Category: damn kids!

book meet nose

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

Our oldest son, Sean, was such a dedicated bookworm when he was a lad. When Sean’s nose was in a book, he was not very easily distracted from it. It’s not a stretch to say that you could drop a grand piano from a great height to crash land on the pavement right in front of him and the odds were pretty even he might not notice.

Or, to be a little less hyperbolic: Once Sean asked me for a ride, then very nearly got left standing on the curb when he failed to notice me shouting and waving at him, even though I was close enough to hit with the proverbial dead cat. (Is it still a proverb? I just realized I haven’t heard anyone say that in ages.)

We were living on an air force base in northern Japan at the time. The O-mobile was a Mitsubishi minivan, which is not as small as the work “mini” implies. It had room to seat six grown adults in spacious comfort and a four wheel drive gearbox that we put to use to climb mountain roads with some regularity. It was a vehicle that was not easily missed when it drove by, is what I’m getting at.

As soon as I pulled into the parking lot I saw there was a parking space at the end of the row, right across from the entrance where Sean was standing by the curb waiting. Score! I pulled in, parked, and looked across the road expectantly at Sean. He did not look up from the book he was reading.

I’m an easily-distracted person. When a moving object crosses my peripheral vision, I look up to see what it is. I’m fully aware this makes me look like a walking nervous tick but I can’t help myself. Whatever makes me do that, though, Sean is full of the antidote for it. The arrival of a big, dark, growling vehicle virtually within arm’s reach did not register at all on his radar.

Which I was used to so, after chuckling to myself, I leaned out the window and said his name, just loudly enough to be heard over the sound of the engine but not so loudly that I might startle him. He was that close. But, apparently, not close enough. I repeated his name, a bit louder this time. Still no response, so I shouted his name, thumping the side of the van with the flat of my hand to give it a little added oomph.

Still oblivious. Wow.

Running out of noise-making options, I laid on the horn, which jolted him out of his reverie so suddenly he almost jumped out of his shoes. Seemed just a trifle annoyed at having been beeped at, too. I explained to him that I’d tried just about everything else but I seem to recall he wasn’t mollified and I had to just let it go.

addicted to meals

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

It’s not that they said something cold-hearted, like, “It’s a cost-saving measure. If we cut free meals, we not only save the cost of purchasing the meals, we also save the cost of employing the people serving the meals, and we can use the cafeteria space for other activities.” That would have been merely cold-hearted.

It’s that they thought somehow it would be better to say evil shit like, “We don’t want to feed kids because they’ll come to expect it,” or “We don’t want to spoil kids by giving them something, like food, that they don’t deserve.”

dear me

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

Dear 15-year-old me:

I’m 59-year-old you and this is the sort of thing we do to pass the time while self-isolating during the pandemic. Yeah. The pandemic. I don’t want to jump straight into that, if you don’t mind. I mean, I’m not going to totally blow it off; I’ll get to it eventually. Just not right now. Baby steps.

I don’t know how these things are supposed to work. Does this letter show up under your pillow on some random day after your fifteenth birthday? Or does it show up in your mailbox like a regular letter the morning of your fifteenth birthday? The fact that I don’t know doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I can’t remember a lot of things that happened when I was fifteen, so first things first: Keep a journal. A diary. Whatever you call it, get something to write on and write something, anything at all, every day, even just one sentence about that day. I can’t tell you why yet, but trust me, you want to do this.

Speaking of things you want to do, start working on your dad to chip on the flying lessons. He’ll do it if you sell it to him the right way. Like, you know how he wants you to go to college? You absolutely should go, so promise get a 4.0 GPA if your parents chip in 50% for flying lessons. They don’t have that kind of money, but they’ll chip for some fraction of your expenses if you deliver good grades, because your mom thinks it’s pretty great that you want to learn to fly. She’ll talk your dad into helping you out, and anything is better than nothing.

Here’s an FYI about that 4.0 GPA: you’re not that smart. I mean, I’m not. Maybe *you* could be that smart, I don’t really know. I didn’t try very hard for good grades. Sort of the point of this letter, right? To warn you not to make the mistakes I made? Well, I know how much you hate to study, believe me, and I know how much you want to piss away the afternoon playing pinball instead of doing your homework. But promise good grades, hen work your ass off for at least a 3.4 – that’s an attainable goal. Even I managed to do that. And guess what? Mom and dad were happy with that.

Why am I talking about college in a letter to 15-year-old me? Because you’re taking flying lessons now, and you should keep on taking them, but you have to get better at math to fly. Ugh. I know. You think math sucks. Well, it’s not math, it’s you. You suck at math. I don’t know how to say it any other way. I still suck at math, but I’m better at it because I had to be. I had to learn math years after high school – pretty basic stuff, stuff I would have known if I gave it more attention in high school. You’re gonna hate it, but you won’t hate it as much later on if you just pay attention now.

Speaking of paying attention, you should not only give your full attention to your flight instructor, you should try to be his friend, because he’s a pretty great guy, which you’ll realize years down the road. He seems a little odd now, but all adults seem pretty odd, don’t they? Like, really weird? Yeah, that doesn’t change as you get older. Everybody just gets weirder, and avoiding them doesn’t help you get over it. And Bill’s not the weirdest guy out there. Really, he’s one of the best guys you know right now. Learn everything he can teach you about flying, learn all his dad jokes, ask him how he’s doing today, *talk to him,* he’s really very interesting. And keep in touch after you move on from this place in your life.

Your best friend’s dad, the guy who gave you your first ride in a plane – you should keep in touch with him, too. You’re going to not want to, and I’ll tell you why in another letter, but if you do, he’ll appreciate it in ways you can’t comprehend right now. Okay, that’s going way past the line I wanted to stop at in this letter. The fact that he introduced you to flying is a rock-solid reason to stick by him and learn from him, and from all his friends who have planes, and especially his friend Don who builds planes in his garage. You should spend as much time with them as possible. Hang out with them a lot more when you go to the fly-in. Drooling over high-performance planes is fun now, but show them how much you’ll work to get behind the stick and they’ll draw you into their circle, teach you everything they know. That’s how Pete Conrad went from sweeping hangars in exchange for lessons and worked his way up to walking on the moon. You don’t know who Pete Conrad is, do you? You only thought you were smart about the moon landings. Go look it up.

By the way, there’s a space station, and I mean A SPACE STATION with an international crew of six people orbiting the earth as I type these words. It’s not impossible that you could be part of that crew – *if* you learn math and *if* you learn to fly, and those are not impossible things to learn. Believing you can work on a space station seems like science fiction to you now, but reality has a funny way of sneaking up on you. Like for instance, I’m living in a world-wide pandemic is kicking the shit out of the United States because American voters thought it would be a good idea to elect a con man president who rose to fame because his television show was a hit in spite of the fact that he couldn’t find his ass with both hands, a map, and a flashlight. Sounds like a Phillip K. Dick dystopia. Which reminds me: Get your hands on all the Phillip K. Dick you can find. I discovered him too late to appreciate him. I think maybe 15-year-old me would have loved him.

Well, 15-year-old me, this has been fun but I have to clean the bathroom. Sorry, but I let it go way too long and it’s pretty gross now. I still put everything off until way past the last minute. Maybe that’s something you can try to stop doing. Just an idea. I’ll be back with more later, promise.

making change

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

I paid cash for my lunch at the grocery store the other day. Didn’t expect the high school guy at the register to count back my change the way cashiers used to, but I did expect him to be able to add up the values of the coins as he was making change, which he was apparently having a lot of trouble with. He started by digging out a couple of quarters, which he obviously added up in his head, then thought long and hard about whether to grab another quarter, decided not to, dug a couple of dimes out of the till and mentally added them to the quarters, then stared at the display while trying to decide how many nickels he needed. It won’t be too much longer until the register displays the change graphically: dollar bill, dollar bill, dollar bill, quarter, quarter, dime, nickel, penny, penny.

bon voyage

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

It took something like two and a half hours to get from the Hill Farms office building back to Our Humble O’Bode this evening, owing to the inch or so of snow on the ground. I have never been so embarrassed to be a cheesehead. One inch of snow and traffic all over Madison is hopelessly snarled. In Waupaca County they wouldn’t call school for less than a foot of snow, and even then most of the businesses in downtown Manawa would be open, after they spent all morning digging out. But, still.

Halfway home, we stopped at the Giant Jones brewery to pick up a couple pint bottles of their scotch ale, which is fast becoming my favorite. Then, just a couple hundred yards from our very own doorstep, we pulled up to Fraboni’s to pick up sandwiches, which we ate in front of the television while the snow continued to fall. Ah, Friday.

fuck your meme

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

I saw a meme on Facebook last night that was, according to the results of a fast Google search, a shortened version of a 2007 book called 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School, Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education, by conservative columnist and radio host Charlie Sykes. The meme listed only 11 rules, probably because, like most Facebook memes, somebody shortened it for quick and easy digestion.  Whoever shortened it also got the source wrong; it said, “Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a high school about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school.”  So it could be that these 11 rules are in no way like any of the 50 rules in Sykes’ book.  If so, I offer my apologies to Charlie until I get the time to read his book and compare it to the meme.  Until then, though, I couldn’t stop myself from responding to the 11 rules that supposedly nobody will ever learn in school:

Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!

Way to inspire people, Charlie! This is a great way to start a list of “rules” you want everyone everywhere to learn and live by.  Who wouldn’t look at a rule like DON’T EXPECT FAIRNESS and not feel a surge of hope for the future and a desire to go on, besides practically everybody?

Strictly speaking, though, Charlie got it wrong.  Life is absolutely fair.  Life makes no judgments at all.  If Life were biased and took into consideration how you lived, then people who dedicated their lives to helping others would all live long and happy lives while wicked, selfish people would perish horribly of pestilence and rot.  It doesn’t work that way, though.  There is nothing more impartial than Life.  You’re born, you live, you die, and you get the same chance to do good or bad with your life as anybody else.  Totally fair.

If, on the other hand, Charlie’s talking about whether or not you get a fair shake in human society, and I suspect he is, that’s all about how people treat one another, which is a part of life, but not all of it.  Maybe that’s what Charlie meant:  People will not treat you fairly.  It’s not entirely wrong, but “life isn’t fair – get used to it” seems like one hell of a cynical take on that message.

I would suggest an alternative to Rule 1: Be fair with people, always. They may not always be fair to you in return, but it’s the right thing to do, and at least you’re bringing some fairness into the world.

Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Charlie’s first two rules are DON’T EXPECT FAIRNESS and NOBODY CARES WHETHER YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF.  I don’t know Charlie, but if I had to form an opinion of him based on these two rules, I’d have to say he seems like kind of a cynical person.  I hope he eventually got a friend or a dog or somebody who was nice to him.

I think I get the direction Charlie’s going in: I think maybe he’s saying that doing good work leads you to feel good about yourself.  If he had said that and only that, I would have to agree with him.  However, Charlie might also be saying you don’t deserve to feel good about yourself until you do good work.  He didn’t say that exactly, but that’s how it sounds to me after “the world won’t care about your self-esteem.”

The idea that people do not care whether or not you respect yourself is, frankly, bullshit.  That’s not my experience at all, and I doubt it’s Charlie’s experience, either.  I think Charlie probably knows as well as I do that people will judge you harshly if you hate yourself.  People expect you to hold yourself in high regard.  People care very much about your self-esteem.

And this is just my opinion, but caring about other people’s feelings, whether those feelings are joy or anguish or anywhere in between, is a big part of being a decent person.  My Rule # 2 would be: Bring some compassion into the world in whatever way you can, small or large.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

This is a bald-faced lie. Some people WILL make 60K or more right out of high school. Some will already be unbelievably rich BEFORE they start high school, or junior high, or grade school.  That’s just a fact.

I’m guessing Charlie didn’t make 60K out of high school and, for some reason, he doesn’t want anybody else to show him up by thinking they will.

Here’s my rule # 3: Don’t listen to anybody who tells you what you will or won’t do. In all likelihood, people who dump shit like this on you are grouchy curmudgeons who are still pissed they weren’t making 60K their first year out of high school.

Also: “car phone” – LOL!

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.

“Wait until you get a boss” sounds like another way of saying “if the boss you get is anything like the boss I got, he will make you more miserable than your teacher ever did.”

I didn’t think my teachers were tough.  I’m not even sure what Charlie means by “tough.”  I thought most of my teachers were pretty great.  Some were boring, a few were jerks, but most of them were good at inspiring me to do good work, challenging me to do better work, and expecting me to do my best.  That’s not “tough.”  That’s nothing more than you would do for a good friend.  I’m not saying your teacher or your boss has to be your friend to be good; I’m saying a good teacher or a good boss will know how to inspire you.  A “tough” boss will just order you to do it.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

There are so many things wrong with this “rule.”

First of all, flipping burgers is one of the most satisfying activities I can think of. Standing in my back yard, beer in one hand, spatula in the other, and relishing the thought of the delicious meal to come: I can’t think of a more relaxing way to unwind at the end of a hectic day in the office.

I suspect, however, that Charlie penned this “rule” with the intent to point a finger of shame at “kids these days” who shun the drudgery of minimum-wage jobs. Assuming that is the case, I submit that flipping burgers for minimum wage – and it will ALWAYS be for minimum wage – is not always the opportunity he makes it out to be. If you have the great good fortune to move on to a better job from flipping burgers, then sure, opportunity; but if you’re flipping burgers because there are no other jobs available to you, you stand no chance of advancement, and you have no prospect of moving up to a job that would be better than living paycheck-to-paycheck, that’s not opportunity, and it doesn’t leave much room for dignity.

And finally, comparing what my grandparents thought of as opportunity to what my children face in the job market is hardly fair. My grandparents weathered the depression.  My parents grew up during a world war.  There were no opportunities then, there was only survival.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

I’m in the awkward position of having to agree with this rule on a technicality, because “learn from your mistakes” is good advice. So is “don’t whine.” If Charlie had said, “If you mess up, don’t whine about it; learn from your mistakes,” I’d stand one-hundred percent in agreement with him, but the oddly specific don’t-blame-your-parents vibe gives me the feeling maybe Charlie made some parenting choices that resulted in more pushback from his kids than he thought he’d get.

I disagree with this rule on principal because it’s wrong.  Parents do lots of things that directly result in kids making mistakes.  Just one example: Parents who hit their kids makes some of the kids think hitting kids is okay. If kids make that mistake, it’s definitely their parents’ fault.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

YOUR PARENTS ARE BORING BECAUSE OF ALL THEY DID FOR YOU! THINK YOU’RE COOL? YOU’RE NOT! YOU’RE JUST A LOUSY KID.

I hate this “rule” so much.  The clunky metaphor in the last line is bad enough, but the way Charlie turned raising kids into a huge guilt trip ought to be a hanging offense.

First of all, any bills that parents paid were never the kids’ bills.  They were the parents’ bills.  Kids don’t rack up bills and they don’t owe parents the money it cost to raise them.  When parents brings kids into the world, it’s entirely the parents’ duty to feed, clothe, and shelter their kids without any conditions.  There is no bargain, no “okay, I’ll do this, but only if you pay me back later.”  Parents pay the bills because it’s their duty as parents! And because it’s their duty, they don’t hang it over the heads of their kids ever. 

And listening to kids is not a chore! Washing their clothes is, but again, that’s what parents do, and kids don’t owe parents anything for it.  Listening to kids hatching their plans is also what parents are supposed to do.  Listen to them and talk with them; help them develop those ideas. Do it with enthusiasm.  If you act like it’s a chore, you’re doing it wrong.

Finally, at some point all kids start to act like they’re too cool for their parents.  That’s how they let their parents know they’re getting ready to hit the road.  Good parents recognize this and don’t sneer at their kids because of it.

So if your parents are boring now, chances are excellent they were always boring. If you know for a fact they used to be interesting but now they’re boring, well, sometimes people decline cognitively. That’s certainly not anybody’s fault but Mother Nature’s.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

There is so much wrong with Rule #8.  The idea that there have to be losers, for starters. You don’t have to make everything a competition to feel good about yourself. If you do, I won’t be your loser just because we both want the same thing.

I don’t know how I feel about grades, but I’m all for giving kids as many chances as they need to get the right answer. That’s called learning from mistakes, which Charlie championed in rule # 6. What’s it matter how many times they do it, so long as they get it right? Why should kids get a limited number of chances to get the right answer and be labeled a loser if they don’t? That doesn’t even make sense.

As far as school bearing any resemblance to real life: Well of course it doesn’t. School is supposed to be the place where kids get all the chances they need to get the right answer before they have to go face “real life.”  It’s supposed to be a place to practice for what comes after.  (Whether it is or not is an entirely different rant.)

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

What the hell does that even mean, “life is not divided into semesters?” I suppose Charlie doesn’t divide his life into weeks, either, or spend the occasional weekend in front of the television drinking beer and watching the football game, or whatever he does for fun.

As far as “finding yourself” is concerned, I don’t even want my employer messing with my personal life. If my boss tried to give me personal advice, I’d politely tell him to mind his own goddamn business and let me get back to work.

Here’s my rule # 9: People who don’t take time off from their jobs now and then are considered workaholics who end up guzzling Maalox straight out of the bottle to control their acid reflux.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

I don’t know when these rules were written but I suspect it was before people started hovering over their laptops in coffee shops all day, making money. Kids, you may disregard rule # 10. It’s another bald-faced lie.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Two things:

Either Charlie’s a nerd and this is a warning that he’s looking forward to revenge for all the times he was pantsed, or Charlie’s not a nerd and this is a warning he’s passing along after a boss or two of his got revenge on him for pantsing them back in grade school.

Either way, I thought you were supposed to be nice to others because that’s how you would like others to behave towards you.  (I’m not sure if the Golden Rule applies to people who like it when others pick a fight with them.)  You’re a total shitheel if  the only way to get you to be nice to people is to warn you you might end up working for a person you used to treat like shit.

 

PS3

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

We tried to watch the first episode of this season’s Downton Abbey last night using Amazon streaming video through a PS3. If that didn’t make any sense at all, here’s how that breaks down:

First of all, yes, we’re fans of Downton Abbey. Roll your eyes all you want. We like it.

Tim left us his PS3, which is a computer made by Sony to play video games. He bought it to play one game in particular and then, when he got tired of the game, he boxed up the computer and pretty much forgot about it until he was cleaning out some of his stuff, found it again and was trying to figure out how to get rid of it. I had just learned that a PS3 will pay Blue-Ray movies and I’m too cheap to buy an actual Blue-Ray disc player, so I offered to pay him whatever he wanted for it, and that’s when he gave it to us. Thanks for the free computer, T-Dawg.

I don’t remember how I found out that we could watch Netflix on it, too. I think Tim told us that. However we found out, the PS3 works just fine as a Blue-Ray player, or to watch Netflix. Love it. What doesn’t work very well, though, is streaming instant video from Amazon. I’m not sure why. Netflix video streams with no problem, but Amazon video buffers all. The. Time. Try to watch a two-hour show when that little twirling arrow thingie freezes the action every three minutes. I can put up with some video buffering when I’m trying to watch a ninety-second video of kittens, but it drove us both up a wall last night. We eventually gave up and watched Downton on B’s tablet. By the way, watching TV on a seven-inch tablet isn’t so bad when you’re watching with somebody who doesn’t mind cuddling up to you.

my second brain

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

I really want to like my smart phone. And for the most part, I do. It can do some pretty awesome stuff I never asked for or even expected it to do. Besides the obvious extras – texting, browsing the internet – it’s got GPS, for instance, so when I call up a Google map, a little blue dot will float down the street I’m walking or driving along. I can’t get lost while I have this phone on me. That kind of rocks my world.

I can also look up almost anything at will. Anything at all. The great big holes in my memory are no longer as frustrating as they used to be. I can usually remember enough background information to successfully google the web page where all the details I need to fill the holes can be found. That definitely rocks my world, no question.

And there are lots of nifty gadgets called apps I can get for the phone. I love gadgets. I love being able to keep a log of how far I walk each day. That particular app even maps each walk so I can keep track of where I’ve been. Love it. Very geeky.

What my smart phone is not particularly good at, ironically, is making a phone call. The reasons are simple, and there are only two: The audio quality sucks, and most people, including yours truly, have very little no radio discipline.

In my lifetime, telephones – real telephones, not cell phones – almost always had good audio quality. Even the cheap plastic ten-dollar phones that drug stores have been selling in blister packs for the last fifteen years or so delivered better audio quality than the best cell phones. I don’t know why, unless it’s because telephones are hardwired into a network while cell phones communicate by radio. Whatever the cause, that was the biggest reason I resisted disconnecting our land line for so long. I liked being able to hear my mom’s voice as it might have sounded if she were not very far away at all. Then she got a cell phone, after practically everybody else I knew did, and then it didn’t matter whether or not I had a land line. Clarity became obsolete. Think about that.

But the thing that really bugs me about cell phones is that they are not telephones at all, but glorified walkie-talkies, hand-held radios that can imitate telephonic communication by virtue of their computer brains. Imitate it, mind you. They’re still radios. While you’re talking, you’re transmitting. You’re not receiving anything your friend is saying. You don’t even know if your friend is talking until you stop. That wasn’t the case with telephones. You could carry on a conversation over a telephone line exactly as if you were speaking to somebody who was in the room with you. You could say “Yes, yes,” or “Uh-huh,” or “Nope, nope, nope,” while they were talking, not necessarily with the intention of interrupting them but just to let them know you were paying attention, listening to what they were saying. Or you could try to interrupt them, but they could keep right on talking to get their point across. You could have a live, active, colorful conversation.

If you want to communicate with anyone over a radio circuit, however, you can’t do any of that. Whenever you start to talk, or even if you say “uh-huh,” your cell phone starts transmitting, which means it stops receiving, which means you can’t hear what your friend is saying anymore. What used to be a verbal cue that told your friend you were listening has become a nervous tic that slams the brakes on the conversation you’re trying to have. So you have to completely change the way you talk. You have to orate instead of converse. For instance, say your friend goes first. While he’s talking, you must compose a response in your head, then when it’s your turn you have to yadda-yadda-yadda non-stop until you’ve finished your prepared speech, because any pause in your oration might be interpreted by your friend as his cue to start talking. When you really are done, you have to stay done until your friend is through. Keeping your mouth shut is not good enough; you have to be deathly quiet. Not even so much as an “uh-huh” through your nose.

This is such an unsatisfying way to have a conversation that I’d much rather write or text people than call and talk to them. Luckily, my phone can do that.

the wave

~ Dave O ~ Leave a comment

Who doesn’t love sitting in traffic? Especially when there’s no apparent reason for it: no crashes, no tolls, no flaming mattresses.

Wait, what? Flaming mattresses? That’s a thing? Because if it is, I feel cheated, having never, ever seen any flaming mattresses in any of the traffic jams I’ve been caught up in. How have I missed out on this?

Anyway, here’s an animated graphic that shows you how traffic can come to a complete standstill even when there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it.