Dear "Anonymous":

Yes, I am.
Actually, they do.
And you smell funny.

Smooches

Because You Can't Fix Stupid

Some of my best moments occur in the most unexpected of locations and situations. Take today for example.

I was sitting in the chair at my new dentist's office having my teeth cleaned and doing that chatting you do with your hygienist when you are trying to talk around a mouth full of hand. The girl from the front desk came bopping into the room. She is probably in her mid 20's and a pleasant if somewhat vacant girl. She asked the hygienist "Are you a vegetarian?" The hygienist, who for the sake of brevity I'll call "J", said "no, I'm not." Our hero, the receptionist, said "Oh. OK. I had a question." J told her to ask it because she could probably answer it.

So Miss Mensa says "can vegetarians eat animal crackers?"

I am not kidding here.

OK, some of you know me well enough to know that having two hands, a mirror and a sharp object in my mouth at this particular moment was probably for the best. I froze. J paused. And giving the biggest benefit of the doubt I've ever seen in my life, J proceeded to tell her about the different kinds of vegetarians and how different kinds of foods, depending on how they're made, are ok for some and not for others. By this time, she had her hands out of my mouth and clenched in her lap so what the hell, I joined in too. And when we were done, Einstein utters the following words, and I shit you not, this verbatim:

"Oh. OK. So the shape of the food doesn't have anything to do with it?"

J tried her best, but I could see the muscles in her jaw twitching behind her mask. I dropped my head. I gnawed the inside of face off trying to keep it in. And J quietly said "No. Honey, no. The shape of the food doesn't matter."

As soon as the room was clear, I lost it. I turned to J and said "Holy Jesus and little fishes, tell me you don't let her play with any of the sharp shit around here, OK?" J fell apart. I said "you should tell her that if you order chicken nuggets in the shape of tiny dinosaurs, it's still not OK to eat them just because dinosaurs are extinct, but first tell her what extinct means, and that even though dinosaurs aren't real any more and the food is SHAPED like dinosaurs doesn't change anything and that it's still friggin chicken, OK?" J had to take off her mask. She had to wipe her eyes and blow her nose and change her gloves.

I said is she for REAL? Really?

J choked out "Girl, this is every single day around here."



I told her I have a blog and we need to chat because I'm going to start an entire chapter on "crap I heard while in the dentist's chair that you are not gonna believe."

Can vegetarians eat animal crackers.

That is right up there with "Did Jesus have a dog?"

I swear to you if I had money falling out of my ass, I'd go call a basket company, have them fill it with animal crackers and send it to J with a note that said "I've hated the dentist all my life and I must thank you because never have I laughed that hard within 100 yards of the chair of pain. You have my thanks and my sympathies."

More Life Lessons With the Ringlet

More Life Lessons with the Ringlet

When I was in the third grade, my gym teacher took a special interest in me because I was a very fast runner. I was just naturally and tremendously fast. Not a single person in that school could touch me – boy, girl, didn’t matter – nobody could keep up. He thought it would be a good idea to have a chat with my parents and then shuttle me into town to see a man who was, at that time, already at 2 time women’s Olympic track coach. He ran a private team, separate and apart from high school teams, and would now and again recruit kids from the outlying areas to try out for his team. I was taken to him and given an opportunity to give it my best shot.

Up to this point, my best shot was always enough. Usually, whatever I felt like giving was enough. I was all of 8 years old and baby, as far as I was concerned, I was IT. At least that’s what I thought until about five minutes after arriving at my tryout. I went from being all that to “how do you like your view of my back ” in the space of about 10 seconds, which is about all it took for his runners to dust the floor with my lagging-behind little rear end. But in spite of it all, he took me on and I made the team.

I then spent the better part of the next year running and training and getting carted all over the east coast for AAU track events and coming home from each and every one of them with my tail between my legs, having at times been beaten so badly I doubt that anybody even knew I was there.

The long and short of it is that I was just as stubborn then as I am now, and I just kept working harder, trying harder, learning more and busting my gut to climb back up to the top of a mountain that had suddenly tripled in size in my little eyes. Eventually, I did. Eventually, I made it out the heats and into the finals just to get beaten in a quite glorious and tremendous fashion all over again. Then I started placing. Then I started winning. Then I was the one to beat again, but it took two years to get there. Eventually, I was probably the fastest sprinter in my age group on the east coast. In fact, I still have the trophy to prove it.

The big fish/little pond vs. little fish/big pond lesson is one of the most important lessons of my life and one that Ringlet learned the hard way this past weekend. I took her to an out of state tournament, in a state where they take their karate about as seriously as Snarks takes her politics. The level of competition was like nothing Ringlet had seen to date, and while I warned her about it, she really didn’t pay me any mind. She had already decided that she knew her kata well enough, didn’t really need to sharpen it up, didn’t need to really do much of anything. She walked in there with her eyes firmly planted on the enormous first place trophy.

She walked out of there a different kid.

To her credit, she realized early on in the day that this was a different world. and rather than crumple or find an excuse to get into the car and just RUN, she rose to the challenge and her performance was just about the best I’ve ever seen out of her. But she was from out of state, unknown and just a bit unprepared for what she was facing. She held it together until we got to the car and then she burst into tears. She was furious at having come four hours, stayed overnight and then spent a day in a hot stuffy gym for “a stinking medal”.

I told her we hadn’t come all that way for a medal. I told her that when she pulled it together, we’d head for the Sonic we spotted on the way there, get a couple of Blasts and have a chat about why we HAD come all that way.

And we did. And she listened. And after a while she got it, especially after listening with rapt attention to the story of my two year asskicking in track. But she got it. She wasn’t even mad at me for dragging her all that way for her very own asskicking. She realized that the second you think you know it all, the second you think you’re the best, when you think you don’t have to work harder or reach for more, that’s the time when somebody’s gonna come up to you and show you, usually in the most humbling manner possible, just how very wrong your assumptions have been.

She’ll head for practice tomorrow night with a new view on things. She’ll sit down with her Master to discuss her short term game plan and goals and she’ll up her game and her training to accomplish them. That alone made it worth my setting her up for a fall to teach her a lesson. Because I’m still not sure even this morning who had the hardest time with this particular lesson: her or me.

Right now I’m thinking probably me.

This One is for The Peanut

Today is one of those days when I can still remember the second I laid eyes on my good friend's beautiful adopted son, to whom we affectionately refer as the Peanut. Mostly I can remember it because at Ringlet’s karate tournament yesterday, there was this itty, bitty, teeny, tiny, wee itsy bitsy little brown boy-critter in a white uniform way too big for his little body, with a white belt wrapped around his waist about 3 times about to stand up in front of a couple of big scary black belt judges and perform his little kata and that kid looked just like the Peanut did way back when. I chit you not, this kid couldn’t have been more than 10 inches tall. OK, maybe a little more than that, but by God not much.

He got up there and with eyes about as big as saucers, he stood before the judges and whispered what information he could remember from Clarence, his ENORMOUS instructor (who is actually quite a teddy bear if you can get past the wicked-scary front he likes to present) and started. When the time came for him to do his little karate screams at various parts of his kata, he would pause, think for a second and then turn to the judges, grit his teeth and growl at them.

I was almost wetting myself from trying not to laugh.

And when this little adorable thing got done and bowed, the whole crowd stood up and clapped, whistled and cheered louder than they had all day long.


And THAT’s what made him cry.

Tales from the Big Boat - Time to Throw Down

Our captain decided not to attempt to enter one of our ports of call due to high winds combined with big rocks in the entrance channel and, in response to the outcry of some passengers about missing a port of call, the ship was diverted to arrive in the Keys the following day. As a result, we found ourselves back in the States and required to go through immigration procedures before leaving the ship, which caused a bit of a backup on the staircases leading off the ship. People were hot, stuffy and getting more than a little cranky after half an hour of just standing on the stairs, waiting to make the most of their day.

Ringlet was standing at the bottom of the first staircase down, right before the landing that turns to head down the second set of stairs to the next deck level. I was right behind her and Mr. Ringie was bringing up the rear. There were lots of people around, just sullenly waiting it out. Quite suddenly, a man a little older than me and wearing sunglasses and a hat, who was situated past the landing and down a few stairs, looked directly up at Ringlet, clapped his hands and said “Come here L. Come to daddy honey.” By “L”, I mean called her by name.

I stopped breathing, turned and glared at him. Ringlet backed up a step toward me.

He did it again. He said “Come on L, my sweetie, come to your daddy.”

By now, he was speaking loudly enough for the half deaf Mr. Ringie to hear him as well, and I felt him stiffen from head to toe behind me, calculating how badly it would hurt his knees to launch himself at this guy who seeminly had a well developed death wish.

I said, out loud, “Who is that guy?” and a lady on the landing looked at me and, pointing to Ringlet, said “Why it’s HER father.” I said “the HELL it is. THAT’s her father” and pointed behind me. She looked up, spied Mr. Ringie and quietly murmured “uh oh.”

Just as I was about to turn to this guy and unload, he clapped his hands again, made a bunch of loud sloppy kissy noises and said “Come ON L. Come ON my sweetie. Come to your Daddy.”

And I snapped.

I whirled on the guy and bellowed “Who ARE you and why are you speaking to my child.”

He stopped and got this confused look on his face. He took off his sunglasses and looked at me, looked at Ringlet and then his eyes got rilly rilly wide as he held up his hands and said “no no nononononono” and pointing at Ringlet, said “beHIND her.”

Right behind Ringlet, same age, same hair, same everything was HIS daughter. Also named L. When he realized what was happening, he turned back to me and EVERYbody was holding their breath as he said “Oh My God. How much longer did I have to live?”

And me being me, smiled and said “Dude, you had approximately 5 seconds until I vaulted this rail, landed on you and force fed you those sunglasses by way of your a$$.”

The whole staircase broke up, and for the rest of the long shuffle out of the ship, you could hear people from all over piping up with “COME TO YOUR DADDY!!!!!”

Tales from the Big Boat #1: Ringlet Meets a Boy

Carnival Valor – pretty big ship. Lots of kids. Lots of kids Ringlet’s age. Lots of boys Ringlet’s age. Lots and lots and lots. Hysterically, this was our first full day on the ship, and we were relaxing in the lounge chairs on the level up above the pool where we could watch the ocean go by on one side and keep an eye on the pool in which Ringlet was splashing with the other. We had fruity drinks. We had nice people around us and the sun was pouring out 85 degree heat. It was great.

Until I felt Mr. Ringie poking me in the arm. I ignored him for the first 10 pokes or so and finally turned and hissed, “WHAT?” He was sitting there, waggling his arm in the direction of the pool with a panicky look on his face, telling me to “Go look. She’s talking to boys. Make it stop.” The people to my left started giggling behind their hands. I told him to just sit down and relax and leave her alone.

Not 10 minutes later, I saw her coming up the stairs to our level and right behind her was a nice looking young boy, around her age. They were kind of talking back and forth. Looked like a plot to me, but fortunately, Mr. Ringie was fretting and facing in an entirely different direction.

Ringlet parked herself in front of her father and one look at the shiteatin' grin on her face should have been enough to know what was coming, but she pulled the boy around her, placed him directly in front of her and this young boy looked Mr. Ringie right in the face, stuck out his right hand, and loudly blurted “Hello Mr. Ringie. My name is Casey. I’m 12 years old. I’m from Martinsburg, West Virginia and I’d like to ask you if it’s OK with you if I go with Ringlet to get some pizza.”

Mr. Ringie just sat there. I held my breath. I had to or I was gonna laugh out loud. The people next to us started snorting and giggling. Mr. Ringie stammered. Mr. Ringie struggled mightily to come up with something to say that was both stern and fatherly. What he managed to pinch out was “Uhhhh…….” I quickly told them to go get some pizza and have fun. When they were about 50 feet away, Mr. Ringie came out of his stroke and howled “Get some WHAT and have some WHAT?”

We quickly found a waiter and a big fruity drink.

Reason #1 to Dropkick My Boss

OK. You people know me. Some of you know me better than my sister. Some of you know me maybe even better than that. Lots of you know me well enough to be fully aware of my greatest phobia in this life of mine. Hopefully, some of you know and care for me well enough to be willing to cough up some cash for bail money when I'm arrested and slammed into jail for drop kicking my boss all over this office for about half an hour or so.

He finally got me back for the mind-bendingly maddening repeated loop of “It’s a Small World” coming from a mysterious location in his office after he spent a week with his wife’s entire family in Disney. He got me back for re-wallpapering his entire office with post-it notes. He got me back for replacing his law school diploma with a photo of Alex Karras as Mongo in Blazing Saddles. If he knew that I planned to come in here with three rolls of plastic wrap and a hairdryer and shrink wrap his entire office when he next goes on vacation, I suppose it might have been worse. As it was, it was bad enough. In any case, this is how my morning went.

I was cranky and I was tired. It's tax season and while that is seldom a good season for much of anybody who owns their own business, this year in particular, the knowledge that April 15 was rapidly approaching has been keeping me up nights. I would have liked to have spent my evening chain smoking, eating pizza and drinking straight tequila, however, none of those activities were acceptable. On a Monday night that is. So instead, I came schlepping in here to work this morning and made a direct line to the little Keurig coffee maker my boss and I have on my desk. Anybody familiar with the mechanics of the Keurig? Let’s leave it at this. When you push the silver button that says “press to open” the front part springs up and open, revealing the place where you insert the little single serving coffee cups. It springs open pretty hard and damned fast.

This morning, as I groggily pressed the silver button, the coffee machine sprang open to reveal a huge, wriggly, hairy, moving, attacking, vicious, lethal blood dripping off it’s fangs ready to spring, got my name written all over it man eating..................…………………….black plastic Halloween spider.

Oh shut UP.

I screamed. Out loud. I actually almost threw up. I know I peed a little. I doubled over and put my hands on my knees to keep from passing out and that was my position when my evil young, no-sense-of-his-own-mortality boss came staggering out of his office, holding his stomach and howling with tears streaming down his face.

I’m shrink wrapping his office. Twice.

I’m replacing his keyboard with an old one and whiting out all the keys.

I’m going to collect packing peanuts and rig them over his door.

I’m going to open his mini blinds all the way and then steal the little controller.

I’m going to do all this and a lot more just as soon as I’m sure I’m not having a heart attack.

I might have to throw the stupid coffee machine away unless I can figure out how to smack that button and open it from 3 feet away, which may or may not be a safe distance, but in any case sure as hell beats standing right on top of the beast when he pounces.

How Not to Navigate a Crowded Parking Deck

I park on the top floor of our parking deck. It’s where most of the tenants park because the spaces are wider, there aren’t any parking restrictions and you can see your car from the windows of your office. When you're bored, you can hit the alarm button on your keyfob and totally freak out people who get a little too close. But on days like this, I have to wonder if metered parking on the street and the risk of a parking ticket isn’t almost worth it. Days when I follow someone who prompts me to write the following rules and regulations of parking deck use:

1. Do not pull in, realize you didn’t read the instructions, and then attempt to back up with four cars in line behind you.

2. Your window rolls down. Really. It does. It is not necessary to take off your seat belt, open your car, get out of your car, peer at the admission ticket, read it, then get back in your car, put your seat belt back ON and then and only then move out of the damned way.

3. The speed limit through the deck is not one mile per hour.

4. The speed limit through the deck most certainly does not include “reverse”.

5. Do not come to a dead stop to examine every single parking space you see.

6. Do not back up to get a second look at that parking space you just passed.

7. Do not turn left where the big red sign says “exit left” instead of continuing through the deck, realize your mistake and once again, throw that sucker in reverse and back up into the now 8 cars lined up behind you.

8. At the end of each row, you can only turn left. You don’t need to stop, look right where there IS no oncoming traffic because it’s a CEMENT WALL and put on your blinker.

9. When there are five spaces available, do not stop and wait for the person walking through the deck to get to their car to see if they are going to vacate a different spot.

10. Once you have done so, and the person strolling to their car DOES get into the car and leave, do NOT then decide you don’t like that spot after all.

11. Do not just once again stop and ponder.

12. Parking your car does not require that you get out and physically examine the space.

13. All those hands extending from the driver’s side windows of the cars behind you are NOT waving at you.

"Tradition" Doesn't Equate to "Right"

Just because something's tradition doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right.

Some of you know me outside just reading my nonsense on this blog and, therefore, some of you know of the struggle I endured a few months back in pulling my daughter out of the karate dojo at which she had trained for over 3 years. In a nutshell, I had to decide between leaving her in a situation where the level of what I considered emotional abuse had risen to the point where she became physically ill at the idea of going to class, for the sake of being able to say she trained with one of the most highly respected 10th degree black belts in the country, or pulling her out and finding her a new trainer before she was emotionally compromised and quit the martial arts all together.

I had to choose between loyalties. I chose my daughter. I pulled her from the class and to be fair, I didn’t handle it well. I had wanted to approach him for months about my concerns. I was pissed, but I allowed myself to be intimidated, and convinced myself that his methods hadn’t really changed and that those same methods had brought her to where she was. Eventually, I had to step back and admit that what I was seeing was different and that under no circumstances was it healthy. Then I had to wait until I was in a foul enough mood that I could go in there and do what had to be done. Yeah, he’s that intimidating.

I’ve spent the past couple of months convinced that my issue was with her instructor as an individual. While I still believe that his methods are still very much a part of my problem with that situation, a conversation I had with another friend, another high ranking black belt, gave me a new perspective.

He asked about what had happened and I told him. His reply to me set me back on my heels. His reply to me essentially stated that in the old school Japanese style of teaching, most black belts of his level and her old instructor’s level only teach other black belts. That the student essentially has absolutely no say. That anything an instructor of their rank chooses to do in order to teach his students is not only acceptable, but above reproach. That while he was happy that my daughter had found a martial arts environment and instructor that nurtured her and brought her back to being in love with the martial arts, he was all about dojo loyalty and clearly took issue with changing instructors and dojos. That the old instructor wasn’t arrogant, and my believing that he was was simply me not understanding the Japanese culture. That he was ex-military and because of that, I probably misunderstood his true intentions.

I sat there and I read those words about half a dozen times and realized that if I got much angrier, I was going to lose the ability to learn from what he was telling me. What he was telling me wasn’t personal. What he was telling me was important because it was right about then that I realized my problem wasn't merely with the methods of an individual, but extended to a culture and tradition thousands of years old. And only then did I reply to him that while I understood what he said, the day I sacrificed my loyalty to my daughter’s well-being for loyalty to some dojo and the tradition behind it was the day that social services could come to my home, at my invitation, and take her away.

I started thinking about the few other young women who had trained with him and thought carefully about whether or not I wanted my child to emulate what they had become after years of exposure to his methods of teaching. I realized I had probably dodged one bigass bullet.

After all this time and up until this morning, I was still struggling with the idea that I had taken her away from what could potentially be the best instructor she’d ever know even if he was a complete jackass because I was annoyed and over-protective. I quit struggling this morning after reading that reply because:

1. Just because something is tradition, doesn’t make it right, healthy or necessary.

2. Falling back on “tradition” to justify treating somebody else, especially a child, like dirt is chickenshit. It sullies what might otherwise be an honorable and respected tradition.

3. Choosing loyalty based on tradition as opposed to what is right and proper is equally chickenshit.

4. If a child is working hard to excel and yet has difficulty mastering a concept and feels lousy about it, then that’s OK. But if that same child consistently walks away from instruction feeling worthless and less valuable than they did when they walked in, that’s not.

5. An age-old tradition that is based upon respect should not require that in order to show respect, one loses their dignity and respect for self. Respect is a two way street.

6. Discipline and respect can be achieved without breaking down the essential part of the student being taught.

7. I did the right thing. He believed in his heart that any method he chose to utilize in interacting with his students was justified based on tradition and that it was perfectly acceptable to treat 10 year old kids as though they were bootcamp soldiers. The act of claiming immunity based on a centuries old tradition isn’t going to change because I don’t approve. The only way I could ever have changed that situation was to remove her from it.

8. I'm finally at the point where I think I can stop being pissed off about it.