Open Carry

I was downtown yesterday with my family. We stopped for a fro-yo (that’s frozen yogurt to those of you not so hip) and while we were in the shop, an “open carry” protest march went by on the sidewalk. A couple of mothers in the shop sheltered their young children from seeing the parade. I was confused, ‘cause I thought “open carry” meant walking around with open alcohol containers.  But these folks in the march were walking with open guns. Not all of the folks in the parade had guns though. I couldn’t tell if the people without guns were guys who maybe just wanted to support the guys with guns, or maybe they thought it was a walk to support the open carry of alcohol. Maybe there was a typo on their leaflet and it read “open gin” instead of “open gun”. Well, I was always taught that mixing alcohol and guns was a bad combination but this all seemed pretty harmless.

But for those of you thinking of going to one of these with your families for a nice activity, I will fill you in: in this parade there were no marching bands, no batons; no twirling of the guns, no politicians, no grand marshal and nobody threw candy to us. And the only floats were the ones there in the yogurt shop. How do these people expect me to join their cause if they don’t throw candy?

Cold Call

Remember those pay phones you could drive up to? Those cold, filthy, disgusting, disease-riddled phones out in the dark corner of the carry-out parking lot? You could barely get close enough with your car to reach the phone, and if you were able to park close enough, the metal cord would swoop down and scratch the side of your car. Yeah, those days were fun.  And you’d drop your quarter ‘cause you couldn’t quite reach the coin slot on the phone, but then you couldn’t get out of your car to get it ‘cause you parked so close to the phone. And it was your last quarter. And in the winter those phones were cold and the push buttons froze up. That phone was really cold. I often wondered if the cold phone would stick to my ear like my tongue sticks to stuff outside in the winter. 

When cell phones first came out in the 80’s, I had this co-worker who would call people and say he was calling from his car to try to impress them, but he was really calling from a pay phone that he parked really close to and the phone reached to his car. So he was sort of telling the truth. Funny guy.

Guess Watt?

Let me start this by saying that I am not a fan of Abbot and Costello’s “Who’s On First” routine. But sometimes similar (and funnier) situations can surface in real life. For instance, I ran into our old friend Mrs. Watt over the weekend. Her last name is tricky. She gets in a lot of conversations that go something like this:

Person: What’s your last name m’am?

Mrs. Watt: Watt

Person: What’s your last name?

Mrs. Watt: Watt

Person (slightly louder): What’s your last name?

Mrs. Watt: Watt!

This confusion can go on for minutes. I doubt if this happens to the famous football player JJ Watt because people know him, but I feel bad for Mrs. Watt. She's been forced to take numerous hearing tests over the years.

We also had a friend named Jim Guess. He found himself in more than one conversation that went something like this:

Person: What’s your last name, son?

Jim: Guess

Person: Smith? Jones?

Jim: No. Guess.

Person: I give up. What is it?

Jim: Guess

Obviously, this can be frustrating for both sides and these poor people get beat up from time to time. Our asylums are probably full of people with names like Watt and Guess. I'm kinda busy writing these columns but somebody should maybe check this out.

Sleep Number

We have one of those older Sleep Number mattresses. Ours was made before they had actual numbers for the different levels of firmness. Ours has just “high” and “low” on the controls. It’s adjustable – you just don’t know how far you’re adjusting it. I would often fall asleep trying to figure out the right firmness. So, when I would hear all the hip people talking about their sleep numbers ("What's your sleep number?"), I would just clam up, ‘cause when I say my setting is “medium high”, people look at me funny, and exclude me from the conversation, ‘cause they didn’t think that a product like that could exist. In a social setting, it might’ve been better just to say we don’t have a sleep number bed rather than having to admit that we bought one without numbers on it. 

Well, we eventually got a new one and now we have that old one in the spare bedroom. I can’t wait to try to sell the old one at a garage sale someday. “OK. You’re saying this is a Sleep Number bed but there are no numbers on it? But you want me to write you a check with numbers on it? Right. How about if I give you $11 for it?” Well, I’ve already prepared a response should that happen: “Hey, at least it’s not one of those really, really old sleep number beds with the Roman Numerals on the controls”. That’ll fix ‘em!

Eye Spy

There used to be a tight end for the Vikings whose nick name was “Eye Chart” because the letter combinations in his name were so obtuse. Well, we used to know a guy who claimed that he had memorized the eye charts that the eye doctors all use. (I know. Get a life, right?) And yet this guy wore glasses. So, perhaps we can deduct that his eyes might have been fine but his memory wasn’t so good.

Well, as you know, I’m all about finding the fun side of things, so if you ever want to have some fun at the eye doctor, try this: when they have you read the eye chart (which of course is just letters) turn it into words or, better yet, sentences. Tell a story. And finish with something like “I can’t read the bottom. The numbers seem smaller”. And when you take the peripheral vision test when you stare straight ahead into the machine and those little lights flash in the corners, instead of clicking the gadget when you see the light, yell out letters. Yeah. That thing would be a useful test if you didn’t have a neck.

And while you’re there sing that "Doctor My Eyes" song by Jackson Browne. They don’t like that song. Nobody does. 

"I Think We can Take Him"

I was in my late 20’s when I was finishing up grad school. For my last class we had to do one of those group projects (you know, the one where the professor typically has no idea that one person did most of the work). My group consisted of four men, and we were all about the same age, and not particularly tough looking. One Sunday afternoon we met at the library to work on the project. There were no meeting rooms available, but we found one with only one kid in it. Our group leader went into the room and asked the kid if we could have it since there were four of us and only one of him. The kid said no. So then the leader guy said, “But we’re grad students.” At that, the kid got irritated and told us to get lost, more or less.

So, the four of us huddled in the hall. Our leader then said something that totally caught me off guard and makes me laugh, even to this day. He said “There’s four of us and only one of him. I think we can take him.” Of course, I didn’t laugh there, thinking he might want to “take” me. We eventually convinced our leader guy that we could meet elsewhere and we ended up working on the project at one of the guys’ nearby apartment. And we all graduated as opposed to going to going to prison for attacking an undergrad.

Looking back though, yeah, I think we could’ve taken him.