For the Love of Taxes

March 15, 2017 by 2 Comments

Let’s start with a little sarcasm. This is my favorite time of year – lots of slush, no fishing yet, and everyone is crabby (except me). This is also the time for two of my favorite things – filling out senseless forms that usually have numbers and letters on top like 1099-R (which makes me wonder if it took 1,098 earlier versions to get to this gem), and doing math. I love doing math. It’s so … Pythagorean. (End of sarcasm)

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The stupidity of this process by which we fund our government is mind boggling, and after we do fund it, we have no say on where the money goes, not even if it’s for somebody’s golf vacation. Couldn’t I at least have a tax deduction for the amount I spend on fishing equipment every year? I mean, it stimulates the economy; it’s good for my health; it helps the ecology of the country, and it occasionally provides subsistence. Win-win-win-win. Also, I’ve done a search through the entire tax code and there isn’t a single deduction for chocolate. What are they thinking? You can’t deduct the amount you spend on the food of the gods?

I think we’re doing this deduction thing all wrong. I mean that progressive taxes, and some unreadable code for what can be deducted that is written by and for lawyers – just doesn’t cut it. I suggest that we each get to choose a deduction, the one thing we care about the most. If you have kids, you should be able to deduct what it cost to raise them that year, not some measly $1800 for a kid, but the actual money you lost, I mean invested that year in your kids. Then the deduction list could go mostly by age. If you’re in college and your parents are mostly paying for it, then you would get to deduct the entire amount you spent that year on pizza. Doesn’t that make sense? If you’re a musician, your deduction could be musical instruments that year. If you’re a cook, it could be knives and band-aids. If you’re a stay-at-home mom, it should be the total cost of aspirin, paper towels, a van, gas, diapers, in addition to whatever else that kid cost you. Think of the benefits. You’d be happier knowing you got a tax break for something you really care about; you would stimulate the economy by spending more on the things you care about, and the government could easily track “Here’s what people really care about.” Then, as usual, after you take your deduction, the government would tax everything else. It’s a beautiful thing.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking, so I’m going to re-boot.

So it’s tax time, the funniest time of the year, the time when the insanity of humanity reaches a crescendo, and the most hilarious part is that none of it matters. Allow me to explain, or better yet, to illustrate my point with two parental stories.

The first story happened quite a few years ago when we were visiting a parent whose identity will be disguised because I still appreciate Christmas presents, and while we were there, I heard a string of nasty words that ran from personal insult to pure blasphemy. I thought this parent was having a heart attack, so I hurried into the dining room and saw this parent pressing both sides of this parent’s head with his/her palms in a gesture much like that in Dickens’s Great Expectations when another esteemed parent with too many children regularly pressed his own head as if he could lift himself off the ground by locking his head and hair in his hands and lifting. Before the red-faced, steaming parent were stacks of forms spread out on the dining room table, a large calculator, and a pile of crumpled yellow legal sheets.

“Are you okay?” I said, innocently.

“It just isn’t working out,” the esteemed parent said. “I filled in the bottom line with how much money I want to get back like I do every year, and then I work backwards to fill in the spaces to get to that amount, but – It. Just. Isn’t. Working.”

“Wait,” I said, “You write in your refund first and then just fill in whatever numbers get you to that refund? How can you do that?”

“I don’t just fill in just any numbers. That’s illegal. I look at my receipts and records and estimate. Sometimes I round things up or down. Once in a while I have to put something in a different pile. I do it every year. It’s the only fair way to do taxes. If you don’t, the government gets all your money and spends it on thousand-dollar pens that will write in outer space or some study on the sex habits of fruit flies. Besides, this is real money to me. To the government it’s just peanuts.”

“Huh?”

“Fruit flies. They’re wasting my money on fruit flies.”

“I don’t think that’s what an actual study was about. I mean, they may have been using fruit flies-”

“Of course it was. Fruit flies. Are you telling me you don’t fill in your refund and work back from there?”

“Um, no,” I said.

The esteemed parent just shook his/her head at me with such a look of pity bordering on disdain that I could do nothing but slink away. It was no fun to do taxes that year.

I visited another parent recently to help out, but before we got to the subject of taxes, this parent asked me to look at their checkbook.

“The spaces are so small, I can’t write in the numbers for reconciliation, and I can never get that darned computer to work.” I was shown a large-button calculator that apparently ran on solar power, and I could see how that might be a problem if this parent worked on banking after 4 PM, especially in the kitchen where this parent once surprised me after I moved a chair to stand on because one of four ceiling fan lights was out, and I unscrewed the burnt-out bulb and this esteemed parent stopped me by saying, “Oh, that’s not burnt out. I unscrewed it because it was just shining on the refrigerator and we don’t need to light the refrigerator.”

“Huh?” I guess I say that a lot when I visit parents.

“Just leave it. The refrigerator has its own light when you open the door. It’s modern.”

So I turned on the three of four ceiling fan lights on this last visit to be sure the calculator had enough power to run, but the esteemed parent said, “Don’t use that computer. When I use it to subtract, it always comes out with less than I expect. There’s something wrong with it.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll use the calculator on my phone.”

“You have a computer in your phone?”

“Yes. These modern phones are mini-computers in a way.”

“Well, I hope the numbers come out right. How does it know you’re not just dialing someone up when you punch in numbers? I mean, you could be calling China, and then the Chinese will take all your money by reversing the charges.”

“My phone just knows. It has separate compartments for different sets of numbers so I don’t call China by mistake.”

“That’s amazing.” The esteemed parent shook his/her head in genuine admiration.

So I looked at the checkbook and pointed out that if the lines were too small to write in numbers, it would be okay to use two lines at once and no one would care.

“I don’t think I could do that,” the esteemed parent said. “It wouldn’t feel right to go outside the lines. It would just be – messy.”

“Okay,” I said, “messy is not good,” and then looked at the bank statement, noticing right away that the balances didn’t match. This bank statement included mini pictures of each of the checks written that month, but when I looked at the checkbook, none of those checks had been recorded.

“Um, you didn’t record any of the checks you wrote this month in the checkbook,” I said innocently.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. There’s plenty of money in our account. The bank can figure that out.”

“But you don’t really know how much you have. You can’t just keep writing checks and not record them in your checkbook.”

“Well, sometimes I do. It’s just that the lines are so small. All I really need is an estimate. Just estimate those checks and put that one amount in the checkbook. It will be fine. If there’s a problem, Linda will call me.”

“Linda?”

“She’s my friend who works at the bank. When they’re busy I just wait until I can see Linda. She’s really sweet and has three children, even though she’s just a young girl, so she has to work, I mean her husband works, but not very hard, and she fixes things when I go to the bank, and she never forgets to ask if I want a lollipop.” What followed was ancestral information on Linda’s forebears, who she was “from home,” and why the only banker in town worth seeing was Linda.

“But what if you go to the bank and Linda’s not there?”

“Well, then I just pretend I forgot something and come back another day. You can do that when you’re old and retired.”

After that, I did my best to record their checks, (in pencil, just in case), compare the balances, and then add a line for reconciliation to put an extra $14.27 into their account because the bank said they had that much, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out where it came from. I suspected that six months ago, someone used the large-button computer without turning on the three lights in the ceiling fan and for once, the result of some subtraction that came out as expected, if incorrect.

“See, the balances match,” I said proudly.

“How did you do that?”

I started to explain, thought better of it, and said instead, “The calculator on my phone has always been accurate. If anyone else helps you, Linda or anyone in the family, be sure they know I did the balances in pencil on purpose, and I’ve recorded all the checks in the last statement.”

“You really don’t have to do that.” What followed was another encomium on the wonders of Linda.

After working on their banking, this esteemed parent said, “That’s enough for one day. I’ll have your sister help me with the taxes when she comes out. I just put in the same numbers every year anyway.”

“You do what?”

“We’re retired, so the numbers don’t change much. I just copy the numbers from the previous year. If anything changes, I put that in, but for the last couple of years the numbers are close enough.”

“Huh?” I said.

“The numbers. They’re always pretty much the same. The only problem is that the spaces are so small that I can’t write them in the boxes anymore, so I’ll just have your sister do it when she comes out next week. One time the government sent a paper saying I added wrong, which was ridiculous. I didn’t add at all because the computer is always wrong, I just copied what we had from the previous year, and the paper said we owed them 24 more dollars, so the refund they sent was $24 less than what we were supposed to get back. I thought of calling them up to complain, but I figured it wasn’t worth the trouble, so I just let it go. You have to watch the government, though. They’ll cheat you if they can. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice. I’m not worried because last year they sent us the right amount for our refund like in the previous years, so I figure there was just some new person who didn’t know when they got our tax forms that year.”

“And Linda doesn’t work for the government,” I said.

“Exactly,” my esteemed parent said.

Some day, I think I’m going to go up to the bank and give Linda a present. She’s earned it.

 

 

Filed Under: Humor, Modern Life, Seasons, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Two Birds with One Stone

January 28, 2013 by 2 Comments

I have a brother-in-law who’s a really smart guy, a PhD in chemical engineering, a guy who thought our boat house and its porch up in the Northwoods ought to have refrigeration, ceiling fans, recharging outlets and lights, so he built his own solar panels and wired the boathouse for all of the above. Yeah, one of those guys. Anyway, one of his best sayings is, “The trick is to make your dysfunction function for you.” I see evidence of this all around. Look at almost any Olympic athlete. These are crazy people, the physical outliers who have small torsos but long legs, so they can swim like mer-people. Then there are the obsessed children who can flex like slinkies so they become gymnasts until their careers are over at seventeen years old. Yeah, those people.

I think people can use their dysfunctions (special talents, obsessions, physical traits, or just weird quirks) to much greater advantage. For example, what if a person has some tendency for things I just don’t understand; let’s say he likes to do math stuff like adding numbers all day. He could work happily to catch the cheaters in Las Vegas or work in a toll booth. Think of the fun with odds, numbers, license plates, and states. And all he would have to say is number words all day. That would be hell for me, but for a person who can actually add and subtract in his head – wow, what an opportunity.

My kind of dysfunction would tend to other areas. I think writers ought to be the guys who work the night desk at hotels. They should have laptops next to the hotel registry from midnight till dawn (perfect for dysfunctional insomniacs) and work on great American novels. Any weird people who check in after midnight could become another Gatsby or Silas Marner.

Artists should take over for window cleaners and instead of cleaning windows that are dirty by the time they finish, they should paint murals on them, and then hose them off and re-paint them a couple of times a year. They could do tunnels to heaven and other perspective drawings like those guys who do the sidewalk chalk art that shows up on the internet twice a year.

Musicians, most of whom need a day job to survive anyway, should be nannies and baby-sitters, as should those who are bilingual. Think of the possibilities. Babysitters shouldn’t be plunking kids in front of a TV or pushing strollers to the park. They should be talking to little kids in Spanish or Polish and playing music to them.

People who are overweight should be personal trainers. All day long they could be telling clients, “No, do your arm curls slowly – here, let me show you. Joey, that’s not how you do a squat-thrust. Do it like this.” Then when they get too conditioned and toned up to be personal trainers, they could become waiters and waitresses where they eat enough to qualify as personal trainers again. In some cases they might eat themselves silly for a while and then get sick of that restaurant’s food like the kids who work in ice cream shops, and then they could become cooks.

Here’s one of my favorite dysfunctions. You know those people who post all that intense political stuff on the internet and never factcheck anything and think Snopes is a family in a William Faukner novel – those people should work for the IRS.

Here are two real cases. I know of an oral surgeon who also ties fishing flies, and his bug creations are so realistic that they scare people. His nickname is “Doc,” as it should be. If I needed an oral surgeon, he’d be the one I wanted. When I found out I needed cataract surgery I had a recommendation on an eye doctor from my father-in-law, but I was still worried since I’d never been in a hospital except to see babies. In the pre-op interview he asked all kinds of questions about my eyes to see what kind of lens he should put in. When I said, “I read a lot and tie flies,” his eyes lit up. “You’re a fly fisherman?” “Yes.” “That’s great. That means if you tie flies, you need a focal point of 14 inches, so I know what lens to put in.” “You tie flies?” I asked him. “Yes.” That’s all I needed to quit worrying about the surgery. If you ever need cataract surgery, get a doctor who can tie a tiny midge on a size 22 hook. No problem.

Golf courses are a dysfunctional use of land. You can’t farm on them, park cars on them or even picnic on them unless you can dodge little dangerous flying objects. I think we should make the dysfunction work for us by combining golf courses and cemeteries. Instead of a tombstone for a person who moved on, we could put in a little name stone angled toward the green, and then if a ball hit it, the ball would bounce perfectly toward the hole just like the advantage of hitting a golf cart path and getting a kicker. You could call it a “Namestone shot,” a lucky thing and as you pass, you could say a blessing on “John Schlemiel, 1927 to 2011.” If I were a golfer, I think I would like that. It would be killing two birdies…. okay, that was uncalled for, I know.

Think of some of the other possibilities. If you’re a high school kid who is failing math, you should be paired up with a fifth grader to teach that fifth grader easier math and then move along with him through sixth grade and so on until you both graduate – and can do math. If you’re afraid of flying, you’d be the best, the most reassuring pilot in the world. No one could be a better janitor than someone who is obsessive/compulsive. Wow, what a clean school you have here, Mr. Tenbroomholder! The possibilities are endless.

If you’re obsessed with movies, you could work for Nielson.
If you’re a gambler….
If you’re a clutterbug….
If you’re a birdwatcher….
If you can’t help blogging, you could, um, blog. Okay, that was uncalled for, I know.

Dysfunction is such a wonderful thing. Heck, I could have been five or six successful things.

Filed Under: Humor, Modern Life, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

Advice to Women on Sports and Men

December 1, 2012 by 1 Comment

I suppose this fits under the heading “Men are from Mars.” While most husbands/boyfriends and their eyes are laser-pointed at a flatscreen during any football/basketball/baseball game, the look on a typical wife/girlfriend is that of one who has just opened the hood of her new car. It is a look of XUG, which is one click beyond another acronym. Here’s what a caring woman needs to know.

First, a short cut. One of my favorite true stories is of a good friend/lawyer/banker, a brilliant woman who was forced to go to Soldier Field by her boss to entertain clients, and she knew-nothing-and-could-not-care-less about the violent game of football. Her partner, a very wise man, told her not to worry because she only needed to say four things, and she could say them over and over again. After anyone kicks the ball, always say, “Special teams always make the biggest difference.” After either team scores, always say, “Defense wins games. No defense – no win.” Any time there is a time out, even at the end of the half, always say, “Well, let’s see if they make adjustments.” Any time there is a yellow flag on the field, just mutter, “Are you kidding me?” I know you women are thinking, “Are you kidding me?” but honestly, I’m not. These four things work every time.

I don’t know if she won over her clients, but she has been working at the same bank for twenty years, so I assume the men were duly impressed.

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Football isn’t really a game, not any more than a soap opera is a TV show. It is a substitute for war, a campaign with territory won, players described as offensive weapons, passes that are bombs, defensive plays that are blitzes, quarterbacks who have rifle arms, defensive players who have nicknames like Samurai Mike, and a battle that is won or lost in the trenches. Women who care about men should first appreciate that these men are not actually killing each other. The other thing to remember is that a football game is the one occasion in which an otherwise uncommunicative man can show an emotion. A smart woman would capitalize on that. If you’ve been invited to a Saturday morning bike ride in Wisconsin, show up in a green Aaron Rodgers jersey and see what happens. If you’re in Chicago, you can choose from Urlacher, Tillman, or Marshall. You could wear a Cutler jersey, but this year, that is somewhat risky. If the local team loses, look sad, or better yet, look angry. It’s amazing how a furled brow and grimace can make a guy think you are Athena, or better yet, Venus.

If you’ve already attracted a guy with your football jersey but you’re not sure how to start a conversation, simply ask, “Hey, what time is the game?” Be sure you say, “THE game.” Even if it’s the middle of the season, it’s still “the game” to a guy.

After the football season is over, men focus on basketball. The easiest thing to remember about basketball is that the refs are always wrong. Even if they call a foul that benefits the home team, a typical guy thinks the foul should have been a technical foul, which is a really bad thing, kind of like telling a woman her jeans make her look, well, um, like a heifer. A technical foul, you see, is a really bad thing.

I’m not sure why, but women don’t usually look good in basketball jerseys, so don’t buy one. Just wear the local team’s colors. Basketball is only slightly different from football. It’s not an all-out war; basketball is more like a series of skirmishes. There are fast breaks, screens, setting a “pick,” running the floor (after all, where else could the players run?), and steals. Besides complaining about the refs after every call, there are a few things a woman can say during a basketball game. Whenever you see two players moving at the same time, just yell, “Pick and roll! Pick and roll!” It doesn’t matter whether your team has control of the ball or not. It doesn’t matter if a woman even knows what a pick-and-roll is. It still works if you yell it out.

Another thing a woman needs to know about basketball is that it is more like gambling than war. Statistics like shooting percentages, the current number of fouls, how many time outs are left, and who is “hot” – those things mean a lot in basketball. The best thing a team can do, as in gambling, is go on “a run.” That means one team has outscored the other team by, say 10 points to 2. A final thing a woman can do any time the game is going, no matter whether the home team has the ball or not, is yell, “Back door! Back door!” I’m not sure why, but in basketball, it’s more effective if you yell out something twice in a row.

I’m going to add a text note here. Some men will argue that after football season comes hockey season, especially in places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Canada. The problem is that – unless you are a woman who likes cold climes, you may not want to impress a man with your knowledge of hockey. Besides, it’s a very fast, very violent game, in which there are a lot of official rules and a lot of unofficial rules, and the rules are usually only applied after a referee notices blood on the ice. When a hockey referee gets bored or is tired and wants to slow the game down, he calls “icing,” which is sort of like a delay of game, and it’s supposed to follow a rule, but usually a referee calls it whenever he feels like it.

Another problem is that hockey is four games in one, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, unless you understand J.K. Rowling’s Quidditch. Much of hockey is like speed skating to see who can get to a puck first. Then it becomes soccer with passing, blocking and trying to score a goal. If the puck gets close to the net, it becomes a wrestling match, and after that, it degenerates into one-handed boxing where you hold the opponent’s jersey with your left hand and flail away at him with your right. If you actually hit him and you’re both on skates, he’d slide away from you, and a boxing match with only one punch isn’t very sporting, so you have to hold on to his jersey. I don’t mean to insult hockey fans, but I wonder about a game where fighting puts a player in time out for 45 seconds, and most players have lost their front teeth years ago. I think hockey was invented by bored dentists in very cold places.

After basketball and hockey, it’s time for baseball which lasts through the spring and summer. Women look cute in baseball jerseys, especially pinstripes or flannels that button down the front. Even cuter is a woman who wears a baseball cap and puts her ponytail through the little gap above the sizing tab in the back. Baseball is a slower game than football or basketball, so a woman might actually have a conversation with her date at a baseball game. Baseball has a lot of strategy, though, so some guys don’t talk all that much. In the old days, a baseball game was a bad date because the slowness of the game meant a lot of beer drinking, but today, beer in a baseball stadium is so outrageously expensive that drinking it has become an economic issue that favors conversation and cracking open peanuts.

Here’s what a woman can say during a baseball game. First of all, whenever a player is out, just say, “Good pitching always beats good batting.” It doesn’t matter who has just batted. Fans used to imitate Little League players by repeating a senseless litany that went like this: “Hum, baby, hum, baby, humma humma, swing batter!” That is outdated now, so a woman is safest shouting out after any pitch, “You call that a slider?” Pitchers have lots of other pitches – fastballs, curves, and change ups, but in today’s modern stadiums and the current price of tickets, to most fans all pitches look like sliders, which could be a fast curve or a curving fastball. Do not confuse a baseball slider with a White Castle hamburger. If you do, it will be your last date with that guy. If you want to get rid of him, misusing the “slider” word will do it.

Another thing a woman can do during a baseball game is read the scoreboard. It usually has so much information on it, even scores from other games, that a woman can narrate any piece of it during a slow game, and a guy will appreciate her knowledgable contributions. Also, if you really like the guy you are with at a baseball game, you can attract him by saying, “You know, Tom (or Joe or Mike or whatever), I really appreciate a guy who’s not juiced.” Most guys don’t take steroids, so he’ll appreciate that.

In some cities is easier to be a fan than in others. If you live in Chicago and go to a Cubs game, after the game is over, you can always say, “Just wait till next year.” It’s also good to have a list of names to say out loud. You don’t have to use a verb or put the name in a sentence. Just say the name and he’ll fill in the rest of the information. You can say the names any time during the game, and it will be appropriate. The Babe. Ted Williams. Joe Dimaggio. Stan the Man. Ernie Banks.

If you’re sitting next to two guys and you want to see them fight to ease your boredom, just say, “Pete Rose.” They’ll argue for the rest of the game.

In baseball, there is also a trump card you can play any time. You can say anything you want, even something silly like, “Was that strike four?” and if the guy looks at you with that XUG look on his face, one click beyond the usual acronym, just say, “Yogi-ism.” Yogi Berra said the most inane things and fans loved him for it, so you can too, and then repeat them as often as you like. It’s deja vu all over again.

Filed Under: Humor, Modern Life, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Formicidae Vespoidea Wars

July 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

First Queen Moriarty sent out the scouts, quick little buggers which sprinted for a few paces and then paused, each antennae searching and sensing the smallest ort and leaving an undetectable trail for the skirmishers to follow.

“Damn,” my wife said. “We need to do a thorough cleaning around the sink and under it. Do you see them?”

“No,” I said, claiming another use of my cataract excuse and realizing that our choice of a black, marbeled stone countertop in remodeling our kitchen was a grievous mistake.

“There,” she pointed, dabbing at the spot with a wet wad of paper towel.

“I’m on it,” I said, retrieving a spray bottle of vinegar and water, followed by a swipe of bleach and a quick vacuuming of the floor around the counter, sink, and table in our breakfast nook.

The next morning there were more scouts, followed by a thin line of ant infantry, causing me to make extra trips to the sink, always armed with a wet paper towel to mop up any survivors. I made a quick mission to the local hardware store for traps, those cute little buttony things that promise to kill not only the colony but Queen Moriarty herself. My land mines may have killed some, but I saw only a single death and no more, not even after a second trip to the hardware store for another brand with another insecticide which promised to kill the queen, all bishops, rooks and pawns. It did not, which prompted a third trip to the hardware store for some artillery and more paper towels.

By artillery, I mean a two gallon concoction of poison with its own pump spray gun connected by a coiled death tube to the gallons of poison. This death spray was so powerful the directions required the wearing of rubber gloves, which prompted another trip to the hardware store, my fourth or fifth, I can’t remember because of my focus on the enemy. I followed orders to the letter, spraying outside our house along the foundation, around window sills, along doorways, the dryer vent, and any place that qualified as either a nook or cranny. When my wife was at yoga, I even took everything out from under the sink and sprayed along its edges and the circles where pipes entered.
“Take that, Queen Moriarty. You may have numbers and loyal footsoldiers, but nothing like the power of my death spray.”

The next morning we saw fewer of them, and the ones we saw pretended to be bewildered, but they still advanced into the black camouflage of our counter top. My wife, before she left for yoga class, suggested I try something natural, not really harmful, just repulsive to them. After a quick Google search and confident that anything I found out on the web had to be true because it was published and not removed or amended by any Wiki-person, I made a trip to the local Whole Foods for bay leaves, cinnamon, fine grain salt, baking soda and cayenne. I thought my ground up concoction would have frightened away anything from a bedbug to Lukas, the neighbor’s friendly collie.

“Are those tiny gas masks?” I asked my wife the next morning, trying to examine one of the latest infantrymen on my wet wad of paper towel. “I have a cataract, you know.”

“No,” she said, “your imagination is running away with you.”

“We need a secret weapon. The queen is smarter than I thought.”

No anteaters were available for rent or ownership, but being an avid fly fisherman, I remembered that I had a few patterns tied out of foam that were large ants, almost a quarter of an inch long, and beetles, which I thought might frighten even the most doughty scout. I clipped off the hooks at the bend and placed my foam sentinels at entry points on window sills and at a strategic crossroads of the counter.

This plan led only to shrieks from my wife, whom I had forgotten to let in on my latest strategy. As a result, my foam sentinels were retired from duty before I could discover their effectiveness, although I noticed one possible failure in the new arrival of a rather large carpenter ant that had been attracted to one of my rather well-done patterns and seemed to be attempting something unspeakable to the imitation.

I made another trip to the hardware store, probably the ninth or tenth, this time swallowing my manly pride and asking the associate in the pest department for advice. I told her the saga of my campaign so far. She nodded sympathetically and slightly patronizingly to each battle report and listened patiently while I explored other options. An electronic anti-bug plug-in? An anteater toy? Mirrors to confuse them? Perfume to obliterate their scent trail? Mini-snares? What about one of those battery-powered fly swatters like a tennis racket with a grid of wires that could be left on to electrocute any of the little black devils that might stray across it?

She did not comment on my failures, nor my desperate plans, but simply reached behind her to a tall canister the size of a can of tennis balls. “If the ant traps didn’t do it,” she said, “sprinkle this around all the entry points. Again wear rubber gloves and don’t inhale it.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. No one does. The formula is a carefully guarded secret. I only know that I have seen it work.”

When I checked out, I discovered to my joy that I not only had the ultimate weapon, I had achieved most-favored nation status and had been rewarded with fifty cents off my purchase. I left the store, probably my twelfth trip, cradling the canister as if it contained nitro or anti-matter. Either would do, I thought. I waited for my wife to go to yoga class, donned a mask left over from our contractors removing knob and tube wiring and disturbing lead paint, put on latex dishwashing gloves and a second layer of blue nothing-gets-through-this rubber gloves that nearly reached my elbows, and sprinkled the death-to-all-pixies-and-any-six-legged-creatures dust everywhere I thought one of Queen Moriarty’s soldiers might show up.

The next morning, it is true that the battlefield was littered with casualties, which my wife cleaned up with wet paper towels, but we saw no sign of Queen Moriarty, and by mid-afternoon several more of her henchmen had shown up, somehow having achieved immunity to my death dust.

“That’s it,” I told my wife. “We’re going to use the nuclear option.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“The last time I was at the store, I noticed a box way off in the corner where you almost had to ask for it specifically. It was labeled in very small print, so small someone with a cataract had to squint to read it. It read: Bug fogger. Kills everything. You must close up the house and leave for the day.”

“No,” my wife said. “We want our grandson to visit us sometime.”

“But-”

“No, and I’m not going to yoga today. Every time I go to yoga, you run to the hardware store. You’ve sent their stock up three points in a single week.”

“But-”

“Here,” she said, handing me a fresh roll of paper towels and demonstrating how to wet a wad so it doesn’t drip but still is moist enough to sop up invaders. “You’re on guard duty.”

There I stood, mostly wiping up grains of pepper that look to one with a cataract like you-know-whats, but even worse, as I look out the kitchen window, I see a chipmunk, its flicking tail, full cheek pouches, and tiny paws as it darts out from a den it has dug under a flat flagstone at the corner of our garage. The hardware store must have something for troublesome rodents, I think, but I cannot act. I am on guard duty, and my wife is not going to yoga today. There must be something I can do.

“That’s it, you may no longer have anything to do with pest control,” my wife says as she passes, grabs my arm and makes me look at myself in the bathroom mirror. It is true. I now look like Jack Nicholson at his narrow-eyed worst. We are doomed.

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Hibernal

February 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

If you like these posts, be sure to check out my literary suspense novel, Hibernal, a Winter’s Tale, now available in paperback and Kindle at Amazon.com.

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Bunburying

November 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Oscar Wilde, in The Importance of Being Earnest, created an all-occasions excuse for anything his rascal characters didn’t want to do. They couldn’t make an appointment because a dear imaginary friend Bunbury was so ill and near death that he needed immediate, indefinite attention. I think the use of such a response ought to be enlarged to meet any situation, not just requests for engagements.

Consider for example…. Many questions asked by a wife put a husband on treacherous ground. “Does this make make me look fat?” must be answered with an immediate “No!” and the answer must be immediate and emphatic. Any pause or slip will telegraph an uncertainty, and therefore, it does make her look fat, and you’re insensitive for saying so. On other occasions, though, I have found my own Bunbury.

Two years ago, I had cataract surgery, a ten-minute outpatient routine, followed by a day of blurred vision and a week of eyedrops. It was no big deal but became a great catchall. “Kurt, what do you think about this color? Do I look anaemic?” “I had a cataract, so I have a fake lens and my other eye is growing a cataract, so I can’t say for sure.” Soon, this was shortened to “I have a cataract.” For more serious questions, I have a backup.

Five months after cataract surgery, I had a detached retina. Today’s medicine is amazing and the surgeon reattached it, followed by two months of blurry vision, and a permanent need for glasses and a wavy-line effect on far away objects because the back of my eye is no longer perfectly oval. For serious questions, such as “Is this where we turn?” I now say simply, “Detached retina.” This excuse is supported by the surgeon’s warning that I can no longer get into fights, which means no wifely boxing. I am such a lucky man.

Consider:
“You call yourself a writer? Didn’t you see those typos?” “Detached retina.”
“Didn’t you see that the washing machine was full of whites?” “Cataract.”
“What was the name of the guy who sold us the scratched refrigerator?” “Sorry. Cataract.”
“Have you seen my keys (glasses, book, purse, scarf, gloves, travel mug)?” “Cataract.”
“Should I wear the blue sweater or the green?” “Detached retina, sorry.”
“When do we have to leave to get to the play on time?” “Cataract.”

I will admit that you have to have the perfect wife for this system to work, but if you do, then Bunbury away. Everyone should have a Bunbury.

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