The Dark Side of People Watching

Awhile back I wrote an article called “The Art of People Watching” and I described the proper way to observe others and have fun doing it. Since then I’ve been sharpening my skills, but have learned in the process that the Art of People Watching is not all sunshine and rainbows. Today is an example, and I’ll be glad to share it with you. While a friend waited in line at the pharmacy today, I kept my eyes peeled for interesting folks, and was not disappointed.

The plump woman standing in front of my friend was pushing a shopping cart, but there was nothing in the bowels of it. This in itself is nothing unusual, except that I think the only thing she intended to use it for was a prop. It was doing a fine job in that respect, as she leaned half her body over it while flipping through a clothing catalog, but as I looked closer at the cart it seemed to be straining under her enormous weight. Either the metal was beginning to warp beneath her, or it had been used to move a house prior to this. In the small area usually reserved for children I saw what I thought at first was a thirty gallon garbage bag but turned out to be her purse. She kept dipping her hand into it and extracting something that I can only guess was some sort of food, because it went into her mouth with the speed of a cobra striking its prey and I was able to catch a glimpse of something orange. I tried to detect any stains on her fingers or mouth in an attempt to prove my theory that the snack was cheese puffs, but her lightening-like reflexes eluded my casual observations. Next to her purse was a two liter of Diet Mountain Dew (further evidence that she was trying to offset a high caloric intake), and from time to time she lifted it to her face, wrapped her inner tube-sized lips around the mouth and inhaled a draught, all with the ease and grace of a prima donna ballerina, or a pregnant yak – I’m not sure which.

When I was able to pry my bulging orbs from this spectacle, I spotted a young mother and her daughter in the headache aisle. The woman was poring over the five hundred choices of pain relief in front of her while her little girl curled up her tiny body and squeezed it in one of the shelves between boxes of blood pressure machines and diabetes testing kits. I immediately had to fight the urge to get up, walk over to where the child was crouched and ask in a loud voice, “How much for the little girl?” with visions of Jake Blues in my head. As I fantasized about the reaction this might bring, I saw the darling girl shove her forefinger into her nose, seemingly all the way to the third knuckle, dig around as if panning for gold, and then withdrew her digit and inspected whatever it was on the end of it before slipping the same finger into her mouth. I fought the urge to empty the contents of my breakfast all over the waiting room area of the pharmacy while actually longing to watch the circus lady in front of my friend, and shifted my wretched attention to the child’s mother, only to see the woman mimicking the actions of her little girl, oblivious to the crowd around her. The fruit indeed did not fall far from that tree, I mused, forcing myself to look away even as my morbid mind wondered if the duo ever shared their treasures with each other in private.

One aisle over in the constipation section stood an old man and what was obviously his wife. I say obviously, because I cannot imagine any man having to put up with the verbal pummeling he was privy to without being married. The woman had a bottle of pills in her meaty hand and was reading the ingredients to him as if it were a passage from the bible. I could tell right away from the haggard look of bored acceptance on his face that he had been subject to her voice for years, and I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance between his appearance and the pictures I had seen of Holocaust survivors. Indeed, as I heard the woman’s droning from over thirty feet away, I had the overwhelming urge to slice my wrists with whatever sharp object was within arm’s length. I instinctually knew that if I were to suddenly walk up to him and put a gun to his forehead, he would look at me as if I were the Angel of Mercy and cry, “Thank God!” My eyes began to bleed just seeing the torture in his countenance, and I had to divert my gaze to my own hands to keep from weeping out loud.

I stayed that way for the rest of the time there, afraid to look up lest my eyes found themselves locked helplessly to one of the theaters of the grotesque transpiring around me. Finally my friend pulled me from my tiny prison of a vantage point and I almost swooned from gratitude upon seeing the front doors. People watching can be fun – don’t get me wrong – but sometimes it can be downright horrifying.

Don’t Hate the Haters

A friend of a friend of a friend of someone who I’m trying to be friends with on Facebook just posted this long rant about how people with nothing better to do than complain should keep her name out of their mouths.  When people spout off like that, it really whets my curiosity and leaves me a little frustrated for being left out of the loop of whatever drama they’re going through.  So next time you decide to let off some steam on a social network, remember to be social about it and fill us in on all the gory details.

But that’s not what tweaked my interest.  A friend of that friend of a friend of a friend of someone who I’m trying to be friends with replied by saying the woman should be lucky to have haters, because haters tell you things about yourself that you wouldn’t have known otherwise.  She went on to say that if weren’t for haters, our lives would be completely boring.  That’s when I realized what I’ve been missing my whole life.  I gotta get me some haters!  I mean, how am I going to achieve any degree of Self-Actualization unless I’m able to learn everything about myself?  Here I’ve been going through life trying to be a good guy to everyone, you know, some poor schmuck going around like everybody’s feelings were made of eggshells.  I really had to sit back and review the way I’ve dealt with folks, and I was ashamed to discover that whenever a hater drifted into my life I bent over backwards and jumped through hoops to turn them into whatever a hater isn’t.  I’m here to tell you it hasn’t been easy doing all that hopping and bending, especially at my age.  If I wanted to achieve any sense of Enlightenment, I’d better start hunting up some serious haters.

So that’s what I did.  Since I’m chronically lazy (and proud of it) I started with the Yellow Pages.  No such luck.  I guess if I wanted to get some haters, I’d have to go out and find them.  But first, I had to find out what a hater really is, so the first person I came across – this young guy with his hat sideways, his pants down below his ankles and a mouth full of automobile parts – I asked him to define a hater.  He looked at me as if sizing me up for a coffin and then said, “Man, a hater is someone who talks shit about you because they ain’t got what you have.  Haters are jealous!”  As he shuffled on I was left scratching my head.  He must have had fleas.  I couldn’t really buy that explanation because nobody in their right mind is going to say, “Yeah, I’m jealous coz they got an Armani suit and I don’t, so I’m gonna put ‘em down.”  No, that’s envy.  Jealousy is when you think you possess something – usually another person – and you’re afraid someone else is going to take it from you.  I guess you could hate anyone trying to steal your friend of a friend of a friend, but I’d rather put my hater eggs in an envious person’s basket.

The second person I came across was an old man with tobacco drooling from his mouth and who smelled like he’d been wetting his pants for years, so I decided to skip him.  Then another young man strolled toward me, this one dressed like someone who should have been named Biff, with corduroy pants, a violet shirt and a sweater tied in a knot around his well-groomed neck.  I asked him to tell me what a hater is and he said, “That’s someone who can’t be happy about someone else’s accomplishment, so they feel compelled to put that person down.”  I really liked that definition, so I shook the guy’s hand and went on my way, my ears and eyes peeled for any unemployed haters I could hire.  Unfortunately, people don’t go around with big neon signs on their forehead flashing “HATERS”, so I really was back to square one in my hunt, whatever a square one is.

I must have passed a dozen people without having a clue if they were real haters or not, and I was beginning to think I’d have to advertise when this big, hairy, gruff-looking guy came plodding toward me.  I found myself feeling nervous which I took as a sign, and stopped him.  As his eyes bored into my brain (or was he seeing the fleas I’d picked up?) I asked him, “Excuse me, could you tell me what a hater looks like?”

His bushy face kind of imploded in on itself as he frowned and pursed his toothless mouth.  “What the hell do you think I am, some kinda damned answer girl?” 

That’s when I realized he was a she and I fought the sudden urge to turn tail and run.  Instead, I stammered back, “Um, I just thought you – “

Sasquatch cut me off.  “That’s what you get for thinking, idiot!  I hate people like you!”

I signed her on the spot.  Now my life’s complete.

The Benefits of Aging

As a young man, occasionally an elderly person would stare at me with intensity and croak, “Don’t grow old!”  This was a source of some amusement, as my questions of “Why?” would always be answered with groans and fits of coughing.

Many, many years later I find myself at the other end of life’s ruler, and am convinced those doomsayers were nothing more than miserable specimens of humanity trying to scare me.  Being old has so many benefits that I am unable to list them all in one sitting.  I will, however, go over some highlights for the benefit of our younger readers, and hope it also serves as a reminder to those of us in our waning years that this is a time to celebrate.

Usually the first indication that you are growing older comes on your fortieth birthday.  Upon awaking, you will discover that the warranty of one of your body parts has expired.  For most of us this is vision.  Do not despair, because this is only nature’s way of exercising your arms as you stretch them away from you in order to read.  When your arms just won’t grow any longer, you get to visit an optometrist and find just the right pair of glasses that compliment your face.  Glasses tell the public that you’re wise beyond your years, an illusion only dispelled by speaking.

For men, this is the decade of your life that hair begins to stop growing out of the head and begins sprouting out of the ears and nose.  This added bonus helps keep your head warm during the winter as you are compelled to wear hats, and the additional hair in your nose and ears is great for keeping bugs from moving in like so many uninvited houseguests.  You ladies will discover that certain portions of your anatomy will begin to succumb to gravity, which is great, because with the help of slings and straps you can actually appear more full-figured.

On the morning of your fiftieth birthday, when you rise from your bed, some part of you will not.  This should be no cause for alarm, as your doctor probably hasn’t seen you in over twenty years and would enjoy the challenge of reattaching whatever fell off.  For me it was my teeth, which turned out to be a blessing as I’m no longer plagued by toothaches or a slave to brushing.  In your fifties you will find that if you drop something onto the floor (which happens more often as you lose strength in your hands), it is more difficult to rise from a squat.  Your knees will begin to make sounds very much like firewood crackling in a hearth, but as your hearing fades, you won’t hear it so much.  You learn that while on the ground you might as well pick up anything else you find, just to avoid stooping again anytime soon.  In time your surroundings will be much cleaner, which aids longevity.

As you roll into your sixth decade you will find that the things which upset you before are now frivolous.  This reduces your level of stress to almost nothing, except for that little matter of regularity.  Listen well and heed my words.  If you do not keep yourself regular during this time it is certain you will meet with great discomfort.  Dynamite is a last resort so keep plenty of roughage handy, or if you can stomach it, a spoonful of mineral oil will keep the impaction police away.  In your sixties and beyond, you will begin to move slower, which helps you appreciate little things like the tile pattern on your kitchen floor, and racing snails while driving.  Eventually you will revert to a child-like state again, which is the best thing of all about aging, because you get plenty of naps and mischievous time, and can say whatever’s on your mind without fear of repercussion.  I could go on forever about this, but my thinking bone is telling me to take a break, and the recliner is calling.  So have fun growing old!

Lucid Dreaming 101

There is a very simple technique that can bring about immediate results in the creation of your dreams, and it involves the power of your imagination combined with a certain amount of preparation.  It is important that you train the mind to do as you wish.  I like to say that the mind is a good slave but a poor master.  The mind operates best with structure, and in order to take control of your dreams you will have to begin keeping a dream journal.  Set a date that you will start, and have a notebook and pen on hand.  Every morning write down whatever you can recall, be it just a feeling, bits and pieces of a dream or an entire saga.  This tells the mind that you expect to remember your dreams, and it will be eager to please you.  Within a couple of weeks at the most you will discover that your dream recall has increased dramatically. 

Now, the key to ‘waking up’ in your dreams lies in actually creating your dream environment.  Every night as you prepare for sleep, pretend you are in a place of your making.  You can construct a place in your mind by imagining, for instance, sitting in a comfortable chair and visualizing everything around you from the floor (Carpet or hardwood? Tile or stone? What color?  If you are barefooted, imagine how it feels on the soles of your feet.), to furniture (Plush or wicker?  Leather or fabric?  Is it a couch, loveseat, recliner or lawn chairs and beanbags?  Try to give it as much life as possible.) to decorations, fireplace, windows, ect.  Go about the room in your imagination and begin to visualize it in a 360 degree perspective.  Don’t worry if you fall asleep doing this and don’t remember anything.  You’re training your mind to do your bidding.  It all boils down to how strong-willed your mind is, and how easy it is to make it surrender to you.  If you find this way distracting, you can pretend you are in one of the rooms of your own house.  Imagine being in the middle of the room and try to fill in as much detail as you can.  This can be an ongoing exercise.  Don’t be alarmed (though most people are) if you suddenly find yourself ‘Here” in the place of your imagination.  With a little more work you will be able to successfully leave your body in sleep and travel wherever you wish. 

Another simple trick is to tell yourself just before going off to sleep “I will remember my dreams in the morning” or “I will wake up in my dreams tonight” or whatever postulate you can think of.  Give the mind commands and it will eventually obey them.  The mind, unchecked, is no better than a monkey flying about in a cage, but just like a child, it thrives under strict but fair supervision.  Give yourself postulates before sleep each night and soon the mind will be excited to work for you.  If you wish to wake up in your dreams, set yourself up for that by telling your consciousness this is what you expect.  Again, depending on how stubborn your mind can be (if it’s been in control for a long time you will have to assert yourself.  It has no choice but to obey if you are determined.) 

Yet another way to either become cognizant of and in your dreams and/or being able to leave your physical body is to lie on your back in your bed, being as relaxed as you can be.  Listen very carefully to every sound; identify them.  You will soon be able to hear a very high-pitched electronic hum that seems to come from within you.  This is what I call the Sound of Silence.  It is literally the primary vibration of the inner worlds.  Some people hear a deep HUM, some hear chimes, or a single flute note, but pretty much everyone can find the high-pitched tone.  Put your attention lightly on that sound and soon your mind will turn all the outer sounds into ‘white noise’ and all you will hear is the Sound of Silence.  It may take a few nights to master this, but if you persist it will become easier and easier.  Once you can identify and ‘latch onto’ the pitch, practice using your imagination to create an environment or a familiar place, or being with a certain person even, and it will happen.  Again, don’t be afraid.  It’s normal to get freaked out at first, but if you stick with it you’ll soon be flying around dreaming whatever you want to dream of, and if you’re diligent you will be able to actually leave your physical body and see it lying on your bed while you float above it. 

The key to all these techniques is to teach the mind to do your bidding.  Repetition, practice, and determination are your tools.  If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.  If you find yourself in a place where you don’t feel comfortable or in control, you can always call my name and I’ll be right there to help out.  We all have the potential to do these things.  As children it was as natural to us as smiling.  The demands of so many rules and laws piled one on top of the other in our growing years pushed much of these abilities deep within.  You can restore that sense of childlike wonder and awe with just a little effort.

Its The Law

The longer a country remains sovereign, the more laws it has to make just to keep the crazies from taking over the place.  This counts for states and cities, too, not to mention (well, then, yes to mention) the basic family unit.  I actually had to make a sign and put it on the bathroom door that said “PLEASE FLUSH THE TOILET IF YOU USE IT” after a certain someone in our house kept ‘forgetting’.  While we’re on the subject, let me share a bit of wisdom with you: No matter how hard you try, you cannot train a cat to flush the toilet.  Imposing rules becomes a necessity when living with morons or liberals.  Just because a box of plastic garbage bags doesn’t say “DO NOT PUT BAG OVER YOUR HEAD AND ATTEMPT TO DRIVE” doesn’t mean it’s ok to do it.  Unfortunately, over the years it has been necessary to impose laws and warnings to keep people from hurting themselves or others. (See “CAUTION: HOT” on the lid of a McDonald’s coffee cup).

Some laws are strange, to say the least.  In Alaska, it is illegal to look at a moose from an airplane.  Ok, I could understand it if they said you can’t look at a moose if you’re FLYING an airplane (I can see a pilot becoming enthralled by a moose’s good looks and plowing their plane into the snow), but come on!  Are there forest rangers with binoculars watching airplanes as they pass?  “Uh, yeah, Delta Charlie, this is Yogi One.  I just spotted a passenger in a Piper Cub ogling one of our mooses.  Permission to bring it down by lethal force.”

In Miami, Florida it is illegal to imitate an animal.  I’ve heard of thin-skinned alligators, but this takes the cake.  If I lived in Miami, I would dress in all black and sneak around the neighborhoods barking and meowing just to be rebellious.  Makes you wonder what happened to bring that law in effect.  “Your honor, I thought my neighbor was a chicken and accidently wrung his neck.”

In Illinois you must have a steering wheel to drive a car.  You can do without wheels, a chassis, brakes and an engine, but by golly you’d better have that steering wheel.  Reminds me of the cop that pulled a man over for walking down the highway with a car door perched on his shoulder.  When asked what the deal was with the car door, the man explained that he put the window down because it was getting hot.  I would have been scared to ask him about his exhaust system.

In Kentucky it is the law that you must take a bath at least once a year.  God forbid if you’re a shower person.  Wouldn’t you hate to be the guy that has to make sure this law is enforced?  “Ok, lift your arms one person at a time, please!”  I wonder if the person who broke this law went to Miami – would they get in trouble for smelling like an animal?

Here’s one I wish was a universal law: In North Carolina it is illegal for dogs and cats to fight.  They are permitted to disagree, but please, no violence!  Personally, I think every dog deserves a good raking across the snout just for general principles.

In Providence, Rhode Island, it is illegal to jump off a bridge.  Jumping to conclusions, however, is allowed with a permit.  In Cleveland, Ohio, it is not lawful to leave chewing gum in public places.  This makes one wonder if it is ok to stick gum on a statue’s nose in Providence, and all right to swan dive off a bridge in Cleveland.  I know where I’m taking my next vacation.

If you’re in West Virginia, you’d better be a baby if you’re going around in a baby carriage.  Otherwise, you’re fined.  They’d probably take away your binky.  Who in their right mind would roll around in a baby carriage after they’ve been potty trained?  I could make all kinds of West Virginia jokes here, but I wouldn’t want a diaper upside my head.

There are so many strange laws I could go on literally for days, but I’m so busy staying on the straight and narrow I don’t have time to do more research.  Of course, I’m probably breaking some ordinance somewhere, but that’s just the outlaw in me flaunting my criminality.  Did you know in Tennessee it is illegal to sell bologna on Sunday?  You’ll find me just over the state line pushing thick sliced bologna from the trunk of my car.  I have to sell it fast, because if my product turns green, I’d be making a killing – literally.

It IS a Small World After All!

Even at age fifty four I’m constantly blown away by things I didn’t know before.  It’s almost as if the older I get, the less I know.  By the time I’m eighty I’ll be completely ignorant.  Perhaps senility has something to do with it, and if it is, my hat’s off to it (just so I can get some air up there).  And I’m not talking about the typical ‘Did you know if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its butt every time it hopped’, type of knowledge, either.  I had to go to the Veterans Hospital in Birmingham a while back to get set up for a sleep study (I can hardly wait to get my very own Darth Vader mask!), and the sixty-something year old driver of the DAV transport’s name was Foy James.  Well, my mom’s maiden name was James, and there is a whole slew of James hanging out in Walker County, Alabama.  I got to talking with this fellow, and he said his grandfather told him when he was a kid that HIS grandfather had a brother who settled down in Walker County.  Well, the more we talked, the more it occurred to us that we were related, which kind of blows my mind because what were the odds of us meeting and being relatives?  I moved back to Alabama in 2005 to be closer to my sisters and cousins, but I had no idea I’d have distant kinfolk crawling all over the hills.  If a casual conversation with a van driver can reveal a shared bloodline, I’d be willing to bet I’ve been bumping into cousins and such all along (unless I had wings).  I like to joke around and say everyone in Alabama is related to each other, but I had no idea they were all related to me!

Like I said, what are the odds?  Math hurts my brain, so I’m not even going to try, but there are seven billion people in the world, and three hundred million people in the United States.  If I had more fingers and toes I’d be able to tell you how many cousins I know about, but this fellow was definitely not one of them!  Makes me wonder how many folks marry relatives and don’t know it.  Hopefully more than do know it.  Once my ex-wife and I were talking about our ancestors and we discovered that we both had Jacksons in our family tree.  I was quick to change the subject.  On a related subject, I used to have fun with my sisters when they were little – I think torment would be a better word – by coming up to them and saying, “Ewww!  You’ve got ancestors!”  They would start crying and say “NO I DON’T!” then run to mom and dad and complain.  That’s about the time I discovered what whippings were.  I did something similar with my daughter when she was just a sprout.  I’d walk up to her and say “Oh my God!  Your epidermis is showing!”  That’s when my ex- taught me what it meant to be in the doghouse.  But back to the subject.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been reminded just how small the world is.  While in the Army I had a female acquaintance stationed in Natick, Massachusetts.  We only had a handful of opportunities to see each other whenever I visited the base there, and our relationship never grew serious.  Eight years later I attended a seminar in Atlanta and was at the Peachtree Convention Center, riding down an escalator in a crowd of people.  As I casually looked over the teeming mass, I saw this young lady coming up the escalator next to me!  I quickly got her attention by acting like a fool (an act I’ve honed to perfection) and we had a pleasant afternoon together.  She was there for a completely different reason, so it wasn’t like we had been drawn to the same place because of similar interests.  I never forgot the incident, obviously, and still marvel over it.  I’m deliberately not calling it a coincidence because I don’t believe in them.  If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that there are no coincidences or accidents.  Everything happens for a reason.  The trick is figuring out the reason.  That’s the mystery of life, I suppose.

Once when I was a cab driver in Washington, DC, I had two women in my cab that I had picked up from different places.  I don’t know about how it is now, but the company I worked for back then had DC broken up into sectors, and it was common for a cabbie to pick up people from one zone and carry them to other zones that were connected.  All very technical, you know.  Anyway, I had these two women in my backseat and they were talking.  As it turns out, they had attended the same elementary school in New York City twenty years earlier and had been best friends.  Well, we were all completely stunned.  They were crying and hugging each other and I was in the front seat wishing I had someone to hug at that moment.

I’m sure we all have similar stories.  It just offers proof, to me, at least, that not only is the world getting tinier, the degrees that separate us are sometimes non-existent.  This realization keeps me looking at the faces in crowds no matter where I am, just in the off chance I’ll run across an old friend or relative.  Who knows?  You may be living next to an old school chum from half a world away and half a lifetime ago, or you may very well be working in the same office with a distant cousin.  I’d bet if we knew just how connected we are, we’d never meet a stranger.

A Matter of Time

I know, I skipped my usual blog post.  I was making a point.  I wanted to talk about procrastination.  You know old saying:  “Put off for tomorrow what you can do today.”  This means if you live by this rule religiously, you’ll never get anything done.  Shakespeare, my favorite writer (except for maybe a dozen others) once said in a play: “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow / Lights the way to dusty death.” That means you’re going to die someday.  I didn’t need him to tell me that, but the saying is still cool.  Now I’m going to share a stunning and moon-shattering fact with you.  Are you sitting down?  You can stand up for this one.  There is no such thing as tomorrow.

A long while ago, before time was invented, a couple of philosophers were deep in philosophical mode.  To protect the innocent, let’s call them Pocrates and Slato.  By the way, I snatched those names out of the sticky, slimy ether we call inspiration.  Now, Pocrates and Slato were hanging out once, and the subject came around to time, even though they hadn’t called it that yet.

Pocrates said, “Hey, have you noticed how everything seems to happen all at once?”

Slato replied, “Yes I did, but I’ve been waiting for you to mention it because it never seemed to be the right moment to bring the subject up.”

“We’ve got to do something about this.  It’s getting pretty hectic, what with everyone being born, growing up, getting old and dying this instant.”  Pocrates scratched his beard.

Slato thought for a moment and then said, “We could come up with something that could put everything in its place.  Once something happens, like, for instance, you scratching your beard, we could put that to the side and say it’s over with.  People could then move past an event and leave it behind.”

Pocrates stopped scratching his beard even though it still itched and mused, “What in the world would we call it?  I liked that one word you said just then.  I think it would be the perfect word for it.”

“Oh, what word would that be?”

“Leave.  Doesn’t that have such a green sound to it?”  Pocrates seemed proud of himself.

Slato frowned.  “Nooo, I think folks might confuse things that have already happened with those things that grow on trees.  Why don’t we call it the . . .past?  Once a thing is ready to be let go of, we could move ‘past’ it.”

This time Pocrates frowned, but not for the same reason.  “If we must.  Let’s leave it at that.”

“While we’re on the subject,” Slato continued, “we might as well give a name for things that haven’t happened yet, just to keep it from happening right now.  My grandson has been making me laugh as he tries to mimic the words his elders use.  He has come up with some fun and exotic names.  He calls coffee “boffee”, horsey “whorehe” and furniture “future”.  I picked the past word, you choose the ‘going to happen’ word.”

Pocrates grinned impishly.  “The first two sound a little risqué.  Let’s go with that last one, future.”  He sighed triumphantly.  “My friend, I think we just solved one of the greatest conundrums in history.”

Slato shook hands with his philosopher buddy. “You are absolutely right!  Now we can start writing down everything that happened in the past, making sure we give the information just enough drama to make it interesting, and we can call it history!”

Pocrates countered, “And all the things that haven’t happened yet, the future, we can make predictions and forecasts, and call it SWAG – Scientific Wild-Ass Guessing!”

Thus was born not only the separation of the past and future, they invented the first acronym.  Most adherents even now put one foot in yesterday, one foot in tomorrow, and piss all over today.  Those philosophers would go on to invent “The check’s in the mail”, “I’ll respect you in the morning” and “I can’t mow the yard now – there’s a football game on!”

So now you know why I’m late with my blog.  I was doing research on time, and finally ran out of it.

The Art of People Watching

(originally published August 14, 2009 in the Free Ads Weekly, Florence, AL)

There are not many pleasures greater than watching people.  To some, people watching is a leisure pastime; to stalkers it’s their job.  It is absolutely fascinating viewing the endless variations of human beings, especially in a public setting.  If you haven’t tried this, or if your life is such that you just don’t have time to ogle folks, it would be well worth the effort to set aside some time, park yourself in a chair or bench where people congregate, and enjoy.  My favorite people watching place is the mall.  To add excitement and flair to this activity, I like to guess what people do for a living, or if in the company of others, what the group dynamic is.  I recently amused myself at a local shopping center (wait, that sounded wrong) while waiting for my family to buy the store out.  Here’s a sample of how it went:

Ok, here comes a young man, probably still in high school, although at my age if they don’t have wrinkles, they’re kids.  He’s wearing black pants, a brown shirt and a McDonald’s cap on his head.  Must work there, or he’s a real Big Mac fanatic.  Judging by the condition of his uniform, he must have just gotten off work.  Yeah, I can smell french fries from here.  Wonder if he knows how much a grande skinny caramel latte is?  There was a time when they only sold burgers and fries.  Nah, his shirt’s pulled out and his cap is perched sideways on his head.  He’s definitely a backline kinda guy.  He’s in a hurry, too.  I probably would have gone home and changed into more comfortable clothes, but then people watchers would be confused, like how this guy smells like french fries and – whoa, he’s passing by and I got a whiff of pickles.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Quarter Pounder fall out of his pants leg.

See how easy that was?  It’s all a matter of paying attention to details.  I use all my senses – well, except touching – to profile the passerby.  Sort of like Sherlock Holmes, except he was a lot smarter and did it for a living.  Now that’s an idea.  I’d have to get used to smoking a pipe.  Of course, since we can’t always judge a book by its cover, this means having to get Holmesey to look for details, like uniforms, accessories (are they listening to an i-pod or talking on an i-phone, or is that a glop of gum on their ear?), protest signs held above their head, t-shirt messages (like ‘I do what the voices in my wife’s head tell me to do’ or ‘I like starting fires’) and posture.  My mother always told me not to slouch.  What can I say?  Anyway, the joy of watching people first comes with really looking at them.

Here comes the perfect example, a cute couple.  He’s about four and a half feet tall and so skinny a doughnut hole would fill him up, wearing a buttoned shirt with tiki or totem poles pictured on it and black shorts revealing legs so white they glow.  He’s holding hands with an Amazon sumo wrestler of a woman wearing a circus tent for a dress.  Yep, there’s the wedding bands, that means they’re married – which raises the question as to whether they’re married to each other or not.  (‘Who was that lady I saw you with last night?’  ‘That was no lady, that was my brother!’)  They aren’t in a hurry, and only seem interested in each other.  They stroll by, laughing at some noise he made that had just lifted him off the ground.  I’m guessing he’s a full time stunt double for speed bumps, and she’s a billboard fashion model.  It’s obvious these two are newlyweds – most marriages longer than six months pay each other to keep at arm’s distance.  Sometimes figuring people out is a piece of cake.

Coming the other way is a young lady pushing a double-stroller and surrounded on all sides by various sized children, none of which look over seven.  She’s dressed in gaily colored child-resistant clothing, right down to the galoshes, and seems in need of a break.  Every child, and I mean every, seems to be either trying to outdecimal each other or shatter surrounding shop windows, creating a cacophony of ear-splitting noise.  Directly behind this this rapidly moving conclave, like the wake behind a powerboat, people turn to stare and clasp hands over their horrified mouths, and it isn’t until they pass that I notice a little one about two years old bringing up the rear, taking off the last bit of his clothing and letting it fall behind.

There are so many benefits to people watching, as it offers a never-ending supply of insight into the human condition, as well as providing excellent mental exercise and practice in the art of intuition.  My intuition is telling me now to sit back, relax, and see if the little guy makes it to their car before mom notices.

A No-Brainer

I absolutely love reading about the new studies scientists and researchers come up with.  It tells me that insanity can strike anyone, regardless of their education.  I mean, I’ve known a lot of crazy poor people – been one myself for many years and loved it – and even though I already know that mental illness is a prerequisite to holding public office, I always assumed that academia was immune to such things.  I’m glad to know I was wrong.  Now I have a completely new segment of society to poke fun of.

Listen to this: Researchers at Yale University (you know, the place where they teach people how to build a better lock) have come out with a study that says stress can cause the brain to shrink.  Really.  I have a number of questions to ask these eggheads because I find their findings a little hard to digest.  I never did like the taste of brain.  Too salty.  But seriously, I want to know how much money these guys spent on measuring brains, because I could have done it for a fraction of the cost.  I just need a cloth measuring tape and a hacksaw.  Ok, well, I suppose I would need a permit to conduct experiments with a hacksaw.  Can’t let just anybody go around slicing into brains.  You have to be a parent or teacher to do that.  How do you think folks get brainwashed?  It’s not like you can stick a hose in one ear and hope to get your noggin clean.  Anyway, that’s another subject for another day.  I recommend Dawn dish soap, though.  Just sayin’.

The article (here it is: http://connecticut.cbslocal.com/2012/11/30/study-stress-causes-brain-to-shrink/) says the scientists measured the brain size of over 100 subjects after interviewing them to find out if they had ever gone through a stressful experience.  Ok, here are the problems I find with that.  First of all, why bother to ask if someone’s gone through a stressful experience or not?  Isn’t being born enough? And then there are all those vegetables you’re forced to eat when you’re growing up.  I’m getting an ulcer just thinking about that vinegar-soaked spinach I had to eat before I could go out to play.  I carried that spinach in my pocket for days until I finally gave in.  Haven’t we all had enough stress to sink a battleship?  Asking someone if they’ve ever been stressed is like asking a bear if he craps in the woods.  Talking to a bear, now that’s stressful.

I want to know how these researchers know that their subjects’ brains had actually gotten smaller.  It’s not like they measured their brains before being stressed and then afterwards.  Now, that’s given me an idea.  I can measure the brain of a person then make them bungee jump off a flying jetliner, then measure their brains again.  I’d be willing to bet their bowels shrunk, too.  If my subject is afraid of flying, though, I can put lipstick on their shirt and then tell them to explain to their significant other how it got there.  I can’t think of anything more stressful than that.  Unless an angry bear shows up wearing lipstick.

Here’s the weird part, though.  Scientists have been telling us all along that stress is good for us, and now they say it makes our brains shrink.  I don’t believe either premise.  If stress is good for us, why not hide broken glass in instant mashed potatoes?  Why not make us drive cars held together by spaghetti?  C’mon now.  If stress makes our brains shrink, the average adult would have the brain of a squirrel.  Then we’d all be in politics.  Yale, stick with making locks, because no one’s buying your shrunken brain theory, and if they do they should see a shrink.

Southern Shakedown

A  few months ago I felt what I thought was a super heavy truck rumbling by.  It was a slow mover, too.  Took all of half a minute worth of shaking the foundation before it passed.  Then I found out it was an earthquake.  Cool!  Well, I don’t mean cool as in yippee, but cool as in I live in Florence, Alabama, for screaming out loud.  There’s not supposed to be earthquakes here.  I live in tornado alley on the first floor and am used to dodging those critters, but haven’t been trained in evading earthquakes.  I’m even used to the remnants of hurricanes drenching the Tennessee Valley (funny that the powers that be call it the Tennessee Valley even though it’s in Alabama – must be an old property rights thing) in the summertime.  I have no idea what to do for an earthquake, though.  Guess I’m going to have to get a seatbelt for my computer chair.  Knowing my luck it’ll get stuck and I’ll have to spend the rest of my life rolling around looking for bubble wrap to pop.

If earthquakes are going to become the norm here, I think I’ll move to California where it’s really safe.  I’m serious.  They have buildings made of Slinkies and highways made of Jell-O just so they don’t have to worry about cleaning up rubble all the time.  I saw a video once of a street wobbling up and down like it was a roller coaster and the telephone poles beside it looked like chop sticks in soup.  What in the heck are you suppose to do when that happens?  Stay inside your house and you’ll probably end up a sheetrock sandwich.  Go outside and get beaned by flying debris or plucked by huge chop sticks.  If I wanted that kind of action I’d go to Six Flags.

It’s pretty rough when an earthquake picks on coastal cities.  Look what it did to Japan.  Now when you buy a radio or sushi you’ll be able to see it in the dark because of the radiation.  That’s not all that happens to folks near the water.  When an earthquake rumbles off shore it’s like a fat man doing a belly flop in a bathtub.  They call it a tsunami.  I call it one hell of a big wave.  Do you believe professional surfers actually go around the world looking for stuff like that?  What I want to know is who pays them to ride the waves?  Do they get a free pass to an all-you-can-eat shark buffet?  I know there are some sharks that would love to be at an all-you-can-eat people buffet.  Now that I think about it, I don’t want to live in California.  I can barely swim as it is.  Maybe I could get some land in Nevada, and when the Big One hits I’ll have ocean front property.  Wait.  Then I’ll still be on the coast.  Maybe I can get a couple of acres on top of one of the Rocky Mountains.

We all know there’s going to be the Big One someday, and by that I mean a huge earthquake that will turn California into the next Atlantis.  At least that’s what they keep telling us.  Who in their right mind would want to live in a place that’s going to eventually slide into the ocean?  Never mind.  I answered my own question.  I thought the Big One was going to happen when Hollywood made a Scooby-Doo movie, but I was wrong.  The fault line runs from Mexico all the way up to British Columbia.  Let me tell you there’s not enough Superglue on the planet to fix that crack.  I think the words ‘fault line’ are appropriate, since something has to take responsibility for it.  There’s a big earthquake.  Someone crawls out of the remnants of their home and says “Who did this?”  I can honestly point to the fissure in the ground and respond, “It’s the line’s fault!”

But back to my original dilemma.  Earthquakes aren’t supposed to happen in the Deep South.  Because we’re deep in the South, far away from mischievous lines in the earth.  Just a couple weeks before our rumble there was a fairly big earthquake centered in Virginia.  Probably from someone having eaten too much BBQ pork and pickled eggs.  Nevertheless, it happened, and people could feel it all the way from Atlanta to Toronto to Detroit to Boston.  We do not need Mother Earth to develop a case of Tourettes.  Ok, cursing is fine, but these global twitches have got to go.  We’re running out of places to, well, run.  Kansas is looking better and better all the time.