by Richard Timothy | Oct 14, 2010 | Gratefully Grateful, Horribly Horrible, I Think There's a Point, Lightbulbs and Soapboxes, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
My sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh and I have a system for packing for trips. This system is fairly common practice for people that have attended, are attending, or may attend the ‘Last Minute School of Preparation’. Although for the record, we did not pack last minute for our Hawaii trip… we packed three minutes prior to last minute. I always look at last minute as, well, just that. The fact that Angela and I got to take a two hour nap before driving to the airport I feel shows you our proficiency at packing just before the last minute.
There are a few things that acting, or in our case packing, last minute enables you to experience. Here are a few of my personal favorites:
- The a fore mentioned two hour nap. I’m a fan of naps, and even though I will most likely be sleeping on the plane to whatever destination a waits, starting a flight with a nap that is just long enough to leave me sleepy is a nice preparatory event before I begin my on plane nap.
- No double-checking your luggage before leaving. It means that I will always have the Goonies adventure quality about my trip. Because I don’t have time to double-check my bags there is no telling if I remembered everything and it isn’t until I’m in the middle of a hotel room in a new city, country, planet, etc. were I discover if I am going to need to get creative about doing my hair because I forgot a brush, or that I need to get out into my new environment to experience my new surroundings and find a store that sells what I forgot. (I only used a plastic fork to comb my hair for the first day. When Angela caught me using it, she made us go to a store to buy a small cheap brush for the trip.)
- The giggles. In my experience it is inevitable that, at some point in the late night hours when I am tired and wanting to go to sleep but am still packing, I hit that loopy stage where everything is so much funnier than it would have been had I actually gotten some sleep. I’ve never felt bad about an uncontrollable giggle fit and packing three minutes to ‘last minute’ is always good for at least one of those… sometimes more.
The flight to Hawaii was in two parts. The first flight went to Phoenix Arizona. I slept through the whole thing. I attempted the nodding off routine of falling asleep in an upright sitting position, but when my head dropped down for the first nod it didn’t come back up until an hour later when the captain announced that we had begun our decent to Phoenix. It was grand. The flight from Phoenix to Maui on the other hand was a flyway to hell (feel free to sing that in your best AC/DC voice).
You know that feeling when you get an ice cream cone filled with two scoops of your favorite flavors and just as you step out of the store, even before you have taken a single lick, your hands fumble and you watch in Hollywood slow motion as your treat of creamy goodness falls to the ground to become completely inedible crushing your dreams that there is anything good in this world? Yeah, well I had that exact same feeling when I walked onto the airplane and saw two of the three seats in front of me being occupied by little kids. The mother sitting in the middle seat separating the two children is what gave me a false sense of hope that maybe it wasn’t going to be ‘that bad’. Damn you ‘false sense of hope’ and your deceitful ways.
The sperm donor, I mean father, was in the chair across the aisle. Actually scratch that, he was a donor because during the six plus hours on the flight I saw him do zero in regards to being a father. In fact I would give him negative points because at only one point during the flight did he remove his headphones and stopped watching movies on his iPad. It was during this iPad break that his wife actually told him, “I need some help. I am asking you to help me.” His response to this was to put his head phones back on and ignore her and the kids with even more vigor than he had done before.
The little boy was by far the more horrid of the two evils, er kids, mainly because he would not shut the hell up. Seriously, for the entire flight he did not stop talking once. And the extent of the mother’s parental ability was to remain sitting in her seat and say “shhhhh” repeatedly and then ignore the kids. At one point the little monster had to go to the toilet. He did this by announcing to the entire plane that he had to poop. Then, because there was a line to get to the toilet, he spent five minutes waiting for his turn standing in the aisle announcing that he needed to poop. He even informed the mother at one point that he was just going to poop in the aisle. The mother had the insight to hold on to his hand while they waited in line after his started to undo his belt after the pooping in the aisle comment.
You know, I miss the days when parents would beat their children. Not with the excitable vigor of Rocky Balboa taking on the USSR, but a nice heartfelt smack on the rump when the kids were being little shi… fecal matters. I mean I know it’s the parents fault, but perhaps if the parents had been beaten as children then they would have not grown up to be such worthless parents themselves. Besides, let’s say a kid throws a fit on a plane and is making the plane ride a horrific experience for everyone on the plane, I think that spanking the child in front of all of those people would be a nice way to publically apologize to everyone on that plane for your failure as a parent and your child’s lack of behavior. I know I’d appreciate seeing the little bastard getting a quick smack on the butt. I’d probably even say thank you.
Now even though I’m a reverend I’m not the type of person to bless people. However, if I thought it would do any good I would bless this family with infertility, sterility, barrenness, and unfruitfulness … and a lifetime of failures in the adoption department. I mean sure let them have a long full life and die of natural causes, but family lines go extinct all the time; I just happen to be of the opinion that this family is one that deserves be part of the family line extinction.
However, there was one positive thing that happened from all of this, the sheer nirvana I felt getting off of that plane and away from that family. Sometimes it’s the little things you have to take with you and that one lasted the entire time I was in Maui. Hell, it even got me through the two and a half hour delay and entire plane ride home.
What are your thoughts on the topic of bad kids and worse parents?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: last minute, unpacking suitcase, bad kids on plane, depressed, bad parents, and happy day.
by Richard Timothy | Sep 30, 2010 | Adolescent Shenanigans, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Public Service Announcement, When I Was a Kid
Not too long ago I did a little Smirk about sleep and some of the things we do while we are asleep… like dreaming (I felt that needed conveying for those who have not yet read that piece). However, there was one thing I was reminded as I was writing the piece… the exact opposite of sleep and dreaming. Then again maybe it was awake dreaming. I’m not altogether certain, all I can say for sure is that the only hallucination I’ve ever had in my life was a result of no sleep… for three days straight.
It happened during my senior year of high school. During this phase of my life I had decided that art was my life. I even managed to get the authorization to have three of my seven classes to be art classes. I had even gotten permission to have a ceramics class during 7th period, when no ceramics classes were offered. The teacher would teach her normal beginner art class and I was left alone to play in the ceramics room. It worked very well for me, and you’d be amazed at the number of ceramic thrown bowls I had to give as gifts to friends and family for no reason what so ever.
It was during my senior year that my interest in school began to wane. I did well in school when I would go. It’s just that I wasn’t terribly interested in going, at least going before noon. Staying up late was a bit of a family tradition in my house. Going to bed before midnight was what we called ‘going to bed early.’ Seriously, the lights in our house were almost always on until two a.m. or later, and the last ones to usually go to be… my parents, especially my mom. The woman had more projects than New York, and was always up late trying to get one completed before the new day.
I don’t remember the reason for why I stayed up all night the first night. It might have been for a reason as brilliant as, “Because I could.” Believe me, when you’re 17/18 years old, reasons like that were usually as brilliant as you got. The following day I was amazed at how good and alert I felt. So that evening after dinner was consumed, friends had gone home, and I had made my ‘Sev Run’ (this is what we called going to 7-Eleven) to get 32 ounces of neon colored bubbly sugar water we lovingly called “Dew,” I committed myself to my room for the rest of the evening, knowing that I would be getting tired at some point due to my lack of sleep.
After writing two love poems about girls that would never know how I felt (ah to be a young and suffering artist), I let my imagination dive into a novel a friend gave me to read. When I reached what I considered to be a good stopping point, it was about five in the morning. I only had two hours before I would need to get up and get ready for school. That is when a line from the cinematic genius is ‘Strange Brew’ came to mind. There is a scene where two brothers get a job at a brewery. Once home they decide to celebrate by drinking all of the free beer they had gotten from their new job. As they are carrying cases of beer into the house, one of them says, “… let’s not blow it by being late for our first day on the job…” to which the other brother replies, “Well, why don’t we just stay up all night?”
Why not indeed? Even thought it didn’t work in the movie I was sure I could pull it off. Besides, there was only a little bit of night left, and I saw no point in going to bed. I was even early for school that day, which rarely ever happened to me that year.
Day two of no sleep left me a little more aware that I was missing something that my body and mind were in full support of receiving. The prospect of enjoying some sleep that evening was the key ingredient in getting me through a few nodding off moments during my afternoon classes. Well that and the constant flow of Mountain Dew both in and out of my body, which helped keep me alert and on my toes… mainly because of all the visits I had to make to the rest room.
Sleep would have been eminent had it not been for the gathering of friends that happened right after school. None of us had any homework, which was rare, so we hung out, watched movies, and eventually toilet papered our arch nemesis’s house. Yes we broke all conventional rules for toilet papering a home and did it during a week night. 
It was a cop’s house, the one that was always giving us a hard time. He would always go home while he was on duty and leave his police car running in his driveway. I think it was so the gas would be used up so on record it appeared he was out patrolling all night. Toilet papering his house was just the kind of spontaneous thing that motivated me to forget all about being tired and filled me with the required amount of adrenaline I needed to make it through another sleepless night. Well that and getting chased around down by the cop after he left his house. Stealthily sneaking back to my house did take a little more time than expected, but was well worth it.
So when four a.m. arrived, about the same time I was getting home, I dipped my cup of reasoning into the endless pool or teenage wit and wisdom, which all teenagers drink from during their time as a teen, and exclaimed, “I’ll get all the sleep I need when I’m dead!” I mean sure it might have sounded cool, and rebellious, and edgy at the time, but it really was quite an erroneous statement. Unfortunately, it was lost on me at the time, so I proceeded to stay up for a third day in a row… more than anything though, I just wanted to see if I could do it. Turns out, I could. What? It seemed like a good idea at the time.
It was on day three, during my 5th period art class that my REMly challenged mind had had enough and was going to make it quite clear to me that it wanted a break. I was working on a three foot by two foot pencil drawing of a woman in a dress. Her hair was hanging down in front of her face, which was perfect for me because I was still having trouble drawing faces proportionally. The drawing had no face to speak of, just lots and lots of hair. I remember one of her arms was hanging to her side, but it was a sort of side profile drawing so the arm was placed right in front of the dress. It was as I was shading the dress around the arm that it happened.
The entire picture became three dimensional and popped off of the paper. At first I was quite please because this allowed me to grab the lady’s arm and move it out of the way so I could get the shading on the dress right where her arm was hanging. The problem that arose was her arm kept slipping out of my hand and falling back to its original position, and ultimately getting in the way of the shading I was doing. After five minutes of this, with me getting more and more frustrated by the arms interference, one of my class mates broke the silence by asking me, “Are you ok?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He told me that I kept putting my hand on top of the drawing and then would move my hand off of it like I was holding something and putting it down next to the paper. After shading for a few seconds I’d do it all over again. Also, apparently there were a few times that I hunched over the drawing and started scratching at the arm with one hand while I was shading right next to the area I was scratching at. My experience was that I was using my finger to tap her arm to the side while I shaded.
As the realization of what just happened hit me. I said I was fine and as I looked back at my drawing I saw the arm falling back into the paper as a flat two dimensional image. I only had two periods left before the day was over and I could go home, but damn if those two forty-five minute classes didn’t have a two to one special going on that day. For ever one minute that passed, I got a second minute for free. It was an epic hour and a half.
When I finally got home, I went straight to my room, taped a “Sleeping” sign on my door, and climbed into bed. I have no recollection of my head ever hitting the pillow. However, when I woke up fifteen hours later to get ready for school, it was clear by my reflection in the mirror that not only had my head hit the pillow, but that one side of my head had battled against it to gain control of my hair for the night. The pillow had won and the left side of my head had my hair sticking out in every direction but down. I am happy to say that after a shower and a hefty heaping handful of hair gel, my puffed pillowy hairdo deflated. Plus, I was no longer sleep deprived. Otherwise, I probably would have just said, “screw it” and gone to school looking like I was trying to win a Robert Smith lookalike contest where I was the only contestant (again… my junior year was an unfortunate time during my high school years… damn you Robert Smith… damn you The Cure.)
So any sleep deprived stories about your school years you’d care to share?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: art class, writing poetry, drinking mountain dew, toilet papering house, sleep deprived, drawing, and sleeping sign.
by Richard Timothy | Sep 24, 2010 | Borrowed Smirk, I Think There's a Point, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
My cutie-baby-sweetie-pie-wifey-pooh’s best friend conveyed this story to me, since she were there when it happened. She is related to the senior who was denied her senior discount at a local eatery that just so happens to be a franchise of international claim, but I only think they exist in the US… maybe Canada and Mexico, but that’s it. To avoid naming names I’ll just simply say that this place spends a lot of its time focusing on cakes of the pan variety and have an affinity for that jumping action that bunnies seem to be so proficient at.
Sadie (the senior) was in sitting in the back seat feeling a bit peckish, in the way a bear might feel peckish after a six month nap. As they were driving down the road she noticed a big sign on the side of the before mentioned restaurant that said, “Early Bird Senior Discount – 50% off!”
Sadie realizing that she was the only one in the car that this sign applied to, had a moment of charity that was driven by her ever growing urge to eat something as soon as possible. She told the driver to go to the restaurant and that she would be taking care of the bill for everyone. Like most people I know, have known, will know, and will never meet, but if we did they would also be of the disposition that when free food is interjected into the conversation there is a high probability that the people that are presented with this type of offer are going to take you up on it. The people in the car with Sadie were no different, and soon everyone was out of the car and sitting in a booth inside the restaurant.
“Order whatever you want I am going to get a stellar discount,” she told everyone at the table. Then, as the waiter approached the table, she informed him that she would be picking up the entire check. As they ate Sadie expressed how excited she at the new year and how excited she was at being a year older so that she could finally get all the senior discount at movies, restaurants, museums, and everywhere else that offered them. After everyone had sufficiently stuffed themselves with eggs, bacon, waffles, and whatever else people eat when they decided to have breakfast for dinner, the bill arrived.
As Sadie looked over the bill she noticed that they had not given her the senior discount and called the waiter over. She pulled out senior ID card and handed it to the waiter, “I forgot to show you this so I can get my discount.”
The waiter looked at the card, and then looked at her, and then back at the card. “But you’re like seventeen?”
“Yeah, but I’m a senior see my ID card.”
“It’s for your high school.”
“Yeah, but I’m a senior.”
The waiter blinked. Then a little baffled that he had to explain it, said slowly, “The discount if for senior citizens, not high school seniors.”
The table started to shake as everyone sitting down tried suppress their laughter.
“But your sign outside doesn’t say that!” Sadie demanded.
“I’m sorry miss, but the discount is only for senior citizens.” And he walked away from the table.
By now the table was a roar of laughter. Everyone except Sadie, that is. She was trying to find supporters to her cause, claiming that it was false advertising. But that only got everyone laughing again, mainly because she was so serious about it. Her mother then explained to her that all of the senior discounts she had been looking forward to were, in fact, only for people age 65 and above. None of them applied to seniors in high school.
Sadie was a little deflated by this realization, but to help her feel better about the little misunderstanding, her parents offered to buy her dinner instead of the original plan, which, as I stated before is not the type of offer people seem willing to turn down. She got over it eventually. However, her mother did tell us that if you ever bring up the phrase ‘senior discount’ in Sadie’s presence, she almost always blurts out in a type of Tourettes inspired uncontrollability, “False Advertising.”
I even tried it once when we were over at their house while Sadie was there… her mom was not kidding.
All in all, I thought it was a grand story and now, every time I pass one of pancake restaurants I always find a smile has landed on my lips, as I think about the senior who was denied her senior discount for being the wrong kind of senior.
Do you have any ‘lost in translation’ stories? I’d love to hear them.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: senior discount, breakfast, argue, and woman cursing.
by Richard Timothy | Sep 22, 2010 | Confessed Confidentially, My Cutie Baby Sweetie Pie, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
Today is one of my favorite days of the year, and it really only started three years ago. Granted, three years ago it was on a Saturday instead of a Wednesday, but it was a perfect morning. The sun was out fulfilling its autumn obligation to lightly cook the tree leaves from a vibrant spring green to an nice crunchy golden brown. The house was a flurry of activity that required me to leave the house so certain preparations could take place. Things like my sweetie-baby-cutie-pie putting on a dress… that I wasn’t allowed to see, until later that day. Yes the twenty-second of September is mine and Angela’s anniversary… mostly.
The thing about our anniversary is that it’s a two parter, since we got married one month after our 5th year anniversary of being together. So whenever I tell people it’s our anniversary I double digit it, as in, “Today is our 8/3 anniversary.” My view is that our first five years together are just as substantial and relationship defining as our three years married.
The one thing that our wedding did was give us a date that we could put on napkins and margarita glasses, which we gave to friends and family as a reminder of the day we invited them to be there while we proclaimed our commitment, love, and vows to each other to life, the universe and everything. See our anniversary prior to that was a little ambiguous. It was the month of August, as opposed to a specific day in that month. This was because pinpointing when we officially became official was officially different for each of us. I went with the early part of the month, because I had already made up my mind that I was committed to her… trouble is I never conveyed this in words. So when she asked me at the later portion of the month if we were officially exclusive and together, I gave her a loving ‘well duh’ look and explained I thought that’s what we had been doing the past few weeks.
I know people say that communication is a very important tool for staying together, which is true. However, I feel it is equally important to point out that it’s just as important tool in discovering if you are actually together or not in the first place.
Did getting married change anything? Yes and no. My perspective was that a wedding would in no way change, enhance, or alter my commitment, love, and devotion to her, and it didn’t. But I will say that apart from adding “wifey-pooh” to her pet name “sweetie-baby-cutie-pie” there was something that was there that wasn’t before. I couldn’t explain it… I still can’t, but there was something new, or maybe it was always there and I just didn’t notice it before. Angela noticed it too… truth is she noticed it first, but she usually does… it’s one of those Angela things.
And just so there is not confusion on the matter, yes, she was the one that proposed. It’s not that I was opposed to marriage, it just that… well ok, it was that actually. I had no plans, goals, or needs to go through a man made ceremony that religious people claims means something that it doesn’t. And that is also used by some to change that bright red ‘don’t have sex’ light that had been glowing in their mind as long as they can remember, to a bright (Al) Green colored light that magically turned that what was a sin the day before into an acceptable and highly recommended way to spend an evening… morning… brunch… lunch… afternoon tea… well, you get the point.
I knew it was something Angela wanted though. Know why? Because she communicated it me. (See, again with that communication thing. Very, very helpful.) So I thought about it and what it would mean to her (because I didn’t see it meaning anything to me). I just wanted her to be happy. I eventually told her that too. And then one day, after she had gotten home from a three day event in California, and listening to a majority of the other women there explaining how their husbands had ‘let’ them come to the event, she walked up to me, gave me a kiss and said, “I think it’s time we start looking for a ring.” To which I retorted, “Ok.” And that was it, we were engaged.
I know it’s not terribly romantic… come to think of it, it’s not romantic in any way, shape, or form, but I think it worked out the only way if could for us. Plus, I love being able to tell her, “Thank you for asking me to marry you.” If you are married and have not said this before, or said it in a while, try it out. Hopefully saying it will make you as happy as it makes me. Of course you can switch it up a bit in the event that you were the asker as opposed to the askee. Still, give it a try. I hope it fits.
As for the wedding, it was one of the best parties I’ve ever been to, let alone thrown. And all of the credit for that goes to Angela, except the wine selection. I helped a great deal putting that together. The decorations were perfect. She had spent over a year planning, creating, and purchasing things that were on sale that she knew she’d use for the wedding, even if she wasn’t exactly sure how at the time of purchase. I knew that even though it was our wedding, it was her day. The thing about a wedding is that it’s commonly a day for the bride, and the mom’s. The men of a wedding cast are really just cute little penguin suited lawn ornaments that get to toast those who were there celebrating with them and look pretty as they waddle around in their uncomfortable suit. Oh and you get to kiss the beautiful bride every time people start making dinging noises using some utensil to lightly tap on the side of their glass, which was pretty cool. I’m a big fan of kissing my wife.
Since today is our official anniversary day, I started looking into what gift I could get her… no I am not waiting until the last minute, not completely. For our anniversary we are actually heading to Maui for a week, but that isn’t until the first week in October, so even those we have an anniversary getaway planned, it is going to be a little over a week until we get there. She was kind enough to warn me that she did get me a little something, so in repercussion I looked up to see what commemorates your eight year anniversary.
Apparently there are two lists now, the Tradition Gift List and the Modern Gift List, and just for the record, the Traditional Gift List sucks. For year one you have paper, year five is wood, and year eight is bronze or pottery. The Modern Gift list seems a bit more rewarding. Year one is clocks, year five is silverware, and year eight is linens or lace. Ok so maybe I didn’t pick the best examples. But in the Traditional list you only get diamonds on your 60th anniversary. On the Modern list you get diamonds for your 10th, 30th, and 60th anniversary. I do feel it is important to point out that these are suggestions and you do not have to follow them like ducklings following their mother across a country road. But if you need a suggestion, I think more people are going to be supportive of a list that suggests you give them diamonds at least three times in 60 years as opposed to just once.
So as part of my gift to my sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh on our anniversary it to proclaim to the world, but mainly those of you reading, of my complete and total adoration and love for my wife, Angela. (This next bit is for her, but you are more than welcome to keep reading.)
To my best friend, my love, my Angela,
I know it’s a cliché, but I figure since we both love wine a fermented analogy would be quite fitting. The longer we’re together, the better my life gets. Our lives are affected by our surroundings, our moods, our feelings, the trees, the seasons, the sun and moon, and with each passing year the flavor of our life together, becomes richer, fuller, and better than I could have ever imagined. I love your infectious laugh that fills our home. I love your ability to sing Bon Jovi at the top of your lungs while playing Rock Band with our friends. I love your melting smile and endless capacity to be just goofy enough so that our time together is full, true, and cheerful. I love that a day does not go by without us telling the other how much we love them. I love your drive and determination to change the world for the better, and to help remind others how to believe in themselves and dream again. I know I say this often, and it’s because it is always true and always there in front me… you make this world more beautiful simply by being a part of it. I wuv you. I love you. And I am so incredibly in love with you. Thank you for asking me. Happy Anniversary!
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: happy day, anniversary, woman proposing, pottery, and I love you.
by Richard Timothy | Sep 20, 2010 | I Think There's a Point, My Cutie Baby Sweetie Pie, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
Ears are interesting things. Not necessarily because of their size and shape, and how proportional they are to your head, even though all of those to play an important role in how much you were teased as a child and is a motivational factor in whether or not you grow your hair long or not. What I am referring to the how our ears emotionally identify certain sounds and the power those sounds have to created a positive or negative reaction in us.
It was at a birthday party this past weekend and was reminded of one of my favorite sounds. The thing is I use to make this sound all the time growing up. It’s a relatively simple sound to make, one that I imagine we all enjoyed making in our youth and even during early infancy when we learned that fingers could be used to make a collection of noises when applied to your mouth. What could this sound of delight be? It’s the popping sound you can make as finger slides out of your mouth while it is pressing on the inside of one of your cheek.
To make this sound I highly recommend you wash your hands first. Hands are mischievous things that have a tendency to go places and touch things that not even a hand should touch. After washing your hands… you know, you might want to brush your teeth as well. At the very least I’d suggest gargling with some mouth wash. This, however, is dependent on if and what you have recently eaten. Once your hands and mouth are both properly sanitized for some friendly interaction, open your mouth and insert your index finger pressing it firmly against the inside of the cheek or your choice. Note: you will want to use a left to right system for this, i.e. if you use your right index finger, press it against the inside or your left cheek. Close your mouth around your finger so that no air can escape out of your mouth and then breathe out so that your mouth fills with air. As the pressure builds up, slide your finger along the side of your cheek and out of your mouth. As your finger exits, your mouth will make a loud popping noise.
There is another way to make this noise, which does not include any fingers in any mouths, and it is in this context that this sound that brings a smile to my face every time I hear it. It’s the popping sound a cork makes as it is removed from a new bottle of wine. Whenever I pull out a cork from a newly opened wine bottle that sound hits me in the face like a cream pie of pure joy. I’ll bet that anytime Dionysus makes a trumpeted entrance into Mount Olympus the horn section is a symphony of the cork popping sounds. It truly is one of my favorite euphoric sounds. And it is for that reason alone that I hope the screw top bottles in the wine world remain more minimal as opposed to becoming a standard.
Some other noises I love, that always put a smile on my face:
- The knock at the door when I am expecting friends to visit. I hear that knock and know who it is. I can’t help but smile as I walk up to the door to let them in.
- The sound of my sweetie-baby-cutie-pie laughing. Especially when I am in my office working and I can hear her downstairs laughing at something she is watching on the television… or YouTube. Her laugh is very infectious and fills me full of smiles.
- The song Glósóli by Sigur Ros, and even though I have no idea about what the song means (because it is performed in a foreign language) it always gets me smiley and feeling better about life, the universe, and everything.
Now to give a little yang to this yin topic… or is it the other way around? Either way, I figured it would only be fair if I offered a handful of sounds at make me my skin crawl, my teeth clinch, and the desire to have the connection from my ears to my brain to be severed. These sounds include:
- Frost being scrapped off of car windshields while I am sitting inside the car. Oddly, if I am the one outside scrapping of the windshield, I have no problem with the sound, but if I am sitting in the car and someone else is scrapping, I have turn up the heater and car stereo, and to stick my fingers in my ears to try to drown out the sound.
- Adults’ using baby-talk while conversing with other adults. This creates a very spontaneous and unrelenting desire to slap these adults in the face until they stops. I’m all for mimicking babies in their underdeveloped oratory as an attempt to get them to smile or giggle, or as a deterrent to get them to stop crying. When adults, actually let’s make that anyone older than three, starts using a baby-talk voice to ask for anything, everyone in ear shot is going to want to beat you until you promise never to talk like that again.
- The knock at the door when I have someone coming over that I am not particularly fond of. I hear the knock and I know who it is. I always have to try really hard to put a smile on my face as I walk up to the door to let them in.
- Radio commercials that use car horns in their commercial. I have, on more than one occasion, discovered that my middle finger becomes loaded and is ready to go off at a moment’s notice as a result of radio commercials honking at me during my drive to work. Freaks me out more often than not… between those commercials and the tedium of morning radio DJ’s I’ve pretty much stopped listening to the radio altogether.
The thing about euphoric sounds is its all relative, and no I’m not talking about any of my cousins… but then again, you might… I could go back to that door knocking experience with people at your door that you don’t want there. Well there you have it some of my yin sounds and yang noises.
What are some of your sounds that bring either joy or grumpiness… or some variety therein?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: big ears, mouth popping sound, opening wine, scraping ice, and joy.
by Richard Timothy | Sep 17, 2010 | I Think There's a Point, Life Characters, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
It happened overnight, my brother’s bank account went from a couple hundred dollars to over a million in the blink of an eye. How did he do it? Well, let me tell you…
My brother came into his million dollars when living in Jackson Wyoming, which only just recently changed. My friend Ans and I would dream, scheme and plot about ways to get him out of Jackson. It’s not so much we were opposed to Jackson; we were just opposed to him living there. I mean sure I enjoy visiting there, but I’d never want to live there, it’s just not a good fit and it certainly wasn’t a good fit for Dave. At least it wasn’t in our minds. Turns out the only motivation he needed was, instead of our constant verbal pestering for him to move, a significant other that refused to live there.
Dave is a rather clever sort, and was always hatching up new ideas for how he could make some extra money. It was after work, during one of these planning sessions, that he found himself a bit peckish and wanted to get something to eat. He headed down town and hit the local ATM to grab some cash for a late lunch. As his receipt rolled out of the ATM, looking much like an R2 unit attempting to stick out its tongue, Dave looked at the printed balance at the bottom of the sheet to see how much cash he had left until pay day.
He looked at the number. He blinked and looked at the number. Then did a series of extreme blinks and head shakes in much the same manner as someone who has attempted to see how long they can start at the sun and was not attempting to get their eyes to adjust so they could see the world again. As he looked back at the paper next to the words Account Balance was a little over one million dollars. He knew something was amiss, he hoped it wasn’t, but knew better. So he went home, pulled close the blinds, you know, just in case. And in an act of positive mental reinforcement started to compose a list of all the things he would do if the money in his account turned out to actually be his. He decided to give it a few days before checking it again, figuring that if the bank made an error they would be able to easily correct it in a few days time.
Relativity is a funny thing, you know that whole spending 30 minutes at the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) feeling like hours… ok not the best example, because seriously whoever gets out of the DMV in 30 minutes. For me it’s more like visiting the a natural history museum, I can spend hours there and it seems like only minutes, and my wife can spend minutes there and it feels like hours and hours (sigh, adult women and their lack of dinosaur bone appreciation). The thing about relativity is that if you add enough alcohol to the equation, it doesn’t matter how long you spend at a place or in a situation, you still won’t remember it in the morning. However, even though Dave has for few drinks, which were hastily consumed, the weekend still crawled by one minute at a time.
After the fourth day Dave checked the balance again. The balance had not changed. My brother was a officially a millionaire… until…
Dave entered the bank, waited in line until a teller was available, and then began to explain the situation. As his explanation progressed, a look of growing concern began chiseling away at the teller’s face with much the same intensity as the French did using their iron balls to blow the nose off of statues of dead Egyptian royalty. She didn’t get shot at, but it was clear that whoever had created this little blunder was probably going to be looking for a new job the second blame was attached and she was hoping it wasn’t her.
Soon Dave was in the bank managers office telling the story once again as people hurriedly walked in and out of the office, to explain their research on the matter and trying to find someone to blame that wasn’t them. Eventually, they discovered what happened. Turned out Dave’s account number was identical to the school districts account number, except for one digit, which I know doesn’t make it identical, but, well, mostly identical then. When the state sent their yearly funds to the Jackson school district’s bank, the person entering the money into the account fat fingered the one digit that transformed the destination of the funds from the schools account into Dave’s account.
After being thanked incessantly for the hour or so he was at the bank, waiting for them to figure the whole thing out, Dave was given a new account balance print out that ended her brief stroll down millionaire lane and put his funds back to where it was just a few days prior. Once he got home he looked at his ‘Things-to-do-with-a-million-dollars’ list and filed it away in his ‘Things-to-get-to’ folder. As a reward he did get his picture taken and was the front page story at the local newspaper.
I like to think that through my brother’s honesty and integrity to an ‘Oopsie’ situation that he singlehandedly was responsible for making sure all of the kid in that school district received an education that year. Hey, I’m a firm believer in puffing up a family member with greatness when they do something greatish. I’m also a firm believer in reminding them when they are being a bit of an ass as well. I guess you could call it fulfilling one of your functional duties for the group of people that you call family.
Dave was only a millionaire for a few days… and it was a complete accident, but technically he was one, which is still a goal I know a lot of people have. At least he got to check it of his ‘To Do’ list early on. Now that he’s got out of the way, he can focus on other, more important things. Still, it does make for a good story.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: one million, ATM receipt, dinosaur, bank teller, newspaper, and to do list.
My sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh and I have a system for packing for trips. This system is fairly common practice for people that have attended, are attending, or may attend the ‘Last Minute School of Preparation’. Although for the record, we did not pack last minute for our Hawaii trip… we packed three minutes prior to last minute. I always look at last minute as, well, just that. The fact that Angela and I got to take a two hour nap before driving to the airport I feel shows you our proficiency at packing just before the last minute.
