There we were at the Flagler College end-of the year picnic, showing off my little 4-month-old baby to co-workers and handing her around to people who had passed the 43-question test (with essay) we require before you can handle little Amelie. My eyes became transfixed on a group of kids in the corner of the yard, all hootin’ and hollerin’ while blasting a little red ball at each other trying to take someone’s knee cap off. “That’ll be you soon,” somebody said, noticing my gaze as I bounced the baby. I stared starry-eyed and muttered, “yeah.” And then it occurred to me, “no.” He didn’t mean me! He meant that will be Amelie one day. She will be out there playing, whoopin’ it up with the other kids, and by the size of her, beating them up and stepping on them with her massive size 62 shoes that are usually worn by circus bears to keep their snaggly toenails from tearing up the carpet. He meant her, not me! But I wanted to be out there with them … in the mix … whoopin’ it up … gettin’ crazy … gettin’ grass stains on my pants … messin’ up my hair … rolling in the grass until I itched so bad I thought my skin would fall off. Not her. Me! Look at ‘em. It’s summertime. Daylight savings time is back. The air is warm. The grass is thick and there’s playin’ to do. Lots of it. I wanted the […]
Isn’t There Anything Else to Study But Worm Poop?
I had to check it twice, even three times, just to see if my eyes were deceiving me. They’ve been known to do that, you know. Once I mistook a plastic bag in a field for a rabbit smoking a cigarette on a Harley Davidson. But this was real. This was no fraud of my imagination. The headline on the Internet, from a respectable news source, honestly said: “Geologists Find Ancient Worm Feces.” Life was so much easier when I was just seeing imaginary biker rabbits. Reality is much harder to deal with. THE STORY (as reported by The Associated Press): “Swedish geologists have found fossilized feces from a worm that lived some 500 million years ago, media reports said Wednesday.” The mind takes off like a drag racer after reading that. So many questions. So many things wrong with that one sentence. If you took out the only sane part — “… said Wednesday” — it would be like removing graphite rods from a nuclear reactor, and that concoction of absurdities would quickly produce a chain reaction. Newspapers and computers across America would spontaneously combust!
Mr. Fix-It
I’m not cheap. That’s not the reason I tinker and come up with odd solutions to obvious problems. I’m not lazy, either. Most of the time it takes far longer to do it my way than the way anyone else would — throw it out and start over. And it’s not like I’m trying to save room in the landfill. Yet, there I was, cramming myself under the passenger seat of my Jeep, replacing a spring that broke, which causes it to slide forward and back like an amusement park ride. I had created a wire contraption that would hold it in place … hopefully. Why not just get a new spring? I don’t know! And there I was calling my brother to ask if the welder was working. “Whyyyyy?” he asked in his goofy, defensive sing-song, not wanting to commit to an answer until he knew it wouldn’t suck him into a bottomless pit of work.
Secrets to a Work-Free Life
The headline on the Wall Street Journal technology section read, “Secrets of the tech-Savvy Traveler” and I realized we had lost the war to the machines. Actually, it runs deeper than that. We have lost the war to work. Nowhere are we safe from work. Not at home. Not on vacation. Not even in the bathroom. Technology is such that we can take it with us everywhere, and probably to the grave, where I’m sure we can do it just as effectively, and maybe quicker. “60 Minutes” just ran a piece called “Working 24/7,” and it said Americans work more hours than anyone on the planet, including the Japanese. And the Japanese used to work until one of their feet would fall off.