The 'Wildlife' of Discovery Kingdom

We were able to use our “free” tickets to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom this past weekend. I say “free” because my wife won four tickets, which didn’t include parking, and we also needed an additional ticket in order to get the whole family in. We didn’t feel like it would be fair -- or even legal -- to make one of the boys stay home, so we drained the checking account and headed for Vallejo.

When I was growing up, Six Flags was called Marine World Africa USA. I guess they felt like they needed to change the name when they started adding more roller coasters, or more flags. It’s now like a combination of Disneyland and SeaWorld, but with more Oakland Raiders fans, so it’s classier.

It’s really a great place. The roller coasters are world-class. Every one of them is guaranteed to loosen your bowels and help you find Jesus. And the animal shows are amazing. For the most part.

Right inside the gate, our boys were holding parrots on their arms, and in true modern theme park fashion, we were offered the chance to buy pictures of our adorable boys holding the large colorful birds for $2000 each. We opted for the cell phone pictures with the park photographer’s head in the foreground blocking half the shot.

We bypassed the snack shack selling $15 sodas (Free refills all day! Come for the rides, stay for the diabetes!), and headed straight for the attractions.

We saw tigers.

We saw lions. (They were all sleeping, but still lions.)

We saw giraffes.

We rode massive, thrilling roller coasters.

We saw a walrus show where a 3000-pound walrus the size of a pickup truck harrumphed its way up onto land, waddled over, and kissed its trainer.

We saw an elephant demonstration where the elephants were rolling on the ground, sitting up like begging dogs, and lifting 300-pound logs with their trunks.

Then we went to the dolphin show, and sat down close to the water in “the splash zone.” Son Number Two was incredibly lucky and was one of only two kids picked out of the crowd to go and help the trainers during the show. The dolphins were shoving the trainers out of the water fifteen feet into the air and doing backflips. One trainer rode a dolphin like a surfboard, and another rode two at the same time like a chariot. Son Number Two really wanted to ride one also, but apparently that maneuver is reserved for the highly-trained adults in wetsuits. He did get to give them commands, feed them fish, pet them on the noses, and get royally soaked by their splashing tails. He was on cloud nine, and he and his brothers all decided they wanted to be dolphin trainers when they grow up.

Just when we thought the day couldn’t get any more exciting, we went to the Wildlife Theater Show. We were right.

The Wildlife Theater Show started out pretty well, I guess. A pig went trotting past us down the front aisle as a parrot came out and announced that the show was about to begin. Then the human announcer arrived. He was a little too animated for my taste, but he was tolerable. Next, one of the trainers walked out with a two-toed sloth draped over her like she was holding a small child. That was pretty cool.

Then they brought out a skunk. OK...

Then a North American porcupine. Alright, that’s pretty neat.

Then a white-nosed coati on a leash. A coati sort of looks like a raccoon and an aardvark had a high speed collision. He climbed up a wooden pole.

Then a bobcat on a leash. The bobcat just walked around.

Then they brought out a house cat. On a leash. Hmm…

The house cat jumped from a post onto the wooden pole. Wow, it has claws. So did my grandpa’s cat. Hmm… A house cat. In the Wildlife Theater. OK.

Then they got back on track and brought out a serval on a leash. A serval is a spotted and striped African cat that sort of looks like a cheetah mated with a house cat on stilts. It jumped eight feet straight up in the air to snag a fuzzy toy off an overhanging pole. Pretty impressive hops for a cat on a leash.

Then they brought out a milk snake. It was not on a leash.

For the grand finale of this incredible, fifteen-minute show that inexplicably included a house cat, they brought out…another house cat.

This was a completely different house cat than the first one, they assured us. This one also had claws and was able to climb the wooden pole while on a leash. And then, as if that was not enough entertainment to blow our minds, they told us the second house cat’s incredible back-story. He was from two towns over. They got him when he was young.

Wow, Six Flags, you really outdid yourself here at the Wildlife Theater. I’m glad we hit some of the other highlights prior to this, or we may have been too exhausted from all the excitement to continue on the rest of the day.

House cats? Really? If you are willing to try and wow me with house cats, I have a few other cost-cutting measures you might want to consider.

For instance, on our walk through the park we saw a few "roaring rapids"-type white water adventure rides. Maybe you should ixnay those and have the park-goers just stand in a line while one of your employees sprays them down with a garden hose.

You could also just replace all the roller coasters with a low-speed minivan ride to the Walmart to buy socks. Flash Pass holders could get to ride shotgun.

Instead of the big, impressive dolphin show, we could all just go up to a small glass bowl and look at a goldfish. The lucky spectators chosen from the crowd could get to feed it a tiny pinch of fish flakes.

Tigers and lions? Too expensive to feed. You could go with little barky Chihuahua dogs and maybe a well-trained lab rat or two. The nice white ones, though. Not the giant, menacing black rats. No sense in scaring the children. And the elephants could easily be replaced by cows. Their poop is smaller and they eat less. Maybe even Texas longhorns if you wanted to get crazy. And you could always oust the giraffes in favor of the far easier to handle, guinea pig. Throw in a few old Labrador retrievers and you’re in business.

Also, if the six flags are getting too much for you to maintain, don’t be afraid to ratchet that number down. One Flag Discovery Kingdom still has a nice ring to it.

House cats aside, we really did have a fantastic day, and at the end of the “Wildlife” Theater Show, guess what animal all three of my boys waited in line to pet?

The house cat. Go figure.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Whittling

We went camping this past weekend with two other families. All three families have only boys, so our campsite consisted of six sleep-deprived parents and eight single-digit-age, wild and excited boys. So we gave them all knives.

Two of the brothers had received their very own Swiss Army-style pocket knives from the Yosemite gift shop on their last camping trip, so they brought them along. This led to all the other boys clamoring to have a turn with the knives. Not wanting anyone grabbing for a fast moving blade, in the interest of safety, us dads dug through our camping gear and gave them each their own pocket knife, and taught them the manly art of whittling.

It went something like this:

“Dad, can I use your pocket knife?”

“Sure son.”

(Glare from wife)

“Hey, son, if that knife gets dull, you can use one of the daggers your mom is staring at me with.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Here, check this out. This kind of single-blade knife is cool, because if you put your index finger on this little lever and flick your wrist like this… bam, like a switchblade.”

(Icier, dagger-ier glare from wife)

“Never do that, though. Sorry, honey.”

As is so often the case, the fatherly approach to this type of situation differed slightly from the motherly approach. We dads thought the proper approach was to give our sons detailed instructions on proper knife safety and whittling technique, make sure the first aid kits were fully stocked, then sit back and watch them learn by doing.

As near as I could tell, the mothers’ approach was to attempt to keep them away from all sharp objects until they turn 25.

The dads finally won out, once we promised to take an active role in the refereeing of all knife-related activities, and soon all the boys were happily seated in their camp chairs around the fire pit, whittling like mad. We did, however, run into a few unexpected issues that we never got fully worked out.

For starters, we couldn’t get them to keep their elbows resting on their knees, allowing them to whittle straight out away from themselves. They kept leaning back and bringing the work closer to them and higher, ending up with the stick up by their face and the knife whipping rapidly past the tip of their nose.

They would also get easily distracted, but would continue to whittle, while their eyes wandered off to something more interesting beyond the fire pit. We kept having to say, “Either stop whittling or watch what you’re doing.” Again, the learn-by-doing method would have taught this quite a bit faster, but I guess the moms wanted to save the Band-Aids in case of a bear attack or something.

The kids would also regularly get up and walk around the inner perimeter of the campfire chair circle. It turns out that seven-year-old whittlers have little to no awareness of their surroundings, and neither do five-year-old walkers while in a campfire chair ring of whittlers. Most of our time was spent yelling, “Stop walking! Watch the knife! Be careful! Don’t stab your brother!” etc.

We had to make sure that the whittling remained the standard “sharpen the end of the stick,” or “get all the bark off the stick,” because some of the other things they came up with were not optimal. I found Son Number One with the stick pressed against the top of his knee, sawing a notch all the way around the stick with the knife blade. He was almost through when I stopped him. “Let’s try not to test out dad’s tourniquet skills on this trip, OK buddy? Besides, your mommy would faint and hit her head on a rock. We don’t want that.”

The next day Son Number One and Two both decided that they wanted to make miniature canoes out of ¾” diameter sticks that were 6” long. I just couldn’t see the interior of the mini canoe getting hollowed out very safely, and I figured our first aid kit would probably fall a little short if we had to attend to a knife sticking all the way through a hand. “Why don’t we just stick with ‘standard whittling’ instead, OK?”

For the boys, almost as exciting as being allowed to whittle was the prospect of simply having the knife with them in their pockets. My boys kept asking me if they could take the knives with them into the woods.

“No.”

“Aw, dad. Why not?”

“Because you are not allowed to whittle unsupervised, or more than 50 feet from the first aid kit, and whittling is all you're allowed to use the knife for. Why do you want it?”

“For bears.”

“If you see a bear, I would like you to call to me, instead of trying to take it on with a 2-1/2” dull blade… Unless we tied the knife to the end of a long sturdy stick…”

(Icy dagger glare from wife)

“Never do that, though. Sorry, honey.”

It was a fun weekend. The boys started to learn a new skill, and they all lived to tell about it. As a side bonus, the activity of whittling did serve to slightly lessen the requests to throw another pine cone on the fire, although wanting to throw the other guy’s whittling stick in the fire did result in a few near knife fights.

Even though their mothers refuse to believe it, they were in far more danger after the whittling than during, from running around with the sharp, smooth sticks they made. Our knives were pretty dull.

All in all, it was a successful trip. We came home with all eight boys with the same number of holes in their bodies as they arrived with, and by the end of the weekend they had successfully whittled hundreds of sticks, which was fun for them. They had also successfully whittled their mothers’ nerves down to sharp, raw edges.

Thankfully, we don’t whittle at home.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Summer Reading

We are officially on summer break. By “we,” I of course mean everyone at my house except me. The first day of summer, my three boys looked at me as I was getting ready to leave the house in the morning and asked, “Where are you going?”

“Work.”

“Oh… You don’t get summer, too?”

“Shut up.”

I’m not bitter.

In preparation for a three-month period of not being able to get away from the boys, my wife went to our local library and picked up information on their summer reading program for kids. Apparently the public library system is trying to keep kids interested in stuff like books and reading, so they are offering an incentive program. You set a reading goal of a number of books to read, and you get to come into the library and pick up a prize when you reach your half-way point, and again when you reach the full goal.

Son Number Two, who will be going into the second grade next year, heard the word “prizes,” and was immediately on board. If there is ever something to win, whether it be a prize, a trophy, or just bragging rights, he is interested. Their last day of school was on Thursday, and they were released from the hellish prison of elementary school just after noon. When I arrived home around 5:30 P.M., he was very excited to inform me that he had already read eight books.

“No, buddy, you can’t count ones you read during the school year. It has to be books you read during the summer.”

“I know. I have read eight books today, since after school. I’m on nine right now.”

“They have to be real books. Not picture books.”

“I know,” he said. “I read these.”

He hands me a stack of books. They weren’t exactly Moby Dick, but they weren’t Go, Dog. Go! either. He had read five Disney Winnie the Pooh adventures, two Magic Tree House chapter books, and Dolphin Tale, which was so good, they made it into a movie. (Actually, I think in this case, the movie was made into this book, but either way, the movie starred the handsome, roguishly charming, and multi-talented Harry Connick Jr., so you know it was good. Oh, and Morgan Freeman, too.)

“Wow, dude. That’s a lot of books to read in five hours.”

“Yeah, my goal is twenty books, so I’m trying to get to the halfway point so I can get my first prize.”

“It’s called a ‘summer reading program,’ dude, not a ‘the day school gets out reading program.’”

“Huh?”

“I think you should take a break now.”

“OK, I just need to read this one and one more, then I’ll be done. Can we go get my prize tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is the actual first day of summer. They won’t be ready for you.”

“What!?!”

“Don’t worry, buddy. Mommy can take you in a couple of days.”

Well, that was last Thursday. In an effort to slow his pace a little, we told him he was only allowed to read long chapter books for the other ten. We went to a baseball game on Saturday, and he sat in the stands and read. My wife took the boys to the pool to swim with their friends, and he laid under her chair and read, until she had to almost throw him into the pool.

As of yesterday, five days after school got out, he was at 19. He has put us in a strange spot, parenting-wise. On the one hand, we are thrilled that he loves to read. On the other hand, we really don’t know if he loves to read, or if he just loves prizes, and would be eating live goldfish, or swimming naked to Alcatraz, if that happened to be what the library’s summer prize program entailed. On the one hand, we are thrilled to see him set a goal and work hard to achieve it. On the other hand, we have considered moving his goal from 20 books up to 2,000 in an effort to make it a “summer” program.  

We don’t want to tell him to stop reading, because that seems wrong from a good parental advice standpoint. We have to do something, though, because if we don’t, he will literally read all summer. I think we’re going to have to put him on a strict schedule, and try to balance out his activities. This is mostly a selfish thing on my part, because one of my main concerns is that he will get too smart, too fast.

He is already reading the Hardy Boys mysteries, and the Encyclopedia Brown series. At his pace, I’m really kind of worried that he will run through all of those and then graduate to the Sherlock Holmes collection. What’s next, John Grisham novels? I’m going to have to try and balance this out somehow. “Dumb it down,” if you will. I think I’ll make a rule that for every chapter of a book he reads, he has to spend at least ten minutes in the backyard banging a stick against a tree, or digging a hole with a spoon.

If we don’t do something like that, he’ll be on to The Count of Monte Cristo and A Tale of Two Cities in no time. Based on the furious book-devouring capacity he has already demonstrated, he will have read everything by the time he is 14 years old. I am well aware that when my boys are in their teens they will be convinced that they know everything, but I am not at all interested in trying to raise a teenage boy who actually does. This must be stopped!

My wife and my parents helped out the other day in distracting him, by taking all the boys on a summer field trip to an insect museum. Not only did this help by providing a four-hour window where he was unable to read, but it shed a hopeful light on our situation. He was allowed to spend some of his money in the gift shop at the end of the day, and what did my highly-educated, well-read seven-year-old son purchase? A three-inch-long piece of transparent hard candy with a scorpion encased inside. He’s currently sucking on the candy, trying to get down to the scorpion, so he can eat it.

Maybe there is hope. Maybe he’s not all that smart after all.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

A Romantic Nook

We’re on fire over here at Casa de Smidge this week. Two days ago my wife called me, very excited, saying, “Good news! I won four tickets to Six Flags!”

My immediate thought was, “There’s five of us.” I kept it to myself for the moment.

Then she said, “The kids are out of school at the end of this week. You should take a day off work!”

“A day off? What’s wrong with the weekend?” I inquired.

“Do you have any idea how crowded it will be on the weekend?”

Well, yes, things are usually more crowded on the weekends, because people like me have jobs.

“How did you win tickets to Six Flags, anyway?”

“A radio contest online.”

A radio contest online? Is that what you do all day while I’m at work? I kept that one to myself as well.

“Anyway,” she said, “we’ll talk and figure out when we can go. I’m excited we get to go for free!”

Hmm… free. Funny you mentioned free, because from the moment this conversation began, all I could hear was money being sucked out of my wallet.

For starters, we need another ticket. I looked up prices online, and a general admission cost $59.99. Then there is a $25 parking fee, gas to get there and back, $17 hamburgers and $9 sodas, and $20 pictures of us screaming – some joyfully, some in abject terror -- as we drop off the precipice of death on the roller coaster du jour.

All that, plus I need to miss a day of work and burn one of my precious vacation days that I like to use to avoid meetings? Free is starting to sound like it’s going to cost me just under $650. While I was on the Six Flags website looking up ticket prices, I noticed there was a “jobs” section. Maybe I can work there for the day while my family goes on the rides to try and defray some of the expenses that are coming with all this free stuff. Oh well.

Then, today at elementary school, our winning streak continued. Son Number One was the lucky second grade super reader to win a grand prize in the super reader grand prize giveaway. This is their last week of school, and apparently they have abandoned math and English in favor of talent shows, costume contests, and prize giveaways. It was announced to the entire school over the PA system that he had won a Nook e-reader. He called to tell me all about it.

“Dad, I won a Nook at school with my golden ticket!”

My immediate thought, besides a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tangent, was, “A Nook. OK, that shouldn’t cost too much to own. E-books are cheap.”

“Great, buddy! That’s really cool. You are one lucky dude. Is it color or black and white?”

“Huh? It’s real you know.”

“Yes, I figured it was a real one. I was asking about the screen… Never mind. I’ll see it when I get home. Congratulations, that’s really neat!”

When I got home, the new Nook was out of the box and charging up. I already had a Nook account, so I connected to our WiFi and logged in. When his new Nook synced up with my account, my son already had two books in his library; The Tree of Death, and Other Hilarious Stories, by yours truly, and Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.

Hmm… I don’t remember downloading Pride and Prejudice. It must have been free. My book is written in family-friendly language and will be just fine for him if he decides he needs a laugh, but I’m not entirely sure about Pride and Prejudice. Let’s face facts, though. He may be a super reader, but he’s eight years old. I doubt he’d get past Jane Austen’s first page.

It was when I went to the Nook’s home screen that I noticed the obvious problem; namely the fact that this device is connected to the internet. There, on the bottom of the screen, was the “What to read next” section, showing us four helpful choices from the Barnes & Noble Top 100, complete with vibrant pictures of the book covers.

Silver Linings Playbook – OK. No big deal there.

The 1^st Victim – No graphic cover art, but I’m not in love with the title. (Said the guy whose humor book is called The Tree of Death…)

Possession – This is what stopped me in my tracks. My eight-year-old’s new Nook has a picture of a topless woman with her back turned to us, holding a cluster of grapes, and showing a lot of side boob. Not good.

Beauty From Pain – Another topless women, this time lying in bed, partially covered by a sheet, holding a glass of wine, and showing a lot of leg. Not much better than side boob and grapes.

Hmm… This is not optimal. This reminds me of when I got my wife her first Kindle. As a joke, while I was setting it up, I downloaded a free “adult western novella,” called In the Marshall’s Arms, complete with the sweaty, shirtless cowboy on the cover, so it would be the first thing she saw. She said, “Very funny,” and erased it. The only problem with my little joke was, from then on, the only thing that pops up on my Amazon suggestions list are questionable books featuring sweaty, shirtless cowboys.

Now, I can’t imagine that Amazon has shared my supposed love of western-themed erotica with Barnes & Noble. That seems unlikely, given their competitive relationship. So I have to conclude that either the B&N 100 is mostly smut, or somehow, Pride and Prejudice triggers “romance novels” to show up in your feed.

I guess it doesn’t matter too much why it is happening. Since it is happening, I need to figure out a way to keep the Nook from delivering topless women to my eight-year-old, or he’ll never get to even see, let alone use, the cool prize he won.

There doesn’t seem to be any parental control features on the Nook, so I may have to simply download a bunch of children’s books and then disconnect the WiFi. The only problem is, I already logged in once. These things have a tendency to remember stuff like that and do it on their own. If I can’t get it figured out, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to tell him.

“Sorry, son. Unfortunately, the e-reader from school is a porn machine, so I bought you a Kobo instead.”

Hopefully it won’t come to that. Maybe I can distract him by telling him there was a mix up, and he really won a trip to Six Flags.

Then I could sell the Nook to pay for the fifth ticket.

That might just work.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

A Prestigious Address

I have always disliked the fact that the post office keeps pushing me to add another four digits to ZIP codes. I take it as a sign of their obvious laziness. They already make me write a five-digit ZIP code that represents the city and state, even though I already wrote the city and state on the envelope. The four extra numbers represent the actual street that the mail is going to, but I already wrote the street name on the envelope. Why do they need it in number form? Are they hiring the illiterate now? The extra four numbers make even less sense for PO boxes. If you send something to a PO box and include the full nine-digit ZIP code, it looks like this:

Bob Johnson

PO Box 1225

Wichita, KS  67207-1225

The extra four numbers are the PO box number. Why would I want to write it twice for them? That seems redundant, and like I already did it once.

Well, the other day I received a letter from my sister, and I happened to notice that the post office’s automated machinery -- the cost of which was in no way fully covered by my already overpriced stamp -- had printed my full ZIP code on the bottom of the envelope. And by full, I mean my eleven-digit ZIP code.

You thought ZIP codes only went up to nine numbers? You were wrong! The first five numbers are the city, the extra four are the street, but the magical, heretofore missing, last two digits actually represent your actual house! Now we’re getting somewhere, post office! I don’t mind writing extra numbers on the envelope if it’s all I have to write.

After I discovered this wonderful hidden nugget of postal knowledge, I ran a test, just to be sure. I mailed a letter to myself. The envelope had only two things on it. An overpriced stamp that in no way covers the cost of the bloated bureaucracy that is the post office, and an eleven-digit number. No words of any kind. No name, no street, no city. Nothing except my full ZIP code.

Bang! Two days later it showed up in my mailbox with a postmark. It worked.

Suddenly I am a fan of ZIP codes. They are finally useful, and non-redundant. My house has its very own ZIP code, and so does yours. Who knew? Figure out what it is, and that’s all the address anyone needs in order to send you a letter. So simple. So efficient.

As easy as that sounds, however, I don’t hold out much hope for my new streamlined addressing system to catch on. People like their addresses too much. We are so impressed with where we live these days that we have even started naming our neighborhoods.

“Where do you live, Bob?”

“The Enclave at Cedar Point. How about you, Fred?”

“We just moved to Parkwood Terrace at Oakview Springs Ranch.”

“Oh, great. I heard of all the Terraces, Parkwood Terrace was the best. Who was your builder?”

“Rentwood Homes.”

“No kidding! We’re in a Rentwood over at the Enclave! We should get the families together and compare granite backsplashes and toilet fixtures. What’s your address?”

“17534 Twenty-Mule-Team Chuck Wagon Ranch Drive. How about you?”

“We’re at 487278 Sunflower Mesa Creek Falls Circle.”

“Super! We can barbecue at our outdoor kitchen areas. Can’t wait to see your floor plan.”

First of all, if you guys were to look at the county assessor’s plat map, your “Enclave at Cedar Point” is actually officially known as Phase Two of the Smedley-Herndorfer Tract. Second of all, you guys live in Hogsass, Wisconsin, not the Riviera. Stop trying to make it magical.

There is no way that the folks living at “The Enclave” want to shorten up their mailing addresses to just a long ZIP code number. Most of them probably wish that people were required to include their made-up neighborhood name in their address. What are we, England?

Have you ever seen an English address? They look like this:

Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Donald Henry Robinson III

15 The Cottage Row

Huntsman’s Wood Lane

The Shepherd’s Green

Linsingtonham

Kensington upon Brighton

Hertfordshire

England  SM12 5WP

It takes you fifteen minutes to address the envelope because you get writer’s cramp halfway through. If we’re not careful with all this neighborhood naming, we could end up with that someday.

While we might never get to the point of having to include “The Promontory at Eagle’s Perch” on the envelope, we probably can’t go down to just the eleven-digit ZIP code either, because a post office employee still has to hand-deliver the mail. Since they routinely give my mail to my neighbor across the street, I think we need to keep names on the envelopes, and since I routinely receive mail for people on completely different streets, we should probably keep street addresses written on them as well.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

41 at 41

I am turning 41 years old this week, and since I have inexplicably made it this long, I thought I might as well share some of my thoughts, observations, and acquired wisdom from my life thus far. I pared it down to one for each year. You’re welcome.

1.  There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who prefer the toilet paper to come off the top of the roll, and those who prefer the bottom. The people who like it to come off the bottom of the roll are wrong.

2.  If beds were advertised the same way as tents, a queen-size mattress would sleep nine adults comfortably.

3.  The three second rule has almost infinite extensions depending on how much you like the food that dropped.

4.  You never fully appreciate how crazy your family is until you have to explain them to your new wife.

5.  I don’t understand why disappointed is not the opposite of appointed.

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

7.  Here’s the difference between men and women: Men can look at a picture of women's underwear and get excited. Not women in underwear, just the underwear itself. Women do not get excited looking at pictures of boxer shorts.

8.  The toothpaste tube is the most amazing invention ever. You get four days of toothpaste out of the large main body of the tube, and six weeks of toothpaste out of the last 10% of the tube, up by the cap. If we could make automobile gas tanks out of the same stuff that the last 10% of the toothpaste tube is made of, cars would get 700 miles per gallon.

9.  The clearest evidence that America is the greatest country on earth is that the Red Bull beverage company put a man in space. Take that, Belgium.

10.  If you give enough money to the right charities, you will never have to buy address labels again.

11.  I have reached the electronic tipping point. At this point, I would much rather lose my wallet than my phone.

12.  A really good financial goal in life is to have your bank account balance be larger than your bank account number.

13.  Life without beer and cheese would be horrible, but life without bacon would be pointless.

14.  When packing thirteen suitcases into the car for your wife, is it impossible to have ten of them be “on top” so she can get to them easily.

15.  Never get a woman personalized license plates like "HOT QT" or something like that, because eventually the boyfriend or husband will have to drive the car, and he will be mercilessly ridiculed by the other male drivers.

16.  You can ask someone to do something, or you can tell them how you want it done, but you cannot do both.

17.  A good indicator of where you are in life is this: Does the advertisement of free food still affect your decision making?

18.  It makes more sense to become a strong swimmer than a strong runner. You don’t die when you stop running.

19.  There is no “t” or “t” sound in the word across. There is no “b” or “b” sound in the word supposedly. Please pronounce accordingly.

20.  Men are far more likely to clean things with spit than women are.

21.  Money and toilet paper have something in common – They are both easy to take for granted until you run out. Also, in totally opposite, but equally dire situations, they can be substituted for each other.

22.  Pets and skull tattoos have something in common - Just because yours is badass does not mean you are badass. In fact, it usually means the exact opposite.

23.  If you ask a guy to tell you a story about a time he almost died, he will have four stories just off the top of his head, and one will be from this year. If you ask a woman the same question, she will look at you like you’re crazy.

24.  One sure sign of getting old – When you start sitting down to put your pants on.

25.  Children and ceiling fans are incompatible. Plain and simple.

26.  In life, it is very important to remember where you are and why you're there. That way, when your podiatrist tells you to drop your shorts, you ask some questions first.

27.  The hotel alarm clock - You can either take the time to figure out how it works before you go to bed, or you can figure it out in the dark at 4:30 A.M. when it unexpectedly goes off.

28.  Probably the funniest thing ever written is this: “We’ve upped our contribution. Up yours!”

29.  People who don’t use their cruise control on the freeway should be pulled over and arrested.

30.  There are 21 words in the English language that need to be used more. They are: Bailiwick, Hootenanny, Skullduggery, Scofflaw, Ballyhoo, Shenanigans, Donnybrook, Catawampus, Chicanery, Cajoled, Hullabaloo, Besmirch, Boondoggle, Haberdashery, Melee, Befuddled, Flummoxed, Hoosegow, Wiseacre, Tomfoolery, and Kerfuffle.

31.  Nothing is more interesting to a child than what you are doing, provided that what you are doing is easier without children involved.

32.  You cannot claim to be a grown woman, fully capable of taking care of yourself, and also claim that you do not know how to operate a toilet seat.

33.  Fried chicken and touch screen devices do not mix well.

34.  A carsick child and a blender without a lid have a lot in common.

35.  To be or not to be is not the question. The real question is, which towel in the guest bathroom am I supposed to use to dry my hands?

36.  Give a boy enough time with any object, whether it be a stale Cheerio, a bouncy ball, a doll, or a book, and he will eventually turn it into a weapon.

37.  "The only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys" is a pretty accurate saying, but it leaves out the other major difference: the speed at which they heal when they fall off those toys.

38.  The best thing to do when your infant cries at night is to set a timer for ten minutes. If the timer runs out before the baby stops crying, reset the timer.

39.  The people investigating alternative energy sources should take a look at my wife's side of the bed. When she comes to bed she is in a near-frozen state, but the bed somehow heats her up to roughly 8,000 degrees in the middle of the night. I have never once plugged the bed in or recharged it in any way.

40.  As I get older, I find myself dividing the people of the world into two categories: People I would let watch my kids for five minutes, and people I wouldn’t.

41.  The person who invented the hotel shower curtain rod that curves out away from the tub so the shower curtain doesn’t stick to your arm should receive the Nobel prize.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Give Me Your Money

I was browsing my way through the Yahoo headlines today, keeping abreast of the hard-hitting news items of the day, such as what dress Kim Kardashian was wearing inappropriately this week. (Abreast… get it?) Anyway, after I got done being outraged at the fact that a New York City traffic officer would have the unmitigated gall to give J Lo a parking ticket, I came across a headline that caught my eye in a different way.

New utility scam is popping up across the nation

Hey, wait a minute. This actually looks like something that could affect my life. This actually sounds like something I should read in order to better protect myself against the seemingly ever-increasing population of no-good, rotten scammers out there. Someone named Cameron Huddleston apparently has penned an article for Kiplinger.com, a well-respected financial magazine’s online presence, that will equip me to do battle with thieves. I’m interested.

The Better Business Bureau says that a new utility bill scam is popping up throughout the U.S. and Canada. And it involves an approach to get people to part with their money that's been growing in popularity over the past couple of years: prepaid debit cards.

Huh? I thought this was going to be about someone piggybacking onto my gas or electric bill? Debit cards? OK, I guess I’ll read on.

The BBB reports that scammers are calling people and claiming to work for a local electric, water or gas company. The callers tell people that they're late on a utility bill and that their service will be cut off if they don't pay immediately. Then they instruct people to purchase a prepaid debit card to pay their bill and call them back with the card number. Thieves then drain the value from the card.

Huh?

Scammers have turned to prepaid debit cards recently because wire transfer services have increased their fraud detection systems -- making it more difficult for them to use this once-popular method of stealing money from people. Scammers also like prepaid debit cards because they don't have to show a photo ID to collect or spend money on the cards.

Huh?

For help spotting a utility scam, the BBB offers these tips:

Then the article listed helpful tips like, “Utility companies would never operate with high-pressure tactics like this,” and “it’s a red flag if you are asked to pay by prepaid debit card.”

Huh?

Who is falling for this? How do you not know if you are behind on your gas payments, and even if you know you’re behind, who would go buy a prepaid debit card to pay the bill? Apparently it works, or it wouldn’t be “growing in popularity” among our nation’s degenerate scallywags.

Since there are obviously people out there who need my help, I have done the Better Business Bureau one better, and developed Smidge’s BBBB tip for spotting a utility scam: Live until you’re old enough to be responsible for paying the utility bill somewhere, then if you are still naïve enough to fall for a scam that idiotic, stop what you are doing and call me. I will walk you through whatever process we need to use to have you send me your entire life savings. I will give it all to charity, and you can consider it a valuable lesson and thank me later.

The article reminded me of a letter I received a while back from Ruby Addo Mills. She was the second wife of the late Ghanaian president who died not long ago. She was contacting me in view of the fact that we could be of great assistance to each other. She currently inherited the sum of ninety five million US dollars ($95,000,000.00) which she intended to use for investment purposes, specifically in my country of origin. She was very adamant about the fact that she would obviously never ask me for any of my account details until we met face-to-face in the bank’s vault in any of these three countries of my choice: Madrid, Spain, Johannesburg, South Africa or Kampala, Uganda. For security reasons, she wanted all communications go through her son. She wanted me to send her son, Samuel Kofi Atta Mills, the details to enable her contact me for more details, and she would explain more to me in next detailed fax to me.

Sam never did show up in Kampala like he promised.

Anyway… The end of the Kiplinger.com article had this to say:

Also, a utility bill scam that began last year has resurfaced. Utility companies in several states, including Kentucky and Tennessee, have received reports from customers who have received calls claiming that the federal goverment will help pay their electric bills. Click here to learn more about this utility bill scam and how to avoid it.

Since “government” was misspelled in the last paragraph, I’m half wondering if the whole thing wasn’t a brilliant double-reverse by some hacker, and the link to learn more was really going to steal my money somehow. Maybe it was going to trick me into paying to read the rest by entering a prepaid debit card number. The only problem with that is, I have an I.Q. above room temperature, and since I have been living a normal financial existence where I keep my money in something called a bank, and pay my bills with things like checks and credit cards, I have no idea where I would go to buy a prepaid debit card.

If it really was a real article, I guess maybe it was aimed at the same folks who care if J Lo is getting a parking ticket, or know where to buy a prepaid debit card.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

A Boys' Mother's Day

My wife is a mother of boys. When she was younger, and dreaming of getting married and having her own family someday, she always said she wanted to have four boys. That’s the only part she ever tells me. She won’t tell me what kind of husband she dreamed she would have, so I will have to assume that I obviously met or surpassed all of her expectations.

While she likely met 400% of her goal in the husband department, we ended up with only three boys, so she made just 75% of her goal in the offspring department. That is just fine with her. After we had Son Number Two she began to question her earlier logic, and by the time Number Three was on the scene, she knew that four was just crazy talk.

Every once in a blue moon she will see a cute little baby girl, or one of our nieces all decked out in a pretty dress, and she will make that “awww” sound that women make when they find something unbearably adorable. Then she hears a story from a friend about eight-year-old girl drama, and breaths a quiet sigh of relief. (And so do I.)

While we both think that having only boys takes a lot of the stress off us as parents, I don’t think she was fully prepared for all the fighting. She may not have been prepared for all the peeing, either.

Fighting, to boys, is like climbing. It is ingrained in their DNA. See a tall, dangerous-looking structure or tree? Climb it. See your brother over there looking smug or having fun? Go tackle him. It’s just a fact of life. They start very young by wrestling each other down as toddlers. It’s a fact that infant boys with older brothers learn to roll themselves over at an earlier age, due to the desire to keep from getting pinned and avoiding the three count.

She was initially concerned with how much fighting was taking place between the first two, but by the time the third one was in the mix, she had resigned herself to the inevitable melees. I knew she had finally come around one day when I heard her tell Number One regarding his youngest brother, “Be gentle if you’re going to fight with him.” No one but a mother of boys would ever utter those words.

As far as the peeing goes, she definitely wasn’t prepared for that. Truth be told, I wasn’t really either. This is the area where the parents of girls probably gain back some ground. Sure, there’s drama and fashion and hairstyles to deal with, but the peeing is at least straightforward. Or should I say, straight down. With boys, there’s a moving part to the equation, and it can be unpredictable.

Son Number One summed it up for her about a year ago when she was questioning him outside a public restroom. We were all dressed up for a wedding rehearsal dinner, and he came out sporting wet underwear, with his pants still undone, looking for some help. When she asked, slightly exasperated, how his underwear and his nice dress pants had become covered in pee, he explained, “My penis just went wild.”

When she brought him back and told me the story, I just nodded. “Yep, sometimes that happens.”

I knew exactly what my son had meant, and I could even envision the whole thing happening. The mistake I made was assuming he also knew what had happened and why, and he was just giving his mom the condensed version of the events. As it turns out, maybe I should have been doing a little more coaching with the boys when it comes to peeing. That became evident recently.

Son Number Two came out of our downstairs bathroom the other evening with a forlorn expression on his face.

“Mom, something just happened.”

Nothing good has ever preceded those words. Since it was obviously a bathroom incident, and my wife happened to be cooking dinner at the time, I bravely stepped in to help.

“What’s up, buddy?”

“Well, I started to pee, and then all of a sudden, instead of going down, it was going up.”

As we rounded the corner and stepped through the door to the little bathroom, I was amazed at what I saw. There was pee on the toilet seat, on the top of the toilet, on the wall behind the toilet, on the step stool next to the toilet, and all over the floor. There was even a puddle of pee on the floor all the way behind the toilet, between the base of the toilet and the wall. How do you get a puddle directly behind the toilet??

It took me a whole roll of toilet paper to clean it all up.

“What happened, buddy?”

Not one for long detailed explanations, and perhaps to try and figure it out himself, he opted for a reenactment. He dropped his drawers in front of the toilet and said, “I don’t know. I was standing here like this, and then it just went all over the place.” He was standing with both hands down at his side, simply thrusting his hips forward.

“Well, it helps to aim it down.”

“Is there a hole or something?”

Come again? Is there a hole or something? You can’t be serious right now.

“Uh, yeah, buddy. Right there. That’s where the pee comes out. You need to aim it.”

“OK, dad. I will next time.”

What was that all about? How have you had this penis for seven years and not figured out how it works?? Depending on the time of day, that thing can be pointing anywhere. You’ve got to aim it, man!

Oh, well. I guess I need to do a little better job explaining the obvious to my boys. We should probably go over the wonderful benefits of wiping your butt again, as well.

Happy Mother’s Day, sweetheart! You are doing a fine job of being a mother of boys. I on the other hand, am obviously falling down a little bit on the fatherly end. I was concentrating on teaching them important man skills like how to field a grounder and how to use a saw without removing any of your fingers. I figured peeing was self-explanatory. I guess not.

I will try to stay on top of all the bodily function-related issues, and I promise I will be all over the future penis conversations when it comes time to talk about its other function!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Mowing the Lawn

Either I'm a genius or just really dumb-lucky. I’m not sure which. I think if I really examined my past and took an honest look at it, the answer to that question would be clear, but we don’t have time for that. Let’s just go with genius.

Here’s why I’m a genius: My two oldest boys now constantly ask me if they can mow the lawn and all three of them beg to wash the cars, and they fight over who gets to do it. You heard me.

Do I pay them? No.

Am I a genius? Obviously.

Do I know how I made this happen? Never mind about that.

OK, I’ll admit, my genius is subtle. So subtle, in fact, that even I didn’t realize what I was doing until the results made themselves clear, but the results speak for themselves. I have three sons begging to do chores.

The key to my genius was making the activities forbidden for a long time. With the car, the secret was never letting them play with the hose. At first I thought I was making the hose off limits because I didn’t want to be sprayed, and I was too lazy to get out of the way, but that’s the thing about the depth of my genius. Even I didn’t fully understand what I was doing. By keeping the hose from them, I was actually creating little minions who will do anything to be able to operate a high-pressure spray nozzle.

“Dad, can we wash the car?”

“I don’t know… will you promise to be careful with the hose, and not spray me or the house?”

“Yes, yes, yes.”

“I don’t know… are you sure you can handle it?”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

“OK, you can do it. But make sure to take turns with the hose so Number Three gets a turn. Don’t hog it.”

“OK, we will! Thanks, dad!!!”

“You’re welcome.” (smirk)

This last time they washed the car, Son Number One felt like he didn’t get enough hose time, so he asked if he could wash down the driveway after they finished the car. I said, “I guess so.” He and his younger brother cleaned out every crack in the driveway and blew all the dirt down to the street. I waited until they had it completely clean and then said, “You’ve been playing long enough. Time to turn it off.” (smirk)

Genius.

The older two have just begun to mow the lawn this year, and if the hose is considered a 7 on a 10-scale of fun, the gas-powered push mower is a 200. They fight over who gets to go first.

Genius.

Unlike the hose, I was keeping them away from the mower for obvious safety reasons. Mowers on their own are pretty dangerous pieces of machinery even for adults, but on top of that, I keep my lawn mower's deck set fairly high. I'm not running a golf course here, and I have found that if I leave the grass a little longer, it hides the bare spots a little better than if I cut it super-short. I would be fired as a greens keeper. Anyway, when you combine the high deck height with my boys’ propensity to relocate sticks and rocks into the lawn and leave them there, my grass and the surrounding 100-foot radius can resemble an artillery range on mow day.

Safety glasses and closed-toed shoes are mandatory. Shin guards are a good idea.

Now, I think my dislike of lawn maintenance is fairly well documented. One must look no further than my lawn itself to understand my level of enthusiasm for spending any amount of my free time taking care of something that should be able to fend for itself. Given my distain for this suburban chore, I was really looking forward to passing it off to my boys. I told my wife that I was waiting until they were big enough to handle the mower safely. That was true, but what I didn’t say was that we also needed to wait until they had a large enough overall blood volume that they can lose a few pints and still live through it. Just in case. Shin injuries can bleed like the dickens, believe me.

After watching them operate the mower the first time, I made up a few new safety rules on the fly, so to speak. The first one is no other brother is allowed within 50 feet of the guy running the mower. There was always an unofficial 25-foot shrapnel safety zone, but the first time I saw one of them spin the mower around, I extended it. They are still short enough that to get the mower up on its back wheels to spin it around, they have to tilt the push handle way down close to the ground, presenting the spectators with the full underside of the mower and its spinning blades of death. Back up a little more, boys.

The second new rule is that all mower operators that aren’t daddy should wear their baseball cups when mowing. Like I said, they’re short, and a misplaced ricocheting object that catches me in the shin might catch them in a far more important body part than just a leg bone. I want to have grandkids one day, after all. Safety first.

We boys are a funny breed. When you sit us down to tell us how dangerous an activity can be if done wrong, that only makes us want to do it more. If I told them they had to wear a full suit of armor to mow the lawn, they would be salivating to get started. So basically, I’m a genius for having boys, and since I provided the Y chromosomes, I can take full credit.

Unfortunately, as my wife reminds me frequently, that also means I have to take full credit when their male genes direct them to jump off the roof into an inflatable pool, or attempt to ride the ceiling fan.

Oh, well. I’ll take it. I’m just happy to finally be able to sit and watch the chores get done. Maybe I should start telling them it’s really dangerous to clean up their room?

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Defending the Tooth Fairy

The other day I went to our kids’ elementary school and had lunch with Son Number Two for his birthday. I got to sit at the table with his class, and let me tell you; if you ever have the chance to go to an elementary school and eat lunch in the multi-purpose room with 200 little kids, go ahead and pass on that. Just take your lunch and eat it quietly in the car by yourself. Holy crap. The twenty minutes I was in that lunch room took at least three years off my life.

The noise level alone is enough to make you nuts, but when you also factor in the constant barrage of questions directed your way by your tablemates and the children from the surrounding tables, your head is spinning the entire time. Yes, I can help you open your applesauce. Yes, I am his dad. No, I am not as bald as your dad. Yes I am much balder than her dad. No, I am under seven feet tall. Yes, I do like guacamole. No, I do not have a riding lawn mower. No, I do not want any of your yogurt. No, Pluto used to be a planet, but now it’s just a rock, I guess. And Mickey’s dog. No, seven million is much smaller than infinity. Yes, I do know how to play kickball. Yes, George Washington was the first president. No, I don’t know what your front door looks like. Yes, we do have a backyard at our house…

Amid the myriad of questions, one of my son’s classmates pipes up out of nowhere with a statement. Sam, we’ll call him to protect his identity, since I suspect he will be in trouble with the law one day, says, “There’s no such thing as the Tooth Fairy.”

Why, Sam? Why do you have to be like this? My son, who is about to lose another tooth, is sitting right here. Why are you undermining me by trying to disprove this universal parental lie?

“That’s crazy talk, Sam. The Tooth Fairy is totally real. Why do you think she (or he?) doesn’t exist?”

“Because my tooth has been under my pillow for a week, and I haven’t got any money.”

OK, Sam, I can see your point.

“Do your parents know you lost the tooth and put it under your pillow?”

“Yes.”

OK, Sam’s parents, you’re killing me here! Write yourselves a note and put it under YOUR pillow! Come on brain, work with me, here. I know you’re tired from all the questions and the noise, but we need to focus on solving this problem. Must lie convincingly…

“OK, Sam, here’s what you need to do. Ask your parents to call the Tooth Fairy hotline. In emergencies like this, we parents have a special number to reach the Tooth Fairy. She was obviously too busy to get to your house the first night. That happens sometimes when lots of kids lose teeth on the same day.” (Or when your dad has too much of his “special drink” and forgets to take care of business before his head hits the pillow.) “Usually she just comes the next night, but your name must have fallen off the schedule somehow due to a clerical error at Tooth Fairy headquarters. It’s rare, but it happens.”

“Are you sure? I think you’re making that up. I don’t think she’s real.”

“Of course she’s real.” Work with me, kid. “Who do you think takes your tooth and leaves you money?”

“Parents.”

“What?!? Parents? That’s crazy talk. I have never left a nickel under any of my kids’ pillows.” (I leave gold presidential dollar coins, not nickels.) “Why would we want your teeth, anyway?”

“I don’t know, but you do.”

This isn’t going well. This kid is not buying any of this. Sam’s parents, this is all your fault! If you were here right now, we would be having some words!

Just when I thought the ship was sinking and I was going to lose the battle, and my son’s reality would be shattered right in front of my eyes, my own child came to the rescue. Son Number Two, who had been listening intently and rather wide-eyed to this whole exchange, suddenly had a flash of brilliance. He said to his doubting classmate across the table, “There has to be a Tooth Fairy, because there is no way your mom or dad could put their hand under your pillow without waking you up.”

“That’s true,” said Sam.

Nice going, Number Two! Never mind the fact that at eleven o’clock at night I could grab you by the ankles, drag you out of your bunk bed, stuff the dollar coin up one of your nostrils, and throw you down the stairs without waking you up, but OK. I guess when you’re debating a seven-year-old, it helps to use seven-year-old logic.

“See, I told you so. Have your parents call the hotline.”

Crisis averted. The lunch may have taken three years off my life, but it was totally worth it. I helped keep my kid, and hopefully a bunch of other kids in his class, from growing up too quickly. Plus, I got to trade my lame Cheez-Its for someone’s awesome fruit roll-up.

I answered about 30 more random questions and opened five or six more yogurts and snack packs, and then it was time to be dismissed for after-lunch recess. As we were about to get up from the table, Drew, one of my son’s best buddies from class pipes up, “Well, there might be a Tooth Fairy, but there’s no Santa Claus.”

Come on, Drew’s parents! Give me a break.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

The DMV

A few weeks ago, I received one of the most dreaded pieces of mail an American can receive. I was being summoned to the DMV. My driver’s license was about to expire, and if I wanted to continue to operate motor vehicles legally, I was required to actually go to a DMV location to take a vision test, take a new picture, and most importantly, I suspect, pay $32.00.

My immediate reaction was, “Nooooo! Not the DMV!!! Why do I have to get a new license, anyway? I’ve only had this one a few years. Nothing has changed!” My wife then pointed out that I had a full head of hair in the picture, so it had obviously been a few more than a few years. She might have a point. As I was admiring my hair in the photo, a thought occurred to me. “Man, I was good looking with hair…” Just kidding, that’s not what I thought… What I thought was, “Why am I smiling in this picture?”

Only two groups of people ever see your driver’s license. People you are buying something from, and police officers. I couldn’t care less what the Safeway clerk and the bartender think of my picture, and I really don’t care what the cops think of it either, but if I were to get pulled over by a patrolman, I don’t think I want him looking at a jovial smiling idiot picture of me. I want the picture to be useful to me in some way. I will no doubt be trying to talk my way out of whatever traffic violation he has me dead to rights on, so I want that picture to be helping my case.

But, what look should I go for in the new picture?

Sad and pathetic? Never good.

Surprised? Like, “Wow, I can’t believe I did that! That is literally the first stop sign I have ever rolled in my whole life. I don’t know what came over me!” Probably not.

What about tired? No… exhausted! That’s the ticket. Or should I say, my ticket to no ticket. My story will be this: With the seven little mouths to feed at home, I am forced to work three jobs (due to the economy and so forth) just to make ends meet. Meat. There’s something we haven’t had in a while. Things are tough, but we don’t complain. We have our health, for the most part, although, momma’s cough is getting worse. How much do these tickets normally run, anyway? I guess we could take it down to one meal a day for a while to pay for the ticket, but with junior being as skinny as he is now, I sure hope it doesn’t take too long to pay off. I know I broke the law, and I hate to be a pain, but I’m almost late for my shift at the manure factory, and I really can’t afford to lose that job, due to all the aforementioned reasons… Yes, exhausted it is!

The letter I received in the mail strongly suggested that I make an appointment at my local DMV branch. Based on my past DMV waiting room experiences, I thought an appointment sounded like a really good idea, so I went on the DMV’s handy website and used their appointment system. I clicked on the DMV branch in my town and they gave me an appointment time for three weeks later on a Thursday at 9:10 A.M. Now, normally I’m working on Thursdays at 9:10 A.M., but I took it, no questions asked. I had the option to pass on that one and see what else was available, but that option scared me to death. We’re talking about the DMV here. If I tried for something else, it was surely going to be worse, and there would be no going back. The next available appointment was probably ten weeks after my license would expire. Thursday at 9:10 A.M. it is!

I walked into the brightly-lit, modern-looking DMV office at 9:05 A.M. There were about 8 or 9 DMV employees behind the counters, and no less than 75 people sitting forlornly in the waiting area that consisted of two large banks of plastic chairs on either side of the spacious facility. There they sat, dead silent, staring straight ahead, each holding a paper ticket with a letter and a number. A woman holding A32 was sitting next to a man with G14. Holy crap, I’m going to be here all day! What was the point of the appointment?

I stood in the three-person line at the ticket dispensing lady, and when I got to the counter, she asked if I had an appointment. I said, “Yes!” with a non-DMV-ish level of hopefulness in my voice. She smirked and gave me ticket H42 and told me to have a seat. I walked to the waiting area with the proper DMV-ish level of dejectedness. I will be here well past dinner time.

My butt was not in the molded plastic seat for more than 15 seconds when “H42. Now serving number H42 at window 12,” could be heard echoing through the facility. H42! That’s me! I sprang out of my seat with renewed non-DMV-ish vigor, and stepped quickly away from the waiting hordes over to window 12.

The lady behind window 12 asked me a few questions and had me sign my form in her presence, swearing under penalty of law that I was me and I was being truthful to the best of my knowledge. Then she took my thumbprint, and had me write her a check for $32.00. She took my check and then asked me to cover my left eye and read line 3 on letter chart B hanging from the ceiling behind her desk. I contemplated asking her why she took my money before she verified that I was able to see well enough to renew my license, but I figured I already knew the answer to that question, so I just went ahead and read line 3 to her.

When I was done with the left eye, she apparently had some more typing to do, so there was a lull in the conversation. I figured it was a good time to ask her a few driver’s license-related questions that had been on my mind. Namely, how come somebody who doesn't have a driver’s license qualifies to be your passenger in the carpool lane? I mean, if they can’t drive, you're not carpooling, you're just being a taxi service. And what qualifies no-passenger Prius hybrids and motorcycles for the carpool lane, and not my Partial Zero-Emission 4-Cylinder Camry? I mean, I burn less gas than the passenger-less guy in the big pickup truck. Shouldn’t I get to use the bonus lane for at least part of the time? And, really, when we get right down to it, shouldn't the people who pay the most taxes get to use the carpool lane whenever they want? I mean, they paid for it, right?

She just looked at me blankly and said, “Please proceed to the picture area.”

Okeydokey.

The moment of truth. I have been working on my “exhausted and earnestly struggling to make ends meet” look for three weeks.

There were three people ahead of me in the picture line, but it moved very quickly. When it was my turn, the picture lady asked for my paperwork, and then said, “Step to the blue screen place your feet on the marks on the floor look straight ahead OK done.”

What? Did you take it already?

“You should receive your new license in the mail in three to four weeks please exit to your right have a nice day next.”

Dammit! I didn’t even have time to do my exhausted look. I have no idea what look I was doing. I don’t even know at what point the picture was taken. Maybe I’ll end up with surprised. That’s better than nothing.

Oh, well. Even though the picture didn’t turn out like I had hoped, the upside was I was in and out of the building in 11 minutes. Every one of those 75 people were still sitting there when I walked out the door. Make an appointment, people!

I would have been in and out in more like eight or nine minutes, but I stopped to question the security guard at the exit door. He didn’t know anything about the carpool lane, either.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

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