Do it again and you’ll pull back a stump

So, I don’t exactly live in a sleepy rural area. I live in a fairly good-sized city actually. But if you were listening to the top-of-the-hour news on the radio here this evening, you might have thought otherwise. Headlines might have been about the restroom dalliances of Senator Craig, or the pending fiasco that is unrestricted Mexican trucking within our borders, or one of several other weighty issues. But no. Those were all trumped by something of more importance, certainly.

This evening, our local police issued an alert, carried on the public airwaves, for an unknown man who grabbed a woman’s butt at an Arby’s. Black male, mid twenties, about six feet tall. Apparently the man should be considered “touchy-feely”.

Now, just so we’re all clear with each other, I don’t approve of copping a feel on a stranger in line at Arby’s. Or anywhere else. With a significant other, hey, just be discreet if you happen to be in line at Arby’s when the mood hits. My friend who works as an Arby’s manager would probably be grateful since he’s also been single for a while and hates to see anyone having a good time that he’s not having. So with that being said, my question is “What the hell?!” I mean, I know crime in our area is down, but certainly there must be something a little more pressing than the “Booty Bandit”.

What have we come to when women are making a report to the police over something like this. Half the guys in my high school journalism class would still be in jail doing time if this had been a bookable offense. Juvenile? Sure. Criminal? Uh, no. The common reply back in the day was “Do it again and you’ll pull back a stump!” followed by some expletive-enhanced description of the perpetrator’s intellect, nether-regions, or creative combination of the two. And if the guy dared do it again (at least within the same day) he could be assured of a solid smack and possibly a date for Friday night. I did spend my high school years in Cooterville after all.

If the Bandit had actually tried to sexually assault the…uh…what’s a word that’s like victim but really conveys more of a sense of wussiness? You know, something that says “yeah, I was wronged, but only in such a way that maybe I’m owed an apology but instead I’m really going to play it up and make a big, stinking turd of a deal out of it” with a dash of crybaby added in? Anyway, if the Bandit had actually tried to sexually assault that person in the line at Arby’s, I could totally understand a broadcast going out that said “Be on the lookout for a man suspected of attempting to rape women while standing in line at Arby’s. Women are advised to keep exact change for orders to shorten wait times and minimize their risk.” But that would never happen, because the curly fries with dipping sauce are too delicious for anyone to be doing anything else.

So I had a moment of stunned silence in the car followed by some serious laughing on my part. Not laughing at the woman’s pain or humiliation, but just at the over-abundance of it. And the fact that the big-time news radio station carried a bulletin about it. Perhaps moving to the “big city” lo those many years ago didn’t take me as far away from my roots as I thought.

Water Fight!

Is it just me, or does everyone experience the hiccup and loss of a few days when first starting out writing a blog? Nothing quite like the guilt of seeing that it’s been three days since the last post. Especially when I’ve been building a battery of topics to write about, so it’s not like I have writer’s block or anything. Just a busy schedule. But I digress…

So, a quick bit of disclosure. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. A Mormon. You may have heard of us. Or you may at least have heard of Glenn Beck, who is also Mormon. Or Mitt Romney. Or yes, even Donnie and Marie. But this isn’t about any of them. This bit of personal information is just to provide some context around talking about the mid-week church youth activities my daughter attends. They have these every week, and typically are broken up by gender and age groups. But once a month, everyone gets together for a large group activity, but boys and girls.

Last night was one of those nights, and it brought back fond memories for me.

The youth were playing some water volleyball and having water relays. The water volleyball was a new concept for me, but looked pretty fun. Water baloons caught and tossed back over the net by teams of two using a bath towel between them. The relay involved sitting in a row and passing a giant, water-logged sponge front to back over each other’s heads and squeezing what was left out into buckets. Good stuff. And though fun, the activities weren’t what the kids were all about. They were, of course, about throwing buckets of water and strafing each other with super soakers. Boys versus girls for the most part, of course. And those are the memories I have.

When I was younger, and part of said youth program at church, water fights between the boys and girls were a summertime ritual. Most of them took place in my parents’ yard, and involved any manner of dousing conceivable. It wouldn’t be terribly unusual for the guys to be outside talking and suddenly see a volley of water balloons arcing over the top of the house. It was even less unusual for the girls to be outside talking and suddenly see a volley of water balloons arcing over the top of the house. All sides enjoyed it, and the combat would last for an hour or more. Balloons, then hoses, then five-gallon buckets, and eventually a few guys grabbing one of the girls in an attempt to hold her directly under the outside faucet.

For us guys, it was a combination of water combat and flirting. We had some attractive girls in our circle of friends. For the girls, it was also a combination of water combat and flirting. The guys weren’t completely unfortunate either. The girls had all apparently read Sun Tsu’s “Art of War” however, and knew that one of the keys to winning was to let your enemy think you are weak. The guys would always think they were getting the better of the girls in the water fight, but the girls were always winning the real war in terms of relationships.

I only realized the full extent of this while watching my daughter and her friends at their youth activity. One of the girls in particular was a perpetual target (though she dished some out too). And she loved it. She was losing the fight, but clearly winning the war. And once I realized that, my immediate next realization was of my daughter was doing the same thing. Which led to my final realization that, with the start to her dating only being two years away, it’s about time for me to choose between aluminum or wood and start practicing at the batting cages.

I believe Sun Tsu also has a thing or two to say about preparation, after all.

Summer drive-ins

This weekend was the last before school gets seriously underway. Officially, my kids started back to school last Wednesday. But those first three days are never anything serious, and Labor Day weekend is when people really consider summer vacation to be officially over. It’s the last hoorah, as it were. This year though, the kids are with their mom for Labor Day. So for us together, this past weekend was it for summer break.

Since my divorce a couple years ago, the kids and I have a standing Friday night tradition over the summers. Every Friday together we head to the drive-in movies, unless there isn’t anything family-appropriate to take them to. Most people when they hear that we’re heading to the drive-in either ask “Where is there a drive-in around here?” or “What the heck is a drive-in movie?” For the unintiated, a drive-in movie is exactly what it sounds like. You load up your car with you and the kids, drive up to the ticket window, pay only for those in the car older than 11, and watch movies on a big screen in the great outdoors. Drive-ins have no fancy sound system (you listen on your car radio or a boombox), no stadium seating, and the restrooms and concession areas look like they were last renovated somewhere around the time I was born.

In short, they’re fantastic.

Seriously, going to the drive-in is a much more family experience. Things feel more personal and connected somehow. You may read my blog, but are we really connected? Nah. I’m too chicken to put my personal info out there to be phished. So unless you start leaving me comments and I get to know you better, you’ll know lots about my life but never know me. At the drive-in you wind up having conversations with strangers that offer to share popcorn and blankets if it gets too chilly by the time the second show starts (yes, drive-ins give you two movies back-to-back). Your kids run out into the open area in front of the screen to play with other kids that they don’t know, and have a blast doing it. Up until last year, one of the drive-ins we frequent even had a swing set.

Yes, I said “one of the drive-ins”. There are three that we haunt depending on what’s playing where.

If you’ve read my sister’s blog at “Looking for George” you may be already familiar with the fact that we grew up in a town coloquially referred to as “Cooterville”. It can be a bit hick (like San Francisco can be a bit liberal), but that also means that time has stood still in some respects for our hometown. I’m a well-educated, technolgically progressive guy, but it’s nice to be able to step back in time. So having a hometown that lets me do that can be nice. Part of that is having two drive-in theatres within five minutes of my parents’ house, and another within thirty minutes. And the one within thirty minutes has two screens showing different movies. So technically we have a choice of four places to watch movies on Fridays. The state in which we live actually has the largest number of operating drive-in theatres left in the country. And I hope that never changes.

So this past weekend the movie selection was a little thin. One of the theates had already closed for the season. Two of the other three screens were showing the same movies or movies we had already seen a couple times (Harry Potter is one that just continues to make money it seems). And there was no way I was taking the kids to see “Superbad”. I won’t even take me to see it. So the question I posed to the kids was “Do we want to go see these two movies at the drive-in, or just stay home and do something else instead?” There was no question as far as the kids were concerned: the drive-in had to be done, especially since it was their last chance for the year.

I’m really glad the my kids and I have something special like that. Something that we know is “our thing” to do as a family. Now I just have to find something we can do during the school months as “our thing” while the drive-in is closed. Summer, you weren’t long enough this year.

Broken wrist follow-up

So I’ve gotten back to my hometown area to pick up my youngest daughter and her new, arm-length accessory. It looks pretty good on her actually. I called her on the phone the other day and asked if her cousins had signed her cast yet and she didn’t quite understand the concept. My sister explained later, and my daughter said that she didn’t want them to sign it and wanted to keep it white. (She has a plaster cast for the next few days and will get her pink one then.) As soon as her siblings and I arrived she started having everyone sign her cast with markers. Very cute that she wanted us to get to sign it first.

The break is pretty obvious in the x-ray. I’m no radiologist, but I don’t believe bones are supposed to separate and lean non-linearly. The day after getting her case, my daughter was in no pain and had no swelling or any of the other things they tell you to be watching for. She’s been her happy-go-lucky self, playing endlessly outside with her cousins while we’re still visiting and dragging tree limbs five times her size over to the fire pit for her uncle to burn. If it weren’t for the plaster appendage, you’d never know anything happened. I’m very happy about that.

My daughter’s biggest point of happiness is that she interprets not getting the cast wet as not having to take baths. She’s due for a scrub-down, so some harsh reality is going to be rearing its ugly head very soon.

How do you outsource that?!

So there hasn’t been a whole lot of hubbub in the press lately about outsourcing. I used to run my own business and outsourced some work at one point. The word “mistake” springs immediately to mind. When the Indians that you outsource to then turn around and outsource some of their workload to the Indonesians, well…again, the word “mistake” springs immediately to mind.

I’ve gotten out of the business of having my own business though. Now I work for a Fortune 50 company as part of their Internet Marketing group. Yes, that means I work on the web sites. I do not do the programming, though that kind of thing is definitely in my repetoir. Our programming isn’t outsourced where I work, but could be well-defined as being “insourced”. We don’t ship the work out overseas, we just ship the workers in. I’m all good with that. I don’t care who does a job, as long as it’s done right and well. And by someone locally where there’s a modicum of oversight.

But that isn’t what this post is about. What this post is about is an extra-special, something different I’ve noticed with the imported workers. I don’t know if it’s just a cultural difference, or some deeper mass psychosis caused by something bad in the curry. Whatever it is, it is disturbing. For whatever the reason, I have been regularly encountering people talking on their cell phone in — the restroom.

Now, I really don’t know who they’re talking with on their cell phones. I’m assuming it isn’t business since they are speaking in their native tongue. But if it isn’t business, then it must be family or friends. At least that’s what goes through my head as I’m either occupying a stall or urinal and one of these guys walks in, already engaged in conversation, and begins to take care of business. While still engaged in conversation. Like I said, I can’t understand a word they’re saying, but I can definitely tell when the guy in the next stall breaks in the middle of a word, and I’m sure the person he’s talking to, that can understand what he’s saying, can tell even better than I.

If that’s what you do at home, hey, whatever. If your wife / kids / parents / friends don’t mind listening to your private moments, well then they’re just damn weird. But this is all about me, and for crying out loud I don’t want whoever you’ve brought into the bathroom with you to be listening in on whatever I might be doing in there. Can’t say that I’m terribly comfortable with you being in there with me in the first place, and now you’ve just doubled my psychic struggles with the public restroom. Thanks. If I wasn’t such a WASP I’d probably reenact the restroom stall scene from “Austin Powers” just to get the person on the other end to ask you what the heck was going on and hopefully shame you into some tact.

Just in case it hadn’t occurred to you yet, being on the phone means that one hand is occupied. Have you ever tried washing up with only one hand? Do you know how hard and ineffecitve that is? Yeah, well neither do most of these guys using the phone in the restroom, because they don’t even try. So now they have not only shared their “business” with whoever it is they’re talking with, but also their complete lack of hygiene.

Yuck.

Unexpected first entry topic

So with all the prodding I’ve been toying with the whole blog idea and the possibilities of its anonymous exhibitionism and decided to give it a go. Of course to do so means needing a starter topic, which is the thing that keeps many people from starting writing in the first place. Again, enter my pointy-blog-sticked sister with a phone call only ninety minutes or so ago to inform me of some goings-on involving my youngest daughter who is spending a couple days visiting with her cousin.

“I’m really sorry. My youngest daughter and your youngest daughter were playing a round of ‘let’s jump off tall things that we ought not’ and I think her wrist is broken. Mom and I are taking her to the hospital.”

Hey hey…a blog topic if ever one was made.

My sister feels awful as though she were some neglectful ne’er-do-well. I say things just happen with kids sometimes. My son had a compound break from a trampoline accident a few years ago. Which I never fully saw because he snapped his arm back in place on his own before coming inside (GAH!). The fact that nothing like this has happened to any of my sister’s kids yet I just chalk up to beating the odds. Seriously, check her site (http://lookingforgeorge.spaces.live.com) and just look for the doll. And then keep an eye on the evening news. Or watch “Chucky” movies. Whatever works for you.

So now I sit and wait for a call from relatives two hours away to let me know that everything has gone fine with setting bones and putting on a cast. My daughter is a very sweet, mild-mannered but fun-loving girl and I hate to think of her being in pain and doped up on morphine. Not that I would want to think of other people in that predicament, save for possibly one or two, or maybe a half-dozen. Again, another set of stories for another time.

More than anything I wish I was right there to give her a hug and help carry her out and drive her home when it’s all over. None of which she’d remember later of course, due to being anesthetized from having her bones set. But it’s the being there that would count, as much for me as for her I suppose. But with other kids needing packed off to school in the morning I have to wait a couple more days to give her a hug.

And to see her cool cast. I hear she has chosen pink, which comes as absolutely no surprise.