Put your Hand in the Hand of the Man

You gotta love the “Employees must wash hands before returning to work” (EMWHBRTW) signs you see in restrooms at businesses. They’ve been around a while and I think we’re all a bit healthier due to them. Some comments:

• Can we get these printed in foreign languages at the ethnic restaurants?
• Let's add the line “Customers probably should wash hands too.”
• Let's add the line “if you just came in here to use the mirror please disregard the message"
• Let's add a line for what the penalty is for not washing hands. “Violators will be___________!
• Let's get these into the restrooms of those who work from home.  

I think a “Clean Hands Across America” campaign during restaurant week might spur awareness.

Let's Talk Turkey

We are seeing more and more wild turkeys. They just keep showing up. Standing in front of your house. And they don’t leave. Is it just me, or are these birds predominantly showing up in front yards formerly occupied by those giant skeletons we saw prior to Halloween?  Are they getting bigger? Or is that just me? In some regions they’re approaching the size of small ostriches.  And is there an uglier bird in North America?

The birds are so ugly, The Pilgrims saw these creatures and thought to themselves, "We came all the way from England, and this is what we get?" I bet the Native Americans tried to keep the Pilgrims from seeing the turkeys. Yeah, they kept ‘em out back. I bet if by chance one of the Pilgrims saw the wild turkey the Native Americans said something like, “Yeah, they’re ugly, but they taste good. Tastes like chicken.”

Pushing my Buttons!

I was at the courthouse today. I had to go to the second floor. The guard instructed me how to get to the elevators.  I walked to the end of the hall and hit the up arrow. I waited. One of the elevators was on the top floor but the other was coming down. When it got to me the doors opened. There was a guard with a prisoner in the elevator. The guard told me I couldn’t get in because he had a prisoner in there. The other elevator was still on the top floor. Did it have a prisoner on it as well, I wondered?  So I found the stairway and climbed to my floor.

Wait. What? Something is wrong here. Shouldn’t the prisoner(s) be the ones taking the steps? I pay my taxes. And why did the door open for me if they were going down, apparently to the basement? I bet the prisoner got in there and pushed all the buttons.

At least now I know that, if I’m on the elevator, and we stop at a floor, and I, for whatever reason, don’t want that person to come into the car, I can yell out, “Got a prisoner in here!”

Area Code to Live By

Remember when people would carve or scratch phone numbers into desks, bathroom stall walls, phone booths, places like that?   I talked to a guy tonight who knows a guy who met his future wife by calling one of those numbers. True story. True in that it’s how this guy met his future wife and true that, yeah, I talked to a guy tonight who told me this.

He and I discussed why we don’t see this type of thing any longer, not people meeting their spouses this way, but the fact that people don’t carve or scratch phone numbers any longer. I think I know the reason for that. First of all, there are no phone booths. (I think the phone co scratched the phone booth #'s to try to get you to pay for a call.) Secondly, when I was young, you only had to carve 7 numbers into the desk or stall for a phone number. Now, with the area code a part of every number, you have to carve ten digits. In this fast and busy world, who has time for that?

Hey, it doesn't take a genius to figure this stuff out. 

Former Man For All Seasons

When Halloween is over, what do people do with their giant skeletons? Do they:

• Put them in mausoleum-like self-storage units?
• Return them to the biology lab at the university?
• Let their dogs bury the bones in the backyard?
• Leave them up and decorate them for other holidays?

My thought for Thanksgiving would be to perhaps add a wishbone. Maybe add a heart for Valentine’s Day. Turn them into the Jolly Green Giant for St. Patrick’s Day. Add a big white wig for Dolly Parton Day.  That kind of thing.

Why don’t we see more of the Jolly Green Giant on St. Patrick’s Day?

Giant

 

There’s a street across town named Giant Street. Yeah. We never talk about it much. But it’s there. Its existence predated the giant skeleton in the yard fad that we are seeing today, but it would have been cool if the whole street had giant skeletons on it. “Hey Dad, can we drive down Giant Street again?”

I don’t know the origin of the name “Giant Street”. Is it wider than other streets? Longer? I don’t think so. Did they wake up one day and realize they had a disproportional number of tall people on the street? Were the developers big fans of the New York Giants? (No, there was no Dodger or Yankee Street nearby. Or Jets.) Had there been a Giant Eagle store nearby? No. (Who names a store Giant Eagle?)

My theory is that there was a big guy who lived on the street and he never talked to anybody and nobody even knew his name and he was just known as “The Giant’. Maybe he saved somebody’s life or something so they named the street after him. (Yeah, I read “To Kill a Mockingbird” too.)

Tur(n)key Operation

I know a guy who, while waiting for a surgical technique to be approved here in the states, went ahead and had the procedure done in Turkey. He could afford it, and he was in considerable pain, so he flew over and had it done. He says he feels the best he’s felt in years.

I wanted to find out more about the procedure, so I googled “Turkey doctor”. The only thing that turned up in my search was veterinarians. So yeah, I don’t think he had the procedure done by a veterinarian, but now I kinda want to know. Is it socially acceptable for me to ask him?

This type of thing has to happen all the time I bet. People go to Turkey for surgery, only to find out after they get there that their “Turkey Doctor” is a veterinarian. I don’t have time to look this up (gotta run this blog) but if somebody could look into that that’d be great.