in memoriam

I was invited to a Memorial Day picnic. And, being one to rarely turn down an invitation to eat, I decided to attend. Knowing my talent in the culinary arts, I decided bring some store-bought potato salad instead of trying to create my own. Trust me...the other picnicking guests would be better off.

I brought the potato salad home and dumped it into a bowl, grabbing a wooden spoon for scooping, before heading off to the picnic. Granted, I could have left the food in its original container, but I like to give the illusion of competency in kitchen matters. This, despite the fact that there are no cooking skills entwined within my genes.

I returned home that evening with my empty bowl and spoon in hand. The store bought potato salad having proved edible enough for total consumption...which is more than could be said for anything that I would have made.

I found an empty spot in my dishwasher along side several days worth of dirty plates, turned the machine on, and went to take a shower.

Once squeaky clean and toweled off, I noticed an overpowering scent of burning wood. It's late May, so I couldn't imagine that someone in the apartment complex was using their fireplace...a fireplace that costs $100 more a month, which is why I reside in a non-fireplaced apartment.
I wrapped the towel around my waist and began investigating in earnest.

Soon, since I only have three rooms to examine, I found that the odor was emanating from the kitchen. The oven was off. Nothing was in the toaster. The microwave was empty. I opened the dish washer and a wave of smoke infused steam rose up around me. Odd, I thought, that my dishwasher smelled smoky...not smoking, exactly, just smoky.

I peered inside and saw that my one, lone, wooden spoon had somehow fallen off the rack and was now wedged underneath a thin circular piece of metal at the bottom of the appliance. The same spoon that, hours before, had been sitting in a bowl of potato salad.

Possessing very little mechanical knowledge and knowing nothing, in specific, of dish washers, I reached down to retrieve the spoon. I grabbed the spoon, inadvertently touching the metal pipe thing, and burned my finger. Having never realized that anything that hot could be found inside a dish washer, I was quite surprised. 'Wouldn't the water cascading around the dishes cool any hot metal? Apparently not,' I thought, as I held my finger under a cold stream of water from the faucet.

Once my finger was tended to, I returned to the spoon. Without the searing pain to avert my attention, I noticed that the spoon was smoldering, the wood of the handle that was lodged under the circular metal being blackened and completely seared.

Careful to keep all appendages away from the metal, I got the spoon out and ran it under the same cool stream that served my finger so well only moments before. Once satisfied that there were no glowing embers left, I tossed the charred spoon into the trashcan. 'My dear spoon,' I thought, 'you have served your picnic well.'

bless you

I met my friends Gwen and Bill for dinner the other day. Bill's father is also a Bill, which makes him Bill II. And this is exactly how he signs his name. We always found this to be quite amusing, and for a while took to calling him Bill: The Sequel. Bill, however, never fully appreciated our wit. So we have since ceased calling him this...to his face. Behind his back, he's still Bill: The Sequel, or simply Seeq for short.

I've never understood the need for some men to give their first born male the same name as themselves. Women don't seem to have this obsession. Gwen is simply 'Gwen the first' with no history of Gwens preceding her. Despite this, however, we're both anxiously awaiting for Bill to someday get married and have a baby boy, thus completing the Trilogy of Bills.

We were midway through our meal when Gwen happened to sneeze. Which isn't necessarily a noteworthy event, except that Gwen is a marathon sneezer. Single sneezes don't suffice. Rather Gwen can shoot off round after round of sneezes with nary a pause.

She claims to have once fired off 13 consecutive sneezes...a personal best for her. On this night, she missed that mark by about three. And after the last sneeze commenced, Bill and I said a collective 'bless you'.

She stared at us, mouth agape, and incredulously asked, “Only one? I sneezed, like, 10 times and for that I get only one 'bless you'?”

I've known Gwen longer than Bill and am more familiar with her courtesy quirks. This being said, the correct response is always, “Gwen, I'm incredibly sorry for being such a thoughtless cad.”

Bill, however, chose to say, “What are you talking about? We said 'bless you' once you were finished. Did you expect us to give each individual sneeze its own bless you?”

At this point, I opted to keep my mouth shut. Bill opened the can of worms and he could very well try closing it himself. I may not agree with Gwen's sneeze etiquette, but I know when to keep my mouth shut and blend into the decorum.

“Of course,” she told him. “That's how bless yous work...one per sneeze.”

“That's ridiculous,” he continued. “You get one bless you per string of sneezes...that's it. It's like applause at a graduation. You're always asked to hold off on clapping until the final name is called. That's the way it works and that's the way it's always worked!”

I took a bite of my burger, planning on sitting back and enjoying the sneezing debate from a spectator's standpoint when I started to choke.

Gwen and Bill continued to argue as I coughed and hacked, oblivious to my lack of oxygen.

Eventually, the coughing ceased but the raging sneeze debate continued. My near death experience went completely unnoticed while more important things...saying 'bless you' after each sneeze...took precedence.

Gwen was clearly a sneeze sympathizer who blatantly discriminated against us oxygen deprived chokers.

Due to this, I'm planning on chewing more carefully in her presence. I simply can't trust that my life will be safe in her hands if future food gets stuck in my throat.

Plus, I'll be docking her five 'bless yous'.

thinking ahead

Another birthday, and this year I'm entering the grisly underbelly years of my 30's. Gone are the days when I could appease myself with the knowledge that I was closer to my twenties than I was to my forties. It's rather depressing.

And I realize that my mid-life crisis years aren't too far off. But rather than wait for them, I've decided that I'm going to get them over with now. Once done with, I can sail off into my retirement years in blissful peace.

So the question I now have is what form my proactive mid-life crisis will take.

Those late teenage years seem to be where most mid-lifers revert to when going through their various crises. And flashy convertibles seem to be one common solution.

The problem with focusing on a sports cars, however, is that they require a good deal of money...money that I don't have. And even if I hold off on my mid-life crisis for a few years, I'm still not going to have the money. Unfortunately, this teenage fantasy is out.

Affairs seem to be another popular mid-life crisis indulgence. And, being single, I would greatly welcome an affair. But it's tough to have an affair when there's no relationship to be affairing on. I suppose I could lie and simply tell prospective affairers that I'm married, but what type of illicit romance would it be when it was based on a bunch of lies? Lying to your spouse is one thing. But lying about having a spouse that you're lying to simply doesn't make for a solid relationship on which to base an affair.

I ran through a list of other things that teenagers do to solve the crisis I was having about having a mid-life crisis; alienating parents, sulking and brooding, writing angst ridden poetry. Sadly, none of these are going to bring about a pleasurable mid-life crisis for me. I realized that I was going to have to go back even farther.

Which is why I plan on spending my mid-life crisis watching Saturday morning cartoons and eating a whole lot of candy.