Author Archives: Ben Nelson

What Are Friends For?

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It’s good to have close friends; friends who you can swap tall tales with, who accept you for who you are, despite my… I mean your, little quirks. But, apparently, everyone has his or her limit.

About 15 years ago I was telling some buddies of mine about the local Indian mounds that as kids, my brother and I used to explore. One in particular was right off of Terry Street near my parent’s home that they had built, just before Interstate 75 slashed through their property. A fill pit for I-75 was dug in the area and I had always thought that the mounds were destroyed in the process. Or were they?

My friends were now anxious to help me solve this “mystery”, so we grabbed our shovels and headed east of town. Immediately, we found a large 5-foot high mound just off the road. It was covered with a thick layer of palmettos and large pine trees and was obviously ancient and man-made. We each picked a spot and in the scorching July sun… we began to dig.

An hour later we were still hacking through palmetto roots when my father pulled up in his truck. He stopped and watched us for a few minutes and then finally said “What are you doin’?” I stopped digging and said, “We found that Indian mound we used to dig around in!” My dad sat in his truck, with the AC running, watching with interest. Thirty minutes later, as we dug deeper, my dad looked at his watch and said, “I’m going to get some soup!”

An hour later I was standing up to my neck in a huge hole, shaking my head. “Something’s wrong.” “You’re right… I’m having heat stroke!” said John, throwing down his shovel. Just then, my soup-loving father drove back up. “How’s it going!” he said looking rather unconcerned. “Not so good,” I said. “We haven’t found anything yet.” “I’ll be damned,” said my dad shutting off his truck. He paused. “You know who built those mounds?” asked my dad. “The Calusas?” said Chuck. “Nope…He did!” My father was grinning and pointing at ME! “WHAT!” I yelled with my hands on my head. “Yep, you were 8 years old when you cleared this property with a bulldozer and that’s YOUR trash pile.” My dad drove off, smiling. Satisfied that he had done a good days work.

After shaking my fist and yelling “farewell” at the back of my dads retreating truck, it became eerily quiet. (Uh-oh! I thought, suddenly remembering that I was outnumbered by possible “ex-friends”) I closed my eyes and turned slowly to face them and then, took a peek. They were both walking towards me like angry zombies, shovels in blistered hands.

As it turns out, they were equally unimpressed with my contribution to ancient history, my dad’s devilish sense of humor, and my apparent inability to remember where I’d left something fairly large. I had some explaining to do, but I’m proud to say that they have since forgiven me… but being good buddies… they have not forgotten.

Reading What We Want To Believe

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Years ago we were visiting my grandparents at their home in what is now Cape Coral. As the adults sat talking out on the porch, my sister and I wandered off to rummage through the old newspapers, pictures and antiques. Their house was old, dark, dusty, cluttered and for two kids… an archeological adventure! On this particular outing we found a magazine with advertisements for patent medicines and inventions that years ago could have been purchased through the mail. The claims that accompanied these treasures were fantastic. Mere spoonfuls of a tonic could cure hundreds of ailments. Another ad claimed that simply wearing a mysterious device could make weak men strong and women more womanly. Always the young skeptic, I shook my head and wondered out loud to my sister, Julie. “Why would anyone have believed this stuff?” Julie pitched the magazine back in a pile of papers, creating a poof of dust in the dim light. “I don’t know… I guess they needed to believe it.”

I was recently reminded of my sister’s words, when a friend sent me an email of a giant 20 foot long alligator eating a moose. The title block said “THIS IS REAL… SEND TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!” Well, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so even though this was a real hoot, it was obviously fake. Yes, a genuine giant moose-eating alligator would have been amazing, but the fact that there is something inside of all of us that actually wants to believe it, is equally amazing.

As innocent as these Photoshop pranks might seem, there are also a great many harmful, patently untrue and just plain mean pieces of misinformation that are constantly being spread and promoted as factual. Again… such serious theories and accusations should require equally serious critical analysis and proof. But instead, it seems that the simple act of something being broadcast on TV or being published in a blog, email or newspaper, automatically gives that something the weight of truth. I think it may be because as humans, we are all subconsciously prewired to look for information that fits in with or validates our preconceived notions, fears and desires.

A few days ago, my sister forwarded me a particularly scary and divisive chain email she had received and added, “I can’t believe my friend thinks this is true!!” Her friend had set aside her skepticism in favor of the forwarded emails passionate accusations and her own fears. So I sent back a link to a reliable site that debunks such claims and typed below it “It’s clearly not true, but remember… some people will still feel the need to believe it.”

We are generally an intelligent species capable of creating remarkable technologies and solving complicated problems. But if we don’t use the tools of critical thinking that we have learned from the Ancient Greeks, or at least the skeptical skills that we have learned from buying used cars, we risk being trapped by our own fears and prejudices.

But then… don’t take my word for it.

Perils of a Good Sense of Humor

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When I first became involved in local politics a friend warned me, “You better be careful with that sense of humor of yours!” I nodded and thanked him for the advice. “Hey!” I said, looking just under his chin. “What’s that?” He looked down just as my index finger was coming up, “twanging” his nose. Yes, it was incredibly juvenile behavior. But the timing… was superb.

From the stories that my relatives have told me and from having personally experienced 55 family Thanksgivings, I can assure you that this is inherited behavior. My father and his brother Charlie in particular had brutal senses of humor… which made the harsh life that they experienced as kids easier to deal with. At a very young age they were often left alone in the woods to tend the cattle and also to trap raccoons to sell… by hand. To make things even more interesting these animals had to be brought in alive.

The process went something like this. After a raccoon was spotted high in a cypress tree, my dad (being the smallest and easiest to bully) would climb up the tree with a stick. His orders were to convince the animal to jump 60 feet to the ground by swatting at it like it was a raccoon piñata. Prior to doing a really bad flying squirrel imitation, the raccoon would first ‘lighten his load’ by emptying the contents of his bladder, bowels and stomach… onto my father. This always delighted my Uncle Charlie who would be far below on the ground, laughing hysterically and shouting helpful encouragement to his little brother. “You’ve got him now Ben!”

Once the raccoon hit the ground, both boys would chase the dazed mammal until Charlie could bop it on the head with a stick, knocking him out cold. Being the big brother, he would grab the unconscious critter by its ringed tail and carry it proudly back home.

However, on this particular hunting trip, Mother Nature decided to show off her own sense of humor by waking up the boy’s un-amused captive. It immediately wrapped all four furry legs tightly around Charlie’s thigh and started chewing. The once proud hunter proceeded to try every dance, jump, roll, scream and evasive maneuver known to man in an attempt to dislodge the angry masked mammal from his leg. My father stopped laughing just long enough to put a hand on each side of his mouth and yell… “You’ve got ‘em now Charlie!” The raccoon soon lost his taste for the boy’s boney leg and took off for the deep swamp, leaving Charlie unharmed, furious, and running towards his still laughing little brother.

I suppose the advice my friend was trying to give me and the lesson that my father learned from his big brother were the same. The transition from laughter to “Uh-Oh!” can come pretty quickly and the price for others not sharing your sense of humor can be painfully expensive.

The Tao of Ow

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“Bam! Owwwww!” (OH for… I did it again!) In our house in Georgia the footboard of the bed has wooden “ears” sticking out each side, about the same height as my… hip. So when I round the corner to get to the TV or put away some clothes I have about a one in ten chance of catching one in the tenders and then folding up like a lawn chair. This was probably the hundredth time that I’d clipped it on the way by, so even though I was finally beating my wife at something (she was only up to about fifty times) I still howled in pain, cursed the stupid design, the knucklehead that designed it, the tree it was made out of and the people that built it. We’ve plotted several times to just cut the fancy ears off and be done with it… and I’ve even made it into the bedroom with the chainsaw running a couple of times, but Lori always stops me. “No… we just have to be more careful.” But that plan doesn’t work very well… so we’re probably going to keep doing it… until it really hurts.

When I was elementary school age I would go to work with my dad every day, all day, in the summer. He had a small dragline mounted on a truck that he cleaned the farm ditches east of Bonita with. All day long, I would sit on the crane shooting at frogs and snakes with my bb gun until he was ready to move forward. “OKAY!” He would yell and I would scramble into the seat, push the starter button (which cranked the truck up in gear because I wasn’t heavy enough to push in the clutch), drive forward about twenty feet and then go back to whatever I had been doing until he was ready to move again. Believe it or not, even shooting a bb gun at snakes can get a little boring for an eight-year-old, and since I didn’t dare wander off, I was always looking for something else to do, even somewhere different to sit. And so one fateful July day I made the mistake of sitting on a full can of gasoline as I watched my dad throw the cattails out of the ditch with the machine. Yeah… I KNOW! It seems stupid now but I was eight… remember? As the crane shook around and the gas in the can sloshed around, the liquid fuel didn’t get on me… but the 95-degree heat made sure that the gas fumes did bake some pretty sensitive areas.

It took about ten minutes for me to figure out that I had made a serious mistake… and that as a result my butt was apparently on fire or at least felt like it. My dad was always well aware of what was going on around the machine so he immediately saw me running and jumping around like… well, like my butt was on fire. It wasn’t his fault, but his solution to my problem added insult to injury as he made me strip down to nothing and then rinse off in the ditch with my friends the snakes and frogs that I had just been shooting at. Then he shook his head, chuckled, got back up in the crane and worked the rest of the day as I tried to hide in the crane… constantly fanning my naked scorched posterior.

So, the bad news was that my rear end burned like one of those out of control oil wells for about three days. But the good news is that I never sat on a gas can again… and I never will. Ah… who am I kidding? I probably never will!

Good Decisions

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I was sitting in my good friend Dan’s office having our usual Friday after hour’s “meeting” when he leaned back in his leather chair with his hands behind his head and said in his slow southern drawl “Benny… If I could give my kids one thing… you know what it would be?”
Dan was from Birmingham Alabama and had made a really good living and life for him and his family as an attorney. A REALLY good one! In some sense I suppose we were unlikely friends; the well-educated attorney and the, well… marine contractor, but a mutual racquet-ball friend of ours decided to introduce us because on the court we were both “Kamikazes” who spent most of our time sliding on our bellys and crashing into walls, innocent by-standers and our hapless opponents with no regard for anyone’s health or well-being. Tom put a hand on each of our shoulders and said “Ben, this is Dan. Why don’t you two go smash into each other instead of me for a change!” So we did… every Sunday for the next three years.
Since we were both having some of the typical challenges associated with raising sons and since I was always ready to derail a perfectly serious conversation with a smart alec remark, I slouched into the comfy clients chair and took a shot at Dan’s profound question regarding the ideal gift for his teenage boys. “I don’t know… One way plane tickets?” He didn’t bat an eye, but his gaze went from the ceiling straight to me. “The ability to make good decisions!” I can’t remember if we discussed it any further, but that simple statement has stuck with me ever since.
A few years later I was visiting another friend of mine when he proceeded to get into an argument with his son over his college plans. As the conversation got more and more heated I decided to try to do what any good supportive friend would do… get the heck out of there! “Wow… look at the time! I’d better go… uhhhh… water my… driveway?” My friend wouldn’t let me. “NO! Listen to this! I want him to be able to choose whatever college he wants, but since I’m the one paying for it, I should be able to set some ground rules.” (His son and I both rolled our eyes… but for different reasons) “I told him that I would contribute the same amount of money no matter what college he chooses… but in turn, he has to give Florida State (yeah, he was an awful huge fan) a good look!” His son wasn’t amused. “Yeah? Well I told YOU that I’m NOT going to go to Florida State!” His father stepped forward and they were now nose to nose. “You’re not listening!” yelled his dad. “I’m not saying that you have to go there, I’m just saying that you have to give it serious consideration! Just visit the school, listen to what they have to offer and then, if you still don’t like it… you can go someplace else.” The angry young man stuck his arms straight out at his sides. “You’re the one that won’t listen! Why should I waste the time even looking at a school that I’m not going to pick? Right Mr. Nelson?” (OH… PERFECT! Now they’re both looking at ME!!)) I held my hands in front of me and said “Hey, I don’t want to get into…“ but then I thought about what Dan had said years ago… and I started over. “OK look… the WAY we make decisions can be just as important as the decision itself. Your dad just wants to be sure you have every opportunity to gather and weigh all the information fairly so that you can make this important decision based on REAL facts… not on what you think you know or what your friends have been telling you.” Then I looked at my friend. “But after he’s done that, YOU have to understand that, as much as you may want to, you can’t give someone the ability to make good decisions, you can only give them the opportunity…” (then I grabbed the young man by his shoulders and said to him slowly ) “…AND THE MONEY!”

For Whites Only

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“For whites only.” I stood there and looked at the faded, crude, handwritten sign above the algae covered drinking fountain. As I looked around, the fountain didn’t really look out of place in the Fort Myers auto parts store in the 1960’s. Everything there was dirty, old and outdated. But that sign… I didn’t understand it.

As I watched the scenery go by on the long ride home back to Bonita with my father, I had a lot of questions. “What’s the difference what color you are when it comes to drinking out of a fountain? I saw the guys that worked at that place… what’s makes them think they’re so special?” My dad just kept his eyes on the road in front of him. “That’s just the way some people think and I suppose it’s their fountain.” I stuck my hand out the window and felt the warm summer air go by. “Well… it’s not right. I’ll sure never drink out of it!” My dad looked over at me. “Yeah? Well, I guess it just depends on how thirsty you are.”

Although my father was born and raised in the south, I can never remember him saying or doing anything particularly prejudiced. He basically put all people into two categories… people who owed him money (not good) and people who paid him money (good). So, my sister, brother and I grew up relatively free of any parental pressure to be prejudice. I don’t think this was an intentional lesson… it was more of a collateral one.

Decades later, prior to my son Nick getting his first tattoo, he asked me what I thought. I shrugged, “It’s up to you son, but people are going to judge you for what you look like, not for who you really are.” Nicks eyebrow rose, “But that’s not right Dad… that’s prejudice!” I nodded, “Yep… that’s prejudice, but generally, that’s what people do. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just telling you that when people don’t really know you, they instinctively fill in the blanks themselves.” Nick shook his head. “Well, that’s the problem of the people doing the judging, not the guy with the tattoo!” Then my eyebrows rose, “Yeah? Well… I guess that depends on how badly you want a job!”

My twin sons’ disdain for prejudice was first brought to my attention at a third grade parent teacher conference. The teacher was in near hysterics for what seemed like a solid ten minutes explaining how she was having such a hard time getting my sons to pay attention. “I’ll be talking right to them telling them what they have to do and right while I’m talking to them… THEY JUST START DRAWING PICTURES!” Both of her elbows dropped to the table and she cradled her head in her hands. “I mean… do you have this problem with them at home too?” I blinked my eyes a couple of times, shook my head and then said. “Uhhh… I’m sorry. What were you saying?” True story.

Anyway, once she calmed down, she told me that “on the plus side” when it came to who they made friends or socialized with Nick and Neil were oblivious to ethnicity or any of the usual learned social or economic prejudices that can begin manifesting themselves in elementary school. This was good news for two reasons… my kids were obviously socially well adjusted and relatively free of a problem that has plagued the human race for millennia and… I had just been handed an opportunity to get the heck out of that meeting! I slammed my hands on the table, smiled and stood up abruptly. “Well that’s FANTASTIC!” The teacher’s mouth was hanging open as I grabbed her hand and shook it. “Thank you so much for calling me with this great news!” As I turned and headed out of the door I called over my shoulder. “Come on boys… say goodbye to your teacher!”…. “Boys?… Boys?… BOYS!”

No Experience Needed

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No experience needed?

As we walked in through the registration tent at the “1984 Case Backhoe Rodeo” with the hundred or so other men, my father, myself, and our good friend Bob noticed that there was no vetting process. No proof of experience required! Anyone who walked up with twenty dollars and signed in could compete in a competition that consisted of proving how quickly and precisely you could complete a series of nearly impossible tasks with a variety of extremely large, dangerous machines (backhoes and hydraulic excavators) whose controls had been reconfigured in a random, crossed up fashion. This was really exciting for my father and me because we were both professional equipment operators with decades of experience. Bob, on the other hand, was excited because he had always wanted to operate a piece of heavy equipment and now he was finally going to get to!

I think that most everyone would agree that although we remain blissfully unaware of our own limitations, we are almost always delightfully aware of our friend’s limitations. That’s what friends are for… to tell you when you’re about to do something incredibly stupid. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked Mike as he gave twenty dollars to the person at the table. “I’m signing up to compete!” he said with a big smile on his face. I rolled my eyes, shook my head and looked over at my dad. He was grinning from ear to ear. As usual he had his own priorities and right now he was very interested in seeing his good friend provide some entertainment and years of great stories by displaying his complete incompetence in front of hundreds of people. I leaned over and whispered slowly and clearly into Mike’s ear. “You… are… going… to… kill…someone.” Mike proudly placed his official entry lanyard around his neck and announced “Hey… I’m a commercial airline pilot! How hard could this be?”

Well… here’s how hard. The first task began with a 20-ton backhoes bucket hovering over a small but sturdy metal table. On the table there was an empty and rightfully terrified one-gallon beer pitcher. After you climbed into the seat of the already running machine, an official poured a little over one gallon of beer into the machines gigantic bucket and instructed you to fill the other container completely… with beer. “You spill it, you’re out! You take longer than 30 seconds. You’re out!”

My dad and I watched as Bob climbed into the machine. With his CAT baseball cap tilted just so and his calm, confident demeanor, he certainly looked the part. But my dad and I knew better. As I looked around, I thought it was interesting. Terrifying… but interesting. Why would everyone assume that he knows what he’s doing? The official backed up (thank god!) and held a flag in the air. Bob calmly reached down and pulled the throttle wide open, which caused my dad to start laughing hysterically and me to utter a phrase commonly used on construction sites. Then… Mike stretched and calmly gave a nod to the official.

Now, you can’t fault Mike’s reaction time. Because when the flag dropped he instantly shoved both controls forward… simultaneously vaporizing the hapless beer pitcher, driving the small table deep into the ground and shooting beer about 20 feet into the air. And then, just like a water skier that falls and can’t let go of the tow rope, Bob froze… causing the giant machine to continue pushing down until it lifted itself about 5 feet into the air.

After Mike was finally coaxed down out of the groaning machine and the crowd had finished laughing, he was promptly disqualified and asked the one simple question that should have been asked in the first place. “Have you ever run a machine before?” I mean… no one would ever consider a complete and utter lack of comparable experience or knowledge to be a positive trait or a qualification for something so important? Would they?

Standard Oil

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At the Northwest corner of Terry Street and Old 41 is a building that used to be a Standard Oil gas station. It was my and my buddy’s favorite place to hang out after elementary school. We would each scrape up enough money to buy an ice cold coke and a package of peanuts, then sit together on the raised concrete stoop in front of the station and watch the world drift by while we goofed on each other, laughed and prepared ourselves for home. We just thought we were having fun, but our experiences there changed who we would become… in ways we could never imagine.

It was the fall of 63 and as I plopped down next to my friends it seemed like just another typical day after school. I ripped a corner off a package of peanuts, dumped a dose of salty deliciousness into my mouth and closed my eyes as I quickly crunched them up, chasing them down with the ice-cold tangy sweetness of a King Sized Coke. I swallowed, savoring the fizzy combination of flavors. “Ahhhhh…” I said looking over at my buddy Paul Fisher. As usual, he had immediately gulped down half of his coke, tore open his bag of peanuts and haphazardly poured them into the bottle, like he was loading a BB gun. I shook my head and wrinkled up my nose. “Man… are you strange!” Billy, sitting on the other side of him agreed. “Yeah, what the heck’s wrong with you Fisher?” Paul put his thumb over the end of the bottle, frowned and began shaking it vigorously. “Shut up!” Paul said without looking up. He held on tight as the coke went through a controlled explosion, spewing some of the soda and peanuts all over him. As soon as it stopped fizzing he tilted the bottle up, poured whatever the heck it had become into his mouth and then chewed calmly while he sat there staring straight ahead. “You guys just don’t know what’s good.”

Although the station was owned and operated by Mack Alverez, a fellow named Ted seemed to be there all the time. He occasionally pumped gas for people, but we couldn’t tell if he actually worked there. He mostly sat around telling bad jokes and attempting to freak us out by saying weird stuff.

This particular day, Ted, who was the oldest looking person I had ever seen, hobbled over and then just stood there hunched over looking down at us. We all stopped talking and stared at him. He had about three teeth, so it was always difficult to tell if he was grinning or sneering. (I think he was sneering this time.) As he looked back and forth at us, his freaky little fishing hat pulled too far forward on his head, he pulled out a tiny little pocket knife, opened it and made what were evidently meant to be threatening gestures at us. Then he turned towards me. “You want me to slice your tongue and run your leg through it?” Because he wore old bent up wire rimmed glasses that were about an inch thick and you couldn’t see his eyes, I really wasn’t all that sure he was talking to me, so I swallowed my last sip of soda and pointed my thumb at my chest. “What…You mean me?” He made a little lunge towards me and swiped the 2″ long blade in the air. “YEAH, I mean you!” I stared at him for a moment with a puzzled look on my face then shook my head. “Nope!” Then I turned towards Billy and casually motioned towards him with my empty bottle. “But I bet Billy would like that!” “WHAT???” yelled Billy, immediately jumping up. Paul started to laugh, which would have been fine except he had a mouth full of his special snack mixture and as Ted began making his way towards Billy a stream of coke and peanuts suddenly began “fire hosing” out of his nose.

Apparently, this took the old man by surprise, because he began stumbling backwards… A look of horror on his face that even his hat, glasses and lack of discernible teeth, couldn’t hide. Neither Paul nor Billy got to see Teds reaction, because Billy was already half way home and Paul was in a panic… frantically trying to dislodge the jet propelled peanuts that had lodged themselves in his nose.

I don’t doubt that Paul and Billy remember this story differently, but Paul has had sinus and migraine problems his entire adult life. I’m betting they are peanut related.

Law and Disorder

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Although a home security system is good to have, there is no substitute for a good neighbor.

Years ago I walked over to my neighbor’s house after work to ask him for a typical neighbor favor. “Hey Jim! I’m going to the Keys for the weekend. Could you keep an eye on my house while I’m gone?” Since my friend Jim is a one-man neighborhood watch, he was really happy to take on the responsibility of doing what he does all the time anyway. Just ask any pizza delivery person… no one (not even me) gets down our street without an I.D., passport, note from their mom and a thorough questioning. So I always feel secure about leaving our house when we go on vacation.

That particular night, after packing our bags and doing last minute preparation for the next mornings road trip, I put the kids to bed, and then walked around the house checking all the doors and motion lights before I set the alarm clock and settled into bed for the evening. I was just starting to doze off when I noticed a light outside, shining through the curtains. I sat up in bed, completely awake. (What the… There’s someone outside with a flash light walking around the house! Wait… there’s TWO people!)

Moving like a ninja, I slipped silently out of bed, crept over to the window and slowly peeked out through the curtains. It was pitch black outside, so all I could see were flashlights. Then… I heard the screen door open. (Holy… they’re trying to break into the house!) I was ready, because I’d been through this situation a thousand times. Well… in my head. I slowly backed away from the window and then deftly moved through the completely dark house like a cat. BAM “OWWW!” I quietly cursed as I hopped on one foot after stubbing my toe.

Limping quietly and quickly, I made my way over to the sliding door to the porch and then leaned back against the wall. The lights on the porch swept back and forth; searching… but they could not see me because I was like a shadow… camouflaged in (I looked down) my bright white underwear? (OH GREAT! Too late to put some pants on. Wait… I’m going fight two burglars in my whitey-tighties!?) As I started feeling more and more vulnerable and my adrenaline fed ninja powers began to fade, the intruder’s flashlights crossed each other’s bodies and I caught a glimpse of them. (They’re Sheriffs Officers?) I was really relieved, so without thinking I turned the porch light on, shoved the sliding glass door open, jumped out of the door onto the porch and said “Hey guys!” This was a REALLY bad idea. In the blinding light both officers completely freaked out, spun around and began frantically trying to get their guns out of their buttoned down holsters. Luckily for me, before they could get their guns drawn I said “Soooo… what are you guys doing on my porch?” I have to admit, their next response was completely appropriate and I suspect, by the book… they both started laughing hysterically. OK, it might have been the sight of me in my underwear, but maybe they were relieved that they weren’t going to be involved in a gun battle with a crazy half naked ninja!

After about thirty seconds of them laughing uncontrollably, holding their chests and trying to get their breath I had had enough. I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms. “OK, OK… very funny! Now… what’s going on?” The one officer sighed a deep breath. “We’re sorry sir, but your neighbor called and said you were gone for the weekend and that he heard noises at your house and that the lights were going on and off. So, we came by to (he snickered) take a look.” The other deputy choked back a laugh, put his arm around his partners shoulder and just before they turned to leave said “Well, I think we’ve seen enough here!” They both laughed again. “Goodnight Sir. Sorry to disturb you!”

On second thought… Although a good neighbor is wonderful, thank goodness for excellent sheriffs deputies with a sense of humor… And our new security system!

The Smart Phone

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I am the proud owner of a brand new Smart Phone. It is, ironically, my “reward” for doing something stupid.

Having a mobile device is not new for me. In fact, I’ve had a mobile phone since they were first developed in the early 1980’s. Mind you, my first one was only mobile if you could carry the 50 lb. backpack that allowed you to periodically and sporadically fight through the other twenty anonymous users on your channel. This could only occur a couple of times a day and never when you needed to actually talk to someone. It was best described as “heavy but useless.” A phone booth was still much easier to use and to carry. (For you youngsters under thirty years old, just Google phone booth and ignore the Superman references.)

When the modern cell phone came along you could finally make that all important call to your friend and let him know what you did over the weekend… while everyone in the restaurant glared at you as you screamed into your “flip phone.” But at least now it was small enough that you could put it in your pocket, right next to your scheduling calendar and pen that Harvey Haines gave you and everyone else in Bonita for Christmas. Phones were still just for making phone calls and as a result were just marginally smarter than the people who used them.

My wife and kids were the ones who finally introduced me to the wonders of the “smart phone.” Soon it was doing my scheduling, helping me find my way to unknown addresses, and allowing me to take pictures of my friends in compromising positions so that I could send copies to everyone. It also allowed me to check my email obsessively while trying to convince the phone that I didn’t want to “beat” someone at the office… I wanted to “meet” them there. Having thick fingertips that fit perfectly on three of the silly little keys at once turns out to be a problem.

But despite the frustrations of using it, I am entirely dependent on my phone. If I leave home without it in the morning I am paralyzed. I don’t know what day it is, what time it is, where I’m supposed to be or the phone number of the people that I need to call. To me, Bob’s phone number is… Bob. And although they are technical masterpieces, they are a bit on the fragile side… which brings us to how I ended up with another new phone.

I had just finished working outside and my clothes were particularly filthy, so I stripped them off on the porch, went inside, took a shower and then gathered up my dirty clothes. After I removed my wallet and keys from my pockets I threw the stinky garments into the washing machine. After I got dressed to go back out to work, I was looking around for my precious phone when I heard, “Klunk, Klunk, Klunk…” “NOOOOOO!!!” I ran into the laundry room, yanked open the washer and pulled my only slightly damp phone from my jeans pocket. “It’s still working!” I shouted hopefully to my wife, holding it proudly in the air. It immediately responded by vibrating and saying “Droid”. Panicked but hopeful, I started blowing on it, shaking it and turning it on and off. There had to be some way to bring it back to life. I ran to the computer and Googled how to dry out a cell phone. It said “Don’t blow on it, shake it, or turn it on and off!” (Oh come on!) As I read further, the two best sounding remedies that came up were to either dip your phone in pure alcohol (seriously?) or to put your phone in a bag of rice for 24 hours. (No, not cooked rice! Geez!) The rice method sounded like the best way not to blow up the house, so I tried it. Twenty-four hours later the phone was dry… but completely unresponsive. So, off to the phone store I went.

The store was full of people my age and older with confused looks on their faces, asking questions like “How do I get the pictures of my cat from my old phone onto my new phone?” I shook my head and smiled at these poor hapless, technically challenged people. After all, being an experienced swapper of phones, I knew exactly how to get all my contacts, calendar and other information switched over. I would go home and ask my computer guru/wife Lori to do it for me in exchange for me cooking her dinner. Hmmm… maybe some stir fried rice.