The Internet is making me dumb. I be dumb thanks to the Internet. Damn, you, Internet, damn you! Not it fault, I know. We’re to blame really. The Internet is just a … well … what the heck is it? Microchips and wires? Bits and bytes? A fancy box with endless photos of dogs dressed like Darth Vader and generic Viagra ads? Truth is, the Internet is a vast catalog of searchable information, 98 percent of which will turn your brain softer than the carved pumpkin dissolving into a puddle of goop on my front porch.
Dog Cone Misery … But Otherwise Fine
Forget that a cancerous tumor the size of a large grape was removed from her hind quarters. That it was big enough to cause her trouble going to bathroom. Forget that the vet’s incision to remove it wrapped around the base of her tail like a crescent moon or that she had a long line of blue stitches back there looking like miniature train tracks. Forget that she was supposed to be in pretty good discomfort — miserable even — for days. That she might lose her appetite. That she might have accidents all through the house. Struggle to go to the bathroom. Wouldn’t be able to take anything but short walks and would need to spend the better part of two weeks pretty much resting and not moving around. Forget all of that because … well … that’s just not my dog. Turns out there was only thing that bothered her after surgery to remove her tumor: the cone. Yes, the dreaded plastic cone that dogs must wear to keep them from licking their wounds and meticulously untying their stitches, which my critter nearly managed to do on the final day when we let her get some unsupervised cone-free time.
Things you Never … EVER … Do with a Kid in the Room
You can do a lot of things when there’s a 4-year-old in the room: You can juggle knives. You can teach the kid how to breathe fire using kerosene and a lighter. You can commit federal crimes and embezzle billions of dollars from unsuspecting companies. But what you can’t do — what you must NEVER do! — is let a scary scene from a scary movie flash on the TV or computer while that child is watching. Eyeballs will pop out. Hair will curl. And you’ll be explaining (and lying about) that scene for the next 12 or 13 years. Or at least until her lawyers have finished working you over. I learned this lesson the hard way the other night. We were at my brother’s house for a cookout, and my sister-in-law was explaining her Halloween costume. Only, there is no explaining her Halloween costume. It’s an obscure character from that quirky, spooky, goofy 80s flick, “Beetlejuice.” Seen it? Know who Delia Deetz is? Of course you don’t. Nobody does. My wife had never even seen “Beetlejuice,” so my sister-in-law thought she would show on the computer a scene from the flick.
Phone Calls from Mom and Raking Pine Needles
A student came racing into my opinion writing class out of breath, painfully late and apologizing profusely. He’s always late, but never apologizes like this. “This time I actually have a good excuse,” he told me, doubled-over and wheezing. (Most of the time it’s cigarettes or needing to feed his cat.) “My mother was yelling at me because I didn’t call home this week.” That WAS a good one — one of the best I had heard in an awful long time. Gotta’ call your mom, I told him. I didn’t have the heart to tell this poor college kid those phone calls never stop — and that they only get weirder as he gets older.
Every Moment Now Precious for a Dog with Cancer
This was supposed to be a very different column. One about how dogs mean so much to us. How those four-legged critters — with their dirty feet and ability to eat three-week-old shrimp shells, only to cough them up on the rug — can woo us over and become irreplaceable parts of our lives. And I guess it’s still about that. But it was supposed to be about my brother’s dog, Oreo — a member of his band of rabble-rousing K-9s that I call the “country cousins.” She was an old girl — 17, for goodness sake — and had been part of our family for so long that the loss was felt by all when her body gave out and she had to be put to sleep. Oreo was a big, dopey bear — you half expected to see her lugging around a honey pot and breaking into song. She had a permanent grin stretched across her face … like the one a child gets after walking into Disney World for the first time. It screamed, “WOWWWWW!” and Oreo would have that grin staring at a moth. She enjoyed life, even just sitting on the porch doing nothing, and there’s a lot to be said for that.
A Farewell to Summer (even if we still have the heat)
Goodbye, summer. We hardly knew you. How quickly those sun-drenched months came to a close this year. Always seems like there will be so much time — so much FREE time to just settle in, relax and enjoy the slow life. But the slow life isn’t ever slow. And before you know it, it’s gone. It’s September already. September! The doorway to fall. Sure, it’s still 95 degrees outside and your underwear melts to your waist every time you walk outdoors. But September signals it’s over. Kids go back to school. Work gears up again. The streets feel busier and more bustling. People get more serious, more hurried and less relaxed. Vacations are just a distant memory. In September, the light starts to change. Can’t you see it? The sky is bluer and brighter. The shadows linger longer across the land. The sun drops quicker from the sky like it’s late for a dinner party, and the dusk drowns the world in browns and golds.
Hurricane Planning and All Those C Batteries
Yes, it’s time. As storms line up in the Atlantic and Hurricane Earl tip-toes by us, we should all review our hurricane planning. Don’t be caught unprepared and unaware. Come up with a plan, buy some supplies and listen to the advice of experts. And in that spirit, let me offer up a few of my own helpful tips that will get you ready should the big one strike. • Batteries — Make sure you have enough C batteries. Tons of C batteries. Enough to power the International Space Station. Why C batteries? Because if your house is like mine, every portable lamp, every radio and every other piece of survival equipment you have actually runs on D batteries. And you won’t have a single one of those. My C battery stash — so large the floor in my closet is sagging under its weight — is thanks to my aunt. Every Christmas she buys my daughter a toy that can run for 5 years on a single C battery. But because she expects we will keep it until the next millennium or maybe because she owns stock in Duracell, she also buys dozens and dozens of backups. Every year! So all of these batteries are sitting there, waiting to be used and leaking battery acid all over the shelf. And when a real storm comes and I stumble about in the dark looking for them, I will realize the irony of stocking so many unusable batteries, then have a […]
Hear my latest commentary on WJCT
Listen to my latest commentary on WJCT, the NPR-affiliate in Jacksonville, Florida. This was from a column I wrote called, “Dad on a Fence,” and it ran on air Aug. 30, 2010. [podcast]wp-content/uploads/dadfence.mp3[/podcast] If you’re having trouble listening, try click this link: https://www.nutshellcity.com/dadfence.mp3
A Dad Working on Emergency Reaction Time
In a brand new hotel in Chapel Hill, N.C., I realized something this summer: My family is woefully un-prepared should disaster strike. In the wee hours of the night, as we slept on virgin pillows and virgin sheets, we were suddenly awoken by the most wretched of noises. It sounded as if a pterodactyl was throwing up in the bathroom. Loud and rancorous, it assaulted the ears — a pulsing, throbbing, piercing noise. BLURT-BLURT-BLURT. My first reaction was anger. How dare some North Carolina pterodactyl disturb my slumber. The nerve! There’s nothing like, and nothing worse, than the disorientating fog of being awoken in the middle of the night. You slowly come to your senses — grab a bit of awareness out of the air — and then remember that pterodactyls are long-since extinct. The blaring noise was really a fire alarm. “How dare the hotel be on fire!” I remember thinking.
Feeling Old and Out of Touch: Thanks Mindset List
You want to take a trip down memory lane, and feel really old at the same time? Here’s how you do it. Get on the Web and search out Beloit College’s Mindset List for the Class of 2014. A small college that dates back to when Wisconsin was still a territory, Beloit puts together a fascinating list every year to give us some insight into “the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall.” You know, stuff that we older folk used to find commonplace, but today’s incoming freshmen will scratch their heads and say, “What you talkin’ ‘bout, grandpa?” Because, think about this, most freshman now hitting college campuses like the one I work at were born in 1992. NINETEEN-NINETY-TWO!!! As the list points out, these little dudes and dudettes never had to worry about a Russian nuclear missile hitting the U.S. A read through it gives you an idea of how much things have changed, and how quickly. What was once standard in our lives are now little more than historical relics or forgotten pieces of the past.