Here's to You, Mrs. Robinson

On one of my last trips home to visit my parents, they received a call from their neighbor, a super sharp lady in her 90s. She said she was having some trouble with her email and wondered if we could come over and look at it.

When I got there, I discovered she'd accidentally hidden a familiar toolbar. I checked the appropriate boxes to fix it, and then asked if there was anything else she needed help with. She paused, then said, "Well . . . I keep getting all these messages from men who want to date me."

"What?"

"They say something like Zook."

I immediately recalled the existence of Zoosk, an online dating website that's usually advertised in the margins on Facebook, where (of course) this lively lady is also my friend.

"Oh, do you think maybe you got signed up for something by mistake?"

"Well, I don't know, I must have."

I scrolled through her email, which was teeming with requests.  "I can get you unsubscribed from this service, but are you sure you aren't interested in any of these guys?"

"No, take me off of there. I mean, honestly. One of those men was only 83! Now what would I ever want with him?!"

Evidently cradle robbing is still a concern in the nonagenarian world.

Paint By Numbers

Only in Minneapolis will you find trigonometry as graffiti. Just a roving math thug tagging my parking garage downtown. Will they find it one day far into the future and wonder what it means ... like CROATOAN?

Athletic Supporter

A couple years ago, one of my friends and her husband bought their first house together. They then set about slowly getting to know all their new neighbors, usually while on walks with their young son. 

On one such occasion, my friend started chatting with a man who made no attempt to keep his casual racism out of the conversation. When my friend mentioned that the neighborhood seemed very nice, and that it was great to have a park nearby, he commented:

"Yeah, but that park has a basketball court." He gave her a knowing look. "And you know what those attract."

My friend stared at him incredulously. She simply replied, "Athletes?"

S-o E-m-b-a-r-r-a-s-s-i-n-g

The password requirements for my work computer have grown increasingly complex. A certain number of capital letters, numbers, and symbols, combined with a minimum character count that stops just short of supercalifragilisticexpialidocius. 

Think you've found the perfect password to fit this complicated bill? Great. Now change it frequently and completely. 

But don't write it down!

The last time I had to create yet another encrypted monstrosity, it was a stressful day. My new password reflected this state of mind, but I assumed it would be my little secret for the next couple of months. 

As it turned out, it was only private until I needed tech support a few weeks later. 

IT person: "I can fix that issue. I'll just need your network password."

Me: (pause) "You want me to just ... tell it to you?"

IT person: "Go ahead."

Me: "Um, okay. It's [a series of numbers and symbols], followed by s-o-d-e-p-r-e-s-s-i-n-g."

IT person: "Are those esses or effs?"

Me: "Esses ... like ... depressing."

There was a very long pause. 

Me: "I was in a really bad mood the last time I was prompted for a password change."

IT person: "Yeah. I can see that."

The web address for this moment begins with FML. 

Ghost Protocol

I watch a lot of scary movies. This wouldn't seem like the wisest choice for someone who lives alone, has trouble sleeping, and boasts an overactive, worst-case-scenario imagination. But I'm more afraid of aliens than ghosts, so I'm usually ok.

I didn't think twice about popping in "Ouija" at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night, mainly because it looked (and was) terrible, and actually a bit boring. I don't put much stock in that kind of thing, especially since my friends and I dabbled with a ouija board in college. On Halloween. At midnight. And we're all still alive to tell the tale. Although I did find out I have a spirit guide named Tikwu, for whatever that's worth.  So when the movie was over, I watched an old Simpsons episode and went to sleep.

I'm fairly certain my rude upstairs neighbor woke me up with one of his thuds around 4 a.m., which wasn't unusual.  What was different this time was that there seemed to be a ghostly figure standing next to my bed.

I stared for a moment, still groggy. When it became clear that this apparition wasn't going anywhere, I began to sit up . . . and then it went somewhere. It rose into the air, hovering near my wall.

Even in my bleary, myopic state, my mind held two thoughts clearly at the same time. Thought #1: You're having a bit of sleep paralysis. This is what it looks like when others see "shadow people" and it's a natural, albeit weird, phenomenon. Thought #2: I have to turn my light on or I'm going to fucking die!

And right at that moment, my eyes came into focus, and I realized that I was goggling at (and terrified of) the light filtering in through my bedroom window. Not only that, but I'd actually batted at it with my hand.

I've often wondered what I'd do if I experienced any of the horrors in these movies. As it turns out, my response to an imaginary threat like a ghost was emitting the weakest, most pathetic little "ahh --- ahhhhhhh" and pawing at the air like a newborn kitten.

I take a bit of comfort in this, since my real-life response to a legitimate threat like getting mugged was trying to kick the guy in the nuts while apparently screaming loud enough to wake all my neighbors.

You gotta do what you gotta do, people. Even if it's sleeping with the light on for awhile.

Reduce, Reuse, Redbox

A couple months ago, a friend came to my apartment for dinner, along with her husband and one-year-old daughter. We had a nice meal and then lounged in the living room, while the little girl toddled around.

As I don't have kids, I don't have a stockpile of toys, and I also don't have anything baby-proofed. But I really don't care what any visiting children play with, as long as there's no danger they'll get hurt. Read: I'm fine with broken stuff -- just don't stick anything in a light socket. Or drop one of my 5lb. free weights on your tiny foot. But that's another story.

So this little tyke, just getting her sea legs, motored around my whole place like a wobbly whirling dervish. Then she threw up on the couch. Then we laughed and her mom cleaned it up, and they left, and I went about the rest of my evening.

When I went to watch one of the DVDs I'd rented earlier in the day, it was nowhere to be found. My search of the apartment turned up only a couple of the kid's toys she'd forgotten. Figuring the movie had gotten mixed up in toddler stuff, I assumed it was probably mistakenly hitching a ride home with my friends.

I texted them, saying they could feel free to watch and return it after they unpacked. My friend immediately replied, "Check your recycling."

I wandered into the kitchen, where I keep a brown paper bag on the floor. Sure enough, crammed in between flattened boxes and soup cans was the DVD. I'm not sure if the little girl deposited it there on accident or as a judgment on the quality of the film, but I do know this: Parents are amazing.

Pinheads

I worked at a drugstore in my hometown for about 10 years -- after school and on the weekends while I was a teenager, and every summer during college. I did everything from cleaning and restocking to delivering prescription medications, but mainly I worked the till.

This could get slightly boring on your average Thursday night, and we invented myriad ways to keep ourselves entertained. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say I lost several "who has the lowest blood pressure" competitions and know exactly how much my arm weighs according to the Russell Stover bulk candy scale.

One day, when I "had time to lean, so I had time to clean," I found a small action figure, maybe three inches tall, on the floor. It was a little plastic man wearing a shirt, jeans, and a turban. Since we didn't have an official lost and found, I set him on a shelf behind the front counter. Weeks passed with no claim. I named him Raoul.

At some point, on a particularly dead evening, one of my coworkers and I decided to have some fun with Raoul and the key-making machine. I think we sawed his arm off. I'm not proud of it, but that's what happened. Then my coworker suggested we glue a pin back on him. That also happened. I wore him to the company Christmas party that year on my lapel as my date.

Several more weeks passed, and Raoul became a fixture of sorts at the service counter. Until a little boy pointed up and cried, "Hey! That's mine!"

No kidding. After verifying that it was, indeed, his long-lost toy, I reluctantly handed it over.

"Here you go. His name's Raoul now," I said, awkwardly. "He's missing an arm. Sorry about that."

The kid frowned but took him anyway. As he exited the store, I remembered something critical.

"Oh! He's a . . . pin now!" I yelled after him. "So . . . be careful with that, I guess!"

And that's the story of Raoul, who came into my life for a brief but meaningful time, suffered some indignities due to teenage boredom, and then likely went on to injure an innocent child. So it goes.

Where's the Teeth?

I share an online calendar with a friend of mine. He works three jobs, and I try to stay social with my peeps, so it's just easiest to do a quick schedule check when we want to make plans like buying tickets to a show.

Last week I was sitting in the waiting area of my dentist's office when I got a text message. Here's what it said:

"You'll love this: I went in to my dentist appointment today at 2pm, only to discover that the appointment on my calendar was YOUR dentist appointment."

We were in separate offices across the city, but due to a misreading of a poorly color-coded time slot, only one of us was actually supposed to be there. 

He got hearty chuckles from the receptionist. I got my teeth cleaned.