend, seven hours into a painting project I never consciously started in the first place, to realize what has been going on. I am a grown man, fully capable of making my own decisions, and I woke up that day having no intention whatsoever of painting shutters. Yet there I was.

It was then and there that I realized I have been continuously tricked into doing home improvement projects against my will for years now. Projects that she, herself, was more than capable of completing. The birdhouse was masterfully-built proof. She has been feigning incompetence this whole time! My wife has been manipulating me like a puppet on a string. She is an evil genius.

Oh, well. I guess it’s no big deal really. I mean, the shutters do look good, and the home improvement projects are few and far between. I’m just glad she doesn’t have that kind of manipulative power over me with anything else!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. I just heard the buzzer on the clothes dryer. I have to get the clothes out and fold them right away. They’re too hot for my wife’s fingers when they’re just out of the dryer, but you have to fold them when they’re that hot or else they wrinkle permanently and you have to throw them away.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 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 Season

My boys started school this week, which is just wrong, because it is still August. School is not supposed to start until after Labor Day. That is how it was when I was a kid, so that is how it should be. School in the middle of August should be illegal. Anyway… as happens every year, along with the beginning of school comes the beginning of soccer season, and the end of parental free time as we know it. Now we have a very regulated schedule as to when and where we will sit in our lawn chairs and sweat, as opposed to July when we could sit and sweat anywhere and at any time we chose.

So there I sit. In my chair, at the park. Inexplicably watching a soccer practice. If you read my August, 2011 column “Soccer as Birth Control,” you already know all about my feelings on this subject. Somewhere on the timeline between when I was a kid and when I had kids of my own, parents developed the need to attend their children’s sports practices. My parents never attended a single one of my practices, and I think they would have been asked to leave by the coach if they had. Nowadays, parents are almost required by the coach to help out, and if you just drop your kid off at practice and leave, you are known as “those parents.”

“Billy fell down and scraped his knee. Quick, where are his parents?”

“Oh, they’re not here. They just dropped him off and left.”

“Oh, they’re one of those families, are they?”

So there I sit. In my chair, at the park. Watching Son Number Two’s soccer practice. Watching the poor coach try to get thirteen six-year-olds to all do the same thing at the same time. That is a statistical impossibility. Have you ever tried to get two six-year-olds to do the same thing at the same time? Very difficult. Five or more? Not going to happen. Do I feel sorry for him? No, because I coach T-ball, and as far as I’m concerned, he has it easy. Try to teach thirteen six-year-olds the rules of baseball some time. Talk about impossible. At least soccer only has four rules. Don’t touch the ball with your hands unless you’re the goalie, don’t kick the other guy above the waist, drink lots of water, and don’t kick it into your own goal. How hard can that be?

The infield fly rule. Now that’s hard to teach a six-year-old!

Actually, there may be a few more rules to soccer than that, but no one knows them. I’m pretty sure that is why the league was very adamant that every parent receive a copy of the “code of conduct” this year. We were even required to sign that we had read and understood it, and promised to abide by it. Strangely enough however, the code of conduct had very little to do with the player’s conduct. It was mostly about the conduct of the fans, meaning the parents.

We’ve all heard stories and maybe even seen first-hand the “nightmare parents” at kid’s sporting events. Those marginally sane people who take their child’s sports “career” way too seriously, and voice their opinions about the coaching decisions and referee’s calls obnoxiously from the sidelines. They exist in all sports, but soccer is the only sport where I have ever had to promise in writing that I wouldn’t yell at the ref. I would never yell at the ref anyway, but I can sort of understand why someone might. Americans don’t understand soccer. There is a good reason for that. Soccer is not understandable. Plus it is insanely boring.

The pros play for about ten hours on a field the size of Rhode Island, getting near the actual goal an astonishing three times, resulting in a 0-0 tie at the end of regular play. The referee then adds an additional 45 minutes of “stoppage time” at his or her discretion, resulting in a 1-1 tie after numerous “free kicks.” Thrilling!

The referee might give you a yellow card if you cause a foul, but he might also allow play to continue under the advantage rule, if your foul would have helped your team unfairly. If play stops, the clock doesn’t, so a common tactic is to fake injuries to run the clock down. Corner kick, goal kick, free kick, indirect free kick, penalty kick. Charging, sandwiching, worrying the goalkeeper, cautioning, dangerous play, encroaching, fair charging, obstructing, impeding, late tackling, off sides, on sides, yellow cards, red cards. I am willing to bet that at any soccer match at any time in the United States, only four people actually know what is going on. They are the ref, one of the two coaches (the one who played soccer in high school), and the European couple in the stands.

So, of course some of the parents are yelling at the referee. We’re not yelling, “What was that?” in the context of, “Are you crazy, he was totally off sides!” We’re yelling, “What was that?” in the context of, “What does off sides mean? I totally don’t even understand which team you just called a foul on, if indeed you just called a foul. You stopped the entire play, but the clock is still running, so shouldn’t someone turn it off? I have no idea what is happening, and I feel like I need to yell because you are out in the center of the field which is 2000 feet away from my lawn chair.”

Since I signed the code of conduct, I will refrain from yelling, “What was that?” at the ref. It won’t be hard, since I have no interest in soccer in the first place. I will simply keep watching my sons play, cheering them on in a positive and encouraging manner while not disparaging the other team’s players or their efforts, per the code of conduct, patiently waiting for the day they decide to skip the next soccer season to concentrate on baseball.

And if, while I’m trying not to be one of “those parents,” the coach asks me to help out at practice, I’ll do my best. I will encourage my son and his teammates to drink lots of water and kick the ball toward the correct goal. Hopefully that will be helpful. The most help I could really offer our coach however, is a simple suggestion. Have the rest of the kids always pass the ball to Felipe, the Brazilian kid. He’s the only one out there who looks like he knows what's going on.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 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!

Caber Tossing Pongers

Last week I wrote about Michael Phelps, and what an amazing career he has just capped off at the 30^th Olympiad in London.  As a swimmer, he competes in a sport where it is possible to win a medal for each event he is entered in, and he is ending his career with a second-to-none count of 22 medals to his name. That makes him hard to compare on an apples-to-apples basis to a decathlete, who can earn just one medal while having to compete in more events than Phelps ever swam in any one Olympics. Medal count aside, however, there is no doubt that Phelps is one of the greatest Olympians of all time.

You know who is not one of the greatest Olympians of all time? Any ping pong player.

I have nothing against ping pong as a hobby. It goes great with beer and it’s a good way to kill a half-hour in a rec room. And I have absolutely no problem with professional ping pong players - especially the ones at the Olympics. They are phenomenal. I even enjoyed watching it for about three minutes. What I do have a problem with is the fact that someone can go to London, play ping pong really well, and end up with the same gold medal that Michael Phelps, Jessica Ennis, and Usain Bolt currently have around their necks. That is ridiculous.

To keep everyone on a level playing field, all the Olympic athletes are rigorously drug tested. If ping pong is considered an Olympic sport, then the International Olympic Committee has obviously lost sight of the reason for drug testing in the first place.

The IOC needs to apply a theoretical drug test to their screening process. They need to sit down and look at the list of events they are offering at the Olympic Games and decide if taking performance enhancing drugs would actually help the competitor win. If the answer is no, it should not be an Olympic event. Ping pong? No.

They try to dress it up by calling it “table tennis,” but let’s all be serious for a minute. You’re hitting a little plastic ball with a tiny wooden paddle. Take all the steroids you want. Get steroid injections between matches. Who cares? You’re still just playing ping pong. It’s not a sport.

If they don’t want to apply the theoretical drug test, they could apply a very simple theoretical alcohol test instead. If the game in question can be played while holding a beer in your other hand, it should not be an Olympic event.

Hammer throw – Pass. Ping pong – Fail.

Hammer throw. Now there’s an Olympic event. Pick up a 16-pound lead ball on the end of a steel cable and throw it as far as you can. A gentleman from Hungary just won the gold medal in London by tossing that measly little hammer 264 feet. He could probably eat a ping pong table. The hammer throw has deep Olympic roots, and is also an integral part of the Scottish Highland Games, which also features the caber toss, the only throwing-heavy-stuff event that is cooler than the hammer throw. A caber is a log that is 19 feet long and weighs 175 pounds. Pick it up and throw it. Plain and simple.

It is patently obvious that the caber toss should be immediately added to the Olympics to take the place of ping pong. And on top of that, every medalist in ping pong since its bewildering inclusion to the Olympic Games in 1988 should be forced to enter the caber toss in 2016, just so they can get a feel for how ridiculous their medals for ping pong really are. We could force them to enter the swimming events, but I thought it would be a little harsh to actually drown them, which is what would obviously happen.

I am not saying that professional ping-pongers don’t need a competitive venue to showcase their “sport.” Like I said, I think they are amazing, but let’s remove it from the Olympics and leave the table tennis pro tour where it belongs – in Las Vegas at the Horseshoe on a Wednesday.

If the IOC fails to take my incredibly insightful advice and get rid of ping pong, then the least they could do is make the medal sizes proportionate to the events. If you medal in the decathlon, you should get a medal the size of a truck tire. If you medal in ping pong, it should look like a dime on a string. The silver medal could be an actual dime.

Other dime-sized medal “sports” would include race walking, badminton, and trampoline. Come on, IOC! Really? The race walking course was 31 miles long. Big deal. It’s still walking. My mother-in-law just did a fundraiser where she walked 30 miles in a day, three days in a row. I guess that means she’s a three-time Olympic hopeful! Badminton is just a larger, but somehow less exciting version of ping pong, and don’t even get me started on trampoline. Have you ever seen a kid throw a 16-pound lead ball on a steel cable 264 feet in the backyard for fun? Enough said.

The medal ceremonies should be proportionate also. Actual Olympic-caliber events can maintain the current pomp and circumstance, but the ping pong players should just be handed their dime-sized medal on their way out of the arena by one of the ushers. “Here you go, big guy. Great match.”

To any Olympic ponger, fast walker, shuttlecocker, or bouncy-bouncer that disagrees with me, I offer this simple solution: Get a tape measure and lay out 29 feet on your floor. Now stand back and look at it.

That’s how far Carl Lewis flew in a single long jump.

By the way -- huge congratulations to Jike Zhang, Long Ma, Hao Wang, and Xiaoxia Li for their amazing gold medal wins at the 2012 Olympic Games.

Who?

Exactly. Good luck in the caber toss, boys.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 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!

Marc Spitz Hot Dog at Phelps

Michael Phelps just turned in one of the most amazing sports careers of all time. He leaves the sport of swimming at the end of the London Olympic Games with a career 22 medals, an astounding 18 of them gold. No other single Olympian in history even has double digits in gold. In fact, he has more gold medals than the entire country of Argentina. He has more career Olympic medals than India.

At the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, Phelps made history by winning eight gold medals in eight straight events. He broke the long-standing record of fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz, who went seven golds for seven events in Munich in 1972. When Phelps broke Spitz’ medal record, the world crowned him as the new “Greatest Olympian,” and there was very little public debate about it. Now, as Phelps finishes up with his astonishing career medal count, crushing former Soviet female gymnast Larisa Last-name-ina for all-time individual medals won, and ending up with twice as many career medals as Spitz, he will be written into the history books as the greatest, bar none.

I am here today to dispute that. I am here today to tell you that Spitz was better.

My case for Spitz being a more dominant swimmer doesn’t even take into account that he won most of his 1972 Olympic races by body lengths, or that he set new world record times in all seven swims. I’m not even focusing on the fact that he swam without goggles, that he swam without a cap, or that he swam with an afro, all of his rather prodigious underarm hair, and a Tom Selleck moustache. My argument even ignores his 1970’s red, white, and blue Speedo, which is hard to ignore.

My argument has to do with eating. A lot of fuss was made during the 2008 Olympic coverage about how much Michael Phelps ate every day. While it was certainly a lot, in the world of competitive swimming, it was pretty standard. World-class swimmers do two things. Swim and eat. When I was swimming in high school, I would come home from practice and eat the entire right side of the fridge. That’s just par for the course, swimming-wise.

The amount of food that Spitz and Phelps put away during their swimming days is not where my argument lies. My case for Spitz’ athletic superiority comes from the amount of food he could put away during a race.

When I was in high school, our swim coach told us a story about Mark Spitz. Back when Spitz was in high school in Santa Clara, California, Coach Pete had seen him race at a nationals meet. Spitz already held national high school records in every stroke, and he was heavily favored in every one of his races, but when the swimmers took the blocks for one of his events, he was absent.

His name was called over the loudspeaker, and everyone at the pool and in the grandstands began looking around for him. When the race officials called his name again, telling him to report to his lane to start the race, he was seen jogging toward the starting blocks from the snack bar. He had three hot dogs in one hand, and he was eating another while he was running toward the pool.

He reached his starting block at one of the middle lanes of the pool, chewing the last of the hot dog he had been eating while he ran. He handed two of the three remaining dogs to the timer behind his block, asking the man to please save them for him. He then joined his opponents, stepping up onto his starting block, still holding a hot dog.

Now, let’s be clear for a minute. We’re talking about an Oscar Mayer wiener, in a bun, with the condiments of Spitz’ choice. In his hand. On the starting blocks. Of a nationals race. He had just wolfed down one of them while running. He was now standing over the end of his lane holding another.

As the crowd looked on in awe, amazement, and amusement, Mark Spitz proceeded to stuff the entire hot dog into his mouth, reach down to touch the block at the “take your marks” command, and dive into the pool with seven other swimmers, starting his race while chewing and swallowing a whole hot dog on lap number one.

He beat the nearest finisher by almost two body lengths.

Michael Phelps is undoubtedly awesome, but all he ever did was swim. It probably never even occurred to him to combine competitive eating with competitive swimming. Mark Spitz was a trailblazing, groundbreaking, lightning fast, “I can eat a hot dog during this race and still whip your ass” kind of an athlete. Wait 30 minutes after eating before getting in the pool? No thanks. I’ll eat while I’m swimming.

Phelps says he did everything he set out to do. That may be true, but until he can do that, Spitz is still the greatest swimmer that ever lived. In my book, anyway.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 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!

Vanity Sizing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

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!

Smuggling Made Easy

Since we are right in the heart of baseball season, I thought I would write a “public service” type column this week in an effort to help you, the baseball fan, combat the high price of ballpark food and beverages.

I can get you into the park with your own beer. No longer will you need to pay $27 for two Miller Lites. It’s simple. It’s ingenious. It’s a little weird.

You just need to buy a used breast pump.

You see, my wife and I, through some strange circumstances, stumbled upon the absolute best way to smuggle almost anything you want into a sports venue.

When Son Number Three was just a baby, we received two San Francisco Giants home game tickets as a gift. They were phenomenal seats, right behind home plate, at one of the best ballparks in the major leagues. They were not to be missed.

Son Number Three was only a few months old at the time, and my wife was right in the thick of the breastfeeding. He was drinking a lot, and she was making a lot. That presents a problem when said mother needs to be away from said child for eight hours. Her body would keep making milk for him, even if he wasn’t there to drink it.

If you have never witnessed the miracle of breastfeeding, you are really missing out. If a mother is on a regular schedule with a constantly hungry child, her body produces milk at very regular intervals. When a mother’s milk “comes in,” it is something very akin to inflating balloons from a high-pressure helium tank. Wham-o! Not wanting her breasts to explode in the fifth inning, and not wanting to miss going to the game, my clever wife devised a plan.

She would bring her breast pump to the game, excuse herself to the family restroom when the time came, depressurize her chest, pour the milk down the drain, and return to her seat where I would fill her in on what she missed. Brilliant.

We drove to San Francisco, pulled into our complimentary parking spot that came with the tickets, and made our way to the turnstiles. Prior to entering the park, we had to stand in line for a bag check. It was there that our great discovery was made. I naturally assessed line length versus apparent line speed and chose the optimal line. It happened to be manned by a twenty-something-year-old male bag checker. When we got up to his table, my wife opened her purse for him to peer into. Satisfied with her purse, he then asked to inspect the rather large pouch hanging from her other shoulder.

The modern-day breast pump is an efficient machine. It is made for ease of use, and ease of portability. This model had an integral carrying case, with two main access panels. The first access panel revealed the working front of the pump, with all its hose attachments, knobs, and buttons. The second access hatch opened to a rather good-sized storage compartment, ostensibly to hold the bottles and suction cup devices necessary to do the job.

My wife set the breast pump down on the inspection table, with all the flaps still closed.

“What is this?” the young man inquired, as he opened the first flap, revealing all the knobs, buttons and hoses.

“It’s a breast pump.”

“A what?” he asked, as he bent down to squint at the strange apparatus.

“A breast pump,” my wife repeated, as he began spinning it around to look at the back side. “I just had a baby, and I’m breastfeeding. This is a pump that…”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence. A light went on inside the young man’s head, and all at once he realized just what it was he was touching. He recoiled straight backward, five feet away from the table, as if he had found a coiled rattlesnake under the flap of the bag.

He continued to back farther away from the table with both his hands up in the “I surrender” position as he begged us to not only have a great day, but also enjoy the game. We were to immediately leave his table area and go about our business, no further questions asked. He was fifteen feet away from the table and still backing up when we thanked him and passed through into the park.

It’s that simple, ladies and gentlemen. Go to the second hand baby stuff store and buy a previously-owned breast pump. You could easily fit three or four cans of beer in the standard storage area, but if you felt the need to smuggle in a six pack and some sandwiches, you could always cut open the bottom and hollow out the inside. Just make sure to leave all the knobs, hoses, and buttons, and at least one of the suction cups visible under the first flap.

At today’s ballpark concession prices, a $50 to $100 investment will pay for itself in no time. There are only two cautions with this ingenious new smuggling plan. First, you need at least one lady with you, so this won’t work on the guys-only outings. Second, and most importantly, you need to go to a young man for the bag check. The 50-year-old mother of three will tear that thing apart, because she knows all about the storage compartment, and she won’t be afraid to touch it!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 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 Lemonade Stand

The other day, my boys got a good lesson in business, economics, marketing, and most importantly, what it’s like to do business in California. They had their very first lemonade stand. Actually, it was a combination lemonade stand and bike and scooter wash. They figured a diversified product and service offering was key to their success.

My wife had bought them a four-foot-tall, $20 cardboard lemonade stand kit, which I was tasked with assembling. The boys “helped,” so it only took us a few hours to put together. We brought it out to the front yard, and the education began. They just thought they were having fun and making money, but unbeknownst to them, they were learning valuable business lessons all day.

Advertising

We started the day by scouting our neighbors’ lots for good lawn sign locations, then knocking on doors to ask if it would be OK to put a sign on their lawn for the day advertising the new business. We live in a nice neighborhood, so that went really well.

Site Layout

With an operation that put off a lot of drain water combined with an operation that relied on a cardboard structure, they had to be careful. We ended up locating the bike wash on the opposite side of the front yard from the lemonade stand.

Supplier Issues
Their business model depended on providing customers with “Homemade Lemonade,” or at least, that’s what the pre-printed sign said on the lemonade stand. Their supplier could only deliver lemon-flavored Crystal Light drink mix. Since Mom, Inc. has a monopoly on the food service supply chain in their region, all they could do was cross their fingers and hope the public wouldn’t know the difference.

Workers Comp Claims

Son Number Two took a chunk out of his finger while messing around with a bike chain during a wash, and a lost-time accident occurred. He was rushed to the kitchen first-aid station and was allowed to return to work later that day, but the damage was done. The “Days Without an Injury” sign went to zero, and upper management was not pleased. Neither was Son Number Two!

Health Code Violations

Shortly after his return to work, Son Number Two’s Band-Aid came off and he ended up bleeding on the lemonade stand. Thankfully there were no customers present at the time, but upper management was not pleased.

Disaster Recovery

In the late morning, the wind picked up a little and blew the cardboard lemonade stand down the street. All business activities ceased as the employees rushed to re-build their storefront, weigh it down with rocks, and get their mom to make them some more Crystal Light.

Human Resource Issues

The two main business partners had some tough decisions to make regarding a certain employee. Their younger brother, Son Number Three was simply not pulling his weight. At four years old, he could not be trusted to serve lemonade or make change, and instead of helping with the bike and scooter wash, he would tend to just splash in the buckets, put soap in his hair, and wander off during the slow times. They really needed self-starters.

Staying Focused

The long-term sustainability of their business model was brought into question when two of their friends came over and the entire organization abandoned the business to go on a scooter ride. Upper management was not pleased.

For all the challenges they faced, there was one area where they excelled: Sales.

The Art of the Sales Pitch

It helps to have a diversified product line, but you have to know how to sell it. A week earlier we had been given a large box of individually wrapped gummy treats in the shape of spiders, and my wife and I did not want the kids to eat all of them, so she suggested they offer them for sale along with the lemonade as a way to make more money. When the first customer pulled over and got out of her car, Son Number One looked her square in the eye and asked, “Would you like to buy a glass of lemonade or a tarantula?”

Who could resist that sales pitch? She bought two lemonades and eight gummy spiders.

Unfortunately, besides being good at sales, they were also a little shady with their business practices.

The Bait and Switch
The sign for their bike and scooter wash operation advertised a bike wash for 50 cents and 25 cents for a scooter wash, but when I pulled my mountain bike out of the garage, they charged me three dollars! They claimed that the 50 cent price tag was only for kid-sized bikes, but later in the day when their grandparents showed up, they only charged them two dollars to wash their Toyota! Upper management was not pleased.

Besides being mildly worried about their business ethics, I was also concerned that they might get an inflated sense of value and worth, since every single adult who came to purchase lemonade and spiders ended up paying them 3-5 times the asking price of 25 cents. Because of that, they ended up having a pretty good day, despite a pretty low sales volume. They brought in $21.75, and to make it even better for the two business partners who were really pulling their weight, their mom was able to convince their younger brother, the soap-haired slacker, that his take-home share of 25 cents was a pretty good deal. Four-year-olds are really gullible. (I wonder where they get the questionable ethics from?)

Not wanting them to have an overly Pollyanna view of doing business in the great state of California, I stepped in before the money went in the piggy banks. Time for the real lesson of the day.

I explained that before they counted their “profits,” there were still a few costs to deal with. They still owed me for lemonade stand set-up construction costs, driveway rent, leasing the $20 cardboard lemonade stand, sidewalk rent, water costs, soap costs, sign rental, material costs for the Crystal Light, and of course, consulting fees. While they thought that they had each made $10.75, in reality, they each owed me $734.

To make it even more realistic for them, I also charged them a business license application fee, deducted income tax, slapped them with an excessive wastewater output fine, and then sued them for fraud and false advertising.

I also threw in lawsuit for emotional distress, claiming that I had spilled some of their excessively cold lemonade on my pants.

That will teach them!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 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!

Independence Day

The 4^th of July holiday is known all over America for its fireworks. I happen to live in California, however, so municipal firework shows are all we have. Personal fireworks are a no-no. Good ones, anyway. This year, we ended up at my sister’s house in Oregon on the 4^th. I was excited, because I thought I would have more access to better personal fireworks in Oregon. Unfortunately, it turns out they are just as lame as California. When we pulled into town, I went to the Junior League’s firework stand in the Safeway parking lot, hoping, at a bare minimum, to buy some honest-to-goodness Black Cat firecrackers. No such luck. The selection was exactly the same as the stand in my own town, at my own Safeway parking lot. I left with the $50 “Safe and Sane” Family Disappointment Package, cursing the leaders of both states under my breath.

So-called “Safe and Sane” fireworks really suck. There is no better way to put it. They just suck. The sparklers even suck. I’m not sure how it was possible to make a sparkler lamer than the ones I grew up with, but they managed to pull it off. To make it worse, we had spent the whole day of the 4^th driving, so my wife was insistent on getting the kids to bed at a reasonable hour, so they wouldn’t be cranky the next day. The sun doesn’t go down in northern Oregon until 9:30 at night in the summer, so my after-dinner fireworks non-extravaganza took place in the daylight on my sister’s driveway.

By the fourth fountain it was obvious that the safe and sane package has exactly four tricks up its sleeve: White shower of sparks, colored shower of sparks, crackling shower of sparks, and whistles. The “large” fountains reached the staggeringly breathtaking height of three feet. Happy birthday, America! Sorry this sucked.

Our boys actually enjoyed the first few, but even at seven, six and four years old, they are still male, so they became bored rather quickly. They began to ask impatiently for me to “do bigger ones.” I was then faced with the challenge of trying to explain that we were celebrating the birth of the freest nation on earth with ridiculously bad fireworks because we were not free to buy the good ones in this particular part of that same nation. I was halfway through the explanation when our savior arrived.

Matt, my sister’s neighbor from down the street, came strolling up to the driveway with his wife and daughter, two armloads of fireworks, and a big smile on his face. We had heard some very loud explosions from the direction of his house earlier in the evening, and when we asked if they were from him, he replied with a wink and a nod that he had no idea what we were talking about. He had the larger $80 Safe and Sane Family Disappointment Package under his left arm, and a bulging brown paper bag under his right arm.

We invited them to join us, and now with more safe and sane firepower, we began clustering four to six of the “large” fountains together and lighting them all at once. That made them mildly tolerable. When I inquired as to what might be in the unmarked bag, Matt said, “I’m glad you asked.”

Matt had gone to Washington, just north of Oregon, a state that still believes that Americans should be able to celebrate Independence Day in style. Matt had a bag full of mortars. Mortars are not safe. They are not sane. They are, however, awesome! Mortars are basically a 1/4 scale of a real municipal firework. They rocket out of the tube with a bang, straight up, 150 feet into the air and explode with a huge shower of colored sparks. And when I say explode, I mean feel-it-in-your-chest explode. When he set off the first one from the middle of the street, I knew we were destined for a much more exciting 4^th of July. Our boys were loving it.

It turned out that Matt, being the kind of courageous American male that is willing to cross state lines with illegal fireworks in order to have a good time, was also the kind of American male that makes his own fireworks. He had some homemade “firecrackers” made out of something called flash powder, that apparently burns three times faster than gunpowder. They looked like a two-inch-wide triangular piece of flat cardboard with a fuse sticking out. When he lit the first one and threw it across the street, we immediately knew where all the loud explosions had been coming from. It shook the windows! Our boys were loving it.

At that point, my sister’s slightly eccentric neighbor, Mark, from across the street, came out to join us with some Roman candles. We held them up and shot flaming colored balls down the street. Now we’re getting somewhere! When Mark decided that the Roman candles weren’t good enough, he went across the street and came back with his own mortars. Now Matt was busy operating two mortar stations, sending fireworks high into the air to the delight of the crowd that was gathering. Our boys were loving it!

Not one, apparently, to waste an opportunity to party, Mark kept going back and forth across the street bringing different items over to the driveway. He had quite a collection of illegal fireworks, along with a speaker/amp for his iPod to add some music to the festivities, and some bootleg whiskey that his friend had sent him, to warm up the crowd. It turned out that Mark owned a gun manufacturing facility a few towns over, and he jokingly (I thought) asked me if I wanted to shoot some blanks out of an M-16. I, of course, said yes.

It was starting to get dark when things started to get a little out of hand. Some random guy from down the road wandered over wearing Coke-bottle glasses and rubber boots, with a beer in one hand and a mortar shell in the other. As people were lighting Mark’s spinning and flying fireworks left and right out in the street, Matt and captain rubber boots were trying to figure out which mortar tube would be best for the new random mortar shell, and Mark, wearing a white dress shirt, shorts and sandals, was standing in the middle of the street holding a glass of whiskey in one hand and an M-16 in the other.

Now, as an American male, I am pro-mortar. I am also pro-homemade fireworks, pro-loud music, pro-beer, pro-whiskey, and pro-machine gun. At 10:00 P.M. on the 4^th of July, however, when I surveyed the scene that had developed in the street in front of my sister’s house, I decided I am not necessarily pro-all-those-things-at-once when my boys are running around in the middle of it. It was starting to look more like a war zone than a barbecue. 

I packed up the kids into the car, and dragged my wife kicking and screaming away from the festivities. Mind you, this was the same woman who was insistent on getting the kids to bed right away – two hours earlier. Deep down, she’s secretly pro-all-those-things-together, too, which is why I love her.

We said goodnight, and left one heck of a party in our rearview mirror. I guess I’m becoming more prudent in my old age, or my parent-age. One thing is for sure, the younger, single me would have braved the flying fireworks and stuck around in hopes of firing some blanks out of that M-16! Oh, well.

We went back to my sister’s house the next morning to help clean up, and the house was still standing, so I guess the party didn’t get too out of hand.

Happy birthday, America!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 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 Dad-cation

What’s the next best thing to going on vacation?

When your wife takes your three kids and goes on vacation, and leaves you home. It’s called a dad-cation. You still have to go to work during the day, but you are back to being a bachelor in the evenings. My wife gave me a dad-cation recently when she took the kids to the coast for a week. She even helped out by emptying the refrigerator and taking all the food with her, so my temporary bachelorhood was more authentic. The only thing I ever had in my fridge when I was single was hot sauce, beer, and olives.

A dad-cation differs greatly from the old bachelor days in one regard. What the old bachelor me would have considered a very boring evening, the dad-cationing me considers bliss.

I would come home from work and the house would be quiet. For a while each night I would just listen to the quiet. Then, I would go up to my office and pay bills, or organize the health care files, or balance my checking account. It was great! And I would sit and think.

I never get to sit and think anymore. I’m fairly sure the human brain is only good for so many minutes of hard work in any given day. When you come home from work to a house full of kids, the brain up-time you have left over from work is quickly exhausted by your children. Rapid-fire questions, helping with projects, refereeing disputes, coloring, reading children’s books, and pretending to be the leader of a gang of puppies who are also spies who have laser beams and force fields and can also be cheetahs who are also truck drivers and jet pilots takes a lot out of you. By the time all the force field cheetah pilots go to bed, your brain just needs to be off. There is no thinking power left over for anything else. On the dad-cation, however, a man can think.

A man can also watch his own TV on a dad-cation. One of the big problems with trying to raise kids who are only allowed limited screen time each day is that you, yourself, get limited screen time as a result. During a typical day, the only thing I ever see on my TV is a Disney show. By the time the kids are in bed, I am too tired, or have too much to do, to watch a grown-up show. On the dad-cation I rented an R-rated movie and watched it while I ate dinner! How crazy is that? I also watched an entire baseball game, and even a comedy with questionable language. It was awesome.

I slept soundly on my dad-cation, too. Ever since we had kids, my nights have involved a lot of pee. I occasionally wake up to pee, but with three boys down the hall, someone else always has to pee, and 99 times out of 100, I am involved somehow. I either hear it, hear about it, help with it, or clean it up. There are far less pee-related activities on the dad-cation.

I slept well, too. When my wife is gone, the hump is available. You know the hump. The big ridge in the middle of the mattress that separates the 10-year-old sleeping divots on either side. I moved to the middle of the bed and slept on the only part of the mattress that still has its original firmness. My back loves the hump!

When my wife returned with the kids, I was well rested and in good spirits. I was also totally unprepared for their return. Now, don’t misunderstand. I missed them and was very happy that they were home, and thankful that they were home safely. I missed being a truck driving spy puppy, and I had been looking forward to their return, but as it turned out, I wasn’t totally ready for it.

Two minutes after I walked into the house from work I was refereeing an argument about who called who a butt face. Three minutes later, when one of them came to me complaining that his brother had punched him in the stomach, I looked at my wife incredulously and asked, “What happened while you were away? Have you been feeding them sugar the whole time?”

She smiled sweetly at me, the way you smile at an idiot, and said, “Honey, they’ve always been like this. Have we been gone too long?”

It’s amazing how fast you can slip back into bachelor mode on a dad-cation. They’re my own kids, but after a week off I was on total patience overload inside of a half-hour of their return. It was as if I was brand new to the whole thing. So, I have decided there needs to be an ease-in period from the dad-cation, much like getting into a hot tub slowly. You either need to be re-exposed to one kid per day for three days, or all three kids for 20 minutes the first day, an hour the second day, and so on, to ease yourself back into full-strength parenting.

The only problem with that is, your wife has been a single parent for a week and wants nothing more than to throw the children at you and run back out the door.

Oh, well. It doesn’t matter. Bachelors don’t know what they’re missing. It’s loud, you can’t think, you can’t watch TV, you can’t sleep, and your back hurts, but you wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

Bachelors hardly ever get to be motorcycle-riding saber-tooth tigers with jet packs and exploding throwing stars.

I do all the time.  

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 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!

Quitting

I haven’t had a drink since New Year’s Day. But I’ve had a lot of beer.

You see, I made myself a last-minute New Year’s resolution that I wouldn’t drink any alcohol until I finished my next book. This was a self-motivational deal with myself, made under the assumption that it would take about another month to finish up the book. Well, it’s been almost six months and I’m still not done. Whoops.

Alcohol for me means beer. It’s really the only alcoholic beverage I ever drink. I will have a Bloody Mary on special occasions, but mostly because I am asked to make them, since I happen to make the world’s best Bloody Mary. (Not meant to be boastful – simply the truth.) Other than that, it’s beer. I don’t really know if that’s because I don’t really care for wine and spirits, or because I just love beer. Probably a little of both. I have always liked beer - literally from the moment I took my first sip from my dad’s can of Coors when I was a boy. I remember thinking, “Man, that’s good! I can’t wait to grow up so I can have a whole one!”

Well, I grew up, and I have been enjoying beer after tasty beer from the time my incredibly good college fake ID said I was 21. Little did I know as a young lad that there were so many choices! Coors is good and all, but I might have exploded with joy if my dad had been a Guinness drinker.

Anyway, due to my love of beer, I figured a drinking moratorium would be a very motivational way to encourage some extra effort and finish up the book. What I said to myself was; no beer until I’m finished. What I naturally meant by that was no alcohol until I was done, which I foolishly thought would be the motivating factor, since beer and alcohol have always gone hand in hand. I did not count on the unexpected happening.

I didn’t miss it at all. I cruised right through the first month. I was shocked. My wife was shocked. My friends were shocked. People who didn’t even know me very well were shocked. If we had a dog, it would have been shocked.

Then, the totally unexpected happened. We had a party at our house, and one of the guests brought over two six-packs of Clausthaler, a German non-alcoholic beer. I looked at it and snickered, like any true beer-lover would do. It never even occurred to me to try one, until my wife said, “Well, you could have one of those, couldn’t you?”

I thought about it for a second, and decided that I could, since my “no drinking until I’m finished” rule really applied to alcohol, and not necessarily a brewed malt beverage that didn’t have any measurable alcohol content to speak of. So, on a whim, just to see how bad it was, I held my nose and took a swig.

Then, the truly, totally, wildly unexpected happened. I liked it. It tasted just like beer. After the first delicious German-brewed sip I realized all at once that I really missed beer. I really, really missed beer. I just didn’t miss the alcohol. Go figure!

I have probably drunk more beer in the last three months than I did in the entire previous year. I used to think of myself as a true beer lover. In my old world, non-alcoholic beer was something to be scoffed at. I am now enlightened. For a true, true beer lover, non-alcoholic beer is awesome. It opens up a whole world of new beer possibilities. Want a beer at lunch on a work day? No problem. Thirsty and want to crack one open while driving home from the store? Sure. Want beer on your Cheerios for breakfast? That’s gross. But you could totally do it! Plus, it’s about half the calories of regular beer, so your beer gut grows half as fast!

In fact, there are only two problems I can find with it. It costs as much or more than beer with alcohol in it. That seems wrong at first, but it’s probably because they have to take the alcohol out after they brew it, so it’s really more work to make it. Nothing we can do about that, I guess. Secondly, due to having no alcohol, there is no clearly defined stopping point. I found this problem at my good friend’s 40^th birthday party. His wife rented out a bar, and we were there for over five hours. As the party was winding down I was feeling unusually bloated. When I paid my tab I realized I had downed ten O’Doul’s over the course of the evening. Maybe paying cash as I go would be a good solution to that one.

Last month, in the midst of all my non-alcoholic beer enlightenment, I, too, turned 40 years old. I had always planned on “cleaning things up a little,” health-wise, when I hit 40, and one of the items on the checklist was soda. I drink waaaay too much Coke. Over the course of many years, I have apparently stopped getting my nutrients and energy from food sources the way God intended, and have instead become the human equivalent of a fat, slow hummingbird. I exist almost entirely on sugar-water. I’m no physician, but I know that can’t be good.

Life is funny sometimes. I quit drinking alcohol almost by accident, and that went really well. I am currently trying to quit drinking caffeinated soda, and it couldn’t be more difficult. I feel like I’m detoxing from morphine. My temples are pounding, my vision is blurry, my palms are sweaty, and I’m walking around with my head in a cloud where I constantly feel like I’m forgetting something. I’m thinking about starting to use heroin just so I’ll have something easier to quit.

I know I need to be done once and for all with my daily soda intake, but this is ridiculous. I don’t think the motivational “take something away” plan will work this time. I already quit drinking, so I really don’t have anything left to take away, anyway. I refuse to give up my non-alcoholic beer, so I’m kind of stuck.

Maybe, instead, I’ll do some kind of motivational rewards program. I could always substitute in real beers for the Cokes as an incentive. That might have some merit... It will either work on its own, or I’ll end up drunk in the middle of the day, get fired from my job and have no money to buy any beverages.

Either way, I’ll get off the Coke.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 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 People of Safeway

As I was walking out of Safeway the other day, I passed a woman who was walking in wearing one of those front-mounted baby carriers on her chest. Nothing odd about that, except the forward-facing passenger was not the usual requisite five-month-old baby. This lady was papoose-ing a tiny little dog. (Either that, or it was the ugliest five-month-old baby ever, but I was pretty sure it was one of those little yappy dogs.)

Now, I was raised right, and as a result, I have never been one to make fun of people. I grew up with the Golden Rule, and I am trying to pass that on to my own children to make sure that they always treat other people the same way they would want to be treated themselves.

But the shock of seeing a lady who had mistaken her pet for a human, and as such, was bringing her cutsy-wootsie, cuddily-wuddily little dog inside the grocery store, got the better of my better judgment. My hand instantly went for my cell phone in an attempt to get a picture of her.

The cell phone was half-way up to ready position when my good raising kicked back in and I stopped myself.

A moment of awkward subterfuge ensued as I reversed the course of the rising phone back down to “just checking my messages” elevation, and pretended to be interested in the screen in case she had seen me.

As I passed by her, staring at my blank screen, I was mildly disgusted with myself. Apparently, due to owning a smartphone, I am dangerously close to crossing the line from civilized adult to thoughtless, totally cyber-connected web monkey. My first reaction upon seeing this woman was, “Man, I’ve got to get a picture of her and post it on Facebook!”

I’m quite sure that when that lady woke up in the morning -- presumably with her yappy dog snuggled up next to her head on her pillow, licking her face in that super-adorable way that he does -- she never could have known that she would cause me, a complete stranger, to have a pretty serious moment of introspection. I walked past her thinking to myself that I am more than mildly hypocritical in this area of my life. The “People of Walmart” area of life, that is.

If you do not know about “People of Walmart,” it is a website dedicated to posting pictures coupled with hilariously sarcastic comments of various Walmart shoppers. With the possible exception of the “everything is a dollar” stores, Walmart seems to attract more human train wrecks per capita than most other stores. A long time ago, people began snapping secret photos of them with their cell phones and posting them online. The site is chock full of people shopping with their underwear on the outside of their clothes, people shopping in only their underwear, and people shopping in the opposite gender’s underwear. Generally, it’s people who have serious underwear issues, or don’t own mirrors, or both.

Here’s my problem. I think the “People of Walmart” site is hilarious. The things some people wear in public cracks me up. (Emphasis on the word “crack.”) So, if I enjoy the website, I should be willing to be a contributor, right? There’s where I got into a serious moral dilemma. When it came time for me to provide content for my own “People of Safeway” Facebook post, I couldn’t do it.

My first thought was not necessarily, “That isn’t a very nice thing to do.” The way I figure it, if you leave the house with a pet strapped onto your chest, you get what you get.

My first thought was, “What am I going to say if she catches me taking a picture of her?”

“Ma’am, can you please hold still so I can take a picture of you to post on the internet in hopes that my friends find your brand of ‘crazy dog lady’ as entertaining as I do?”

There was no way that was going to happen.

So, I guess what I learned about myself is this; my brand of Golden Rule has a lot of personal responsibility attached to it. I will enjoy seeing the picture of you on the internet if you decide to leave your house wearing a dog, but I am not willing to be the guy who personally makes you feel insecure about, or ashamed of, your choice to do so.

I’m still not 100% sure how hypocritical that makes me, but I really don’t care. I’m comfortable with it. I mean, if I ever got so far down the “my pet is a person” road that I was carrying Fifi around in a Baby Bjorn, or if I was going out in public wearing shorts that were eleven sizes too small, I couldn’t honestly expect you not to mock me. In some ways, I would hope that you would. Maybe that would be the kick in the vastly overexposed butt I would need to get back to reality.

I think I just need to get stealthier with my camera.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 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 Triple Play

Matt was up to bat with the bases loaded. Luke was on first, Austin was on second, and Colin was on third. I threw the first pitch to Matt and he made solid contact. A screaming line drive flew past me on the right, heading straight at the third baseman. The runners went. Luckily, the third baseman was taking some time off from his busy chore of making dirt circles with his cleats and was actually paying attention as the ball came hurtling toward his head. He reacted by raising his hands up to keep the ball from hitting him square in the face. To his good fortune, the hand that had the baseball glove on it was the first one to get up in front of his face, and to everyone’s amazement, not the least of which his own, he caught the ball.

That was the end of the baseball-looking portion of the play. The rest resembled a circus. This was five and six-year-old baseball, and no one, least of all the players, was expecting any of the batted balls to be caught on the fly.

At six years old, the rules of baseball can be confusing. Actually, at thirty-six years old they are confusing. At six they are a mystery. At the crack of the bat all three runners had gone, and since the ball was caught on the fly, they all needed to get back to their bases to tag up. No one tagged up. None of them even understand what “tag up” means.

I was standing on the mound, facing the infield and shouting, “Go back, go back!”

The third baseman who had caught the ball stood in utter shock, staring into his glove. Once he realized that he had just made a great play, he jumped up and down for joy. After he got finished with that, he realized that he should probably keep doing things, so since he was playing third base, he walked over and tagged third base with his foot. Colin, who had been on third, was totally ignoring my pleas to go back and had long since crossed the plate and was half way to the dugout. When the third baseman stepped on third, Colin was out. That turned his catch into a double play.

Now I was shouting, “Turn around, turn around!”

Shortly after the third baseman tagged third, Austin, my player who had been on second base, jogged right past him on his way to third. He had not tagged up on second, and when his dad, the third base coach, finally got Austin’s attention, he finally reversed his course and started jogging back to second.

Now I was shouting, “Get back to second, get back to second!”

The third baseman, now sensing that there might be another play to be had near second base, began jogging toward second, himself. The third baseman who was holding the ball, and Austin, his opponent who needed to get back to his base, were jogging side-by-side together down the base path toward second. They were literally six inches apart. If the third baseman had just moved his glove six inches to the right he would have had a triple play.

Now, the opposing coach was shouting, “Tag him, tag him!”

I was shouting, “Run, run!”

Austin and the third baseman just trotted along next to each other, wondering why everyone was shouting at them.

When the misfit jogging partners were ten feet from second base, the third baseman stopped and threw the ball…past second base and into the outfield.

Luke, my player that had started on first base, made it to second base, but finally got the memo from the first base coach that he needed to go back when he saw Austin coming back from third.

Due to the overthrow, Austin made it safely back to second base where he needed to be, but then, for reasons totally unknown to the coaching staff, continued his backward path and headed back to first!

I was now shouting, “No, no!”

He got all the way to first and shared the base with Luke for a while until they realized that they both shouldn’t be there at once. He finally looked up and listened to the exasperated first base coach telling him to get back to second base.

I was shouting, “Get back, get back!”

As Austin was running back to second, the ball came in from the outfield… back to the third baseman. By that time, he was almost totally convinced that there was supposed to be something happening at second base that involved the ball, so he ran it back over to second.

He and Austin arrived at second base at the same time. They both stopped short and neither one of them stepped on the base. They just stared at each other.

I was shouting, “Get to the… Step on the… Don’t get… Do… Base!!!” (I was a little excited by this time, and getting pretty hoarse.)

By this time, all six coaches and all forty parents were shouting something toward the vicinity of second base. The two players - the runner and the fielder – were locked in a bewildered staring contest, neither one knowing what to do, and neither one processing any of the fragmented information and suggestions being hurled at them from all sides. They stood and stared at each other for what was probably a sum total of two seconds, but it was an eternity to a coach whose heart had stopped.

Finally breaking the stalemate, Austin took one step forward and placed his foot squarely on second base. The third baseman saw this as a sign that it was now safe to tag him, so he did.

Forty-five people all leaned back and started breathing again with a laugh as I finally called the runner safe at second.

The longest, most confusing and most heart-wrenching play of the inning was finally over. The third baseman had made an unassisted double play at third, and then missed about nineteen opportunities to turn it into a triple play.

I was just as wound up and emotional for the opposing team’s third baseman as I was for my own runner. When I got done laughing with the other coaches and high-fiving the players involved, I attempted to regain my composure and turned to pitch to the next batter. There, standing at the plate was Matt, ready to go. I looked at him for a second, thinking that something was wrong, until it finally dawned on me that he was the batter that just hit the ball that started that whole mess.

He had run to first base when he hit the ball, but was sent away by the first base coach who was, at the time, frantically trying to retrieve Luke from second.

Matt thought he had hit a foul ball, and he was all ready to give it another try.

“Sorry, buddy. You were out a while ago.”

Whadda ya gonna do? That’s 5/6 baseball for ya.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 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!

Groupon

A few months ago, my wife signed me up to receive emails from Groupon. I had no idea what Groupon was, and no prior interest in it, so I wasn’t exactly sure why she did it. As it later turned out, she was hoping I would buy her things. She’s funny sometimes!

Anyway, one of the first “deals” I was alerted to by the handy Groupon daily email was the unbelievable opportunity to score 47% off a Chocolate and Beer Pairing Class. I’m sorry… a what? Why would I want to pair chocolate with beer? Beer is for pretzels, peanuts and meat, not candy. And even if I wanted to do something as un-American and un-manly as matching up chocolate with beer, why would I want to pay to take a class on how to do it? How hard could it be? There are only two kinds of chocolate; milk and dark. Beer will go equally poorly with either one.

This inane suggestion for something to waste my money on got me curious about Groupon. What other gems did they have to offer me?

How about:

Up to 56% off Self-Service Dog Washes – If you mean the dog is supposed to wash itself, isn’t that called a pool? If you mean you are going to wash your own dog, isn’t that called a hose?

Up to 56% off Champagne Tasting and Chicken Dinner – The picture had elegant, sparkling champagne flutes in the background, and KFC-style fried chicken drumsticks in the foreground. – Yeah, nothing goes better with KFC than fine champagne. Except, of course, Thunderbird.

Up to 54% off a Five-Hour Photography Boot Camp – Excuse me? Photography boot camp? YOU CALL THAT AN F-STOP?!? TAKE THE PICTURE, MAGGOT! DO IT!!!

55% off Discovery Flight Package – Just which one of us is discovering how to fly; me or the “instructor”? There is something about getting bargain basement prices on flight lessons that just doesn’t feel right.

Up to half off a Steve Trevino Comedy Show for Two – You mean, he’s just going to be doing a show for two of us? That seems like it would be awkward.

Up to 76% off Smartlipo or Tickle Liposuction – Tickle Liposuction???? I don’t even know what to think about that.

Up to 57% off Colon Hydrotherapy – That’s just a fancy way of saying enema, isn’t it? No, thanks.

Up to 62% off Infared Body Wraps – I have no idea what that could possibly be, but the fact that the seller of this magnificent product misspelled infrared worries me more than just a little.

Up to 63% off a Pair of Weight Loss Hot Pants – I might want to see 63% off hot pants on the right jogger, but then again, since they are weight loss hot pants, maybe not.

63% off a Motion-Activated Candy Dispenser – Hmm… A motion activated candy dispenser. That seems like it would have an exponential speed increase until the blur of my children suddenly stopped due to three sucrose-induced comas.

Up to 53% off 0.5 cc or 1 cc Injection of Restylane or Juvéderm – I have no idea what either of those substances are, but if they need to be measured in cc’s, presumably to avoid some kind of overdose, and it will be injected into me with a needle, do I really want to be doing that at a place that takes coupons?

79% off Cellulite Reduction Treatments – Didn’t that used to be called running?

Up to 57% off Couples Massage – If you are a couple, why do you need to pay for a massage?

52% off Car-Drifting Courses – A class to teach you how to slide your car sideways. That sounds like a smart use of your money. Maybe you’ll be the best one in your class and the instructor will secretly be a Hollywood director and he’ll want you and your lowered Mitsubishi to be in the next “The Fast and the Furious” movie. Or not.

59% off Sinful Dark Chocolate Facials – You heard me. Chocolate facials.

53% off The Original Slanket – “A flowing fleece blanket with loose-fitting sleeves, letting wearers maintain full use of their hands while lounging.” -  I can’t believe there is a Snuggie knockoff!

Up to 84% off Body Slimming Treatments – “Non-invasive Electro-Slim devices” electrically activating your muscles to get a “work-out” while you lay on a bed. Hmmm… Maybe you could just save the money and jog from your house to the place where you were about to pay for this. 

Up to 64% off Botox – Isn’t Botox actually a form of the food poison botulism? And doesn’t it get injected into your face to get rid of wrinkles? Again, poison being injected with needles at a place that takes coupons. No, thanks.

Up to 86% off an MMA Gym Membership – You want me to pay to belong to a gym where I will get kicked in the head? You must have been kicked in the head.

53% off Justin Bieber Singing Toothbrushes – Never. Never in a million years. Never, ever.

Half off Pole Dancing Classes or Private Party – Is Groupon really the place where strippers go to get their training? What on earth could that private party involve? Yikes.

52% off Unlimited Wine Tasting for Two – These people must be itching to lose money, because they just said “unlimited wine tasting.” Have they not met my wife and her friends?

52% off Universal Remote Control with Built-in Bottle Opener – OK, now we’re getting somewhere. A beer-related Groupon that makes sense.

Half off lingerie, bikinis, dresses and costumes – Do they mean the garments are half-sized, or they cost half as much? Either way, this is another Groupon I can get behind!

Half off Scandinavian Cozies – The picture had a sock-looking thing that went up your arm with a foam rubber beverage holder on the end of it, so you can hold your beer without having your hand get cold. OK, now here’s another beer Groupon with some weight behind it. That is one handy looking beer cozy!

Actually, Groupon does seem to have a lot of good beer-related offerings. In fact, the more I think about that chocolate and beer pairing class, the more I think they might be onto something. I mean, I would prefer a beer and bratwurst pairing class, but I do like chocolate as much as the next guy, and if there is beer sampling... Hmmm. I mean, depending on how much the class costs versus how many beers I get to sample, it might just make good financial sense. If there is enough beer involved, I may not be able to afford not to do it!

Excuse me, I need to go look into that. Maybe I’ll bring my new remote control beer opener and my Scandinavian hand warmer beer cozy.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 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!