Nailed It!

My dad is pretty damn handy around the house. Once, when he was building a set of deck stairs, I asked him how he acquired his various skills in carpentry and painting and general maintenance. He simply attributed it to being a homeowner for 40 years.

So I guess all the endless tinkering required to keep things running smoothly went largely unnoticed while I was growing up. But that all changed when my sister bought a house, and he set about amazing us with constant repairs and improvements.

However, when a mysterious leak sprung in her bathroom, he suggested she call a professional. The plumber cut away a chunk of her wall and found a problem, though not as complicated or expensive as she'd feared. It seems a tiny hole had been punched into a pipe . . . a direct result of my dad hanging a new mirror above the sink a few days before.

My sister called my mom to give her the update, which was equal parts relief at the easy fix and amazement at an uncharacteristically careless error.

Now, my mom has been happily married to this handyman for over four decades, but I can imagine her occasional frustration with his sometimes maddening attention to detail.

Her response:  "Can I be the one to tell your father?"

Centipede My Pants

I've always gotten along pretty well with my sister. We never really fought over anything serious, and we generally enjoyed playing together most of the time. 

But she's three years younger than me, so there was some room for practical jokes.

Or so I'm told. I don't recall messing with her very often, but evidently I convincingly sold her some untruths. She remembers three big lies: 1) That if she honked the car horn, the cops would come. 2) That if she pressed the red button on the VCR, it would blow up. 3) That if she got water on the bathroom tiles, they would crash down.

All in all, pretty benign . . . unless you were intent on avoiding a panic attack when getting clean or recording your favorite TV show. But nothing lastingly damaging or very clever.

We both still talk about the one time I managed to pull a truly great prank on her. When we were in high school, we got a small allowance for cleaning the house every week. Of course we would wait until the very last minute before our parents got home to dust and vacuum and tidy up, so it usually involved rushing around in a frenzy with Windex and Pledge.

Now, I also worked at a drugstore at the time, and I'd happened across a new product in the toy section: super realistic-looking rubber insects. So I bought an enormous fake centipede.

The next week, as we started our chores, I snuck into the basement bathroom and carefully placed the rubber bug in the shower. As we hurried to finish on time, I shouted a reminder that it was her turn to clean that room.

After she entered the bathroom, I heard general spritzing and clattering. I heard the shower curtain being pulled back. There was a short pause, and then a bloodcurdling scream.

When she came racing into the living room, I acted very concerned about what had spooked her.

"What?!" I said. "Hang on, I'll check it out."

I disappeared into the bathroom and gave an appropriate exclamation of horror. I suppose I could have stopped there, or emerged simply holding the bug, or chased her around the house with it. But I did not stop there.

I reappeared with the centipede hanging out of my mouth. For added effect, I growled ferociously and shook it back and forth.

As long as I live, I'll never forget the look of horror on her face, or how wide her eyes were. She nearly soiled herself out of shock, and I nearly did the same laughing.

It's amazing what you can do with a dollar and a little ingenuity. She might say a little evil, but I'm going with ingenuity.

Longitude and Attitude

When I'm not writing this blog, I work a regular 9 to 5 as an editor. It's a real Clark Kent/Superman situation, minus any of the secrecy, derring-do, or general excitement.

The reports I edit evaluate people's skills for particular jobs. Sometimes, when the scores are very low, it's much more difficult for the writer to put a positive spin on the results. 

In one of my favorite examples, the paragraph described the person's inflexibility in depth. Then it ended with this statement:

Adapts to only the most obvious cultural differences, such as time zones.

Time zones!

This person is so set in their ways that, when placed in a new culture, they aren't going to try to learn the language. They're not going to embrace local customs. They're not even going to wear a piece of traditional clothing. The best they can manage is changing their sleeping patterns to accommodate their physical location on the surface of the earth.

I'd say that's the bare minimum amount of adaptability that anyone could expect of any human being. Jet lag aside, we all do eventually synchronize with the rising and setting of the sun.

No special skills required.

Worst. Movie. Ever.

I think I watch too many movies.

This pains me to say, but I had a moment the other day when the lines between reality and the cinematic universe became almost too blurred for my comfort.

Try not to get worked up about this image, but I was in the shower. I have an extra-wide shower head, which I love because it arcs a little higher than most, and as a tall chick I don't have to bend backward like a contortionist to rinse the shampoo out of my hair. 

But it also has a smaller shower wand that rests in the middle, with a very twisty hose. And when I accidentally bump this hose (which is just about every day), the wand dislodges and clatters noisily into the bathtub, scaring the shit out of me and likely my neighbors. 

About a week ago, I once again clipped this hose with an elbow as I was turning around. But this time, without even looking, I reached a hand behind me and caught the wand in mid-air. Like, just reflexively snatched it perfectly as it fell.

And, because I watch too many movies, there was a split second where I froze and thought:

"Am . . . am I a super hero?"

Granted, the ability to catch plummeting shower wands would be the lamest super power ever bestowed on your average protagonist. Plus, I couldn't recall any recent contact with radioactive spiders or gamma rays.

I fully realize that it was either a total fluke or some weird clumsy muscle memory, and I couldn't do it again if I tried. But in the moment, it truly felt like some amazing new skill was being revealed to me. Suddenly. Randomly. In my late 30s. While naked. 

That's never the case.

Oh, Deer

Sometimes, there's a moment -- right between when you ask a question and when you realize the answer -- where you understand that the question itself was completely idiotic.

It's usually the result of simply thinking out loud. Perhaps just hearing it outside your own head is what triggers the logic to kick in.

For instance, I once audibly wondered where the 1972 Summer Olympics were held  . . . while watching the movie "Munich."

It's a DUH! moment, but one that's difficult to take back when you're surrounded by people.

I recently thought about a trip I took to western SD years ago. My friends and I were cruising along the highway enjoying the scenery, and at one point we remarked on a small group of deer by the road.

After driving another ten minutes through the rolling hills, we saw more deer. And one of my friends pondered from the back seat, "Do you think they're the same ones?"

I remember the rest of us doing a very slow turn toward her.

"Uhhhhh . . . not unless they've been running alongside us at 65 miles an hour."

She'd already realized her mistake, but the image of those supersonic whitetails gave us the giggles the whole way home.

Code Name: Rattler

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a sheet of paper I recently unearthed that appears to show the formation of a childhood gang. I sharpened the picture as much as I could, but the pencil has faded a bit over the last 30 years.

Here are two assumptions I'm forced to make about this drawing.  I couldn't have been older than first grade, because Matt and Mike moved away after that year. I also must have been the architect of this document, because none of the boys would have attempted cursive, and my sister couldn't write yet. Also, there was a system set up on the right for attendance and dues, which had to be my brainchild. A few other thoughts:

There seems to have been some disagreement about how each kid would rank, since Mike is listed as "Pres. -- whatever" and Chad is listed as "V. Pres. -- whatever."  Then I'm listed as "3rd (?) Pres./Spy." Quite the power struggle.

Regardless of our titles, we evidently needed "spies" and "lookouts."  And code names. Of course! That's the best part. Rattler, Raven, Tike, C2, and Hawkeye. You can practically see the action figures.

I misspelled my own sister's name, and our plans never made it past "Septemper." Though it appears everyone was present for the first two meetings, which were . . . daily? What a commitment!

I clearly did not own a ruler.

I wish I knew how much our dues were, and what we planned to do with them once collected. Oh, and where we were all supposed to get money.

The sketches of the various neighborhood landmarks (with important notations about "food" and "supplies") do not correspond to the layout I recall from childhood. I think the small building is meant to be the shed in my backyard, which my dad built to house the snowblower and which we automatically assumed was our new base of operations.

This looks like a solid, if overly ambitious, start to a quasi-heroic organization . . . with an emphasis on organization. We had a hierarchy and were looking at least 22 days into the future. Most importantly, we had schematics.

I don't remember why we disbanded. Maybe the sandbox became a DMZ. Maybe we were disavowed by a shady government program after a failed mission that would haunt us all forever. Maybe our moms called us inside because He-Man was on.

We'll never know.

Fright Night

Way back in 1994, a little movie called "Pulp Fiction" was released. Part of this film centered on Samuel L. Jackson's character, a hitman who had a habit of quoting a passage from the Bible just before he killed people. It's not a direct quote, but it's sufficiently badass and intimidating.

Cut to about 20 years later, when I crashed on a friend's couch on a Saturday night. The downstairs neighbors happened to be having a party that evening. They were drinking and carrying on fairly loudly, but not enough to keep me from falling asleep.

Until about 3:00 AM, when several of the partygoers drifted into the hallway, and one dude decided to do a very enthusiastic and convincing rendition of Sam Jackson's speech right outside my friend's door.

So what I jerked awake to in the pitch blackness in a strange place was this, being yelled ferociously roughly ten feet from my head: "AND I WILL STRIKE DOWN UPON THEE WITH GREAT VENGEANCE AND FURIOUS ANGER! AND YOU WILL KNOW MY NAME IS THE LORD WHEN I LAY MY VENGEANCE UPON THEE!"

Let me tell you, this makes quite an impression. Because I thought I would shortly be murdered in a terrifyingly religious fashion.

My friend heard none of this from the bedroom, but was duly impressed that I had avoided cardiac arrest and/or peeing myself.

This is the kind of houseguest I am -- I bounce back from death threats shouted in the middle of the night and wake slightly groggy but ready for pancakes the next morning.

Dirty Words

So I've been playing Words With Friends with a woman named Marlene.

If you're unfamiliar with this app, it's essentially electronic Scrabble. I used to play it regularly, but it turns out I have very little self-control when it comes to games. I lose hours to them. Which is why I don't have any on my phone. (And also why I don't gamble).

My sister prompted me to reinstall it over Christmas so we could play together. But naturally one wordsmith opponent wasn't enough, and the app allows you to compete with random online players.

Hence, Marlene.

It's an odd thing, to be matching wits with a stranger. Do you keep the game friendly, or do you crush them if you can? Do you choose your words carefully, or are you playful with your tiles? Sometimes it takes awhile to feel people out. 

When I had the letters to spell "ORGASMS," I couldn't resist. Knowing nothing about this woman -- not even an age or location -- I wasn't sure if she'd react. There's an option to chat back and forth in the app, but we'd never used it. Until now.

A couple hours later, I had a new message alert.  It simply said, "Hee hee."

I like Marlene.