by John Harvin

My sister in law is lazy. Bone lazy. Dog lazy. Lazy lazy.

She’s the only one in her family like that. My wife, her sister, goes like a hamster on meth–working, child-raising, charities, training for the New York marathon—you name it. My brother in law works ten hard hours each day, comes home and teaches himself stonework so he can build a new wall in front of his house. My sister in law complains.

But this post is not about her, it’s about a litmus test for laziness. Wonder if you’re lazy? Here’s how to tell. 100% guaranteed.

After my father-in-law died, four of us cleaned out his Ohio house. My wife, brother-in-law and I worked six non-stop hours clearing twenty years of accumulation in the garage—it’s amazing how many half-full cans of WD-40 one man can own—while my sister-in-law spent the morning chatting with the realtor about “marketing strategies.” Just as we finished, the realtor left. My sister-in-law descended into the empty garage, saw the three of us sitting on the now spotless floor drinking pop, sighed and walked past us to a coat-rack, where she removed three hangers, and said with all seriousness, “I guess it’s up to me to do everything.”

That’s the test for laziness. If you think you aren’t, you are. If you think you are, you aren’t. My sis-in-law thinks she works non-stop, and complains more than my right knee on a black diamond slope. My work-a-holic wife thinks the day is too short because she can’t do everything she wants to get done.

There are three types of personal characteristics: ones that people seem to get pretty much right, a set which people tend to fudge a bit, and another set, like laziness, that people seem to get exactly 180 degrees wrong.

For example, ask someone if they’re good at math. People know. No one ever says they’re good when they’re not, or vice versa. Or handy with tools. Or good with directions. Or athletic. People know exactly where they stand.

Then there’s another set of attributes that people fudge on. Ask someone if they’re attractive. Very few people will actually say, “No, I’m repulsive.” Instead people fudge. They say “In my own way,” or “Some people think so,” or “I’m beautiful inside.” Ask someone if they’re clean, and they will rarely say, “I’m a slob. The CDC has an entire wing devoted to tracking the pathogens in my bathroom sink.” Instead they might well say, “I’m clean, but messy.” I’d guess most traits fall into this bucket. Good with money. Or smart. Or likable. We would all fudge if asked those questions. Most of us see our personal glass two-thirds full rather than half-empty.

But then there are the Catch-22 traits, the ones where our self-perceptions are the exact opposite of reality. Like laziness. Or being garrulous. Ask a windbag about people that talk too much and you’ll get an hour lecture on how much he hates people like that. Or boring. Or cheap. Cheap people think that since they paid for the Thai food in 2004, that pretty much clears them for eternity. Or, strangely enough, color blindness. I’ve known three color blind people, all of whom insisted they could see colors perfectly well, even though they always looked like they dressed in the dark. Once in an earlier life, I tortured a color blind co-worker by giving him pop quizzes, using the various bits of colored wire from a phone cable. After he failed each quiz, he would take the piece of wire and find someone else in the building and ask them. Of course they would tell him it was purple or whatever. But instead of helping him understand he really was color blind, this merely convinced him there was a vast conspiracy out to get him. Which brings us to another of those 180 traits: paranoia. If you think you’re not paranoid, you are. Etc.

Clearly our current political discourse is all about 180 degree perceptions. Rush calling Obama a racist. Sarah calling people clueless. Karl worried about government encroachment on people’s rights and budget overruns. And the same rules pretty much apply. Anyone who says they’re not at least a little racist, probably is.

So my question to the S&R crew is: What’s the full list? What personality traits or characteristics are always perceived by the owner exactly opposite of reality?

OK, OK, I know this topic is not as profound as Dr. Sammy’s series on religious scope-creep or as revealing as Wufink’s analysis of expectations bias in earnings announcements. But then again, it’s easy for them to think big thoughts, they don’t have to deal with my sister-in-law.

But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m always late for other more important things. I didn’t learn the alphabet until I was 6, didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 20, didn’t graduate from college until I was 26, and didn’t find the girl of my dreams until I was almost 40. I fathered a son at 48, moved to Connecticut at 50, and became a reporter and columnist at 51.

So it’s no surprise that I got into the writing game late. I didn’t hurl myself onto paper until I was 37. I always thought I might be a writer someday, in the same way that I believed I might someday be a cowboy. But horses have to be fed and are expensive compared to legal pads and pencils. All a writer needed was commitment, and a few other very important things.

A serious writer can’t ignore the importance of creating the perfect writer’s stare. It’s never too soon to start thinking about that photo on the book jacket, so I spent hours inspecting myself in the mirror, trying to get the perfect half-smile, that captivating look that suggested a bemused knowledge.

“I need my make-up mirror back,” said my wife.

“In a few minutes,” I replied. “Hey, what do you think of this look? Do I look confident and intelligent?”

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” she asked.

“I’m trying to raise one eyebrow,” I said.

“Give it up, Mr. Spock” she said. “It makes you look like you’ve run afoul of the middle linebacker. Is this really important?”

“Of course it is,” I said. “Millions of people might see this face someday. If I look like a troll, they won’t take me seriously. In our world, it’s all about appearance, baby. If I look wise and compassionate, then I will be. To them, my readers. You know.”

“I always thought there was more to being a writer than looks,” she said. “Like, oh I don’t know, having something to say? Since you’ve decided to become a writer, what are you going to write?”

“I can only handle one thing at a time,” I replied. “I’ve spent three months working on my writer’s stare. When I settle on that, I’ll have to spend this summer working on the writer’s walk.”

“Writer’s walk?” she laughed. “What is that?”

“You know. A writer has to walk down country roads with a dog beside him. I’ll need you to take a few pictures from behind. For the inside of the book jacket. How is anyone ever going to take me seriously if I don’t walk down a country road with a dog beside me? All the great writers do that.”

“You’re making that up,” she said.

“You think so? I guess maybe Virginia Wolfe didn’t walk down country roads, but Hemingway did. Hemingway, now there was a road walker. That’s the kind of image

I want to project. My dad’s name was Ernest. Terry Hemingway. That has a ring. Jeez, I’d forgotten all about pen names. That means I’ll have to put off actual writing for at least two more months.”

And so it was that six months later, I was ready. I bought a word processor, 2000 sheets of paper, and sat waiting for inspiration to take over. I know this is the point where a lot of writers bog down, but not me. While I was walking down country roads, losing dogs at a frightening rate and discarding a thousand potential aliases, I had been nurturing an idea about mythology and high school students, and one year later, I finished The Immortals of Olympus High! I thought it was grand, so I hurried to share it with the world. The search for an agent was on. This can be another time when writers bog down, but not me. The tenth agent I contacted liked the idea, and I signed a contract with him. Now all I had to do was wait a few months, then wealth and fame would surely come. I decided to fill the time by writing a sequel, then another, then another, then another.

The few months stretched out to three years. I wrote five novels for young adults, the Immortals Series, and I was sure I was going to be bigger than King or Rowling. But a thing happened, and not a funny thing. After fourteen rejections, my agent dropped me, saying that no publisher was interested enough in the first book to take a chance on five of them. I fell into the damp, dark realm of writer’s despair. I boxed up the Immortals Series, left my word processor in storage, and moved to Connecticut.

Then I went to work for the Pictorial Gazette, in beautiful but expensive Old Saybrook. As a reporter, I cast a critical eye on my works, the lost works of The Hargrove, as I call them, and realized the most likely reason they weren’t published was because they weren’t very good. If I had spent more time on character development and less on perfecting my writer’s stare, they could have been better.

The irony to all this is that I was published eventually. Don’t Mind Me is currently #2,084,623 on Amazon.com’s sales list. With a bullet. OK, not a bullet. What do you call those things trebuchets hurl? Big rocks? Yeah, one of those. Tragically, there is no photo of me on the book cover.

Now, what does all this have to do with my alarm clock? I think alarm clocks not only keep us from being late, they also tell us when we’re early. I’ll be 55 this summer and that’s kind of old to be doing a complete re-write of five novels aimed at teens. About 25 years too old. But this is me we’re talking about. I’ve always been late for the most important things. And you wouldn’t believe the roads up here. Connecticut has some of the best country roads I’ve ever seen.

So today S&R leaps into the fray with some recommendations for new sports we’d love to see added to the 2014 Winter Games.

• Bobcross: We love skicross. We love snowboardcross. We love bobsledding. Give us four sleds and a course carved out of the side of a mountain of ice – first to the bottom wins. We think you’d need a two-man (men’s and women’s, of course), a four-man and an eight-man coed competition. Trust me, ain’t nobody beating Jimmie Johnson, the driver of the US-1 sled, to the bottom of the hill.
• Nude Luge: We really can’t wait for the mixed doubles here.
• Men’s Pairs Ice Prancing: Hell, we’re 99% of the way there already. To make it interesting, teams will be paired with contestants from Project Runway on the costume design portion of the competition. Tim Gunn can coach the US team and judging will be handled by Heidi Klum, Nina Garcia and Topamericandesignermichael Kors.

Scholars & Rogues supports the ongoing mission of the International Olympic Committee to grow the Olympic tradition. In fact, I personally am already in training for the 2016 Summer Games, where I hope to medal in the Walking Down to the 7-11 to Grab a Quick Cup of Coffee competition.

On December 2, 2007, I held my second ever book signing at the library in my hometown. This was six months after my first book signing, when I actually sold seven books. Maybe I should have made some commemorative t-shirts, I thought. I had 30 books this time and arrived at the library an hour early. Some of my fans might have driven a long way and brought shopping lists, so I wanted to be prepared.

But from the beginning, I had a bad feeling about that event. I walked up to the main desk and introduced myself. There were two librarians up to their elbows in returns.

“Oh, Mr. Hargrove,” said one. “We weren’t sure you were coming. You see, there is nothing listed on the main calendar about your appearance.”

“Nothing at all,” added the second librarian.

“I don’t understand,” I muttered. “I spoke to the Director several weeks ago…”

“Oh, yes! Yes, the Director,” said the first librarian. “She has been sick.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“And, she’s been moving!” added the second librarian.

“Well, then I’m truly sorry,” I said. “Nothing is more stressful than moving. But I’m here now, and I have my books, so just tell me where to go and I’ll get everything ready.”

“We can open up the Grand Hall, I think,” said the first librarian. The Grand Hall! I liked the sound of that. “But, umm, what exactly do you mean when you say you will get everything ready? What are you planning to do to our Grand Hall, Mr. Hargrove?”

“I was just going to put out a few chairs,” I said. “And maybe a table. Some refreshments. Cookies?”

“We keep four chairs out in the Grand Hall at all times,” was her reply. “There’s already a table there. Do you think you’ll need more than four chairs and one table?”

“Well, I hope I will,” I stammered.

“Hope, Mr. Hargrove?” she said, and she cast a curious stare over me. The Librarian’s Stare. It was the closest I’d ever come to being attacked by someone with super powers. I was mesmerized, and could neither move nor speak. I felt an overwhelming desire to give her all my loose change for overdue book fines. “This is a library, Mr. Hargrove. It is a place that was built to contain hope and dreams and the real with the unreal. Every book we keep was written by someone who hoped it might sell a million copies. Do you know how hard it is to write a book that sells a million copies, Mr. Hargrove?”

“Umm. Pretty hard?”

“And when a book sells a million copies, what then, Mr. Hargrove? Does the writer churn out an eternal list of sequels, each more base than the one that came before it? Or does the writer put down quill and pen, and leave the world’s readers to forever dwell upon the great works that he or she could have written? Harper Lee wrote one book. Margaret Mitchell wrote one book. Joseph Heller wrote one book.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Joseph Heller wrote more than one book.”

“He should have stopped at one,” she said. “Here is the Grand Hall. Here are the four chairs we’ve placed for everyone. Here is a rack to hang your hope on, Mr. Hargrove. Best of luck to you. And remember, if you sell only one book, that is a great thing. A grand thing. Almost a miracle. There isn’t any real difference between selling one book and waving a magic wand to make money appear. Your stories came from nowhere, yet people give you money for them. If you sell ten books then you will be filled with a desire to write something better the next time. If you sell a hundred books, think of the effect you will have on the world. A voice that speaks for all time, an echo on the electronic web, singing forever.”

“I hope I sell a mill… I mean, a hundred!” I said.

“Hope and it might be so,” she said. “Of course you’ll find hope in here, along with many other things. But people seldom waste hope on what they need. Rather they expend hope on what they want. There is a difference. So I ask again, do you think you’ll need more than four chairs and one table?“

“No, ma’am.”

“And when you leave, would you mind taking a few letters to the post office for me? They won’t let me out, you know.”

“No problem.”

Over the next two and a half hours, I met hundreds of folks who braved frigid temperatures and holiday traffic to come to Old Saybrook and buy a copy of my book. I’m lying. Only three people came. I did meet Gary and Charlene who drove all the way from Wallingford. They already had a book, having purchased it from Amazon.com, which I signed. They asked to have their picture taken with me, and that was the greatest compliment anyone has paid me in a long time.

At 4:00, I packed up my books and walked to the exit. The librarian who had spoken to me about hope was nowhere to be seen, but I had her letters. They sat on top of the unsold copies that were going into the trunk of my car. When I walked into our home, my wife asked if my second book signing had been successful.

“It was great. It was grand,” I said, and I meant it. “Almost a miracle.”

“What do you mean?“ I asked back. “Because like everyone, there are two of me: the good me and the evil me. Which one are you interested in?”

“The evil you first,” he replied.

“That’s easy,“ I said. “The evil me is the way I am because I have an older brother.”

Glenn is 14 months my elder, the perfect age gap. For him. 14 stupid months. That doesn’t seem like much now, but when I was 10, that extra 1.2 years gave him a decided advantage in every enterprise.

“Daddy!” I screamed, in 1965. “ Look at this bluegill I caught. It’s as big as my hand!”

“Daddy!” screamed Glenn. “Look at this catfish I caught. It’s a long as my arm!”

“Boys!” replied The Dad. “Look at this watch on my wrist. It’s time to go.”

The Dad didn’t like to fish. But it wasn’t just fishing, it was everything! Glenn could throw a football farther, could shoot a basketball better, he could even beat me at horseshoes! Now, I’ll give him the football and basketball, since he had an extra year of practice on me. But horseshoes? Who practices tossing horseshoes? Glenn could drill me in tennis, won all my marbles, and had a poker face that left him with my entire allowance week after week. I even tried to learn croquet just so there would be something I could beat him at. I practiced at night so nobody would see me with my little mallet and my yellow striped ball. For two months I did this, but when I suggested it as a new game to play at the Park, he won easily. Then he held me up to public ridicule for suggesting we play a French girl’s game. Then he hit me with his mallet.

“It’s not really a French girl’s game,” said my reader who isn’t my therapist. “Croquet can be quite challenging.” But I wasn’t listening to him. I was back in childhood.

And the girls, dear lord, the girls. They flocked to Glenn. All he had to do was shake his nasty black mane, and they appeared like a magician‘s doves. To this day, whenever I travel home and meet some girl from high school, the first thing she asks is “Have you seen Glenn lately? Do you have his phone number?“ I lie and tell them nobody has seen Glenn since he ran off with a carnival in 2001, and they coo and ahh about how romantic that life must be.

By 1969, I didn’t need anyone to tell me I was a loser. I already knew it, since I lost to Glenn all the time. Any self-assurance I had about anything was sucked out of me by the time I was 14. I was worse than empty. I was a vacuum rimmed by loss. Losing was all I knew.

“Fascinating,” said the reader who isn’t my therapist. “But that’s enough about the evil you. Sibling rivalries can be intense. But what about the good you? Where did he come from?”

“The good me came from ping pong,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

“Well, you are paying me by the hour,” he replied.

I discovered ping pong in 1971, and I was a natural. OK, that part’s not true. I was actually no better than average, but Glenn was the worst ping pong player I had ever seen. He was terrible. He couldn’t slam, he couldn’t block, he couldn’t go from forehand to backhand without dropping his paddle, and he couldn’t move three feet sideways. So it naturally followed that he refused to play me.

But one day in 1973 when he was home on leave from the Army, Glenn and I were at a party hosted by one of the hundred girls who had a crush on him. She had a ping pong table in her basement. I picked up a paddle and began to bounce the ball casually. Glenn and his latest squeeze came in and I suggested a game. Just for fun. Glenn chuckled.

“What my little brother doesn’t know,” he mumbled, “is that I’ve spent the last two years practicing. I won second place in the 1972 Fort Sill Table Tennis Invitational. Shall we play for money? I got $20 that says I can beat you.”

“There’s no need to play for money,“ I laughed. “Let’s just play for the joy of competition. All our friends are here to watch. Just a friendly game to 21. OK?”

It was great. Either Fort Sill was home to the worst ping pong players in the country, or his confidence was undone by our audience. I won 21 to 6. He demanded a rematch, but I pointed to my watch.

“Sorry, but I have to go,” I said and left. Oh, I gave him the rematch he desperately wanted… 15 years later, in 1988.

By then, all the pretty girls of our youth had married. We had too, so when I went to visit him to celebrate the birth of my daughter Katie, he surprised me with an offer to play a game on his new ping pong table. We batted the ball back and forth for a few minutes, then he suggested we have our long awaited rematch. One game to 21. I agreed. There was no crowd this time, just the two of us. Glenn had gotten better, but when his last serve went into the net, I won 21 to 15.

“I don’t suppose,” he whispered, “I could interest you in a rematch?”

“Sorry, but I have to go,” I said. I left him there, shaking and sweating. “You don’t look well. You should probably see a doctor about that twitch.” We didn’t play again until 1999.

The funny thing about all this is that I didn’t play any ping pong between our matches. I didn’t practice at all, though it was obvious Glenn did. He had the finest table, an expensive paddle, top of the line ping pong balls. He even paid for lessons from a guy named Dr. Kwon, who stood behind Glenn with his arms crossed like a James Bond villain, during our match. But when the match was on the line, Glenn was lost, and when he stood there after I won, he muttered and cursed and looked kind of crazy. Dr. Kwon screamed something in Mandarin, slapped Glenn’s head and stormed off. That last match in 1999 broke something inside him. He was close, so close, but in the end I won 21 to 19.

“I guess… you wouldn’t… be interested in a rematch?“ he hissed. His voice careened on the glassy edge of insane. I almost felt sorry for him.

“Sorry, but I have to go,” I said. And that’s the last time we played.

“So,” said my reader who is not my therapist. “When’s the rematch?”

“What makes you think there’s going to be a rematch?” I asked. “There’s no rematch. Barring a Don King pay-per-view spectacular or the return of Wide World of Sports, there‘s never going to be a rematch. I’m old and fat now. I haven’t picked up a ping pong paddle in eight years. If there was a rematch, I could lose. When you compete, the only game that matters is the last one and the next one. There’s not going to be a next one, so I will bask in the glory of my last win forever. I intend to take my last victory to the grave and beyond to eternity.”

“I think I’d like to talk to your brother about this,” said my reader who is not my therapist. “Could you give me his phone number?”

“I would if I could,” I replied. “But the last time I heard from him, he’d joined a carnival on 2001.”

And perhaps you teethy folk are wondering why I didn’t go to a dentist? I did. But since we were in South Carolina, I couldn‘t see my regular dentist. I visited the offices of Dr. Charles Goomey. The sign on his door proclaimed him a dentist/scientist. This is how that conversation went.

“You’ve got a lot of loose teeth in here,” he said.

“Yes, I know. One just fell out when I was eating a banana.”

“Was it a green banana?” he asked.

“No, it was ripe.”

“Did you swallow it?”

“No, I’ve still got it in this bag of ice chips.”

“You kept the banana?”

“No, I kept the tooth,” I said. “Can you put it back in by any chance?”

“Put it back?” he scoffed. “No, I can’t put it back. It’s not like re-attaching a head. The problem is that you’ve lost a lot of bone from your gums. Do you smoke?”

“I quit two years ago,” I said. “Did you just say you could re-attach a head?”

“Oh, did I say head? I meant finger,” he replied. “Well, we need to take out all these on the bottom. Yep, all five of them have to go. And this one in the back will have to go. Oh, and this one, too. Then we’ll send you off to get a partial head.”

“A partial head?” I gasped.

“Did I say head? I meant denture. Yes, a partial denture. You aren’t afraid of dentists, are you?”

“I wasn’t until now,” I said. “Listen, thanks for the advice, but I don’t think I want you to pull all my teeth just yet.”

“Oh,” he said. “Being from Connecticut, you probably want to keep your teeth for esthetic reasons.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” I said running for the door. I needed to get back home for a second, third and fourth opinion. Sadly, except for the re-attaching head parts, the dentists here gave me the same prognosis. I’m going to be getting dentures, as soon as I can afford them.

When we returned to Connecticut, I interviewed for a teaching position in Norwich, and this time I told the entire story of the banana and my missing tooth. They were very sympathetic, and noted that even with the missing tooth, I still had more teeth than most Tennesseans they had met. I thought that was uncalled for, but I really needed the position, because we didn’t want to relocate to South Carolina. I think I owe Dr. Goomey some money, and I don’t want to be part of any of his experiments. Besides, things could be worse.

My parents both lost their teeth early, so I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s happening to me. Besides, I still had all but one of my teeth on the bottom. I found I could chew around the loose teeth, so with some luck, I could make it until the first of the year when our insurance would kick in. But I didn’t consider the dangers of a cheese pizza.

I was working a bit of crust around my no-longer-all-that-pearly-whites when I noticed there was a new gap in my lower bicuspids. Another one bites the crust. This time, I think I did swallow it, which is more than a little creepy, but what’s past is to be passed. The next day, I had to face my students. One thing is certain: middle school students are as blunt about appearance as a cinder block. When I told them about my new missing tooth, I could hear some muffled giggles, some whispered names: gappy, shovel-mouth, inverted vampire, smilodon, (I was impressed by the last one).

I teach in a K-8 school, so when I took my class to lunch, I decided to seek the companionship of some of our younger students. Somehow, word of my loss had spread throughout the building.

“Mr. Hargrove?” asked Mariana, a third-grader. “Did you really lose a tooth?”

I opened wide and showed her. But she surprised me by flashing a smile of her own. She had gaps, too. So did Isaac, a first grader, and Lee Anna, a tiny fourth grader.

There we sat, just a lot of folks with missing teeth.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Hargrove,” reassured Mariana. “My dentist said other teeth will come in to take their places. I’m sure you’ll get new teeth, too.”

I’m sure I will. The young kids even gave me some ideas for what to do with my missing teeth, ideas I had forgotten about long ago. I put the banana tooth under my pillow, and every morning I check to see if something is there. My wife said I needed to have my head examined. I think I need a whole new head. Or maybe just a partial one, and I know who to call to get it.

“Well,” I said. “We’ve learned something today.”

“Yes,” said Nancy. “Peacocks explode on impact.”

I didn’t meet Nancy until I was 38 years old. This timing worked to my benefit, since I wasn’t considered an adult by any fair standard until I was in my mid-30s. Still, she wonders what I was like before middle age and gray hair settled on me. Mom was always bragging on how I was a good student who hardly ever caused any serious trouble. That’s what moms do. Later, as we went through all the memorabilia of long ago, in the drafty corner of the attic that had been my personal fortress of solitude, Nancy started asking questions.

“What kind of person were you in high school?” she asked.

“I was captain of the football team,” I responded with pride. “I still don’t know how that happened, but it’s in the yearbook, if we can find it. Page 55. Actually, I was one of four captains. I kissed the Homecoming Queen. Strawberry lipstick she wore.”

“Uh huh. But Yoda, what kind of person were you?”

“Senior class president,” I added. “Class of 1973. I actually beat a guy who went to Vanderbilt on a basketball scholarship. His name was Spence. He was a great guy. I don’t remember why I ran, and I‘ll never understand how I won. Got my picture in the Lewisburg Tribune. They spelled my name wrong. I think I’m supposed to be in charge of reunions, but I had a great vice president, and she takes care of all that stuff. I really should go to one of those reunions.”

“You aren’t telling me anything,” she huffed. “Where are your old pictures? Yearbooks and things like that. Did you ever go to a prom?”

“A prom?” I scoffed. “Are you kidding? I didn’t go to A prom. I went to seven proms. Look, here is my prom picture shelf. I need to dust these off. You can see how my hair waxed and waned. The ’70s were a crazy time, and I was in the Navy in ‘74 and ‘75. Here I am in 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, and 1978. That was my last prom. It was time.”

“But you graduated in 1973.”

“Yeah. So?”

Nancy began to wave her hands in front of her face and shake her head. She always does that when she doesn’t understand something, like the rules for hockey or my marriage proposal.

“It was like this,” I said. “In the ’70s, nobody cared who a girl took to the prom. Society had other distractions like gas shortages, the war, and Billy Carter. You didn’t have to take a classmate. An older alum was an OK date, as long as it wasn’t somebody who was on parole, or who fired off a shotgun at graduation. Now, back in the ’70s, I had the reputation of being a bad boy. That was very prestigious for a guy, and made a lot a girls want to take me to prom, to get even with old flames, or something. But it was just a reputation. ‘The bubble reputation,’ as Shakespeare put it. I was harmless. The teachers knew that, so did the principals. So I was viewed as a reliable and calming influence at all the proms I attended.”

“Why did you stop going after 1978?”

“Had to. I got married.”

“I can see how that would slow a bad boy down,” she laughed. “But what about these pictures. Where did they come from?”

“My prom dates sent them to me,” I said. “Except for the first two. She-Whose- Name-Must-Not-Be-Spoken refused to have a professional photographer take our prom picture. Something about not wanting the evidence floating around.”

“Oh,” said Nancy. “You mean Car…”

“Stop!” I demanded.

“…mine?”

“Don’t!” I repeated. “I took a vow. Now, Unspeakable Person’s opposite can be found here.”

“You have a picture of Lurlene?” Nancy asked. “I thought you made her up. What kind of name is Lurlene, anyway?”

“No, she was real, and it‘s a fine name,” I said. I reached over and pulled my personal favorite prom photo from the shelf. It was the 1976 Bicentennial Prom. I was with Lurlene, and I looked fabulous in my powder-blue leisure suit. But the years that mutate fashion had also warped the picture frame, and as I was pulling it toward me, our photo slipped out, and revealed another photo that was behind it. It was a glossy 5 X 7 of Lurlene and some dude sitting side by side. They were holding hands.

“What the… who is this guy and why is he sitting with my Lurlene?” I demanded.

“That is sad,” added Nancy.

“It’s worse than sad,” I sighed. “I’ve been oggling this photo for almost 30 years. It was a lie. A sham. I thought she was special.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Nancy, who tossed the photo on the floor and glared at me. “It’s sad that Lurlene has to go through the rest of her life, knowing that her high school prom photo is with some guy in a powder-blue leisure suit. That is worse than sad.”

As we drove home, all was quiet in the car. Nancy stared straight ahead, so to fight the silence, I cut loose a torrent of anger at Lurlene, so unfaithful, who must have placed the second photo there on purpose. She wanted me to find it. But I was jumpy. I kept feeling like something was approaching at high speed. It was very close now, and it was inevitable, and would strike with a fury that just might tear me to pieces, or at the very least, destroy the rest of my weekend.

At the conclusion of this evening’s Two and a Half Men rerun they displayed vanity card #135 and we paused the TV to read it. What fortuitous timing, given all our recent carping here at S&R about the decline of the press. Here’s what it said:

There you go. Who says you can’t learn valuable life lessons from sitcoms?

Meanwhile, Lem and Phil have their usual morning quarrel, this time over coffee and microscopic organisms. (Trust us, folks—it’s hardly as sexy as it sounds.) When Phil leaves to get a cup of joe, everything in the lab suddenly shuts off. Lem is confounded by this, even more so when everything springs back to life upon Phil’s return.

As it turns out, the problem is that Phil is white, Lem is black, and the sensors apparently respond to light reflecting off the skin. Which means that Veridian has managed to create racist technology.

The company’s efforts to address the problem lead to all kinds of hilarity (simply reinstalling the old tech, which worked just fine, doesn’t occur to anyone). They hire white people to follow black employees around, for instance, but that creates HR issues (these new positions are rather explicitly not open to black applicants). It all crescendos in one of the most outrageous, fall-off-the-couch funny moments in television history (seriously, I laughed until I hurt).

Hilarious concept, if a bit unrealistic, right?

Except that once again, life imitates television: it was recently revealed that HP, evidently the Veridian Dynamics of the computer technology world, has invented racist webcams.

In a video posted on December 10th, a black male and a white female show how an HP computer’s facial-tracking software fails to recognize the black man’s movements. Yeah, you know where this is headed. When the woman, Wanda, enters the frame, the camera follows her wherever she goes. But when the man, Desi, enters, the camera won’t respond to any of his movements at all. His only comment? “I’m going on record, and I’m saying it,” he says. “Hewlett-Packard computers are racist.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

We applaud the good humor of the narrator here, but the whole episode raises an obvious question: doesn’t HP, you know, test its products before release? Even Veridian engages in rigorous product testing (granted, they tend to use their own employees as unwitting guinea pigs, but still)…

Our friend Lee Camp lays the nard-stomp on American culture, and we’re okay with it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What the heck – how about six more minutes of celebrity nard-stomping?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Happy Saturday, Happy Holidays, Happy Shopping, and just in case you can’t think of anything good to get somebody, how about a gift that makes a difference?

The few canine altercations we witnessed in my neighborhood always involved our dog Hamlet, and whatever large stray stumbled into town looking for a handout. Hamlet hated other dogs and attacked them whenever the opportunity came wagging along. But Hamlet was small, so all his contests were Pyrrhic victories, and we spent many a Saturday afternoon taking him to the vet for stitches. Eventually, our neighbors took to calling him Frankenstein’s Dog, and he looked the part.

But Hamlet was afraid of cats, especially Snowball, the large white deaf cat who my mother doted on, and who was the most even tempered feline I ever shared an abode with. Snowball lounged around our house for most of the ’60s, and never bit or scratched anybody. But Snowball was deaf, and in the world of cats, you run from the trouble you hear coming. Snowball sat and patiently waited, like a glacier, for any tom bold enough to intrude into his space.

The dance of the fighting cats was a spectacle that, once observed, was never forgotten. It started with some strange cat, a newcomer or a wanderer, standing at a distance, howling a challenge in alien tones. The opponent replied. This was as far as most cat fights went, since the depth and rhythm of those calls sent all sorts of information to the combatants, and the more timid of the two would beat a hasty retreat. As you might guess, deaf Snowball was at a decided disadvantage, since he never heard the calls. This was strange behavior to the challengers, and it puzzled them mightily. They would sit and repeat the message, sometimes for hours, since obviously this large white thing couldn’t understand basic feline. The lull gave us enough time to invite all our friends over to watch the show. The caterwauling continued, but Snowball just sat.

Eventually, the interloper would begin a slow but determined slink toward Snowball, keening in a high pitched wail that suggested all manner of slashing and biting and general nastiness. Snowball just sat and waited.

“I can’t believe another cat has come to face the champion,” said Johnny Miles, our next door neighbor. “Who is this one? You seen it before?”

“Some big yellow tom,” I said. “We saw it hanging around the school day before yesterday. He’s a big boy.”

“Yeah, but Snowball ain’t afraid of him,” said Johnny. “Look at him. Cool as a cucumber, that one is. I just wish you guys had given him a better name. Snowball. Jeez. What kind of name is that for a fighting cat? Now, Frankenstein’s Dog! That’s a name.”

“Our dog’s name is Hamlet,” I said.

“Does Snowball come to you when you call him?” asked Johnny.

“No. He’s deaf, remember?” I said.

“Maybe if you yelled real loud, or beat a cymbal or something. Maybe he hears in high tones that we can’t.”

“I don’t think he can hear at any tone,” I said, although I liked the idea of getting a pair of cymbals, you know, for around the house. You never knew when you might need cymbals. For dramatic effect.

“I wish you would stop this before it begins,” added Amelia. She was a new kid to the neighborhood, and had a crush on my older brother, a peculiar affliction that made me distrust her.

“I tried to break up a Snowball fight once,” I said. “See this scar? And this one? And this one? And this one?”

“Don’t forget the one on your ear,” added Johnny.

“It was like being eaten by two wood chippers,” I said. “And if I did stop this fight, the stranger would just wait until tonight when we were asleep. Better he gets this out of his system now, when we can get him to a vet if we need to.”

“I just don’t think it’s right,” sighed Amelia.

Girls. When the yellow stranger was within a foot, Snowball lifted his head. The yellow cat attacked, but Snowball enveloped him in a blanket of white. Yellow fur and white fur flew up in the air. The yellow tom’s challenge became a scream of defeat, but Snowball wouldn’t let him go. When he paused to get a better grip, the yellow cat took off. Snowball stood there for a long moment, ears back, waiting for another attack that never came. After two minutes, he began to lick his wounds, and I casually walked over and picked him up. He tensed for a second, then went limp in my hands and purred. Everybody came over to congratulate the champion by scratching his head. Amelia came last. She looked at Snowball closely, held his massive head in her two hands, then looked at me.

“This cat is deaf?” she asked.

“Yep,” I said. “Has been since birth.”

“He’s blind, too,” said Amelia. “See how his eyes don’t move? He’s probably been blind all his life. Poor thing.”

Deaf and blind. And there we stood, deaf and blind as well, around Snowball. Our awe of his prowess was replaced by pity. I carried Snowball into the house, and vowed never to let him outside again, although The Dad said that wasn’t a good idea. Confinement was an insult to the disabled, he said. Let the cat be a cat, as far as he could be one, and that was actually pretty far indeed.

And so I broke that vow. I’ve broken others since then. Snowball sat in sunlight and moonlight like a fair, wintry hill, in silence and in darkness, waiting for the occasional random attacks he could never see or hear coming. And so we all sit and wait for the next revelation of a hero who isn’t godlike after all. But the attacks don’t hurt any less, just because we don’t see them coming. And like Snowball, sometimes we react to the attacks with a greater violence than is necessary, a counter offensive that does more harm than good.

But I did buy my cymbals. I use them all the time, and my neighbors wish my life, like everyone else’s, wasn’t so dramatic.

“Sure, I’ll put The Finger on it,” I said.

“Enough with the stupid finger,” she replied. “I don’t want you to put your finger on anything, I want you to look at the car.”

“All right,” I answered. “But I can look at the car from here. It looks fine. Are you sure you don’t want me to go out there and put The Finger on it?”

She mumbled something and wandered away. I looked at the car. It needed a wash.

I guess I can’t blame my wife for ignoring the miraculous powers of The Finger. She was never a football fan, and even if she was, when The Finger made its foray into the miraculous, she was only eight years old and 358 miles away. Maybe I should start from the beginning.

When I was a junior in high school back in the autumn of 1971, I was part of something great. My high school football team started the season with four wins and all four were shutouts. We still hadn’t been scored on when we traveled east to take on the perennial powerhouse Maryville Rebels, and on the ride back home we had a fifth shutout to contemplate. They’d beaten us 14-0. But the next week, we shut out another opponent, then another. We were 6-1, with five shutouts, and the whole state was paying attention. Then we took a ride north to play a high school in Nashville that no longer exists. We weren’t afraid, since we’d beaten that same team, a senior laden squad, the year before by 30 points.

Now, I have to be careful about this, because that school that no longer exists produced a lot of competitors who might be up for parole soon. I’m not going to come right out and say their roster were stacked with ringers, but the players who showed up at game time weren’t the same guys we saw on the game films. These guys were old, with wedding bands, beards and tattoos. It wasn’t a football game so much as a mugging, and the referees were in on it, since they rightfully feared for their cars in the parking lot. At the end of the first half, the score was tied 0-0.

Our coach gave a rousing and memorable halftime speech that started with a prayer for our safe deliverance from the stadium and ended with a plea for few turnovers. When we went out for the second half, I saw the other team smoking and drinking in the concession stand. It was kind of spooky, but we had another 30 minutes of football to survive. And though I didn’t know it then, I was blessed with The Finger.

We kicked off to start the second half. The ball fell into the hands of a guy who was, I’m not sure, but I think about 9 feet tall. He began a speedy lope down the left sidelines, made a cut here, got a block there, and he was gone. Surely, I thought, our safety would stop him. We always had one guy who didn’t charge down the field, but stayed back as a last line of defense to prevent a kick returner from doing what this leggy freak of nature was doing. Where was our safety? Oh, yeah. I was the safety. So I took off after him. He had speed, but I had a great line of pursuit. He was at the 40, but I was closing. At the 50, I was almost to him. At our 40, he was getting away. I only had one chance. When I knew I couldn’t possibly get any closer to him, I dove in the direction of his canoe-sized feet. I caught the back of his left shoe with the last digit of my index finger, and he stumbled and tumbled, and finally fell. I had prevented a touchdown, and kept out shutout record alive for one more week. Our coach was so overjoyed at the play that he completely forgot how I’d blown my safety assignment in the first place. They fumbled on the very next play. We marched 73 yards for the first of two second half touchdowns.

My tackle not only brought down their freakishly tall returner, but also all the other old guys on his team. After that kickoff, they weren’t the same. I like to think that in the great plan of reality, I did them a favor. I know people who spend their entire lives reliving the same play or the same game or the same season, as if their lives hit the highest point of glory when they were 17. I feel sorry for people like that.

Or maybe it was the beer and cigarettes they enjoyed at halftime, because once we were ahead, they became uncomfortably friendly, wanting phone numbers and other personal information. The final score was 16-0, and despite the promises I’d made to a couple of their defensive backs, I never went back to that part of Nashville.

It was quite a year. By the end of the season, we’d won 9 games and shut out our opponents 8 times. We had not one, but two running backs who rushed for over a thousand yards. I caught a pass and made several tackles. Ironically, the two games we lost were also shutouts, and those two teams, Milan and Maryville, played each other for the state championship. I neither know nor care who won that game, and if the universe cared then somebody from one of those teams would be writing this to gloat about it. But I do know that that year was a close as I would ever come to being a part of something that was truly great, and if we couldn’t taste the greatness of our season, then we could certainly smell it and hear it. It smelled like cut grass and autumn, like dew and Atomic Balm, and the sound of that season was as crisp as the snare drums in the band, and as loud the roar of the home crowd.

Sadly, The Finger hasn’t done much of anything since then, but I still think it has a few more miracles in it. Every November, I think back to those warm Friday nights, and the teammates I had, and the blocks and tackles and endless runs we made.

Last night, my son Joey came downstairs with a bad scratch on his knee. Between his sobs, he gave a rambling narrative about how he was surfing on the bed, but wiped out and landed on one of the few toys he still owns that hasn’t been recalled by the manufacturer. Now his knee had a scrape and it hurt him mightily.

“Do you want me to put The Finger on it?” I asked.

I did, and he stopped crying and fell asleep on my lap. Maybe my touchdown- saving dive wasn’t The Finger’s greatest moment after all.

But it was an amazing tackle. You should have seen it.

If you’ve been attacked by a werewolf and have survived, then you need a copy of Ritch Duncan and Bob Powers’ new book The Werewolf’s Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten.

While lycanthropy is inconvenient at best and terribly dangerous at worst, Duncan and Powers contend that it’s something a person can successfully manage. Through proper precautions and care—including cages, restraining systems, and livestock—a lycanthrope can live a full, rich, successful life. Otherwise, without the advice offered in the manual, a lyc is doomed to be an object of scorn, attracting mobs of angry, pitchfork- and torch-wielding villagers.

The Werewolf’s Guide works as a humor piece because Duncan and Powers play it straight, with casual matter-of-factness: werewolves are real. “Unlike the rest of society,” they write, “werewolves happen to have a condition that, three times a month, causes their bodies to almost double in size, triple in strength and agility, grow a mass of tightly woven fur, and transform from an unremarkable human being into a savage, wild animal resembling (but distinctly different from) a wolf, whose behavior patterns are generally dictated by voracious hunger and rage.”

There’s no supernatural mysticism to lycanthropy. “The blood and saliva of werewolves contain a contagion that acts upon the pituitary gland,” the authors explain. “After you’ve been attacked, this contagion travels through your bloodstream and causes your pituitary gland to release a rare and normally dormant thyroid-stimulating hormone called lycantropin.”

Max Brooks’ 2003 The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead worked for much the same reason. People who’ve read both books will find it impossible not to draw comparisons between the two, right down to the cute little illustrations in each one. In that context, Duncan and Powers’ book feels derivative—it’s just different enough to be worthwhile, but it owes its very existence to Brooks.

That said, The Werewolf’s Guide is brain candy enough to stand on its own as fun escapism. Duncan and Powers are sophisticated with their werewolf construct, and they explore it with a surprisingly elaborate level of detail. They cover a gamut of topics that ranges from “romance and the modern lycanthrope” to “Of God, the Devil , and lycanthrope faith” to “keeping secret, keeping safe, staying alive.” The book includes interviews with werewolf hunters and with “fur chasers” (humans who have fetish-like obsessions with werewolves).

At 236 pages, the joke maybe gets old after a while, but kudos to Duncan and Powers for thoroughly thinking through their approach. The book is light enough that most readers can probably barrel through it in just a couple sittings, which should be enough to keep the humor fresh.

The Werewolf’s Guide offers plenty to like for lycs and non-lycs alike.

On October 31, 1989, I was teaching my 8th-grade reading class a good and simple lesson.
“In your writing, try to avoid absolutes,” I said. “Don’t use words such as always, never, and impossible. It’s much better to say something is highly improbable.” Then I sat back, smiled, and let the wisdom I had imparted settle upon their impressionable minds.

“But some things are impossible,” said Dan, who hadn’t said anything else all year. I was prepared for this.

“Dan, the Guinness Book of World Records lists a guy who ate a tree! Piece by piece, he ate the whole thing. He also ate a bicycle.”

“Was he French?” asked Dan. “If he was, it doesn’t count. They’ll eat anything.”

“Remind me to talk later about stereotypes,” I said. “The point is, most people would say it’s impossible to eat a tree or a bike, but he did it. The Guinness folks were so impressed, they no longer accept such gastro-adventures for consideration. Nothing is impossible.”

“I don’t agree,” countered Dan. “Was the bike a ten-speed?” Can he eat a tree in one sitting? Did he use salad dressing?”

“Ten-speed?” I asked. “What’s that got to do with it?”

But Dan ignored me. There was a lot of chop in the educational waters that day because he was soon joined by a chorus of agreement, but I didn’t break. I bent until it hurt, but I didn’t break.

“Nothing’s impossible,” I shouted. “Now… shut up and do some grammar!”

That night, we placed a bucket of candy on the front porch, a futile gesture since we were so far in the country no trick-or-treaters ever came by, and the coyotes preferred our garbage. I remember that it was hot that night, this was Tennessee after all, so I turned on the air conditioner. The cool air that rose from the vents brought with it the stench of death.

I checked the mouse traps. Our house was bordered on three sides by a cornfield, and mice would occasionally risk some variety to their diet. Bold they were, for we had three cats, Tabby Hunter, MCKC (multi-colored kitty cat) and the Other Cat. The Other Cat was a giant black tom who appeared one day and wouldn’t leave. He wouldn’t let us pet him, but he kept the skunks away so we gave him food and water. But he never came inside and I hadn’t seen him that week.

The traps were all empty so I took a flashlight and went outside. Nothing was in the yard or beside the road, so I removed the metal door from our cinder block foundation and peered into the darkness under our house. There he was, as far from me as possible, lying on his back with his four feet straight up in the air. The Other Cat had died.

“Poor thing,” said my wife, who had come up behind me silently.

“Yes, poor thing,” I agreed. “How long do you think it will take before he degrades? I mean, before we won’t smell him anymore?”

“What are you talking about?” she said. “You’re going to have to crawl under there and get him.”

“No,” I said. Between the opening and the Other Cat, over a span of 80 feet, was a ghastly Kingdom of Spiders. I could see their nasty webs hanging from the bottom of the floor, some as thick as barge ropes. I also knew that somewhere in there was the loathsome Spider Queen with whom I had waged a lifelong battle. I often greeted her ambassadors with broom and boot. Spiders don’t forget things like that.

“You aren’t going to bring up that silly Spider Queen idea, are you?” asked my wife. She never understood Nature. “Because if you’re afraid, I’ll go get him.”

I let her. She was only four feet into the blackness when the screaming began. I grabbed her ankles and pulled her out.

“Release her, vile fiend!” I screamed, but it wasn’t the Spider Queen. It was a snake skin, caught on my wife’s watch. She has this thing about snakes. You know how girls are.

That was when I had my moment. A man seldom gets the opportunity to find out how brave he is. It was time to face my fear. I was going in after the Other Cat. I was going to be brave, that was settled, but I didn’t want to be foolish, so I girded myself for war.

First, two pairs of pants, three shirts and a sweater. Next, I donned hip waders, a winter coat, my fleece toboggan and elbow-length industrial strength welders gloves. I had a rake in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Welder’s goggles to protect the eyes and I was all set. A spider would need to be huge indeed to get a fang into my flesh. I was ready. I could barely move, but I was ready.

Ten minutes later, I had crawled almost the entire distance. The rake had been an effective weapon against the spiders. I’d taken out one that was about as big as a catcher’s mitt, and the rest had retreated. But I was getting angry, and I had good reason. I was crawling on the bones of my home’s foundation, in the dark on Halloween night, hot, tired, trapped in some horrible Edgar Allan Poe story with a dead black cat that never liked me anyway. I began to curse. When I was close enough, I lifted the rake and it hovered just above the Other Cat’s body, about to drop. What I didn’t realize was that I was directly under the main bathroom of the house. The very instant the rake touched the cat, my wife flushed the toilet that was just above my head.

If there is an Olympic event for scooting backwards on fingers and toes, I want in. I covered 40 feet in less than three seconds. The sound was so loud and near that it took several seconds for me to realize what had happened. I returned to the body, placed my rake over it, and retreated with the Other Cat. The spiders laughed and laughed.

When I was out, I placed The Other Cat in a garbage bag and walked through the back cornfield toward the railroad tracks that ran behind our house. After a quick two-word benediction (“Jesus Christ!”), I swung the garbage bag over the tracks and into the trees beyond them.

As I made the trek back to the house, I was chuckling at how stupid I’d been. Spider Queen? What was I thinking? And then it hit me. A rogue idea that just came from nowhere.

What would I do if something in those trees threw that dead cat back at me?

What a strange thought. It was, of course, ridiculous. It was, let’s face it, impossible. But hadn’t I said, that very day… and I was running, running as hard as I had ever run before. Ears of corn ready for the reaper pummeled me, but I didn’t mind because they were in front. What was behind? What was so very close behind me? I hurtled into the house with such force I tore the screen door off its hinges. My wife lost her grip on a huge Tupperware bowl of pop corn that made a blizzard in our kitchen.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded.

“Something!” I replied, rather pathetically. “I have to lock the door.”

I have tried many times since to understand why I ran. I wasn’t a child, after all, I was a grown man. But that didn’t matter that night. It’s really very simple. It was the dark that scared me. The same dark that hid under my bed when I was a child. The dark that lurked in my parent’s closet and under my grandparents‘ staircase.. The awesome dark that rested between the stars had reached down that Halloween night to tap me on the shoulder just to see if I would still jump.

And I did. And I do.

Now, any normal person could glance at me and see that I was a guy destined to play football. I looked like a football player, talked like one, and ran into things with a violence that suggested a natural linebacker. But I didn’t like football that much. Truth be told, I was just clumsy and always late. Hitting other people was OK, but getting hit by other people hurt. A lot. I was too cerebral for football, so I went to the Babe Ruth Baseball League tryouts for boys aged 13-16, and was drafted by the Elks Lodge, Post 1776.

But there were problems. The fact that I was 16 worked against me. Our coach wanted younger players who he could mold and train in the mysterious ways of the Diamond. This seemed altogether unnatural to me, since in football, the positions went to the biggest and the oldest. I was the second string center behind a guy who was the only player on our high school team who was divorced. But I didn’t complain because he was older and bigger than me and that‘s the way it was.

So sitting on the bench while a tiny, shy 13-year-old played center field made me bristle. I’ll admit I even ran into him a couple of times, accidentally, but he kept bouncing up and apologizing for being in my way. And every time we played, there he stood out in center field, and there I sat on the bench.

I guess I should add that I was a terrible baseball player. I could throw and I could catch, but I couldn’t hit a curve ball or judge a high pop fly’s trajectory. I was fast, but I had trouble rounding the bases, and so I always ended up in right field instead of between first and second. But to me, that didn’t matter. I was big, and that should have been enough.

So it was that on the fourth game of the season, I sat on the bench and watched the game. I had only been put into one game so far, as a pinch runner on third base in the last inning, and I was only there for one pitch. Our first baseman sent a fastball sailing into right field and I waltzed in, scoring the winning run without having to do much more than mosey down the base path. But I was determined to do my part. I knew that if I ever got into a game, I would dazzle the coach with my playmaking ability. I just needed a chance.

That chance came in game four. We were playing the Jay Cees, it was a pitcher’s duel, a 0-0 tie, and we couldn’t get a base runner who was fast enough to get into scoring position from first. So when Randy walked, the coach put me in as a pinch runner. I knew what he wanted, and I was going to do it. I was going to steal second base.

I took my lead. The Jay Cee’s pitcher had a glacial delivery, and their catcher was a guy from Chapel Hill who threw like a girl. This would be easy. The coach was doing something with his hands, I didn’t really know what. Maybe there were bees. The windup. The pitch. I was off.

I had never slid into a base before. I’d seen it a thousand times on TV though, and it looked easy. So when I approached the bag, I threw my feet forward, and hit the ground. But when I stopped sliding, I was still 15 feet from second base, so I got up, ran

some more and slid again. Then I was three feet from the bag. I covered that distance with a furious crawl, but the catcher could have walked the ball to second by then. The second baseman slapped my face with his glove and I was out. My coach was furious.

“Why did you try to steal second?” he demanded. “Our best hitter is up. I didn’t give you the sign to steal.”

“There’s a sign to steal?” I asked.

“Yes, there’s a sign to steal! What do you think this is?” and he did the bizarre hand gestures again.

“I thought you were being bothered by bees,” I replied.

“You don’t know any of the signs,” he screeched. “How am I supposed to let you bat if you don’t know the signs that mean to swing or take a pitch!”

“I have to let you tell me when to swing?” I asked. “But I’m right there. I see the pitch. I know when to swing.”

Alas, I was wrong. The coach knew when it was time for me to swing, and the time was never, since I never got off the bench again. I stuck around for five more games before I turned in my uniform. Baseball was too cerebral for me. It was just as well, since our football team’s first-team center had joined the Marines, so there was an opening on the offensive line that fall.

But I never forgot the main lesson of baseball: look for the signs. Signs are everywhere, and all we have to do is keep our eyes open and we’ll see them. I was explaining all this to my girlfriend, who was looking out her window and yearning for my dad’s car that would take me home. She mumbled something about needing to do her

homework, and then laundry, and then wash her hair, so she called six of my friends to come over and get me out of there. I spent a lot of time at her house, and I can still see her peering out the window. When she dumped me later that summer, I was shocked. I don’t know why it never worked out between us. Maybe I was too cerebral for her, too.

Every Sunday morning we go to brunch in Denver. There are lots of great spots and we sort of rotate between them. Today we were going to see if we could get into the new Snooze location at Colorado & 7th. We’ve tried a couple of times before, but with no luck. See, the way Sunday brunch works most places in Denver is that things don’t start to pack up until 9:30 or 10:00. If you’re there before then the wait won’t be too bad.

Except for Snooze. We keep trying earlier and earlier and the lines keep getting longer and longer. Damned early-rising bastards. So today we got up earlier and arrived by 8:45…to find a 45-minute line ahead of us.

Since we were hungry we agreed that we’d head over to Racine’s and next week we’d get to Snooze by around 6:00 pm Saturday night so we could camp out and maybe beat the rush.

So, as our saga begins, it’s 8:45, I’m hungry and already a tad annoyed.

We hop in the car and head west down 8th toward the Governor’s Park neighborhood, where Racine’s is located. As we pass Cheeseman Park (if you don’t know Denver, hold on – a map is on the way) we notice lots of people in running attire with official numbers. Angela says “looks like a race – I wonder if today is the marathon?”

Can’t be, I say. A couple of the people I see couldn’t drive 26 miles without their hearts exploding. Running it would be out of the question. But there are lots and lots of people, and as we cruise by we see that there is, in fact, some kind of very organized race event under way. Hmmm.

Shortly thereafter traffic begins stacking up. And Angela remembers that she did see something on the news, after all – this is the day of the Denver Marathon, and while we haven’t seen the race map, it looks like we’ve wandered into the thick of things. Wonderful.

At Josephine we’re forced to detour, and I’m thinking no sweat, I’ll just buzz through the neighborhood, get around the traffic, and we’ll be at Racine’s in a couple of minutes.

Woops. I try to head west on 9th but it seems they’ve turned the runners south, so I’m dead-ended. Dammit. All right, fine, I’ll hang a left and work my way down to 7th. Nuh-uh. Streets are closed to the south – can’t get across 8th, and from the intersection we can see that they have the runners heading back east along 7th. What the fuck?

It’s right about now that I’m starting to think about the time my trash can disappeared. There are malevolent and contrary forces in the universe, and it sucks when it’s your turn to entertain them.

Right about now Angela checks her watch and says “you know, by the time we get back to Snooze it will be about 45 minutes since we put our names on the list.” Which is funny, of course. No big deal, she says – it’s a beautiful day, we love driving around Denver and we love this neighborhood. Fine. So we loop around to head back east, the way we came from.

Son. Of. A. Bitch! We can’t go east on 8th, obviously, because it’s one-way to the west, and 9th dead-ends at the park. I’m not going to panic just yet, but I’m getting an uneasy feeling about this whole scene.

Well, hell – I guess we can work our way back to the north, catch 14th east and go the long way around.

But…PIGFUCKERS!! They’re running them down 13th! (I do some calculations in my head, and of course, there’s no way they can get from Cheeseman, heading west, to running south on Logan without closing us off to the north somewhere. I should have realized this by now.)

How in the hell did they do this? You can’t go west, you can’t go east, you can’t go south and you can’t go north, either! I mean, there are only four options, people, and since we somehow or another got into the middle of the damned course, there has to be a way out.

By now I’m beginning to get a little irritated. I roll up to the blocked intersection at 13th, where a cop is manning the barricades. He is sympathetic. Sympathetic, but not helpful. He allows as to how I could maybe swing back around thataway and get outside of the course. Somehow. I remind him (he’s working the damned race – shouldn’t he know this already?) that we’ve tried that already. His next best idea is that we can wait a half-hour or however long until all the runners get past.

As I back slowly away, looking for a place to turn around, I eye the officer and the slow stream of runners. I think about those stories where people plow into crowds. I gun my engine. Few things are less intimidating than gunning a Honda Civic, though. I sigh, soaking in my helplessness.

So, how in the hell did I find myself in the midst of the most effective mousetrap in the entire goddamned history or traffic engineering? The course map (this is the part that’s relevant to our current discussion) illustrates:

Notice the blue arrow bottom right. That’s 8th, the one-way path into the trap. The red X at Race St.? That’s more or less the point of no return. The red dashes are street closings. The purple is the race course. Now imagine that you’re in a car proceeding westbound along 8th and that you pass Race without any warning as to what lies ahead. How do you get out?

That’s right, bitches – YOU DON’T!!!

Let me state here that I have never worked on the logistics for a marathon. I’ve never mapped out a marathon course. I’m sure this is a complex process and I acknowledge, without reservation, that there are probably very few people alive who know less about this subject than I do.

That said, what the hell were these fucking rocket surgeons thinking?! A semi-housebroken monkey could look at this map and realize that, hey, maybe we didn’t think this through all the way. Never mind the fact that lots of people live in the area and may need to, you know, go somewhere. But is it a great idea to funnel lots of traffic into an area where the only means of escape is through a goddamned race course?! If I were designing the course, this is precisely what I’d do if I hated runners, drivers, the residents of Cheeseman Park and anybody else dumbass enough to assume that you can get there from here. The only thing missing was Ashton Kutcher and a camera crew.

The asshats could at least have put a sign along 8th letting us know that we were driving into the sumbitching Bermuda Triangle! (Note: If there was, in fact, such a sign, I apologize for the previous insult. Let me instead offer this: The asshats could at least have not hidden the sign letting us know that we were driving into the sumbitching Bermuda Triangle behind a goddamned tree!

[deep breath]

We eventually gave up, found a parking place and walked the several blocks to Racine’s, where we had a lovely brunch. (I had the breakfast burrito, which I heartily recommend to anyone fortunate enough to make it to the restaurant.) Along the way, we learned that there was, in fact, a way out. If you continued down 8th and sat in the line long enough (I’m guessing 45 minutes, maybe?) they were letting a car or two through at Logan whenever there was a break in the line of runners. In the defense of the race planners, we saw at least two cars escape the trap.

If whoever planned this event ever decides to get out of the marathon logistics business, I hope they go to work designing prisons. Or roach motels. As it stands right now, their gift is being wasted.

I want to keep the health insurance I have—which is no health insurance. I was dropped when I had a heart attack. My insurance company called it a preexisting condition, and they were right. Heart attacks have been around a very long time. The important thing is that I treasure my insurance company’s free market right to maximize profits at all moral and ethical costs. I would willingly die defending that right. And now, finally, I may get that chance.

I try not to worry about my needless impending death. I don’t lose sleep over the pointless suffering between now and then, and I refuse to get down about leaving my wife and children behind without any health care of their own. What I do worry about is the prospect of private insurance juggernauts experiencing a ten to fifteen percent decline in annual gross revenue due to the availability of a public option. Now that’s scary.

I don’t have a doctor. But if I did, I wouldn’t want some bureaucrat coming between me and him. Like Sarah Palin, I am against Obama’s death panels. I prefer Liberty Mutual’s death panels, because at least they’re American. I am not impressed with claims of socialized medicine working in countries like Britain, France, and Canada. It’s far better to die of septic shock in a free country than to receive antibiotics in a single-payer one. Single-payer systems, as we know, just aren’t fair. Why should one person have to pay for everyone else? What if that person runs out of money?

I’ve always relished getting the insurance statement envelope in the mail following a surgical procedure. It makes me fee a little like a nominated actor on Oscar night. I never know if I’m going to be reimbursed 80 percent, 50 percent, or not at all. I firmly believe the suspense has kept me going all these years. But under a single-payer or a public option, let’s face it—the thrill will be gone.

Bleeding heart liberal commie pinko anti-American leftist homosexual traitors contend there are 47 million uninsured people in this country. But the truth is, 46,999,996 of them are illegal immigrants and the other four are my family. Let’s get something straight, though—we don’t want a handout. We have a little thing called pride. I can proudly say I’ve been turned away by some of the biggest names in healthcare, from Aetna to AIG to CIGNA to United Health—a virtual Who’s Who of the insurance business.

I am not in the least offended that members of Congress receive superior healthcare provided entirely by the federal government. I recently spoke to my congressman regarding this issue, and he personally assured me that were I ever elected to the House or the Senate, the exact same health plan would be made available to me.

One day, should I miraculously live that long, I’ll be eligible for Medicare, and the government better keep their grubby hands off it. Back when our country was founded by a few brave men, many of them gave their lives for Medicare. If these same patriots were alive today, they would do what any patriot would do in the face of a government takeover of Medicare—show up at Obama rallies with loaded assault weapons.

Because of government interference in the natural order of things, bloodletting has become a lost art. Castor oil and cod liver oil for treatment of everything from a common cold to multiple bone fractures has become a thing of the past.

Amputations are way down, and that’s a problem because, as everyone knows, a severed limb cannot be reinfected. I am not troubled by life expectancy in the U.S. ranking 35th, a bit behind Bosnia and a hair ahead of Albania . Life expectancy is vastly overrated. Post-mortem relapses are increasingly rare.

I am dead set against government sponsored preventive care. Preventive care not only weakens our natural defenses against disease but also casts our government in the role of parent. My own parents had a different approach to medical concerns. When my right foot hurt, Dad would stomp on my left foot, and vice-versa. Mom said he picked this up while watching old episodes of The Three Stooges, proving once again that we can certainly learn a lot from our forefathers.

The fact is, the misguided outcry for a public option—or any sort of healthcare for that matter—represents a serious threat to intelligent design. Intelligent design is a constitutionally guaranteed right granted by our nation’s founders. Under intelligent design, we evolve into a superior civilization as the strong survive, the weak perish, and the really weak run Blackwater.

Government programs are doomed to failure. Aside from the GI Bill, Social Security, the FDA, the Hoover Dam, the Federal Reserve System, the FAA, the SEC, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the National Guard, and NASA, name one government program that works.

I believe the Earth was created in six days by an all-powerful benevolent God and that on the seventh day He created our current healthcare system in His own image. Tampering with the Lord’s healthcare system is heresy and will surely bring the wrath of nations down on this once great land. When that day comes, we owe it to ourselves to bleed to death and resist the evil temptation to show up at a free clinic.

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Rich Herschlag is the author of Before the Glory: 20 Baseball Heroes Talk About Growing Up and Turning Hard Times Into Home Runs (HCI, 2007). His other books include Lay Low and Don’t Make the Big Mistake (Simon & Schuster, 1997) and The Interceptor (Ballantine, 1998).

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Grover and George Washington plan a surprise:

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Choosing a national bird:

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