We’re a society that loves change. Very few things totally satisfy us, so we’re always looking to take what we have and update it, modernize it, change it, improve it and generally make it, well, crappier.But I think I’ve found the one thing we can’t say that about. The one thing that has seen little if any changes over the years. I spotted it while out running the other day and stared in bemusement as it rolled by: a school bus. Yes, a big, yellow diesel-belching school bus, filled with screaming kids that looked like an insane asylum on wheels. It could have been a brand new bus for all I knew, but the world would never know. Modern advancements, or at least modern design, have long passed over the venerable school bus. It’s the instrument of transportation that time forgot — a throwback to yesteryear that is the only constant from one generation to the next. And I, for one, am glad. It brings back memories. There was nothing better as a kid than a school field trip or an away soccer match in a beaten-up bus. Any time you piled in, with all its funny smells and vinyl seats marred by unexplainable stains, it was a good day.
Level Me a Shed
Does anyone really care if a work shed is level? Does anyone know if it matters? I mean, come on. With all the problems we have in the world — the poverty, the war, the sickness, the Hollywood muckity-mucks running around with no underpants — does a little uneven-ess truly matter? By uneven, I’m only talking about a good 5 or 6 inches off, in multiple angles, and directions. People stare, tilt their heads and ask, “Am I screwy or is your shed bending over to tie its shoes?” Now, I’ve written about my shed and its problems before, so I should clarify: These aren’t the old problems — this is since I started working on it. Some things don’t want to be fixed, and my shed is one of them. When last I told of the great story of my work shed, the floor was rotting out, the base beams for the walls had turned to sawdust and a nudist colony of squirrels had opened up a spa in the rafters. (They, or someone else, ate a WHOLE bag of winter rye, and now instead of a floor, I have a green grass carpet from what they spilled.) It was a mess, so I went to work. I ripped out the floor and decided to replace the beams around the base by jacking up the shed. My brother has hydraulic jacks, and I pictured myself lifting it up little by little with a few pumps, sliding new beams under […]
The Quiet Returns
And then it was all quiet … sort of. It seems more and more these days, holidays roll in like hurricanes: plenty of warning, yet never enough time to prepare. Winds lash the trees. The water rises. You scramble, you bite fingernails, and you wish you had gotten out of town when the weatherman warned you. “Why didn’t we go to Tahiti!” But that’s also what makes the holiday so much fun — so exciting. Mothers who come and stay for a week. Mine, even though the refrigerator had long since exceeded its carrying capacity, thought it necessary to buy loaf after loaf of bread from the Spanish Bakery, searching out any little uninhabited region of the fridge to cram it in. We never ate the bread, so I’m still not sure why she kept buying it. The storm isn’t just a metaphor. It did actually come on Christmas morning, as you might recall, just as my mother was driving up from Tampa. All week she had watched the weather, petrified of a strong front that was threatening to bowl her over as she made her early morning run for St. Augustine. She braved the winds and driving rain, hydroplaning at one point on backroads and dodging tornadoes she just knew were coming for her. “What do I do if I see a tornado?” she asked the night before while preparing herself mentally for the journey. “I pull over and jump in a ditch, right?” “No,” I told her. “It’s […]
What a Very Different Christmas
What a very different Christmas from a year ago. What a wonderful Christmas morning. A year ago, my wife was pregnant, awaiting the birth of a moose child who was already two days late. We woke up on Christmas morning, opened presents and started getting ready for people coming over when the little one decided to kick a hole in her cozy confines. That was the beginning of 28 hours of labor, a c-section and six days in the hospital. It was around 10 a.m. when my wife noticed the “trickle” and made a call to her doctor. “How quick can you get here?” the doctor asked. “Now?” my wife replied. “We’re having people over at 11.”
All I Want for Christmas
I don’t ask for much each Christmas. Just a few essentials, a couple luxuries … and a pony! (Still don’t have that last one.) The little kid in me just can’t help but make a list, so here’s a sampling of this year’s: • Stank-O-Matic 3000 Gas Mask and Hazardous Materials Suit — As the father of a little girl who turns 1 on Dec. 26, I can honestly say the first year of dealing with diapers has not been as bad as expected. Sure, it’s never a pleasant experience, but I can’t recall a single Category 5 diaper — the kind with smells that will warp glass or make the threads of your clothes disintegrate. But that said, I know the Dark Lord of the Poops — who can burn nostrils and devastate the land in more ways than one — could pop up at any moment. I need to be prepared and sure could use a Stank-O-Matic, just in case. • Hope — In the coming year I would like to finish at least one project around the house. But the truth is, I have no hope. So I just need a little of it to keep my spirits up. Everyone needs hope, and I need a little extra for my wife, too. (Also, please disregard the large club she has penciled in on her list.) • Sense — I could use a big bag of it. Recently, thanks to my co-worker Mike Horn who had to go […]
The Research Paper that Ate My Column
If this column seems unusually, I don’t know, crappy, I blame the research paper. Yes, the research paper ate my column. I’ve begun a graduate program in media management through the University of Missouri’s Journalism School. It’s all online, designed for working-class stiffs like me who don’t have the time to move up to the frozen tundra of Missouri and who have always preferred going to class in their boxer shorts at all hours of the night. That, in fact, was the marketing ploy that sold me on the program — “midnight in your underwear.” Anyway, I’m really enjoying it, but it takes a bit of adjustment to become a student again. At Flagler College, I’m surrounded by students all the time. But they look up to me as a mentor, a genius and a dashing man of wisdom, which is what the sign on my door reads. I say things to them like, “look here, whippersnapper” or “at what point did you realize your brain had fallen out?” I coach them, and scold them, and they on a weekly basis let the air out of my tires.
In the Ear of the Beholder
My little girl, Amelie, turns 1-year-old this month. Incredible how time flies. It was Dec. 26 of last year that she made her ever-so-slow descent into the world and changed our lives forever. Now, as we close in on that milestone first birthday, it seems incredible how much she has changed. From lump to little girl in less than 12 months. It sounds more like a ready-to-eat stuffing commercial or one of those weight-loss ads. Boy, how the changes do come. Little feet are suddenly big feet. They were tiny, like a bird’s. Now they look like flounders. She’s toddling around the house, not without help from chairs and other supports, but it’s walking in my book. She has dozens of expressions, is gaining height and has more hair than some zip codes. But there’s one category I’m still not sure about: talking. Does she talk or doesn’t she talk? That is the question. To tell you the truth, I’m up in the air on that one. She’s never been a baby talker, uttering those cartoon-esque “goo-goos” or “ga-gas.” Instead, this sweet little angel with honey brown curls and eyes crisp as polished apples has always chosen a much less refined “Heh!” It sounds like what a trucker might give out while wolfing down spicy sausage.
Time to Redesign the Shed
It’s always been a fine shed, capable of holding immense quantities of bolts I’ll never use, bags of solidified concrete that I figure scientists of the future will bring back to life and every piece of odd-shaped wood the world has ever known. My shed is a modern art do-it-yourself kit waiting for assembly. But the last year or so, the old girl has developed some problems, namely that the plywood floor in the back started rotting, collapsing, and swallowing anything in those farthest, deepest, darkest regions of the enclosure.
The Little Brother Gets Hitched
So, our little boy is all married off. He found a woman who would take him, and he’s a husband now. How funny to think of my brother as a married man. My family has always been good at the divorce thing, but not as proficient with the marriage. Or at least the staying married part. They seem all right with the marriage, but the glue just doesn’t stick that well. But this boy has taken the plunge, and looks like he’ll be just fine. This is the same little kid who used to bring home bottle caps and cigarette butts, infuriating my mother because he kept them all in his desk drawer. This is the kid who used to be a model train fanatic and would dig holes in the backyard to see how much dirt-per-square-inch he could pack on his body. (If only there had been a category for him in the Guinness Book of World Records. He’d be the record holder to this day.) And look how I talk about him: Nostalgically like he’s gone. Like he’s been married off and then moved to Pascaloosa. Like he’s not around anymore and isn’t the same ole’ Scott who’s still digging holes in the backyard and collecting cigarette butts. He does both and he’s still around.
My Brother’s Big Wedding Day is Here
The big day is here. My brother is getting married. Family are coming into town, last minute arrangements are being tended to, I’m trying to write a speech, and my mother is starting to talk like a hyena with a caffeine overdose and a good gulp of helium. All her words run together into one long sentence an auctioneer might utter: “Brian I need you to get with the National Weather Service and make sure it’s going to be warmer than 65 degrees because I don’t want to pack my sweater and I’m not wearing stockings so do whatever you need to including paying them off because you know how I hate the cold and it will ruin everything and I won’t be able to dance with Scott which means he will get a divorce …” To me it sounds like one long answering machine beep and my mind wanders until I hear a voice on the end of the other line demand: “Brian! Did you get all that?” “Are you kidding me?” I ask. “I’m still trying to figure out who you are!”