Sheesh!

I should really be in the classroom beginning to work on the goldenrod page of the report cards for my students.  Unless my principal is reading this, then I should be putting the finishing touches on my report cards.  There are two problems...it is far too early in the morning, and what the heck is goldenrod?

I'm only partially kidding.  I do know that goldenrod is a yellowish page and it is different from the the other two colors of paper that are sitting there waiting for me to print out copies for the parents.  But color is what I wanted to talk about today.

Before I begin let me just say, Mom, I warned you.

Colors and I have not been the best of friends over the years.  At first I didn't know what to think.  

As a kid I got a Lite Brite for Christmas.  Not a spectacular thing.  Pretty generic.  Lots of kids had them.

 

It came with seven bags of pegs like these.

See all those happy kids playing with their new toy?  That was me.  (the one on the left)  The way it worked was there were these black construction paper pages that had letters printed on them in a pattern.  That page lay between two sheets of plastic that had holes in them that allowed you to see the letters.  The letters stood for colors the primary colors.  R = red, O = orange, T = taupe, A = auquamarine, P = periwinkle...you get the idea.  Behind this plastic honeycomb and black paper was an incandescent light bulb...back before they were declared illegal and people who owned them were carted off to re-education camps.  Spoiler alert:  The Easy Bake Oven used a huge light bulb also, to cook its little cakes and such.  When using this year's model, and its stupid curly cue light, you have to plan on about a three week bake time..but I digress.

  The object of the Lite Brite was to take these little pointy plastic pegs and poke them through the paper to be held by the plastic holes.  When you were done you could plug it in and voila!  The light would show through the plastic and your picture glowed. It was kind of cool.

I remember distinctly the first picture I made. 

 

Look at it!  A thing of beauty!  Totally symmetrical.  It used all of the colors.  It was great.  I know my parents were impressed.  Then it came time to try the next picture.  They got me one of our fanciest containers to hold all the little pegs...a cool whip container...and away went the picture.  I set up the next picture, the slightly less aesthetically pleasing sailboat, and began to work.  When immediately I looked into this white plastic tub and thought, "What manner of hell is this!?" 

You see, when I made the first picture I took the pegs right from the little plastic bags...the LABELED plastic bags.  When I needed an orange I grabbed for the bag that said orange.  When I needed red, I grabbed for the bag that said red.  When I needed taupe, I grabbed...you get the idea.  When it came time to take it apart I just grabbed all of the pegs and tossed them into the container.  When I looked at the new picture and went to grab a peg, there were no more labels.  The tub of pegs looked like a stew of similarly colored plastic.  When I asked my parents what the heck was going on, they couldn't understand why I didn't get it.  It took the help of my brother and sister to get through subsequent pictures and Lite Brite was relegated to the shelf of, yeah, if you want to play with it, go ahead.  But I never chose that toy for myself again.

That was the first time I, looking back, became aware that I was colorblind.  I didn't know there was such a thing when I was a kid.  I just thought I was stupid or something because everyone else could just grab the right pegs on the first try, and I had to hold it up to the light, compare it to another, and then ask for help.  

It wasn't until I got glasses, in junior high school, that I discovered that I was colorblind in addition to being blind as a bat!  The doc, Ronald H. Sand in the mall near our house, showed me a page of dots in a book and said, "Trace the triangle."  He said it in a , "Oh yeah, I almost forgot to ask you this..." sort of way.  I looked at the page, back at the doc, then back at the page.  I tentatively reached out and picked three of the dots to make a triangle.  Any three points, not in a line, make a triangle ya know.  

(This is a picture I Googled and it's as distinctive as a patio paver to me.  I hope it doesn't say a bad word.)

It was only then that he got interested.  He flipped the book back to the beginning and showed me the page where the dots were gray and black...I saw a figure 8.  "I said, there wasn't anything like that on the first page though."  We went through the whole book and he determined that I was red green colorblind.  Nothing I could do about it.  My eyes were just missing something.  It wasn't til high school biology that I discovered that I was one of the ten percent of people who were colorblind...and that it was my mom's fault!

OK, not really.  It's not anything that you do to become colorblind but, genetically speaking, the gene that flips the switch for your eyes to not work right is carried by the mother.  I had a lot of fun with that bit of info growing up.  It's not everybody that gets to tease their mother on a genetic level!  I used to point at her and very dramatically yell, "YOU DID THIS TO ME!!"  Don't worry about my mom though...She gave as good as she got in the teasing arena.  There was the time that I was frantically opening and shutting cabinet doors looking for the "green pitcher!"  "Mom!  Where is the green pitcher?"  "We don't have a green pitcher." open shut "Yes we do!" open shut "No.  We don't."  open shut  "Oh my goodness!  The green pitcher we use for orange juice!"  OPEN SHUT!  Mom walked calmly over to the one cabinet I hadn't yet assaulted, reached in, and gently pulled out what I was looking for.  "Do you mean the brown pitcher?"  Yeah, it took me a while to get over that one.

Well that brings me to a month ago.  We were in the audience at a play that Jacob was in.  I was sitting next to my mom and Kristiana and Sylvia hadn't come to their seats yet.  They were busy putting make-up on all of the actors.  We had arrived ridiculously early and to pass the time I was pointing out people walking in and who they were to us.  It is a smallish school so I knew a fair number of people. "That is the lead actor's mom."  "That is Kristiana's friend from choir."  "They lived down the street from us."  That kind of thing.  Then a couple walked in that I felt additionally compelled to mention...this was the mom and dad of the other Kristiana at school.  (They spell it with a 'Ch' but we don't that against them)  As you can imagine, we don't encounter too many Kristiana's in our day to day lives.  I said, "Mom, that is the dad of the other Kristiana!" and scanning a little further along the audience..."And that is her mom!" 

As I look back at this interaction I replayed the scene in my head.  Christiana's mom was alone.  She was walking.  She was standing.  She was smiling.  She was blond.  She was on the steps.  She was holding a purse.  She was not sitting down.  She was turning around and looking for her seat.  Any of these would have been wonderful descriptors!  She could have even said, "The one in front of that man?"  Nope, my mom, comes up with, "The one wearing green?"  Picture me...eyebrow raised, mouth flat, shoulders up, hands out palms up like I was checking to see if it was raining in the little theater..."Really mom?  The one in green?  Are you sure you don't mean the one in gray?"  She started laughing and all I could say was, "You're going in the blog."

Attack Of The FLY!

I was reminded of a story recently as I went to my cousin Kim's house for her son's confirmation party.  No, they were not confirming that he was their son...this isn't Jerry Springer.  Get your mind out of the TV.  It was a nice event and I was happy that we could attend.  I was also happy that we weren't attacked by flies like we had been at another one of their parties.  Whenever we get together, the flies are mentioned.  It was really something.  There were hundreds of flies that had decided to enter their kitchen and land on the ceiling while we talked.  I am not exaggerating.  I DO NOT exaggerate!  (Even though I am accused of it a billion times a day!)   They were managed due to numerous fly strips that Dan, Kim's husband, ran to the store to buy. The flies, and their sudden appearance, were eerie. We were one scary soundtrack away from being in a horror movie!  We were all OK ..except that one guy who decided to go down into the basement, ALONE, to find out what that noise was.  We never saw him again.

Anyway, that is not what I was going to write about today.  I had another fly in mind.  The Mediterranean Fruit Fly!  Dun Dun Dunnnnnnnnnn!

That's right, our little neck of the woods was plagued by this particular bug, affectionately called The MedFly, a few decades ago, with momentous consequences...all because of my friend.  But I'll get back to that.  What I won't do is tell you his name.  There are probably hundreds of people who would love to know  the real story and his life (or the finish on his car) might be in jeopardy.

If you are not from the San Francisco bay area then it is conceivable that you have never even heard of this particular pest.  I would say that even fewer of you know that their arrival on the scene caused a great amount of concern among farmers and even greater concern among politicians.  I would also say that if you didn't know those two facts, then you most likely didn't know that there was a controversy surrounding the way that this little bug was handled.  And finally, an infinitesimal amount of you have ever seen one of these winged trouble makers...but I have.

In the early 80's there were crop failures galore.  That was bad enough!  But we were also getting ready for the coming ice age that the government was warning us about so we were all a little on edge.  (and you know that when the government warns you about a global weather disaster they are correct one hundred percent of the time.  ahem...coughBScough...coughINCANDESCENTlightBULBSareWAYbetterTHANthoseDUMBcurlyCUEthingsAREcough...coughBUYaHUMMERcough)  But I digress...must have been something that they are trying to feed to me.

The way it worked was they wanted to spray insecticide all over the areas that could be affected.  This was disconcerting to many, problematic to some, and the worst thing that could ever happen in the whole world to others.  Debate got heated.  People on both sides were very passionate about what to do. One politician B.T. "I Grew a Third Nipple!" Collins is remembered as the guy who, during all of the hearings on the spraying of malathion, drank a glass of the stuff to prove that it wasn't harmful.  The entire debate was academic since the Medfly had been found in crops but hadn't been seen in the cities...yet.  This whole thing about the spraying was being thought of as a preventative measure to keep things from getting out of control on the fruit trees of the cities.

And then my friend came into the picture.  No he didn't lobby congress.  He didn't address the city council.  He didn't even write an article about it for the school newspaper.  He was, as far as I remember, as apolitical as they come.  We were high school students.  I vividly remember saying, "They said that if they start spraying one of the side effects could be that the poison might cause little pits in the paint on cars."  Crops are dying.  No problem.  Food supply in jeopardy.  Yawn.  They are going to spray poison on the entire population with black helicopters like we all had the plague or something.  Whatever.  Your buffing towel might not slide all the way across the hood of your car and fall to the ground because the mirror finish has been diminished ever so slightly.  NOW WAIT JUST A GOSH DARN MINUTE!!! Yes, I was that guy. (was, being the operative word)  My friend did the one little thing that changed the course of history.

Following all the debate, everyone said, "Fine!  Prove to us that the Medfly is, in fact, in this area!"  And here came the troops.  Dozens of workers came around putting up hundreds of little bug catchers in people's trees.  They put these little rectangular shaped glue traps with lime green A-framed roofs all over the cities of the bay area trying to capture the elusive fly.  Don't try to figure out why a fruit fly would fly into a cardboard longhouse instead of landing on the delicious fruit right next to it...it'll only give you a headache.  And the truth is, they didn't.  Not one fly was trapped in one of these contraptions...ever...until...

We were sitting out in front of my friend's house when he looked at the very shiny hood of his Mazda 626.  There was something on it.  A bug.  But it wasn't just any bug...dun dun dunnnnnn....it was the dreaded Medfly!  We had all been seeing pictures of this thing warning us that it was armed and dangerous and that we should avoid eye contact at all costs.  I think that it was such a troublemaker because it had these odd shaped triangular wings and it was picked on by all the other bugs in bug school. But maybe that's just me.

My buddy saw that thing, picked it up, walked over to the trap that he had hanging in the tree in front of his house, and threw it in.  Then we continued to talk about important things like pranks we could play on our science teacher Mr. Patton and exciting things that happened during the latest Roman themed spirit day assembly.  In other words, we forgot about the bug...until the end of the week.

The headline in the paper was something like, "THE SPRAYING WILL BEGIN!"  It seems that we would soon have helicopters hovering over our houses and we were about to have our cars assaulted (oh yeah, there was something else about poison) but here is the kicker.  They basically said that there were no bugs found anywhere in the whole region except for one trap on my friend's street!  They described what trap it was, where it was, how far away it was from the pathway to the junior high school... it was my friend's trap!  There was no question!  He, and the bug he threw in, was the reason that hundreds of people could be seen washing their cars in the middle of the night for months after that.  The onslaught had begun, and my friend had fired the first shot.

 I'm sure there was some bureaucrat somewhere who was patting himself on the back saying, "See!  I told you they would like lime green cardboard!"  In true governmental efficiency it seems that they decided to spray every three months...and the Medfly reproduced every two months...so they never really got a handle on this infestation.  Eventually the Medfly news stories, and the spraying, faded away...much like the time it takes to maintain a mirror finish on my car.  And suddenly I have a hankering for a nice juicy orange..hold the Medfly.

The Garage Door.

Just submitted this story to KLOV radio.  They are making a new book with inspirational stories and were asking for help.  When I hit submit it said, "Unfortunately not every story can be published."  Wanna bet?  I have a blog!  So here you go.  It's short on purpose...They asked for stories to be less than 250 words.  Don't bother counting...it's 250 (exactly).  Yeah, I'm OCD like that.
Jeff

Very late one night I opened the sectional garage door to take out the garbage. Pick up was early the next morning and I had forgotten to do it earlier. When I went to close the automatic door I heard a horrible noise that I was sure would awaken the family, and quite possibly the neighbors. The door got twisted from its track and the roller nearest the top of the door fell off, leaving the door dangling precariously on one side. 
No matter what I did, I couldn't fix it. In fact, everything I did made matters worse...much worse! Now two rollers had fallen off and the door looked as if it was ready to just crash to the ground since the cable connected to the spring had unwound violently! 
We don't live in a horrible neighborhood but I would really feel unsafe leaving the door like it was for fear that people would either steal our possessions or, worse, come in to harm my family. I couldn't wake my wife, it was past 11:30, no one was around, and I could think of nothing I could do. I was beyond desperate. 
I sat down on the step that led to the garage, I put my head in my hands, and prayed aloud, "Lord, I cannot do this myself. I need your help." As I lifted my head from my hands, my mechanically gifted neighbor walked up and said, "Do you need some help?"

The Girl From Ipanema

You may recognize the first couple of lines of this Frank Sinatra song... 

Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking.  And when she passes, each one she passes goes - ah.  

I realize that I have just settled my readers into two camps.  One found it impossible not to read this, even quietly in their head, without singing it.  The other group simply said, "eh?"  I am just old enough, I think, to be placed in the first group.  My mom is a big Sinatra fan, but I don't remember her blasting the Rat Pack leader's records on her Apple iHiFi that was the size of an over-sized bedroom dresser. (I figure everything in the future will be overrun by Apple, including the history books...so I'll just start rewriting now)

No, it is much more likely that I heard the song at my grandparents house, or even on one of the many variety shows that we watched...on one of the three channels that came in clearly.  But where I first heard it is not really important.  What is important is that I had heard of it...and most of the teachers I worked with at the time had heard of it as well.  Let me explain.

We had a new principal at our school.  The first school I worked at was not lucky when it came to keeping principals.  I think the front office had five different occupants in my ten years at the school.  That meant that we, as a staff, were exposed to a lot of different personalities...and a lot of different strategies.  (Don't worry...this will not devolve into a "teachers only" sort of story.  I promise.)  Along with these new people, and new ideas, we also found a lot of new ways to start a meeting at the beginning of the year.  The Ice Breakers were in full force at those times.  

We had Lego pieces that had to be put together a certain way, without talking.  We had to go find people who had read the most, traveled the farthest, or went to the most summer trainings.  Once, we even had to all hold hands, tied in a knot, and try to "untie" without letting go of our grips.  It was a fun and exciting time.  (does sarcasm come across in print?)

The time I am writing about today involves a song, I bet you can guess what it is!  But that is not what we were told.  We were broken up into teams.  Each team was given an envelope with multiple slips of paper in them.  Each paper had a word or a punctuation mark on it.  Each team's job was to hand out a paper to every person, discover what the entire sentence said, and then stand in a line holding our papers so that everyone could read them.  I liked this one!  I am a wee bit competitive when it comes to intellectual things.  When it comes to physical challenges I usually just cry, "UNCLE" and then curl up in the fetal position.  The teams were set.  We had our envelopes.  GO!!  Frantically we were all given a piece of paper.  Everyone wanted to be the first.  Secretly I hoped I would be given the linchpin to the whole sentence.  You know, without me and my insight the team would just be flailing about calling out random verbs, and prepositional phrases.  There, of course, would be the clue of the capitalized word.  Too easy, beginning of the sentence...not for me.  I want the meat of it!  

I turned over my piece of paper...a dot.  WHAT!?!  That's it...a dot.  And it was the smallest piece of paper there was too!  Shouldn't they have handed them out according to height?  I was disappointed.  People with more interesting papers were very excited.  The person who had "Ipanema" was positively strutting!  That was it, the key to the whole thing...when the older members of our group saw that, it was all over but the rearranging.  They didn't need me to figure it out.  And I surely didn't need to be in the mix of everything since my lowly little dot was undoubtedly at the end of the sentence.  My fate was set.  I slowly meandered toward the end of the line and waited as they hashed out whether tall or lean came first.  Others worked on the middle portion to decide where the other punctuation card, a comma, went.  At least the comma had some controversy.  Moved from this place to that..."No!  After lovely."  "Are you sure it isn't after lean!"  I would, in subsequent years. have recurring dreams where I was that comma.  It would be a happier time.  
Ahhhhhh...but I digress.

The group, and its more seasoned members, had this.  I'm not sure if the other groups were as close as ours.  If they didn't have a giveaway word like "Ipanema" then they were in trouble.  And then I got noticed.   One of the teachers in our group looked over and noticed that I was just biding my time while I waited for the heart of the project to be done so I could slide onto the end and finish the sentence off.  She was into this action and wanted the bragging rights of being the first team.  When she noticed that I was off to the side, with my tiny piece of paper, she wondered if I was being a slacker.  I was obviously disengaged from the group at large... and relaxed.  No panic.  No sense of urgency.  Nothing.  

Her part had already been assigned, she was in place, she caught my eye and asked, "What about your paper?"  
I said three simple words...and she dropped to her knees and pounded the carpet of the school's library over and over laughing hysterically.  Needless to say, that halted our progress a bit.  We were still far and away the odds on favorite for this activity (Ipanema...sheesh...they may as well have not cut the paper into pieces) but I had rendered another teacher, a member of our team, out of commission due to laughter.  I didn't mean to.  I was just bored and I wasn't part of the action intellectually so I was going to be part of the action humorectually (it's a word, you can look it up.  But it may be hyphenated.)  I am happy to report that she regained control, we fell into place, and we won the competition handily...though one of our members was wiping laughter tears from her eyes.

And now I suppose I should tell you those three words.  When she asked me what was on my card I simply turned it around, showed her my dot, and said, "I'm not pregnant."

Um, Yeah! A LOT!

I don't suppose there's anyone on the planet but that last lone Slovenian farmer (without Facebook) who hasn't heard about my ear problem, but I have been chastised for not writing in a while...so here it is.  (For the record, I do know that the world does not revolve around me and there are people who don't have me favorited on Facebook...I don't know why, but I suppose it happens...so if you'll excuse me I need to go record the last track for my album "I am the world")

It has been so long now that I cannot remember the exact dates or time frame but I have been fighting a pretty serious ear infection for some time now.  Well even that isn't accurate.  The infection has been gone for a while but the results are lingering on, and on, and on, and on...

I sound like I am a bugler for the infantry when I blow my nose.  It scares my family.  It startles strangers.  It makes my students laugh.  I've just always been exuberant when it comes to using a kleenex.  Then it happened.  I blew my nose, in the classroom, and my ear clogged.  No big deal.  It's done that before.  It will clear in a while...I thought.  About a week later, after it hadn't cleared and my tinnitus (constant ear ringing) had turned the volume up to elementary school fire alarm level, I called the doctor.  (At this point in the story I would like credit for initiating a call to the doctor.  Me, not Sylvia, Me.)  I have a fairly high tolerance for pain (not nearly as much as my dad...but I do OK) so to get me to go in is a big deal.  The good news is that they were able to see me right away.  The bad news is that by the time I finally call the doctor, I have decided that it is something bad and they should treat it with the urgency of the season finale episode of House!    The doctor thought, "This guy is a wimp and he has a boo boo...nose spray...go home."

Sylvia was not pleased.  I thought I would give it a try...and went to work the next day.  (Sylvia was not pleased about that either)  In the middle of teaching my little kiddos the calendar, first thing in the morning, my ear became uncomfortable.  A little while later it was painful.  Within the hour it hurt so bad I was nauseous.  And just before recess it was excruciating!  Just as the pain orchestra was reaching its crescendo I heard a weird noise, felt the pressure in my ear increase significantly, and then an unbelievably sharp pain that almost made me yell out in front of a room full of five year olds.  And Then !!!!  Without all of the gory details, I will just say that I could tell that I was going to either need to hold a kleenex to my ear, or have to research how to get blood out of my shirt.  I called the office, told them that I was going to have to leave work in the middle of the day (for the first time ever) because I couldn't function like this (and I have been hurt bad enough where I drove to the emergency room after I got off of work...but never left the kids).

Here we get into a little more good news/bad news.  I called the doctor on the way home, told them that I had developed a painful (and messy) turn of events, and asked to see the ear/nose/throat specialist.  The bad news, I couldn't do that because I didn't see a doctor yet...today.  The doctor I saw yesterday didn't think that my ear being plugged and infected warranted antibiotics or a trip to the specialist.  I had to go to a general doc first....today...and pay to see her.  Here's where the good news is (pay attention...it's small) The doc looked in my ear for approximately two seconds and declared, "You need to see the specialist!" (ya think!?!) So off I go to see the specialist right before he was to supposed to go to lunch.  (remember this...it becomes important)  And I paid to see him as well.

He declared that I had ruptured my eardrum and that I would need to have the procedure that little kids get to get tubes in their ears.  And then he started rummaging in a drawer while I laid on the table in his office.  I am not exaggerating when I say that it sounded like he was looking for the missing shrimp fork at the bottom of a disorganized box of silverware.

I ventured, "Do we do that procedure here?"
"Yes."
"Is it going to hurt?" (I asked simply because Jake had to have tubes when he was a little guy.  It was an ordeal.  They knocked him out.  He was down for a few days.  Let's see what the doc says about the pain.)
"Um, Yeah!  A LOT!" and then he kind of chuckled as he muttered something like, "I'll teach you to keep me away from MY corned beef sandwich!  It's lunch time dagnabbit!"

The nurse came in, he asked her to find the shrimp fork, and while she went digging the doc came over to me and said, "I'm going to give you some numbing medicine."
"Great."
"It stings and burns a lot."
"greeaaat."
"Did you know it was my lunch time Mr. Garrett?"
"What was that?"
"Nothing."

The rest of the procedure went something like this.  Dab, Sting, burn, sting, burn Burn BURN!!  (I'll never understand how, if I can feel it burning, it is "numb."  Is it like when my dad would offer to make my foot feel better by hitting me on the head?  Diversion?)

And then the shrimp fork.  I would like to point out, again, that I can put up with a lot...but the reason I started into the doc was because the pain was remarkable...now he was going to make it worse!?  He went in, cackling wildly about hunger pangs, and almost made me pass out.  The room spun, I dug my fingers into the plastic coated mattress, I lifted my legs and bent my knees, I tried to walk down the table using my butt cheeks, I tried really hard not to cry.  The doc had the nerve to say, "Just breathe naturally."  He put the shrimp fork down and said, "This next part is going to be uncomfortable."  (The NEXT PART!?!)  What he failed to mention was that the device he was getting had been used to extract information from uncooperative terrorists, spies, and drug dealers when waterboarding proved ineffective.  It had been banned by everyone, everywhere, and Hitler had been quoted as saying, "It was built to scare people...no one was supposed to actually use it! (shudder)"  My doc picked his up on ebay.

He used his new toy to try to clear my inner ear.  The pain was incredible.  The sound was unbelievable.  And the thought of what this vacuum tube was doing was unbearable.  He kept stopping and asking if that was better?  No.  Back in.  Now?  No.  More.  After about three hours (well maybe five minutes) he declared...we are not going to be able to do this now...I have to be put on antibiotics and try again in a few days.  WHAT!?!  Apparently I, and my tolerance, had worked up an uncommon infection that was just going to have to work itself out and I would be known as, "The guy with the cotton ball in his ear" for the next couple weeks.  When I did go back in a few days he decided to actually put the tube in the ear (I didn't get knocked out, a gown, or even a lollipop)  I decided that next time I would schedule my ruptured eardrum to not coincide with his lunch.  Even after a few days of medicine the ear had not improved at all.  More medicine.  More drops.  More ringing.  My tongue tasted like sheet metal (don't ask how I know what that tastes like) More Cotton.  Less hearing.  Crap.

It has now been a few weeks since that all happened.  I can now hear things in my ear...the other ear is a different story now.  The ringing is still as bad as ever in the ruptured ear, but since the 'bad' ear started clearing up, the 'good' ear has been acting weird.  If I hear any kind of low rumbling noise it is like I am being punished.  The pain in my 'good' ear in response to the bass in church, a car's stereo, even a passing truck, is disconcerting and causing people to wonder if I forgot which ear was bad since I now cover the other one!  Good thing I have several appointments to see the doc on Monday.  He wants to check my hearing and then go in to see what is happening with all of these side effects.  Don't worry, I made all of the appointments in the morning and, just in case, I'm bringing him a roast beef sandwich...and a shrimp fork!

Road Trip!

Kristiana, our daughter, is driving.  She is now a fully licensed driver.  I could use the cliches about "stay off the road" or "be careful everyone, there's a new driver out there" but I really can't and be honest at the same time.  We were blessed to have a receptive and careful learner.  She is off to a great start and, with the confidence that comes with experience, I think she will become an excellent driver.  I am already comfortable enough to sit in the back seat while she is at the wheel.  Let me tell you, as someone who used to be a professional driver and always wants to have his hands on the wheel (I think this is why flying isn't my favorite activity), that is huge!  Sylvia and I are so comfortable, in fact, that we allowed her to take our car and spend the night at a mutual friend's house to spend time with them and their adorable baby...in another city...at night...via freeway!

Today's story is not about our new driver and her mini-road-trip...but it did spark a memory that I thought you might enjoy reading about.  Today is about my sister Sue and when she was a newish driver.  She doesn't go by "Sue" now but if she is going to call me "Jeffy" then I get to call her whatever I want.  By way of explanation I should say that my sister was a decent driver.  I am not going to gush over her for three reasons...I didn't train her, I was in her car a few times when "careful" was not a word I would have used to describe her, and finally I am her brother and I am required by law to give her a hard time.

There was a time when Sue talked my parents into letting her take her car to San Anselmo (a small town about an hour from here) to see her friend. At this point I need to clear my throat to express something about our mother.  Pardon me... COUworrierGH ...OK, I'm better.  It took a fair amount of convincing to get her to allow Sue to go.  It didn't hurt that the friend she was visiting was either a minister or in the seminary to become a minister.  I think she had been ordained already but I'm a little fuzzy on the timeline.  I am not fuzzy on the fact that this was a few decades ago and the only way people could communicate to others from the inside of a car was by using the horn (or a certain finger) and neither of those was effective in reaching an hour away back to our house.  And the only way anyone was going to call someone on a handheld device was to be part of a Dick Tracy comic book.  It was all arranged and Sue had promised to call as soon as she got there.  Reasonable right?  Of course.  So off she went.

I don't remember where I was for this part of the story but, thankfully, I wasn't home to watch everything unfold.  By way of letting you all off the hook I will tell you that I spoke to my sister a week ago.  She walked to get the phone, she answered it with her left hand while waving to a friend with her right.  (the point being...she owns and enjoys the use of all of her limbs and as far as I know, she has never spent any time in a ditch)  From wherever I was, I came home to a tale of woe and worry.

It seems that it took Sue a little longer to get to her destination, there was no phone call, and mom got worried.  I just know that she waited as long as she could and then called herself to see if she just forgot to check in.  I am picturing a casual glance at the clock, then a bit of mental math, then (after realizing that she should have gotten there thirty minutes ago) a walk to the phone, and then spinning the dial on the front to dial the ten digits.  (zzzzzzp, tktktktktk, zzzzzzzp, tktktktktk, zzzp, tktk, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzp, tktktktktktktktktktk....rotary phone...what are ya gonna do?)  After the three and a half minutes it took to make a phone call mom heard the line ringing, she heard someone pick up the phone, and then nothing....  Well almost nothing...she could hear movement and possibly even breathing on the other end.  "Hello?  Hello!?  HELLO!!!!??"  No response.

So we have mom, on edge because her daughter is driving far away and late to her destination, and now when she called the house a homicidal maniac picked up the phone to torture my mom by just listening to her get more and more worried and probably more and more frantic!  So now my mom had a choice to make.  Listen for the sound of bodies being dragged to a ditch, (my mom's imaginary homicidal maniacs always chose ditches as their dumping ground of choice), or hang up and call back to see if she had somehow dialed the wrong number but that would mean losing the only connection to the house.  She decided to call again.  This time the phone was busy.  She had dialed right and the best that she could hope for was that everyone was safe, but they were bound and gagged while robbers stole everything in the house and they just didn't want to be bothered on the phone.

This went on for I'm sure what seemed like an eternity while Mom called anyone she could think of that might be able to go and save everyone from their horrible fate.  I am missing a large piece of this story now.  I think that Mom actually called a relative, the church, and possibly the police in San Anselmo to see if they could figure out what is going on.  For what I am sure was an agonizing amount of time nobody could tell my mom what was going on.  I think someone may have gone to the house, knocked on the door, and heard a dog inside but the door was locked and was not answered.  Phone calls back and forth...waiting...waiting...waiting...


(In complete fairness to my mom...had this happened to me and my daughter, I would have freaked out, lost control, and people would probably only be able to see me during visiting hours while I stared into the distance...silently)

Finally the phone rang and it was Sue and there were relatively reasonable explanations for all that had happened.  It seems that Sue drove up only to be whisked from her car by her friend who was late to a Bible study at her church.  She never even made it into the house.  When they got to the church it was either outside her ability or her memory that Mom was waiting for a call and so no call was made.  When the emotional dust had settled and Mom explained her end of the horrible day, she asked about the single event that caused panic on her end...the phone answered, but silent?  It seems that they have a dog with an aversion to the phone.  To make it stop ringing the dog had learned to knock it off the handle...but didn't even have the courtesy to say that no one was home.  Everything was well.  Sue enjoyed the rest of her visit. And made it home safely.

I'm sure that my mom had a few choice words to say about that dog.  She was not terribly happy that something so scary was started by a four legged fur bag...but the rumors that she hired a hit-man to "take care" of the dog are completely untrue.  Even though it was found soon after... in a ditch.  (just kidding)

30 Minutes Or Less

You know the joke about the guy who calls for road service to explain that he has locked his keys in the car.   I'm sure you've heard it.  When he hears that they can't come for an hour, he raises his voice and says, "Oh no!  Please hurry!  My wife and kids are locked inside!"

I'm pretty sure the person who that joke was written for, is who a local construction company is worried about.  There is a major project being built just three blocks from where I sit.  I have heard people say that they will be apartments.  I've heard some say that they will be shops with apartments on top.  I've also heard one person say that it would be a high security prison for the criminally insane/daycare nursery. (but I don't think that will happen)  The point is, there is construction going on...and it has been for quite some time.  I cannot tell you what the exact time has been.  That would take research... since I don't know, off the top of my head, how long it takes to build daycare prisons.  But I can tell you that the weather has changed from very warm and dry to very wet and cold since they started.  

We, here in the lovely city of Fremont, are no strangers to things taking a while.  It took the city council more than three hours to discuss which color the accent pieces on a building, sixty feet above the pavement, would be painted.  Just months before they tore it down.  It was riveting.  Don't think that it is strictly related to the government of the city.  We have a furniture store, on one of our main thoroughfares, that has been going out of business (according to the signs) for three decades!  Wouldn't it be great to get that kind of news from a doctor.  "I'm afraid your days are numbered...you only have thirty more years to live."  I'm not complaining.  I wouldn't want to be handed the keys to the city and told to lock up when I'm done.  I'm not mad.  Just observant.  Now where did I put my glasses?  Never-mind, they're on my nose.

In fact, the land that is being developed by the Alcatraz/Gerber construction company has been vacant for more than forty years.  It was one of the last pieces of property in central Fremont area that hadn't been turned into a building of some sort.  We Fremontinites (I'm not sure that is correct, but once again...research) had begun to assume that it would be vacant forever.  There used to be orchards all over and this, I'm sure, was no exception.  There was even a lone tree that had to, ahem, be convinced to move to another location to make room for this job.  That one sad, dormant, barren tree will probably lend its legacy to the structure.  I'm guessing Peach Wood Estates or Rolling Apricot Manor (I should really hire someone to do research for me).  

I told you all of that so I could tell you this.  There is an interesting sign at the construction site.  On the road next to the very large buildings is a sign that says, "Expect 30 minute delays."  Now my family and I have traveled all across this country.  We are no strangers to signs or delays.  There are helpful signs and strange signs.  There is even a place, in Oklahoma I believe, that had a sign stating, "Hair Cuts and Pizza!"  (we didn't stop)  During the nice weather of the summer road construction seems to be common.  The occasional sign telling us to expect delays is inevitable.  When traveling to Yosemite, here in California, there is an entrance that has been "altered" by a massive rock slide and the cars that come this route have to wait and be escorted into the park by a ranger.  There are delay signs there that tell us that we'll have to wait for up to 7 minutes.  If you've ever been to the Yosemite valley you'll know that the beauty there is worth much more than a seven minute wait.  Nothing against my fair city...but I'm thinking a 30 minute wait to get from A to B would be a little off-putting.

Again, that is not really the problem.  The problem, as I see it, is that the yellow motorized road construction sign that blinks "Expect 30 minute delays" is placed on a main thoroughfare which has about as many outlets as there are cars that travel it.  I counted six ways to leave this road starting at the sign...many more if you started planning ahead as soon as you could read the two-foot-tall letters!  Never mind that the amount of construction happening at this site is sporadic, to say the least.  The buildings are getting built...I just never see anyone there.  The fact that at any given time in your travel down this road could switch to the left or the right and only add 30 seconds to your travel time to avoid 30 minutes of delay.  In fact, the only person I can see getting stuck on this road for 30 minutes would be a myopic obsessive compulsive with clinically advanced tunnel vision.  (apologies all around if any of my readers have actually been caught in the delay.)

Perhaps I am not thinking about this correctly.  Maybe the city planners paid off this construction crew to play a psychological trick on all of us.  If we expect something bad...and then it doesn't happen...Huzzah!  It could be a tourist trick.  Who knows?  People could be thinking, "You know, whenever I travel in Fremont I get the feeling that I may be moderately inconvenienced.  And then it doesn't happen!  I will have to remember this when that company calls to ask me about which Bay Area town is the best!"  That is probably how Fremont recently got voted the best city at doing something-or-other for places that have that specific attribute that is pleasing for some reason...I really need to increase my research budget.