Monday, July 12, 2010

A view of Bertha's logic

Premise number One: Hello! Old people take medicine. Just walk up and down the medications aisle in the grocery store. Just read Part D on a Medicare application.
Just watch an old-people show like Lawrence Welk on television and check out the commercials. No, you don't have to watch the whole show. You can click away from the commercials too if you want to, but just check me out. They advertise Boneva, and Centrum (sounds like “century”) and Celebrex on those shows for a reason which is: old people take medicine.

Premise number Two: Old people can't see. Just hang out at the optometrist's like I do, Just watch the old people shows like I do when I finally get my glasses adjusted. They advertise eye surgeries, eyedrops, and eyeglasses. Yes, the models for eyeglasses are all under the age of ten, but don't worry, they are just faking blindness. They also advertise Centrum for Eyes on those shows.

For some reason those advertisers actually think that their audience can see the commercials. Wait, that is why they also blast the sound on the same commercials—to make sure they can be heard if not seen. (For kids it is “seen and not heard.” For old people it is the other way around.)

Premise number Three: Old ladies cook. The generation of people to the left of center on a pedigree chart does not cook. They occasionally make cake from a box, and soup from a can. That is because their eyes are good enough that they can read the instructions. If it were as much trouble for them to read the labels as it is for old people, they wouldn't do it at all.

Conclusion: Don't you worry, those big companies know their markets well enough to sell their products. Notice that the company designer logo is plenty big enough for anyone to read. But once they get you to buy the medicine or the container of food, they are done with you. When it comes to figuring out how to use your Boneva or your cake mix, you are on your own because the industry standards for labels requires the use of microscopic type.

There must be some directive coming from the Consumer Protection Agency that reads like this: “Whenever designing labels that include instructions for use, drug facts, product ingredients, or nutrition information, do not waste container space by using a typeface that is larger than five points. The average consumer is comfortable with a font of that size or smaller, and lightface is sufficient.”

Okay, if they are selling Legos, or X-box games, maybe. Old people don't use those products anyway unless their grandkids force them to, in which case the kids have to be in the same room to show them how or they couldn't make them anyway.

Once one of my grandkids tried to make me play X-box. (He was in the same room.) Maybe it was War Games. I couldn't even maneuver my guy onto the battlefield. I ended up somewhere in a DMZ where there were high cliffs from which I fell and killed myself all by myself.

But if I walk into the kitchen with the intent of cooking something that requires me to read the instructions on the back of the product, all the grandkids will be gone. They have no desire to help me read the back of a bottle of aspirin either. They think that if I am careless enough to get sick that I will just have to take my medicine.

Well, I have news for the kids. It takes more brains to make cake when you can't read the recipe than it does to play X-box when you can see the controller buttons.

And I have advice for those who market medications and foods that have to be prepared. Discrimination against old people is punishable by law isn't it? I might have read that somewhere, but then the type was awfully small.

It was a grand Fourth of July

How often does the Fourth of July come on a Sunday? Every six years? You may have noticed that the fact that the Fourth was in the middle of the holiday weekend made it possible for a body to celebrate it more than once.

First let me say that at least half of my family members think that Independence Day is the best holiday of the year. They love fireworks, fly-bys, and parades. They love barbecues, car shows and warm weather. And they love this country, so they were happy to celebrate all they could. Imagine that.

This year, the celebrations were all over the weekend. Some towns and cities had their fireworks on Friday, some on Saturday and some on Sunday. It was the same with parades and rodeos and all the rest of it.

By traveling between a couple of different cities and a few other destinations, one of our family members saw fireworks twice, took in a couple of barbecues and a roast beef dinner, golfed, shopped, went fishing, saw a car show, and caught a couple of parades. He wasn't quite fast enough to see the fly-by more than once though.
We all had some good times—some laughs, some proud moments, lots of oohs and aahs, good food, tired kids and family fun.

The city where I spent my weekend doesn't have a traditional parade. Instead they have a huge car show; and after it is over, the cars line up and they all cruise up and down Main Street for as long as they want to. They rev their engines, squeal their tires, honk their horns, and show off their cars in the sense of doing a lot more than just parking them at the fairgrounds.

Everyone else lines the streets and cheers and waves and picks their favorites. (What is more American than a Chevy or a Ford?)

Some of the vehicles are still “peeling out” on the city streets two days later. On Monday afternoon, we were visiting and enjoying the weather outside in the backyard when someone who was still celebrating the car show staged a five-second “burn-out” on the street out front. Even after two days of hearing rumbling engines and screeching tires, we all looked toward the street.

We couldn't see the car from where we were standing, but I pictured a red Pontiac GTX with yellow flames and wide mag wheels. Immediately after the screeching stopped, my ten-year-old grandson came flying around the corner of the house on his foot-powered scooter announcing loudly, “That wasn't me.”

On a more serious note, I have been reading some commentary about the genius of the Declaration of Independence and the incomparable foresight of the men who wrote it, as well as the courage of those who adopted it and signed it. The Constitution of the United States rests in the same category. There has probably been nothing to compare with it in all of history.

What I have concluded is that it was no accident that that many great minds were gathered together in one place and in one time—men of great mental capacity who also had the will, the ability, the tenacity and the courage to craft such a framework for governing a people.

And it doesn't seem as if there has been such a concentration of great minds anywhere in the world since, at least not in government. In some arenas there is just no point in trying to reinvent the wheel. The best legislators are probably those who are smart enough to realize “that wasn't me” and then get over it.

The Basin mosquito surge

Luckily I am one of those people who is usually left unbitten by mosquitoes, so I may be out of line in asking; but there seems to be an over-abundance of them this year, doesn't there?

I have heard an inordinate number of complaints about them, seen an increase of puffy red welts on arms, legs and faces, and noticed that the repellent shelf in the drug store was nearly empty. I know, Sherlock Holmes and all that.

Being receptionist at the mosquito abatement office this week has probably been a challenge. You know we expect to have all of our problems solved and solved quickly in this day and age. Not only that, we expect a government agency to solve them too.

However, I don't know too many people who have a real solution for controlling those pesky (gross understatement) insects. I can't think of any overstatements since mosquitoes are at the top of the dangerous-animal chart and seeing as how they cause, (or is it spread?) deadly diseases. Deadly as in dead.


It's like plugging the hole in the Gulf. No one knows how to do it, and for sure things have been tried.

Repellent isn't much of a solution. Wearing extra clothing doesn't help much if a mosquito really wants to bite you. Citronella candles, Skin So Soft, and eating bananas just makes them more determined. As for mosquito netting, I have never seen any to buy, but I wouldn't want to show up at a barbecue wearing it.

There are instructions for a mosquito trap on line, but I am sure that for every one you trap there are fifty more waiting to take its place. It's not like they have staked out their own backyards and once you clear that area you are safe. They just fly around in a random pattern (nonspecific searching behavior) until they find someone to bite.

There are breakthroughs on the mosquito front though, Apparently what it is that makes the mosquito abort the random pattern and hone in on a certain target is the presence of that much-maligned, of late, carbon dioxide gas.

The carbon dioxide that is exhaled during the normal life processes of a human being and the animals is what attracts the female mosquito who is looking for a shot of blood which will develop the eggs she is getting ready to lay. The males are benign and only eat nectar and plant juices.

The mosquito isn't fussy about which kind of blood she gets. Animal blood is as good as human blood, but a lot of animals are protected by a coat of hair which is too dense for the mosquito's “stinger” to penetrate. Most humans aren't that well protected.

Mr. B. is one of those people who is especially attractive to mosquitoes. He does have a lot of hair on his arms, enough to protect them even though they are usually exposed at this time of year. The hair doesn't extend to his elbows or his knuckles though, which explains the red, raised, dot-matrix pattern on those two parts of his anatomy. He's learning to cover up better though.

People in other areas of the country complain about their mosquitoes, asserting that they are getting bigger and louder every year. Mr. B. complains that this year's mosquitoes are smaller and that he can't hear them coming. That may have something to do with his advancing age, but I might have noticed the same thing.

Birthdays—everybody has one

Perhaps I have already written on the subject that I am going to write about. I'm not sure. If I have and can't remember, I can be fairly sure that you can't either.
There are only so many things that I am qualified or unqualified to write about anyway. Maybe this is one of them.

One of life's greatest mysteries to me, right up there with how do bumblebees fly and where are all the lost socks, is this: why do we make so much fuss over birthdays?

First of all, the individual had nothing to do with getting a birthday. He didn't earn it, buy it, rent it, or study for it. He does nothing and he gets a party. He can't even remember the day he got it. Perhaps it all started with the parents having a party to celebrate a birth. Now they did something to earn a party. Maybe it was so much fun that they kept it up and pretty soon the honor transferred to the birthdayee.

Secondly, everybody has a birthday. We don't usually celebrate or take note of something so common as to be had by everyone. It's like having a foot. Do we celebrate having a foot? No everybody has one or two.
“Ha,” you say, “look at Joe. He lost his foot in the war.” Okay, Joe is different. He doesn't have a foot. Even then he doesn't call for a party—never mind that he most definitely did earn it.

But where's the distinction in having a birthday?

A retirement party I can understand. You worked for 35 years to earn it.
I can live with a housewarming party. You spent megabucks on that celebration.
A funeral I can handle. You probably got gray hair and wrinkles producing relatives to attend it.

A graduation party you suffered and studied hard for.
But you do nothing and you get a birthday party. And people bring presents. Sometimes they sing to you or put your picture in the newspaper.

Find me a guy who doesn't have a birthday, and I will throw him a party. I will send gifts. I will invite the neighbors.

Well, wait a minute. I just happened to remember that some people are shorted in the birthday department. Like my son, for instance. He is like Joe. Well, he has a foot, but he only has a birthday every four years. Now that is a distinction.

I think we may have thrown him a party every year that he didn't have a birthday. On the leap years we might have had a little celebration too. As for the future, we'll see about next leap year when it gets here.

In the meantime, anybody who wants to forget my birthday is perfectly welcome. I keep trying to forget it myself.

Political correctness is a fairy tale

I once read a book of politically correct fairy tales.

Actually I just now found a site that sells the volume on line. The author is James Finn Garner and the title of the book is Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. I know I have the right one because I remember the cover, however I don't remember all of the stories. If I am borrowing from Mr. Garner, I hereby give him credit.

I do think he updated Little Red Riding Hood, being careful not to call the wolf “bad” or any other derogatory names even though it intended to eat a little girl who was clearly on a humanitarian mission. I believe he decided further that he couldn't even call the animal “wolf” as that word has meanings other than that of a big gray carnivorous animal that lives in the forest.

I think he upgraded The Three Little Pigs also, being careful not to cast aspersions on their size or their eating habits.

The Three Bears was probably one of the stories Mr. Garner retold, but Goldilocks already had herself firmly planted in her politically correct feminist role, not being afraid to fight against the establishment for what she thought she deserved.

Mr. Garner's goal in retelling the stories seems to have been to point out that we, whoever we is (and I hope I don't qualify), have gone a bit overboard in our quest to be sensitive above all else—even forsaking clarity in the process. Perhaps that is why the legislation coming out of Washington lately is incomprehensible and over-inflated, as is most of the rhetoric also.

To illustrate my point, consider this example: The Chronologically Advanced Female Person Who Lived in an Unlikely Dwelling for the Extremely Monetarily Challenged. One has to think much harder to decipher the intended meanings, and really The Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe is a lot fewer words. I don't even want to think about politically cleaning up the part about she had so many children she didn't know what to do, or what she gave them for supper, not to mention the spankings.

The Duckling That Was Judged on Its Physical Appearance Instead of its Personal Merits is another case in point. Perhaps you can amuse yourself with your own corrected versions of well-known tales. Maybe try fixing Rapunzel.

I would like to point out that no matter what an object is called, it still retains its latent characteristics. Whether you call a dwarf a “dwarf” or a “little person,” he remains the same in height, weight and person. Changing his name does not change him and therefore the label he is given sooner or later acquires the same meaning as the original object and is again no kinder or fairer that the original label. It is usually longer, fuzzier and harder to remember though.

Whether you label someone “lazy” or “motivationally challenged,” it means the same thing, so why not stick with something that is shorter to type?

I wish to point out also, that no matter how many ways you don't keep score at a soccer game, you will have to change the game if there are to be no losers. Maybe everyone could show up at the field (which could be much smaller) with their own ball and then just kick it all the way home. There would be no winners and no losers. There would be no goalies and no forwards. Everyone would feel good, and just think of the fun everyone would have.

There is one bedtime story that I don't remember our author rewriting. Perhaps the reason is that The Grasshopper and the Ants already is flush with liberal correctness and doesn't need much unimprovement.

The day the microwave died

There are a couple of things without which I cannot function. One of them is the microwave oven.

Garrison Keillor tells about a Lake Wobegone housewife who kept her microwave oven in the carton under the bed. (She must have had on old-fashioned four-poster into which she climbed with a step stool after putting on her bed jacket and nightcap at sundown.)

My mother-in-law kept hers in the carton in the back room on top of the dryer/
I have had a hard time adjusting to some kinds of new technology, like texting and Facebooking, but when the microwave oven appeared in stores, I was one of the first in line. Microwave energy and I are totally compatible. I have warmed everything from playdough to ear drops in the microwave. Nothing that was still alive though.

We would have died of hypothermia last winter without those rice bags and hot drinks we warmed in the MO.

I was forced to try out deprivation once when our microwave oven died of overuse. Thirty times a day I opened the broken microwave's door, put something inside, and closed it. Not until I tried to set the time and temperature did I remember that this dead oven could not cook no matter how much I believed in resurrection.

After removing the item which would still be in one of several stages of cold, I had to go through a complex readjustment process:

“Okay, this is stupid. How many times am I going to put food in this broken microwave before I finally remember not to?”

After that reprimand, I still had to try to think of some alternate method to thaw, heat or cook the meal.

“Okay, dinner is going to be a little late today.” (Anything after 9:30 p.m. is considered late.)

I had to call up mental pictures of my mother or grandmother cooking certain dishes before I could go on with dinner.

“Now would grandmother have put this in the oven, in a pot on the stove, eaten it raw or just gone out for dinner?”

“Scratch that last option. They never went out for dinner…oh yes, I remember, they ate bread-and-milk on nights like this.”

“Well, scratch that too. No one under the age of 33 has ever heard of bread-and-milk. You could get reported for child abuse.”

Well, I turned into a mediocre cook overnight. There aren't many foods that you can cook on a range when they are frozen solid. And the rest of them take some planning ahead.

I think we mostly ate cold cereal during the three days that it took us to find, buy and set up the new microwave. (We didn't waste too much time deliberating.)
If you think that I was upset at the loss of our main method of cooking, you should have seen the six-year-old when he realized that the microwave could do nothing more than act as a temporary storage unit.

He sank down to the floor and began to cry.

“Now we can't make hot chocolate”

I was trying to think. “Now how did grandmother do that?”

What isn't getting spread around?

Well, I have figured out why there are 7,000 political writers/bloggers out there waxing daily on every imaginable issue or non-issue. If there isn’t an issue, they will manufacture one. All they have to do is hear about some event, pertinent or not, decide which side of it they want to come down on and start writing. Some political issues are good for six or eight articles or more. Some of them provide never-ending “fodder.”

I don’t seem to have that luxury—without entering the political arena, that is. I run out of themes for columns. Weekly I have to dig so deep to think of a subject that I sometimes end up trapped in a hole or, just as bad, wearing a subject out. However I don’t know why I should worry much about that given the examples that are out there in the media.

Oh-oh, you are thinking, Bertha is going to add her two-cent’s worth to the pile of material written about the Gulf oil spill, or the BP Oil Leak as it has come to be called. What little I have to say about that comes from a Uintah Basin perspective which may not have been addressed yet.

If that well had been drilled on land—say somewhere out south of Ouray—everyone would be hoping mightily for an oil leak. And if there were one, they would just drive up the trucks, load them up and drive them off again. They wouldn’t need a giant concrete bell, panty hose, or a series of pipes. Any amount of oil spilling on dry land really is a non-issue since without the addition of a large body of water to the equation, there isn’t a medium capable of spreading that oil around for miles and miles (as in south of Ouray).

The same thing cannot be said for all of the “information” and “opinion” circulating about it though. It gets a little oily in that medium, too.

Sometimes there is an issue that even I, agreeable Bertha, cannot resist commenting on. Another one of those issues would be one aspect of the Arizona Emigration Law fracas.

First, if Arizonans need to protect their borders and no one else is going to, they should be allowed to try some things, Second, I thought we were the United States, which should mean that we hang together when things are tough.

I think the best comeback on any level or in any arena that I have evcr heard is the one that the State of Arizona had for the city of Los Angeles in response to its boycott against them. It was just a pointed reminder in the form of a letter to the city council reminding them about the large quantities of electric power that their state provides to Los Angeles in the amount of 25% of their total usage. I also seem to remember that that city is particularly susceptible to rolling brownouts, grayouts or some color of outage.

In addition, if if I am not mistaken, a huge amount of water passes through Arizona on its way to somewhere in southern California as well.

Whether or not Arizona could in actuality turn off the lights, doesn’t matter a whole lot right now But it does matter that someone points out that the two states are a bit codependent and that Los Angeles might not want to be too quick to forget that.

Well, if by now you think that Bertha doesn’t know what she is talking about or she has fallen into a deep hole, you may be right; but you can be sure that she is in company with a whole lot of other writers/bloggers just like her.

Waiting for spring—oh well

You may have noticed that Bertha has shown remarkable restraint this “spring” by avoiding all mention of the weather. Weather is usually a safe subject anyway, at least conversationally, but I am not sure that anyone can talk or write about the weather this spring without getting a little hot under the collar, which is a good thing for the neck.

Well, I stood it as long as I could. Last weekend made me give it up. I am now ready to launch an attack upon the weather, which is sure to do some good.

Yes, I know we need “the moisture.” It isn't the moisture that I mind. Moisture is just water. It's when it presents itself in the form of snow, ice or hail that I get cross. And actually I don't have a problem with snow or ice either if it shows up during winter—you know, that three-month period between the middle of November and the middle of February.

One of the myths that is taught and perpetuated in schools and elsewhere is that there are four seasons of equal length I and that they march rhythmically on through the year without missing a beat. There are graphics around, on calendars and on the web and such, that romanticize each of the four seasons. Snowflakes for winter, colored leaves for fall, beach umbrellas for summer and flowers for spring, as if one for each season could organize things.

But we are getting swindled. We now see green grass and tulips, but they have snow on them. I don't have to tell you that snow is associated with freezing temperatures. Again, that would be okay in “winter” when people actually have their winter clothes and boots in the front of their closets and they prepare for bouts of cold weather. It just isn't any fun at soccer games, campouts and family reunions.

Up until now, I have been able to deal with the cold and over-extended winter weather because I sm an “oh, well,” kind of person. As in “oh well, at least I am not getting sunburned today.” I have been hard-pressed to find enough “oh wells” to improve my attitude this time. In case you want to know what I have been telling myself, and in hopes that it might help someone else cope with wind and cold, I have herewith written the Bertha Butterbean Oh-Well List for Long Winters. Oh well…

1.I look better in winter clothes.

2.The bugs are all gone somewhere else. So are the snakes and lizards.

3. No one has to wonder whether the lawnmower will start.

4. Basketball supplants baseball.

5. Turning on the air conditioner is out of the question.

6. Politicians give the global warming issue a rest.

7.I feel good about owning an SUV.

8.I can make soup for dinner every night.

9.Spring is sure to come sometime.

I thought I could come up with a traditional list of ten “oh wells.” I'm sorry, but I just couldn't finish it. To tell the truth, I was reaching for the last two or three.

You may also have noticed that until number 6. above, I refrained from making any sort of reference to global warming. Personally I was sad to see its demise and am looking forward to its retuurn, provided that can happen without it becoming a political controversy.

I have my own definition of climate change. The seasons have shifted around to later in the calendar year. Winter starts later and ends later than it used to. Someday we may have to use little snowflake graphics to denote spring. Oh well…
Totally not by the way, I read this joke online the other day:

First cave man to second cave man: "I don't care what you say. We never had such unusual weather before they started using bows and arrows."

I don't know how long this joke has been around, but to me it sounds like commentary on the climate-change issue.

Camping and the gender gap

From time to time the topics of Bertha's articles have had something to do with the gender gap—the differences between the sexes—especially in terms of their approach to various activities and problem solving.

I remember writing about the differences in the way men and women orient themselves on this planet. Most men use north, south, east and west. Most women use landmarks.
Then there is the issue of the thermostat. According to my extensive polling data, men turn it down. Women turn it up. Of course, traditional clothing styles contribute to gender temperature disparity. At certain events, men are required to wear suits, some of them consisting of three pieces layered over a shirt or two. Those are the same events at which women wear strapless, sleeveless, backless, and other abbreviated clothing. What is up with that?

Well, those issues are weak when it comes to this one: how did girls and guys get to be so far apart on the proper way of getting in touch with nature? As we make plans for yet another girls' camp experience, I find myself wondering about that once more.
As you know, guys tend not to plan their outdoor experiences. They throw some food and gear into the truck and head for the great outdoors where they seem to feel comfortable wearing wet shoes and sleeping with bears.

Girls, on the other hand, bring along everything required to make the experience not only comfortable but also healthy, enlightening, civilized, educational, worthwhile and memorable. So they need (minimum) the correct food and equipment to cook it, field books, showers, journals, cameras, three changes of clothes per day, shoes to complement all of the above outfits, toilet paper, soap, towels, electronic devices such as cell phones and hair dryers, and table centerpieces.

Once when I conscripted my 18-year-old son into bringing his pickup truck to carry a load of gear home from girls camp, his patient nature was taxed when he had to help me carry many loads of stuff from the campsite to his truck. Even I, a girl, was embarrassed.

“What do girls do with all of this stuff?” he grumbled. I had a hard time explaining it myself.

However, only a girl would leave her hiking boots home and go on a five-mile trail hike in strappy sandals. And only a girl would bring the scallions and leave the matches home.

Camping has been described as something we all did before we discovered houses. And then there are girls like my sister who see absolutely no point in regression, individually or collectively, which attitude may explain the need for girls to make the outdoor experience as much like being at home as possible.

It was probably women tired of camping who invented houses. Then men feeling the need to go far and wide in search of game invented tents, and camping became a recreational sport rather than a way of living. Then someone remembered that the wheel had been invented and put those on little houses and almost everyone was happier.

But when youth groups go camping, they don't go in camp trailers. So we're back to square one. Girls just need more in the out-of-doors to make them happy than boys do.
This little story illustrates my point about the gender gap:

My outdoor-enthusiast son went through the process of bringing three offspring into the world without getting a son of his own. (I know, there is a bit of a gender gap in that whole process as well.) After waiting for about eight years to get a son to take into the wilderness with him, he gave up and invited his oldest daughter.
“Hey Sis. let's you and I go camping and fishing this weekend.”

She had an immediate response.
“Why?”

Kids on the move

Sometimes I have to reach way back into the past to come up with a topic for a Butterbean article. Our days are usually a lot calmer than they used to be. Writing about everyday life now could potentially put anyone to sleep.
So this story comes from several years back when I had all sorts of kids at home, and life was anything but calm:

"Last night my eight-year-old son had the nerve to tell me to quit wiggling. I was sitting quietly enough on the couch listening to him read a story, only it was a bad story so I was trying to get relief by watching a worse television commercial. Hence the slight rhythmic jiggling of my foot.

But my son didn't say, “Will you please stop wiggling?” Instead he took the oblique approach.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

This impertinence from the kid who is directly related to Tigger. He has springs in his feet, He swims in his sleep. He jumps hurdles at church.

For the past eight years he has been hopping, running, squirming, kicking, dancing, skipping, double-timing through my life, and he has the nerve to fault a little jiggling of my foot?

I suppose the average family has a blanket rule for conduct indoors. Something like “no running in the house” probably covers most of the eventualities. But that just won't cut it in the Butterbean family. Not inclusive enough, or I guess the right word be “exclusive,”

So here is the list of rules for behavior regulating motion in the Butterbean household: (They do kind of date us, but you only have to take a look at us and we are automatically dated anyway.

1. No break-dancing in the kitchen.

2. No sporting events in the house. (Covers sprinting, hurdling, high-jumping, long-jumping, pole-vaulting and throwing anything. Also covers dribbling, slam-dunking, sliding, serving, spiking, etc.
)
3. No Michael Jordan or Greg Loughannes impressions.

4. No karate.

5. No super friends impersonations. (Covers Spiderman, Aquaman, Superman, Batman, Tarzan and Geraldo.)

6. No sugar.

7. I reserve the right to enact new rules without prior notice and upon the discovery of hitherto unknown-or-thought-of anti-inertia forces.
At one time I advised this kid that his body would be less abused if he didn't run everywhere he went. I meant to imply that walking into door jambs is safer than running into them. He thought about that for a few seconds and then replied, “But Mom, running is my main thing.”

Just for your peace of mind, I didn't let the kid get away with checking on my bathroom habits. I invoked my right to administer punishment without prior warning. He had to run around the house twenty times. That would be the outside of the house.
He loved every minute of it. Oh well.

Looking back now, I am wondering how Running Boy and I ever happened to be sitting on the couch reading a book in the first place. I must have had more backbone and determination than I thought I did.

Looking back now, I am wondering how Running Boy and I ever happened to be sitting on the couch reading a book in the first place. I must have had more backbone and determination than I thought I did.

I can't park here?

You will probably never believe that I am old enough to have a grandson in college. Okay, maybe you can. But the thing is he doesn't drive, so his parents have to take him to and from his classes. That is usually okay. It isn't far away, and he can arrange his schedule with classes one after the other so that driving isn't usually a hardship.

At least that is the case when his parents are dropping him off. They just drive up to the area in question and let him out the door. Picking him up is a different story, however, because they might have to park and wait for him to emerge from whichever building he is in.

This is a long-established university which means that when it was built years ago, there was no need for multiple parking spaces. I don't know whether there were any cars back then. Students probably lived on campus and could walk to all their classes.

That is no longer the case. You probably have heard more than one campus-parking horror story. Their main theme of them is that there isn't any—campus parking that is.

So the other night, my grandson was driven up to the campus by a friend, and his parents didn't know exactly where to meet him to pick him up. To make matters worse, the power was out and dad's cell phone was down.

Consequently, both dad and mom were at the college in separate cars trying to find and pick up their student without out the aid of phones or street lighting. It was the week before finals and the engineering building was full of students completing semester projects. Every one of those students had brought a car on campus, and every parking space was full. Unbeknownst to each other, both parents are circling the building trying to find a place to park so they can retrieve their son.

While my son-in-law was still circling in the Pontiac, in desperation my daughter drove her SUV onto the sidewalk. You have heard of speed traps? This was a parking trap. When there are absolutely no places to park, the parking patrol comes out. So the minute she stopped her car, a campus policeman drove up behind her and parked his vehicle in a red zone.

He got out of his patrol car and approached my daughter.

“Do you know that you are parked on the sidewalk?”

Do you know how many different and equally damaging replies there could be to that question?

Do you know how tempting it would be to utter one of them? My daughter is a comic and she had to pinch her lips to keep from giving voice to one of these:
“Oh, was that the curb I just ran over?”
“Well, I did notice that I wasn't in line with the other cars, but it is kind of dark out here.”

“Do you know you are parked in a red zone?”

After it was established that she knew she was parked on the sidewalk, the officer had another question for her.

“Why are you parked on the sidewalk?

Again, do you know how tempting it would be to give a smart-aleck answer such as:

“Do you really want me to answer that question?”

“I couldn't help it, my car is one of those that parallel parks itself and it insisted on this spot.”

“ I didn't have a quarter for the parking meter—oh wait, there aren't any parking meters without cars next to them within three blocks.”

Meanwhile her husband, on his next drive-by, noticed that she had been pulled over, so to speak. He quickly parked in a handicapped space and came running over to rescue his wife. When he asked what the problem was, he was greeted with, “Do you know that you are parked in a handicapped zone?” Presumably the officer noticed that my son-in-law was pretty fast on his feet and didn't seem to be handicapped, at least physically.

He answered the officer's question in a direct and respectful manner. “Yes, I do. I was just checking on my wife.”

“You need to move that car immediately, or I will give both of you a ticket.”
Reasoning that one ticket was better than two, he ran back to his car and drove away before the officer had time to open his citation book.

My daughter did try to explain her situation, but she doubted whether the policeman believed any of it. After all, she is pretty sure that she doesn't look old enough to have a son in college.

Watching kids' soccer is winning

In the spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of soccer. The balls come out of the closet and the kids, boys and girls, start to kick them around; they bring home the notes for soccer sign-up and before you know it, the soccer moms and their families are huddled up in the cold and wind watching kids in shorts running around trying to keep warm. Of course the parents are only able to sit and shiver helplessly.

That is just part of the fun of soccer. When weather isn't a deterrent, it can be quite entertaining. I will hereby recount a few of the more amusing incidents I have seen and heard of lately.

The story of this last week was about the game where one of the 8-year-old teams was short a few players and the other team had more than they needed when it came time to play. So the coaches put their heads together and evened things out by sending a couple of the players from the red team onto the blue team so everyone could have fun. The blue team must have been missing their goalie that morning because they put a transplant player into the goal.

It took three kicks on goal before anyone realized that the goalie didn't make a move when there was a goal kick. And it took a few more plays before anyone older than ten realized why. Sometimes the kids are smarter than the adults who just might be a few sides short of a pentagram, that is on any given day.

The week before that my grandson had the dubious honor of playing goalie in his game. He took one for the team when he fearlessly blocked a short goal kick with his face. Well, actually he didn't have time to get out of the way. His injuries included a looser tooth, a bloody nose, and a puffy face.

It turned out to be all for the good though since the loose tooth was one that had been hanging in that mouth too long anyway. Later that evening our movie, Sherlock Holmes, was interrupted in the middle of the “London Bridge” scene in order for us to hear a dramatic announcement.

The kid comes running into the room yelling excitedly, “pause the movie, pause the movie.”

“No, it's almost over.”

“But this is important.” He is now jumping up and down and waving his arms more energetically than he ever did in the soccer goal. We paused the movie.
“What is it?”

“I pulled my tooth.” The benefits of soccer.
Then there is the story of the goalie who caught a goal kick and duly trotted out to the front of the goal box. She faced the field and quickly dropkicked the ball. It was a pretty good kick if you discount the direction it took. It arched neatly up and over her head and rolled straight into her own goal behind her.
Finally, my daughter told me about a game which was refereed by young teenagers, two boys and a girl. One of the player's fathers thought he could make a difference in the score of the game, which wasn't scored anyway, by bleep-bleeping the referees and the other team's players.

The obnoxious father had been warned to clean up his language and be quiet, but he continued to blaspheme the name of referees everywhere. Finally the girl walked over to the mouthy dad and told him he had to leave. He refused and got a little louder. The two boy referees decided she might need a little help and came along to back her up.

“If you do not leave, I will call this game.”

“Yeah. What she said,” piped up the boys.

The father left. He didn't just walk away however. He ambled from his position in one corner of the field, across it to the opposite corner, before he was finally gone. The game continued peacefully for about two minutes until Soccer Man returned with his mother, who must have been the one who taught him to talk, and his wife. Three against three. So the ruckus escalated.

Miss Referee had put up with enough. She strode over to the three and told them she was going to call the game. The grandmother in turn called her a name, which is not fit to print, and said that furthermore she couldn't talk to her like that.
So, game over. The two teams cheered each other, and everyone went home; and that is where some people should stay.

Bertha gets her feet wet

It seems that I made a little ripple in the Facebook pond last weekend when I surprised my kids, who are now my friends, by setting up an account. They thought I would never take the plunge. I wasn't holding out because I had any issues, moral or otherwise, with Facebooking. It was just that I didn't see the point. Anything I wanted to say to someone could be typed into an email, and the recipient could then be called on the phone and told to read his/her email.

Signing up was a pretty slick process. Only took a couple of minutes and cost nothing other than what I send to my internet provider monthly plus the cost of a computer and a modem, a monitor, keyboard, mouse, camera, etc. etc. So nearly free; but since I am paying or have paid for all that stuff anyway, I reasoned that I didn't have much to lose.

I have never heard of it happening, but I suppose I could always get myself off Facebook pretty quickly also. However, I wouldn't recommend even five minutes of it for anyone in the government witness program.

After the quick initial setup , I found a perfectly nondescript boring picture of myself which I had to crop out of a group shot using a fairly cheap program—Photoshop, which I also did have anyway.

In the time it took me to do that, I had 41 new friends with messages from two of them which was amazing considering it was 11 p.m., Mountain Standard Time, and 1 a.m. where one of them originated.

They both said that they didn't think I would ever do it, and that they just about fell off their office furniture when they saw me on Facebook. If I were still waffling at that point, I gave it up when message number two informed me that if I had any doubts, I could let them go because being on Facebook was the best way to check up on my kids. It could be true. For the duration that I am “on” Facebook, my kids are my friends.

Well, to tell the truth, there actually was one small issue that kept me from getting my feet wet sooner. I didn't want to set any records for “least amount of friends on Facebook” or anything. My daughter had 431 friends as of Friday, and that is quite a bit of pressure there. However I have a big family and I could probably twist some arms if it got too embarrassing. But when I found I could collect 41 friends in fifteen minutes, I began to rest easier and enjoy the experience. Right now I have friends that I have never even heard of.

Wait, I do remember stories about people being defriended, hidden or blocked. I think that my other daughter was friends with someone for exactly two hours and four minutes when she was defriended. That is another record I might have to worry about setting.

So, I mentioned that my photo was unoriginal. I have some pressure in that area, too. One daughter has a cute cartoon for her profile picture and another one uses a photo of her laying on the pavement inside of one of those outlines that crime investigators paint around dead bodies. She was in New York City at the time. By the way, have I mentioned any sons yet? No? I didn't think so.

So the gauntlet has been thrown in the photo department. I do have an old photo of me on top of the Middle Teton. Yes, it's real. I already said it was old. Hey, some people put their baby pictures on there don't they? I can't think of anything else remarkable that I have photos of—well actually that I don't have photos of either, for that matter. Lately I have been more apt to stay out of photos when I can.

So when I get my wall page spiffed up and get my friends lined up, I will be all set. I will be all set to…to do what, I'm not sure. This is where “I don't get the point” comes in. If I post my status a few times, people will begin to understand why I went so long without Facebook. If I post too many photos of me in a rocking chair, they will know for sure.

And, I can only check up on my kids so many times in one day.

The return of, ahem, Frankenstein

I hate to admit it to the younger readers in my audience, if I have any, but I have lived long enough to witness the rise and fall of more than a few different items from cultural grace—some of them more than once.

One example that comes to mind is bell-bottom pants. Lest any generation try to take too much credit for them, I believe they were first worn by navy sailors. Which navy and how long ago, I couldn't say, but they did not just appear on the scene in the Sixties because Pierre Cardin had a light bulb moment.

It was the counter-culture Hippies who wore them first. First after the sailors, that is. They sometimes made their own by inserting triangles of colorful fabrics into the outside seams of jeans below the knees. So their pedigree (the bell bottoms') is a tiny bit tainted anyway. Don't worry. I wore them, because they soon made their way into mainstream fashion.

Before they left that scene, though, they had morphed into polyester bells, and then into the polyester leisure suit. Since polyester could be and was made in any wild color or pattern imaginable, it caught on in a hurry in that nonconformist
atmosphere. Too big a hurry. And it was cheap. Too cheap. All of that accounts for the sleazy connotation that goes along with polyester itself. I wore it too. It was a great invention—you didn't have to iron it. But by the late 70's only used car salesmen and great-grannies wore polyester anything.

The contemporary trend of “how low can you go,” low-riding pants may seem like a recent phenomena, but they are nothing more than over-the-top (yeah right) versions of the hip-hugger bell-bottom pants that were popular in the 60's and 70's.

And I was supposed to be excited about their return? And the polyester, too? Not only was the style stale for anyone over fifty, but I looked much better in it the first time around.

Colors schemes in dress and decoration are also wicked in their ability to date an outfit or a home. One that has come and gone is the mauve and gray color combo of the 80's. If there was ever any color combo that dated a living room, it is that one.

I am so glad that we didn't build a house in the 80's because I would have done that then, and had I done so, unfortunately I would still probably have mauve carpet today. I have noticed that it is making a comeback in some venues. Even so, I won't be getting mauve carpet. Everyone who has already lived through the 80's won't be that impressed.

I am not a fashion guru; I know that. Some of the fashions I see I don't even have a name for, and a few of the reruns weren't gone long enough for me to notice. But that makes them really old by now, doesn't it?

Lately, at least, designers have had the grace to put the word “retro” in their narrative somewhere instead of trying to take credit for a rerun.

My kids wonder why I don't get very excited about this or that fashion, or color, or new idea while they act like they invented the latest thing themselves. “I was the first one in Utah to have them; I know it.” (My daughter who lived in the “granola years” actually said that about her first pair of Birkenstocks.)

Whatever. That would be me. I had them the first time they came around, not the second or third. Only they were Dr. Scholl's exercise sandals.