dudes, waxing your back isn’t just for metrosexuals

Last night, I went through the wonderful every-few-months routine of having my back waxed.  I’d like to be clear that I’m not one of those annoying, pretentious metrosexuals, I just hate having grotesque wiry hair on my back.  I wear work boots 90% of the time I have shoes on, and I don’t use hair product (especially since I shave my head). I don’t do any of the metrosexual classics, like checking my reflection more often than my wife does, or jumping on every dumb-looking fashion trend.  I don’t get any other part of me waxed, just my back.  When I was younger, in the dating stage of life, nearly every girlfriend I had remarked how disgusting they found back hair.  I got to thinking about it, and realized, yeah, it’s not pretty. 

My wife does the waxing, and I think deep down she uses it as a way to get me back for all the different things I do to aggravate her.  I can’t see her face when she’s yanking the wax strips off my back, but I bet if I could I’d see a fiendish liitle grin tugging at the corners of her mouth, especially when I blurt out stuff like, “Oh my God, my skin’s on fire!”  I was being kind of a grouchy jerk over the weekend, and the bill came due last night over the course of sixty very painful minutes.

Anyway, dudes don’t realize there’s plenty of middle ground between metrosexual and macho alpha male.  I know a lot of men think that doing anything more cosmetic than brushing their teeth is “kinda gay.”  I’m very comfortable in my sexuality, and anyone who thinks not wanting to look like I’m wearing a frontless sweater is gay, well, homophobia is an ugly trait. 

Last night, I had a Jason Giambi-like 0 for 3 in the baseball games I was interested in.  The Yankees got bullied by Detroit, as Phil Hughes continued his imitation of a human punching bag.  The Mets won, but the bullpen cost my 2nd favorite pitcher (Johan Santana) a win against the woeful Pirates.  For the third part of the trifecta of disappointment, Greg Maddux failed in his effort to pick up his 350th win against the Phillies.  I was really hoping he might get it last night, since the Padres were playing in the Eastern time zone and I knew I’d be able to stay awake to watch the whole thing.  But sometimes you just “gotta tip your cap”, right, unoriginal talking heads?

I get so sick of every baseball broadcast being overrun with moronic announcers babbling about “little things.”  You know, like when some frail .210 hitter actually gets down a sac bunt, or when a different .210 hitter runs hard to first base, even though he was still out.  This kind of stuff gets so ingrained in the baseball conscience, that people forget the obvious: Doing big things is more important than doing little things.  Talking about doing little things is just another thing broadcasters and Joe Fan do to make themselves feel smart.  Give me a lineup of nine guys who do big things, rather than a bunch of overrated “hustle guys who love the game” running hard to first base en route to another out.

The NFL draft was Saturday, although I didn’t get to watch it because of Eastern Star obligations.  I’m a Jets fan (hey, quit laughing), and I was generally pleased with their moves.  It could have been better, but it also could have been Blair Thomas and Johnny Mitchell.  I don’t count on Gang Green having anything better than an 8-8 record, but in the NFL, bad teams can become playoff teams overnight, so you never know.  I grew up a 49ers fan, but after Jerry Rice and Steve Young moved on, I realized I was more of a Rice and Young fan than a Niners fan.  I guess my subconscious need to be in a state of anguish tinged with misery led me to root for the Jets. 

For all the Jets fans out there, you should check out the book True Believers by Joe Queenan.  There’s a whole chapter about how being a Jet fan can be such a mind-numbingly frustrating experience.  The whole book is a great read, but the chapter about Jet fans is my personal favorite.

I know this is going to disappoint some folks, but my grandmother is out of town for a few days, so I won’t be able to tell any stories about our trip to Publix today.  But I thought I’d dust off an old story from a few years ago, when we did our weekly grocery trips to a store called Bruno’s. 

One of the things that was on my grocery list was chopped walnuts.  I’d never had occasion to buy chopped walnuts before, and had a hell of a time finding them.  I told my grandmother, “When you’re getting your stuff, if you see chopped walnuts, grab me a small bag please.”

As time went on, and I had searched almost every aisle in the store for those damn walnuts, my grandmother turned onto the far end of the aisle I was standing halfway down.  At the top of her volume dial, she bellowed, “Derek, did you find your nuts?”

Needless to say, I was horrified.  Of course, the aisle I was standing in the middle of was full of shoppers, and every last one of them was female.  They all looked at me, clearly interested in how I would answer.  In one of God’s very own private mysteries, they somehow all avoided laughing out loud about it.  I would have doubled over and laughed until I saw purple spots.

Instead of answering her, I lowered my head and quickly walked to where she was standing.  I softly said, “Please promise me never to ask me that again, ok?”

A look of confusion spread across her face, and it slowly morphed into one of exasperation.

“It’s some kind of sex thing isn’t it?  Why is it always about sex?  The whole world is obsessed with sex!”

“Grandma, keep your voice down!  What’s the matter with you?  I just don’t want every woman in Griffin wondering if I can find my nuts, ok?”

It was quite a proud moment.

My grandmother has always had a blissful ignorance towards sexual euphemisms, and it has caused considerable embarrassment to her loved ones over the years.  For example, I frequently help my grandmother run her errands, because in the grand tradition of elderly drivers, she is spectacularly awful behind the wheel of a car.  My grandmother has an intolerance for breaks in conversation the way I have an intolerance for penicillin, and she blurted out, seemingly from nowhere, “Did you ever figure out how to jerk off with a stick?”

I thought surely I was hearing things.  I stammered, “I beg your pardon?”

“You know, a stick shift.  I tried to learn to drive a stick shift, but I couldn’t get the hang of jerking off.  I just got frustrated trying to learn to jerk off the right way.”

Obviously, by jerking off, she meant shifting gears.  But that wouldn’t have been embarrassing enough.

“Yeah, grandma, I learned how to do that right around the time my parents let me put up a poster of Vanna White on my bedroom wall when I was 13.”

“You didn’t learn to drive when you were 13!  You surely didn’t learn the right way to jerk off with a stick at 13!”

I just smiled and assured her, “I did, just not the way you mean.”

One more sexual euphemism story, then I’ll stop beating the dead horse.  Me and Cathy live in an older home, and one of the recurring problems we’ve had is slow drains that tend to get backed up frequently.  I was up at my family’s business one day to purchase some drain clog remover, and my grandma had come in at the same time I was there.  She saw the clog remover, and asked, “is your drain backed up again?”

I answered that it was indeed.  I also complained that the last time I put in the drain cleaner, it didn’t do a thorough job.

She dialed up the volume, in front of the store’s female employees and several customers, and blurted, “You just gotta learn to let it eat it out, son.  If you don’t let it finish eating it out, you’re gonna have problems.”

“Grandma, you don’t know what you’re saying, chill out.”

“I know what I’m saying!  I have problems with your grandfather not being patient enough to let it get eaten out good too!”

When my grandmother gets going like this, one thing that always makes it even more comical is that when she’s making a point, she gets kind of bug-eyed.  Between that visual effect and the audio effect of her complete naivete about sexual innuendo, you get a full scale home theatre comedy experience.

I couldn’t stand it any more.  One of the store’s employees had her hand over her mouth, not wanting to laugh out loud at the boss’s raving wife making rather hysterical unintentional references to oral sex.  Several people were staring at me, probably curious to see what I would do next.  I simply walked over to her and quietly said, “You know how sometimes you don’t understand when sayings mean…”

“Oh my Lord, it’s sex again, isn’t it?” she cut me off.  “I swear, I can’t even talk about jerking off and eating out without people thinking about sex.  The whole world’s gone perverted!  How in the heck does eating out have anything to do with sex?  How do you get anything sexy out of wanting something to be eaten out?!”

“Grandma, settle down.  Jesus, they’re gonna call the guys with butterfly nets to come after you.”

And so it goes…

Before I go, something serious I felt like mentioning…

Shifting gears dramatically, I’m a member of Amnesty International, and I encourage anyone who’s interested to learn more about what this very respected and effective human rights organization does by visiting:

www.amnestyusa.org

I’m very much against the death penalty and the legalization of the use of torture as a prison interrogation method.  This isn’t 1400, and yet the United States is currently being led by an incompetent religious bigot who enthusiastically endorses the use of torture as if leading a second wave of the Spanish Inquisition.  Encourage your government to put an end to the good versus evil mentality and the endless and fruitless war that is polarizing this country.

Support our troops by bringing them home to their loved ones. 

 

pinwheels for the damned

Masonic stuff has taken up a good amount of my time and energy the past few days, so forgive me for not posting for a few days.  I doubt anyone out there was thinking, “If That Asperger Dude doesn’t write a new post soon, I’m going into withdrawls.”

Last night at my Lodge meeting I gave a devotional about the pointlessness of being angry at God but the inevitability that we all get that way at some point in our lives.  I gave it the way I prefer to give my devotionals, go in there with a general idea and stand up and speak from the top of my head and the depth of my heart.  No note cards, no prepackaged platitudes.  I think it went over well with the men who bothered to listen.  It is an ongoing source of frustration to me to  look out and see less than half of the members paying attention.  Yet when talk of barbecues, or small town Hee Haw joking begins, they all are completely focused on the subject matter.

It’s the older members that are generally the ones not paying attention.  They don’t care what some damn young liberal fool like myself has to say.  They still want to operate in the reality of 1940, and they want to connect invisible strings to the backs of the younger Masons so they can make us dance when they want.  The whole situation with my Masonic life fills me with bitterness and heartbreak, because when I first became a Mason, I really wanted to make it more than a twice a month visit to Lodge.  I wanted it to be what I spent my days doing, and certain people filled my head with promises that this could happen.  But I’m still waiting, and I’m enough of a realist to know that it will never happen.  The depression and disappointment of my Masonic life is an electric blanket that I can’t throw off in the middle of July.

Every spring, the local council on child abuse awareness places a number of pinwheels on the corner of a middle school’s property in downtown.  You know, those cheap little dollar pinwheels places like drugstores put up near the register in hopes that whiny brats can talk their moms into a hasty last minute purchase.  Each of the pinwheels represents a reported case of child abuse and/or neglect in my home county, which isn’t small but is far from one of Georgia’s most populous counties.  There were just under 1,100 reported cases in 2007.  It’s one thing to see the number 1,100, but it’s quite a powerful visual image to see that many pinwheels, glistening cheerily in the springtime sun, as if to hide their own dark symbolism.

The council does this every spring, and although I applaud them for their efforts, I have little faith it makes much difference.  Here in the deep South, there is still very much an attitude of, “It’s their kid, and it’s nobody’s business how they raise them.”  It’s not an attitude that’s going away any time soon.  God knows how much the council would have to spend on pinwheels if every incident of child abuse/neglect was actually reported.

Every time I drive by Pinwheel Corner, as I have come to think of it, I feel an enormous swell of sadness for the little boy in me who painfully earned a pinwheel that was never displayed in his honor.  And I think of how the memories of all of us pinwheel children will forever be stained, even damned.

When I was in eleventh grade, I conducted what I thought of as a psychology experiment.  I have often done this sort of thing over the years, and I have to admit it can be manipulative on my part.  I shouldn’t do it, but sometimes my intense intellectual curiosity gets the better of me.  It involved my mother, and my curiosity about what she thought of me.

The “in crowd” at my school were all members of the Key Club (guys) and Keywannettes (girls).  I knew this was the kind of crap that impressed my mother.  She was constantly on my case about making friends, fitting in, that kind of thing.  So I lied and told her a member of the Key Club had asked me to be his “Little Brother”, which meant that he would encourage the rest of the Key Club dudes to take me as a member.  She lit up.  She talked to me more that afternoon than she had in weeks.  She asked questions, and beamed that she was pleased I was “finally coming around”.  She even smiled while she did it.  I had my answer.  That experiment shaped a lot of my attitude towards my mother, and to an extent, my sister as well.

When I told my mother I wanted to be a Mason, she was happy about it.  Her happiness had more to do with the fact that I would be socially involved with something than my intense interest in the archaic roots of modern Masonry, but at least she was happy for me.  When I was going through the grunt work of becoming a Mason, learning catechisms and so forth, I would sometimes complain to her about the way the older Masons hazed the new members.  Some of it was just good fun, but oftentimes their teasing was excessive, and even borderline cruel.  When I mentioned how I was frustrated with the neverending hazing, my mother said, “They’re testing you to see how much you want it.”  This really burned my ass because I felt like when someone tells their parent that people are being unbearably obnoxious to their kid, the parent’s first thought should be their kid’s well-being, regardless of his or her age.  Unbelievably, she encouraged me not to rock the boat and to continue to tolerate my tormentors.  It was childhood all over again.  No one was beating me up like my father did, but they were verbally abusing me plenty.  My mother was convinced it wasn’t that big of a deal.  If people like my mother and sister are willing to let other people beat their ass with a paddle or whatever so they can be members of the cool sorority, that’s fine for them.  But although I can enjoy a good joke, I don’t want to be picked on over and over.  Had my fill of that a long time ago.  It was quite a revelation to me to know my mother’s instinct was to be concerned that my inability to deal with verbal abuse could be harmful to the group, not her kid.

I was married once before, and it was a period of my life so wasteful and unfulfilling it really doesn’t even merit much mention.  But during that time, I experienced something that would cast in bronze my beliefs that my mother vastly preferred my sister to me.

I had set up an online account with AOL before my first marriage began.  I allowed my sister and mother to use it as guests.  They never had to pay for their online usage.  I paid for it for years.  After I married my first wife, we decided to go with a different internet service to save money, and frankly, because we hated AOL.  I had told my mother about our plans months in advance, and advised her that she and my sister would need to open new accounts because the new service we planned to use limited more strictly the number of guest accounts.  Besides, I’d been married for a year or so, and it was time for a married couple to have its own internet stuff.  After the agreed upon time arrived, I canceled the AOL account and opened the new one with Bellsouth.  My sister freaked out.  Seems she had not taken the simple steps to get AOL to forward her mail to a new account.  She had not even bothered to set up a new email, even though her college would provide her a new email account.  She and my mother went on the warpath against me.  My mother called me in a state of panic over and over, which was ridiculous.  There was a simple way to solve their problems, and I had given them time to do it.  Yet again, their time was more important than mine.  My mother told me to re-open the AOL account, which I refused to do, since AOL had been very snotty to me when I canceled it.  I didn’t want to deal with those jerks again. 

Apparently, the whole time, my sister was complaining to my mother how unfair it was.  I guess she thought she was entitled to free internet service provided by her married older brother that her friends all made fun of.  My mother, in turn, made my dad miserable, as is the usual course of misery.  He drove over to my house, told me the situation was making his life unbearable (which I don’t blame him for thinking, at all), and told me to reactivate the account and have it put under his name and credit card.  I relented, mostly because I knew he was stuck in a bad in-between area.  I felt humiliated, having to sacrifice my principles, going back to AOL, because my mother and sister didn’t take advantage of what I thought was a very fair amount of time to make the adjustments for the changes I planned.  Simply put, I lapsed into a state of full blown rage, and it lasted for weeks.  Looking back, I guess it was only by the grace of God that I didn’t drop dead from a heart attack.

I shamefully admit that I said awful things to and about my mother.  It was a terrible way to handle a bad situation, and I accept full responsibility for not expressing my displeasure in a non-abusive manner.  I wish I could take it back, but I can’t.  I just want it to be known that I do feel a great sense of shame and regret about my reaction to the whole ordeal.

In the end, my temper tantrums blew any chance I had of people taking my side in the argument.  If I had handled it more maturely, maybe someone would have listened to me.  Maybe not.

I fought with my mother for weeks, and threatened to sever the relationship entirely.  I had had enough.  All my life, living in the shadow of someone six years my junior, had been a difficult burden.  Knowing my mother and biological father both hitched their stars to my sister when I was very young had also been a difficult burden.  But knowing that my mother would blame me for my sister’s irresponsibility was the straw that broke the Asperger’s back.

Finally, I cooled off some, and began the process of getting back to my facade of a marriage, trying not to think about the facade of a relationship I had with my mother and sister.  A few weeks later, my cousin was getting married, and it would be the first time I would be in the same room with my mother and sister since the s*** hit the fan.  I had committed to be an usher, and my sister was to be maid of honor.  I snidely remarked my sister had been everyone’s maid of honor since July 13, 1980.

The events that unfolded on the day of my cousin’s wedding provided the toxic, festering cherry on the sundae of bulls**** that I was being force-fed.  As maid of honor, my sister was responsible for hanging onto the groom’s wedding band.  She forgot and left it in the room in which the bridesmaids had gotten ready for the service.  When they arrived at the point of exchanging of rings, my sister simply left the room, got the ring, and returned to her spot.  She was understandably embarrassed.

What happened then was nearly unbelievable to me.  Because my sister was crying from embarrassment, everyone flocked to her to comfort her.  The happy, newly married couple probably got one tenth the amount of attention that the distraught maid of honor did.  I just stood there shaking my head in amazement.  My grandfather walked up to me and sternly barked, “You oughtta go say something nice to your sister.  She’s upset.”

Well, Goddammit, I was upset too.  I was upset at having spent my life fending off my father’s physical and verbal assaults while everyone around me was too busy doting on my sister to help me.  I was upset at the realization that it would always be that way.  And I was just plain pissed off, knowing that if I had been the one who had forgotten the wedding band, people would have been lining up not to comfort me, but to make smartass comments and knee-jerk judgments.

“You’ve got to be f***ing kidding me,” I muttered, although I’m sure my grandfather didn’t hear me. 

But it was no joke.  It was real, it always was, it still is, and it always shall be very real.

I won’t apologize for the way I feel. 

All I want is an admission.

 

 

when NT’s say X, they mean Y

here’s a list of Asperger interpretations for many sayings of NT’s

 

“She’s got a great personality” means she’s really ugly, overweight, or stupid

“Gosh, it’s so nice to see you” means “we’re both in the same place at the same time and didja speak culture dictates I tell you it’s nice to see you.”

“How are you?” means “Please say fine because I don’t really care how you’re doing.”

“This dish tastes interesting” means “This dish tastes like s***.”

“You have a lovely home.” means “I’m mentally comparing your home to mine in hopes I can feel like I’m better than you.”

“I’ve slept with tons of women” means “I actually cry after sex but i want to sound badass.”

“That guy’s strange.” means “That guy doesn’t comform to our Southern norms and must be subtly punished over period of years.”

“I may not be a psychologist, but I am a mother…” means “I think the ability to procreate like any common tree sloth makes me somehow brilliant even though my kid starts fires while I pat myself on the back.”

“That guy’s smart.” means “That guy uses words with multiple syllables that a hick like me is unfamiliar with” and/or “I hate that guy because his intelligence dwarfs mine”.

“You gotta get right with Jesus.” means “I’m so arrogant and such a religious bigot that I assume that my choice of religion has an absolute monopoly on the truth.”

“My wife is nagging me.” means “I can’t believe my wife actually expects me to do the things I promised her I would do.”

“I want a small wedding.” means “I want a huge wedding that will cast a frustrating shadow over both of our lives for a year, and I expect you to know that without me saying it because my mind has become delusional from too many chick flicks and cheap romance novels.”

“I’m a social butterfly.” means “If other people don’t define me, I’ll be a word without meaning.”

“My preacher says…” means “I’m too simple-minded or just stupid to think for myself, so I let a guy who screams himself hoarse and cries in front of dozens of people do my heavy thinking for me.”

“Support the troops” means “If you’re against this war, I hope your hippie ass drops dead. Shock and awe! YEAH!!!”

“That’s a good idea, sir.” means “You’re a person who has more fancy titles than me, so you could say let’s roll around in pig s*** and I’d say it sounds like a good idea.”

“Not tonight, I have a headache.” means “You’re not going to climb all over me, do your nasty business for thirty seconds, and fall asleep leaving me to debate using the spin cycle on the washing machine to get off.”

“Your baby is so cute.” means “I wouldn’t tell you if your baby looked like something Scully and Mulder should be chasing on the X-Files, so I’m sticking with a meaningless generic compliment.”

“That guy’s a damn liberal fool” means “that guy doesn’t drive a pickup or own a gun.”

“Well, it’s getting late.” means “get the f*** out of my house, you mooching bastards.”

If anyone enjoys this, maybe I’ll do some more down the road.

 

 

 

 

 

things that make me go “WTF??” ,and Chasing Erin

As anyone (all ten of you) who reads this blog regularly knows, one of my favorite things to write about is the differences between my Asperger ways and perspectives and those of the neurotypicals in my life.

One NT saying I’ve never really understood is “just so we can say we’ve been there.”  You know, like when people go to a tourist attraction, such as the Empire State Building, so they can come home and tell the other NT’s they went.  I guess my perspective is, “Who gives a f*** if other people know I went to the top of the Empire State Building?”  If I’m going to do something, I’m doing it for the experience itself, not for any potential vacation stories I may or may not tell.  Why should I care if John and Jane Mouthbreather think it’s cool that I saw the Empire State Building?  Every vacation or weekend road trip I’ve ever been on, some NT has declared that he or she wants to do something, “just so we can say we’ve been there”.  Have people really become so dependent on the approval of others that experience and the chance to form memories have taken a back seat, or even been thrown out of the car altogether?

Another thing NT’s seem to take a lot of pride in is finishing each other’s sentences.  They’ll beam with delight and foolish pride as they proclaim, “We can finish each other’s sentences.”  Apparently forming a complete sentence on your own is for unlovable losers.  When people try to finish my sentences for me, and they frequently do, it really pisses me right off.  It’s just yet another behavioral difference between Aspergers and NT’s.  To an Asperger, someone finishing a sentence for you suggests they think you need their help to form a coherent thought.  To an NT, it’s a sign that you have some cosmic bond.  Of course, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, as it so often is.

NT’s are always really impressed by people with titles.  I see this especially in my Masonic and Eastern Star activities.  The NT’s speak in reverent tones about the Grand this or Most Worshipful that.  To me, they’re all as full of s*** as anyone else is, including me.  It’s almost like the NT’s believe that a few cool-sounding well placed titles lend some majesty to a human being.  I’ve always said that I’d much rather be a title-less Mason who makes the world a better place than a guy with titles as long as your arm who just seeks more titles with an insatiable and ravenous appetite.

A lot of NT’s will continue to eat a certain food even though they know it will lead to a two hour stint in the bathroom.  They always accompany this ill-advised decision with the statement, “I don’t care if it makes me sick, I’m gonna eat so and so tonight.”  I find this astonishingly foolish.  If you know that an unpleasant outcome is guaranteed, why follow through with the course of action?  Being a life-long resident of central Georgia, collard greens is a food that comes to mind.  There seems to be a insanely large number of people running around this part of the world who are willing to accept hours of ungodly stomach rebellion in exchange for ten minutes scarfing down a plate of collard greens.  I just don’t get it.

I’m in a pretty good mood today, mostly because my New York Yankees have actually played good baseball the past couple of days.  I still don’t get why Giambi is starting so much, but I’ve beat that dead horse plenty I guess.  He is hitting so poorly that it seems like a day or two on the bench is warranted, but he’s still being put out on the field.  Some managers, actually a lot of managers, have what us stat rats call “pets”.  This means a player who gets to keep playing even though he’s hurtng the team, or at best, contributing very little, simply because the manager likes that player.  Dusty Baker is one of history’s worst about having a few pets around, particularly with Neifi Perez and Paul Bako.  Girardi seems to  have bought Giambi a pretty collar and made him his pet.  I think Giambi would have to burn down his manager’s house to be put on the bench, and that might not even do it.  After all, sometimes pets take a dump on the rug, right?

My wife likes to tease me because I have the hots for Erin Esurance, pink-haired animated babe from the Esurance commericals.  I’m sure you’ve all seen those commericals because hardly a commerical break goes by that Erin doesn’t strut her well-proportioned cartoon stuff.  To be clear, yes I know it’s quite stupid and pathetic to crush on an animated chick.  But dammit, I haven’t felt this way since Judy Jetson broke my heart when I was six

Wonder if I should tell Cathy about that pink wig I got her to wear on my birthday…

helping old ladies watch Celtic Woman

My family and friends always look forward to my Wednesday posts about my weekly grocery shopping trip with my grandmother, so let’s get to it, shall we?

Actually, the trip to Publix went by without much entertaining or interesting happening.  On the drive home, I commented, “That was an unusually smooth trip, wasn’t it?  Nothing like last week for sure.”

“I wanted to tell you, after our trip last week, I called Publix and spoke with their manager for several minutes about not having any five pounds of flour stocked”, she replied.

“Grandma, please tell me you’re yanking my chain.”

“No, I called and we had a good talk about the flour.  He promised me they’d do a better job keeping it stocked.  I also told him how the attitude around there was bad last week.”

I took in a deep breath, and exhaled very slowly, weighing my next words carefully in my mind.

“Hey grandma, do you remember when I was younger, what you used to tell me quite a lot?  From the time I was around ten until I was well into my teenage years?  About getting old?”

“No, what?”

“You used to tell me, very emphatically, that if you ever started acting like a meddling old woman who gets herself out of sorts over stupid things and makes a habit out of complaining about trivial imperfections in service, that you wanted me to tell you without being mean about it.  You said you never wanted to be like that.”

But alas, one of the things that happens in old age seems to be that you forget how foolish stereotypical old men and women came across when you weren’t one yourself.  All of a sudden, those things that were not worth complaining about, like keeping five pound bags of flour in stock, become worthy of not only  in-store tirades, but follow up phone calls to further drive the point home.

“But I have always used five pound bags of flour.  I told that there manager if he couldn’t keep ‘em stocked, we’d just shop somewhere else.  I told him good.”

Again I took a deep breath, slowly exhaling as I thought my next words over.

“Grandma, you can’t go raising hell every time a store doesn’t have bananas that ripen quickly enough, or the employees don’t tapdance over to you and offer to rake your front yard.  It’s just not a good thing to do.”

She had dug in by this point though.

“If we don’t make a stand and get businesses to do right, they’ll keep on giving us a bad deal.”

“Make a stand?  You make a stand for human rights, or freedom of religion.  You don’t make a stand over bags of flour.”

But it was pointless.  Another thing that happens as people grow older is that they pick very odd and minor things to get themselves tied in knots about.  Then they find out who to complain to, and they abuse the privilege without mercy, knowing most people won’t just tell an elderly person to bugger off.  It’s almost as if they are so miserable with getting old that they have to find some stupid way to vent the misery instead of just admitting they hate feeling old.  It’s easier to blame someone or something else.

“They should keep that in stock, it’s important.  And it’s important to let businesses know when they let you down.”

I wanted to shoot back that they didn’t let her down, they ran out of an item a lot of people purchase.   But I didn’t.  My feelings of amusement and silent laughter had turned to sadness for her state of mind.  I know how awful it feels to turn into something you always said you hated and didn’t want to be. 

My father was an alcoholic, and his drinking made me miserable.  I always swore I wouldn’t have a hard time knowing when to say when, but I developed my own drinking problem in my early adulthood years.  I remember how hard it was to see my face in the mirror, knowing I was turning into the alcoholic train wreck of a human being my father had been.  The thing I least wanted to become, I became.

So for once in my life, I kept my mouth shut when I felt I had a point to make.  I decided that deep inside the corners of her heart, she knows what she is becoming, and that knowledge has to be difficult enough of a burden to bear without me piling on.

I know I can be pretty tough on the elderly on my blog, so I wanted to tell this story in order to prove I don’t hate the elderly, just some of their less endearing traits.

One good thing about being an Asperger is that if we think something is the right thing to do, we’ll do it regardless of what the slack-jawed gawkers around us think.  A lot of NT’s will only do the right thing if they see another NT do it first. 

One night I took my lovely wife to see Celtic Woman perform at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta.  We arrived a bit early, and found our way to our seats in the balcony.  We were pretty high up, and the stairs at the Fox are rather steep.  We just sat talking, listening to the orchestra warm up, enjoying a night out. 

A woman my mom’s age and what I would assume was her mother came through the passageway to our section and looked fearfully at the upper part of the area.  The elderly woman sighed and leaned on her companion and they took a very difficult first wobbly step towards their seats.  It was obviously a tremendous effort on the elderly woman’s part, and they still had four or five dozen steps to go.

There were several men in seats around the bottom of the stairs, but they all shifted uncomfortably in their seats and turned their heads in the opposite direction. 

“F*** this”, I muttered under my breath, rising from my seat.  I walked purposefully down the steps, stood next to the struggling old woman, and smiled, which is not really a natural act for me.

“All right, pretty lady.  You put all your weight on me, and we’re gonna get you to your seat.”

She nodded and threw an arm around me.  She did what I said, putting every ounce of her weight on me, and the old girl was heavier than she looked.  But I got her up those steps and helped her into her seat.  She and her daughter both thanked me, and I returned to my wife.

After I sat down, the woman behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, “That was an incredibly sweet and thoughtful thing you just did.”  I felt my cheeks beginning to burn red, and simply said, “It was the right thing to do.”

There was an entire row of nothing but women who had obviously come to the show together sitting a couple of rows behind us.  One of them blurted out, very loudly, “We are all so impressed! Chivalry’s not dead! WOOHOO!!”

Then the entire section begin to break into applause.  My wife was enjoying it, but she was giving me the quick little pats on my arm she gives me when she knows I am uncomfortable.  At this point I was quite embarrassed.  I gave a feeble, borderline dismissive wave of acknowledgment, like political dignitaries do.

So anyway, I know I can be tough on the elderly, but I’m not on a crusade against them, I could just very much do without some of the things they tend to do.

All right, dear readers, that’s all for now. 

 

a poisoned dream cycle

Saturday morning, my wife was watching one of the seemingly infinite number of decorating/home renovations shows that channels like HGTV and TLC have made so popular.  Ever since the show Trading Spaces caught on a few years back, these shows have spread like weeds, because television executives are second only to football coaches in the tendency to be copycats.  The biggest gripe I have with these shows is that they have filled the head of every woman who watches them with the delusion that they are a skilled interior decorator, and the head of the men who watch with a similar delusion that they are skilled carpenters.

In the grand tradition of all things popular and trendy, there is a formula to be followed.  Actual professional decorators come in and explain their ideas, delusional woman of the house pouts like a damn baby because she has “her own vision for the room”, an accord is reached, carpenter runs behind schedule, dramatic music is played as the host frets about time constraints, another miraculous last minute rush gets the room completed on time, woman homeowner cries in a nausea-inducing spectacle upon seeing the completed room.

One of the things that bugs me about these kinds of shows is that I know there must be armies of morons watching who think they’re actually not going to finish the room on time.  Hey dummies, how are you not getting this?  They’re building false suspense.  The same things happen every week, just like the old ’70s cop show CHiPs.  Throw in two high speed chases, an argument with the chief, and a shot or two of Ponch’s keister stuffed in hazardously tight pants, you’ve got yourself a show.

Ladies, moving a lamp from one corner of your living room to another corner does not make you an interior designer.  Gentlemen, using a hammer to hang a picture on the wall does not make you a carpenter.  You’re almost as bad as the imbeciles flocking to play Texas hold ‘em because they see it on tv and want to be part of the trend.  You aren’t going to make millions playing poker, you’re just a poseur hanging out with other poseurs, wearing your sunglasses indoors, ultimately only fooling yourself.  If badminton became trendy, you would decide that your calling is to spend your free time playing badminton.  Figure out who you are, or is being one of the sheep who you are?  I bet it is.

That leads me to another thing that I don’t get about NT’s.  They all demand a happy conclusion to the movies and tv shows they watch and the books they read.  If a smarmy ride off into the sunset is not provided by the writer, then the majority of NT’s automatically declare a work to be bad.  When it comes to blockbuster type movies, you can bet the ending will be a happy one.  The NT masses will still sit breathlessly wondering how things will end, while I’m always sitting there thinking, “No way will this movie not give these people their precious happy ending.”

As I’ve mentioned before, I was not diagnosed as being an Asperger until last year, at age 33.  Since then, I have had almost complete freedom from the various repeating nightmares that had plagued me since I was a very young child.  I think it illustrates how much a correct answer can set an Asperger’s mind at relative peace.  All those years of knowing I had a very unusual set of problems that no one had really been able to provide an all-encompassing answer for, combined with the traumas of my father’s abuse of me, had created a poisoned dream cycle spinning around maniacally in my subconscious.  It is as if the correct diagnosis provided some sort of neutralizing effect on the poison polluting my dreams.

The first nightmare I can remember having involved being chased by a bull in my grandparents’ back yard.  When I was small, my grandfather had a small herd of cattle, and I was constantly warned with horror stories about the dangers of messing with the bull.  It began to repeat itself, and I had that dream several times a week for probably two years.

As I grew older, and became more and more full of rage about the things my father had done to me (and to a lesser extent, my family’s enabling of them) most of my nightmares involved some cataclysmic final confrontation between me and him.  Usually it would begin with my mother telling me that she had decided to remarry my father, which would send me into a panic.  The next step would involve me yelling at my father for all the things he had gotten away with, not just pushing me around, but for the way he treated my mom, the way he had money to do things like fly him and his new wife to Hawaii but not to pay child support, the way his actions taught me the lesson that life is one big brawl, and so on.  Usually I would scream out loud in my sleep, often to the point of scratching my larynx.  Then he would clamp his hands around my throat, and I would do the same to him, and we would both strain to choke the other to death first.  I can’t even imagine how many times over the years I woke up with my pillow between my hands, squeezed in an hourglass shape as I was acting out my dream.

One night, not longer after Cathy and I got married, I had a nightmare where I was exchanging punches with my father before the inevitable strangulation scene.  I awoke to find myself standing beside the bed, my fist pressed into the mattress less than six inches from my wife’s head as she slept.  I started saying, to no one, “Oh my God, oh my God…”  Cathy, always eager to get as much sleep as possible, was humorous in her dismissal of the whole thing.  She said, “Well, you didn’t hit me, so don’t worry about it.”  Then she almost immediately went back to a peaceful sleep.  But it shook me up terribly that I came so close to a real disaster.

When I was about twenty or so, I had a repeating nightmare that lasted over a year.  It involved the house I grew up in, where all the lovely melodrama of my upbringing occured.  I would be in the house by myself, in my old bedroom.  I would look outside the window and see a figure wearing a long black cloak with the hood pulled over its head marching through the front yard towards the front door.  I would run to the front door, somehow knowing it wasn’t locked, to try to lock it before the figure could enter the house.  He would always just get there ahead of me, open the door, and beat me senseless.

It troubled me to the point I talked to a counselor about it.  He asked, “Do you ever have lucid dreams where you can actually sometimes will things to happen in your dreams?”  I answered that I had occassionally experienced that ability.  He suggested the next time I had the dream, I pull the hood back and allow myself to know the identity of my attacker.

A couple of nights later, I had the dream.  I threw back the sides of the figure’s hood even as he was strangling me, and was horrified to see my own face staring back at me with a look of malice.  I came violently awake, gasping for air, choking, shaking all over.  But I never had the dream again after that.

Almost immediately after being diagnosed correctly, and adjusted my medication regime to better suit my correct diagnosis, I began sleeping much better.  I still have the occassional nightmare, but I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t.  I have probably had about five or six nightmares in the past year where I was torn out of the dream cycle to find myself twisting my pillow in place of father’s neck.  Prior to my diagnosis, I would have had that many in a week.  My dreams have been largely detoxified just from the peace of finally understanding who I am, and why.

 

Tron, Ferris Bueller, and the general malaise of sick days

Ever have one of those nights when you couldn’t sleep at all?  I went to bed not feeling so great, and tossed and turned the whole night.  I’m pretty sure I’m getting sick, because I’m freezing cold.  I’m the most hot-natured person you’ll ever meet, and if I’m cold then it’s a good sign that I’m about to have some unpleasant health issues going on.  So if this post is lousy, hey, I’ve had no sleep and I feel like something a cat coughed up. 

I’ve been sitting on the sofa all morning watching old episodes of ER.  Parminder Nagra, who plays the surgeon from India, is a long-standing favorite tv hottie of That Asperger Dude.  I was watching an episode where they had a young teenage patient with Asperger’s Syndrome, and I have to say I was a bit disappointed with how they portrayed the illness.  ER usually does a spot-on job of portraying medical conditions accurately, but the young girl who was supposed to have Asperger’s seemed more bipolar than autistic.  Of course, there is a fairly high incidence of bipolar disorder in Aspergers.

Overwhelmingly, the first thing my friends and family have commented on about my blog is that I have a good vocabulary.  Although all compliments are appreciated, I kind of feel like maybe I should just try to publish a study guide of SAT vocabulary words.  I rarely get comments on the actual writing content, or my writing style, just on how many of “them big fancy words you throw around.”

I’m not into golf at all, never been able to stand watching or playing it, so around Masters time, I just try to drown myself in baseball games.  But I had a flashback the other day to a few years back, when the National Organization of Women decided to stage a protest in Augusta over the golf course’s no-women-allowed-in-the-clubhouse policy.  I had mixed feelings about this.  I think that the policy is sexist and tacky, but I also think that since it’s a private club, they can have whatever dumbass, archaic policy they want.  I also humbly suggest that there are tons of more important issues that the National Orgnization of Women should be tackling first.  For instance, the insane number of domestic violence cases that go unreported or unprosecuted.  A lot of police departments have been silent accomplices in domestic violence by looking the other way instead of protecting victims.

Erin Andrews was the always important sideline reporter for the Yankees game Wednesday night.  Unless she plans to do her on-camera reports wearing a bikini, her presence is unecessary.  I’d like to recommend the American flag bikini Jessica Simpson wore on the cover of GQ magazine.  She spent the whole night trying to get the guys in the booth engaged in some inane back and forth banter.  Erin, you’re a living doll, but I already have one woman in my life talking too much during the baseball games I watch.

Oh, no he didn’t!

Nice seemless transition from standing up for women who are victims of domestic violence to making a snide sexist remark about my wife’s chattiness, don’t you think?  Don’t worry ladies, she’ll give me a nasty look later and maybe a rude finger gesture when she reads this.  I deserve it.

Steve Phillips, talking head on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight, come get your whoopin’!  I always find myself shaking my head in disbelief that this guy is considered an expert.  He singlehandedly forced the Mets into a baseball version of the Israelites wandering around the desert.  His utter and spectacular incompetence rendered the Mets almost completely irrelevant in the largest city in the US.  Steve Phillips saying a general manager made a bad decision is like Don King telling someone they have ugly hair, or David Beckham telling another guy he’s coming across a bit gay.

The dogs had to get their last round of shots today, so they feel like crap too.  I’m wrapped under a blanket writing, the dogs are on the floor whining and taking short naps, and a general malaise has settled over the living room.  It makes me think about days I stayed home from school sick when I was a kid.

My mom knew that if I stayed out of school or came home early sick, we had to go rent the movies Tron and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  This was back in the heyday of small, privately-owned VHS rental joints, and the one nearest our home knew that if I came in there on a school day, it was to get Tron and Ferris.  It’s funny how obvious an Asperger thing that is to look back on, but at the tme, we didn’t have a name for those types of behaviors.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  People had several names for my Asperger-type traits, but unfortunately none of them were really flattering.

I was always very aware of how many absences a school allowed for each grading period, and my Asperger memory never failed to have an accurate tally of how many days I had to play with.  I’ll just admit it, I did fake sick sometimes.  Not as much as people probably think I did, but yeah, I did it some.  Most of the time I did it just because I needed a break from the constant sensory bombardment and overwhelming social songs and dances of the school day.  I don’t think many kids make it through all twelve grades without pulling the occassional bogus sick day.

When I was in seventh grade, I had a lot of real, honest, sick days.  I would get terrible headaches in the middle part of morning classes, and would call my mom to come pick me up.  Instead of trying to ascertain the cause of my headaches, she felt that it was natural to assume I was using drugs.  Never once did she pick me up when I called with a headache that she didn’t ask several times if I needed to admit to her I was using drugs.  Did I mention my mean-spirited, alcoholic father used to punch me on top of my head?  Think that might cause headaches?  Hmmm….

I think another reason I was getting so any headaches is that seventh grade was the first time I had changed schools since my first day of first grade.  There was no middle school at the time I was a seventh grader, and I attended grades one through six at the same elementary school.  I think my undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome was having a hard time with such a drastic change in routine and surroundings.  I had a locker for the first time, and for whatever reason, it never wanted to open for me.  I was around a whole lot of new people, after seeing the same faces day in and day out for six years.  All of the changes were hard for my Asperger tendencies, and I would stress myself out to the point of bad headaches bringing down the sledgehammer mid-mornings.  

Do I think my mom dropped the ball with my headaches?  Well, yes and no.  I don’t remember her ever refusing to come pick me up, so I can’t complain about that.  I can’t really hold her accoutable for not knowing I needed treatment for an illness that still had no clear definition or name in the medical community, that wouldn’t be fair.  But I do think it was damaging to me to accuse me of using drugs so much.  I had never even thought about using drugs until she began blaming my headaches on them.  And I do think that as much as people in my family have been coming to me the past year to tell me about this or that trait they had noticed about me as a child that they thought might be autistic, or at least very unusual, that a visit to a child psychologist was warranted.  But I’m not mad about it.

I was finally correctly diagnosed as an Asperger in 2007, at age 33.  In other words, about three decades too late to really make a huge difference.  But there is peace in having an answer, and you can’t put a price on inner peace.  I think in a lot of ways, the way my father pushed me around made me better able to handle the adversities that came with being an Asperger.  I was familiar with the concept of struggle.  So I guess in a twisted way, his acts of violence towards me gave me an inner resolve that many Aspergers have a hard time developing.  I never would have been able to keep it together throughout four trips to the psychiatric ward without that resolve, so maybe everything does happen for a reason.  Maybe not.

If there are any parents of small children reading this, and you think your child has autistic traits, please do yourself and your child a favor and have a psychiatrist perform an examination.  There can never be too much information where this is concerned.  A lot of times I catch myself feeling sorry for myself that I lost so much time, so much potential happiness, to the effects of my undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome.  It’s not healthy, and it’s surely not productive, but I am a human being.

I just happen to be a human being who can easily recite the history of the Knights Templar without missing a beat but struggles to maintain eye contact and engage in simple small talk about what the weather is like outside.  

All right, dear readers, I’m gonna go take some Tylenol and dust off my copy of Tron.

 

the transvestite hookers in the KFC parking lot

My closest friend used to work as a physical therapist at a local treatment facility.  He’s since moved on to work as head athletic trainer and assistant coach at a private high school.  Although the stories he tells from his job with the high school are usually pretty good, they can’t compare to one he told me from back when he was working at the physical therapy center.

A guy came in for treatment as he was trying to recuperate from a gunshot wound to one of his legs.  My buddy asked him, “How did you get end up getting shot?”, and the guy told him this story:

It seems he picked up a prostitute at the local KFC parking lot, of all places.  So, after he picked up the hooker, they drove to somewhere secluded and started to get things warmed up, so to speak.  The guy reached over to run his hand up the hooker’s leg, and was stunned to encounter….dude equipment as he progressed along the way.

So he goes ballistic, starts yelling, telling the transvestite to give him the money back and get out of the car.  The hooker refuses, and the argument turns physical.  As it continues to escalate, the hooker ends up shooting the guy in the leg, taking the loot, and running off.

He actually told my friend this story.  Not, “I was cleaning my gun and the damned thing went off” or any of a million other things I could think of that I would rather admit to before telling a complete stranger that I unknowingly picked up a transvestite prostitute outside a KFC and ended up getting shot in the process.  I told my buddy, “I don’t know what’s funnier, the story itself or the fact that he came in there and admitted it to you like that instead of saying it was a shooting range accident.  But I have to say, I can’t believe that in a small town that doesn’t even have a Target or a Starbucks, we’ve got transvestite hookers doing business in the KFC parking lot.”

Good stuff.

The Yankees won an ugly train wreck (is there ever a beautiful train wreck?) of a game last night against Boston 15-9.  The Boston pitchers tried to gift wrap an easy win for Chien-Ming Wang early on in the game, but Wang apparently decided to exchange the gift for store credit, because he was truly awful after getting the big lead.  He uncharacteristically had bad problems finding the strike zone.  I’m sure he won’t have too many starts like this, the guy’s a damn good pitcher, but it was brutal.  Thankfully the Yankees offense showed up with bigger whoopass sticks than the Red Sox did.  Jason Giambi got a garbage time RBI single off the only remaining pitcher in the world who can’t get him out, Mike Timlin.  Girardi seems to have a bizarre attachment to Jason Giambi, because he sure doesn’t deserve all the playing time he’s getting.  I hope Girardi isn’t going to be one of those managers who sticks with a veteran way too long just because of some false notion that just being a veteran makes his presence worthwhile.  They could call up any AA first baseman to play lead-footed defense and only hit against Mike Timlin.  I still think they should try Hideki Matsui at first, but what do I know?  Alex Rodriguez went deep to break his tie with Willie McCovey and Ted Williams on the all-time HR list, and of course all the dopes in the sports media are talking about the irony of him passing Williams in a game against Boston.  It’s not really that big of a coincidence since the unbalanced schedule means the Yankees and Red Sox play each other a ton.  Derek Jeter played a solid game and had a big RBI single, but still looks like he might not be able to run at full speed again just yet.

So today’s main target of my espn-hating wrath will be pretty boy oxygen waster Mike Greenberg.  All espn talking heads overdo it with the hand gestures, but Greenberg constantly flails his hands about as if being attacked by a swarm of invisible bees.  He wrote a book called “Why My Wife Thinks I’m an Idiot”.  Hey, I think he’s an idiot too!  Give me a book deal!

I actually like his co-host on the morning espn radio show, Mike Golic.  I often find myself wishing Golic would stick his meaty fist right in the center of Greenberg’s chemical peel and night cream loving mug.  Or for Buster Olney, another of the small crew of espn on-air people I have any use for whatsoever, to hop up and throw his chair at Greenberg while screaming, “I deserve better than this, I went to Vanderbilt, dammit!!!” 

For any hardcore baseball fans looking for a good book to read, check out “The Prince of New York’s 2008 Baseball Guide” by Paul Lebowitz.  It’s a little pricey ($20.95 cover price) for it’s size, but it’s an entertaining read with detailed sections on each of the MLB teams.  I disagree with some of his opinions, but that’s one of the things that make being a sports fan fun, our different interpretations of the same thing.  I like the fact that he doesn’t flinch when it comes to criticizing stupid decisions of front offices.  A lot of writers are scared to death of criticizing front offices for fear that one day they might need a precious quote from said front office and be turned down because of past criticisms.  Anyway, check it out, it’s a good baseball book.

The Rangers beat the Devils last night to extend their series lead to 3 games to 1.  Me and Chris, my aforementioned athletic trainer friend, were talking about how stupid it is for all the hockey talking heads to keep painting this as some huge upset.  It’s a four seed against a five seed, and there’s hardly ever much difference in any sports playoffs between four and five seeds.  Besides, the Devils were terrible against both New York hockey teams this past regular season.  It’s not a big surprise that this trend has carried over to the playoffs.

I’ve been dragging ass today.  My wife told me to stop drinking so many Red Bulls, and yesterday I had none.  I have to figure out how many of those things will give me some extra energy through the daytime without keeping me up late or making my chest feel like it’s barely keeping my heart in place.  I need a chart that says “if you weigh this much and feel this way at this time, drink this much Red Bull.”  I figure two a day might be the right number.

Can you believe people are still talking about the Red Sox jersey being buried underneath the new Yankee Stadium?  For those of you who don’t really follow sports closely, a construction worker helping pour the foundation for the new Yankee Stadium stuffed a Red Sox jersey in there because he’s a Red Sox fan and hoped to put a hex on the Yankees.  The Yankees spent 50 grand in Sunday overtime construction wages to extract said jersey.  To top it off, the Steinbrenner family has made grandiose noise about wanting the construction worker thrown in the pokey.  My God, is this really what it’s come to, folks?  Throwing people in jail over an entombed baseball jersey?  Why don’t we go all Old Testament on his ass and chop his hands off while we’re at it?

April is Autism Awareness month, and as a sports fan with Asperger’s Sydrome, a form of autism, I would like to encourage all of you to visit the Athletes Against Autism website at www.athletesagainstautism.org if you have a moment.  Olaf Kolzig, goaltender for the NHL’s Washington Capitals, started this charity after his son was diagnosed as autistic. I have to admit I really always disliked Kolzig until I heard about this, mostly because I got tired of watching him stick it to my Rangers through the years.  But after hearing about his efforts to improve awareness of this illness which has affected my life so deeply, I find myself rooting very enthusiastically for the guy.  He doesn’t seem to be one of those celebrities who sticks his name on a foundation for tax purposes and then almost completely removes himself from it.  Having an autistic child, he has an intense personal interest in the cause, and it shows.  Big props to him and all the other athletes who have helped him raise awareness and funds for treatment and research.

Have you ever noticed how old men make disgusting throat clearing noises several times a day?  At Lodge, it sounds like a phlegm chorus.  My grandfather does it too.  Man, does he ever.  He can hold that snot-hocking note for a full five seconds.  And after they finish a meal, old guys always seem to make this disgusting sucking noise every few minutes.  Like they’re trying to see if there’s any stray pieces of country fried steak to enjoy.  It seems like human beings are noisiest in the earliest and latest years of their lives, doesn’t it?  But at least babies don’t know when they sound disgusting, you’d think that an eighty year old dude would.

I’m sure the elderly appreciate my support. 

 

 

 

 

 

disgruntled elderly Publix shoppers make Wednesdays entertaining

Man alive, Wednesdays are always interesting.  I take my  80+ year old grandmother to a nearby Publix and help her with her grocery shopping while I also get my shopping done.  I never really have to worry about coming up with anything to write about on Wednesdays, because those grocery store trips provide a writer with plenty of material.

My grandma takes her grocery store trips seriously.  If she can’t find a brand name she wants, or if employees don’t immediately drop everything they’re doing and bend over backwards to answer her barrage of questions, she lapses into stereotypical old lady mode.  This involves loudly complaining about how much better customer service was back in the old days, acting as if the store has commited a hate crime against the elderly for running out of the special toothpaste for dentures, and general old person melodrama.

I love my grandma, she’s stood by me through a lot of bad stuff and really helped me out as I was going through so many tribulations as a teenager and young adult.  And I appreciate all the things she’s done for me and continues to do for me.  She’s been a good maternal figure, and a good friend.  It hurts me to see her turning into something she has always said she didn’t want to become, a stereotypical mouthy and irritable old lady.  Sometimes I feel guilty laughing at some of her old lady behaviors, but it’s important to see the humor in things.  I’m just glad she’s still around, even if  she’s a bit more…animated than she ever was until recently.

Today, she went on the warpath quickly upon our arrival in Publix.  She wanted a five pound bag of flour, and they were out of them.  She went freaking crackers on me.  “I can’t believe this place doesn’t even have five pound bags of flour!  What’s Publix coming to?” she said to the heavens above at a very loud volume.

I stupidly pointed out that they had several other sizes of bags of flour. 

She got bug-eyed and blurted out angrily, “I don’t want any other size bag!  I want a dang five pound bag of flour!”

“Okay, okay, jeez, grandma.  Just settle down, all right?  It’s all fine.  Let’s just finish looking down this aisle.”

But the octogenarian beast had chewed through the leash.

“And look at the rest of the place!  It looks like they haven’t restocked in forever!  And the attitude around here is bad too!  I don’t like the direction this place is going at all!”

I pause here to point out that I saw very few things that looked like they needed restocking.  No more than usual anyway.  Stores can’t keep every shelf fully stocked 365 days a year.  And the attitude comment had apparently come when she wandered over to the deli to bemoan the fact that they had no ready-made seven layer salads in their section.  They were very busy with other customers, but the old lady in her thought her problem was dire enough to take precendence over the people who were getting sandwiches at the deli counter at the time.  Because they were out of seven layer salads, and couldn’t immediately drop everything they were working on, she had decided there was a store wide attitude problem.

I wasn’t really interested in jumping in front of the train any more.  Moving on…

Have you ever noticed how many dummies use the non-word “irregardless”?  Yeah, you mean regardless, chief.  It drives me nuts how many basic things about their own language the people around here butcher.  The number of people who don’t know the correct times to use “your” and “you’re” is also astonishing.  It’s funny to hear all the rednecks around here bitching about people coming to America and not speaking English, when most of them don’t really know how to correctly speak the language either.  The difference between “to” and “too” also eludes the pea-sized brains of the local Bubbas.  Just simple stuff that should be learned by second grade. 

When I was a teenager, my granddad was always finding stuff for me to do.  If you walk in his field of vision, he will give you a chore or errand to do.  I used to tell my friends, “If my granddad asks if you have plans later, for God’s sake say yes or you’ll be pruning the trees in his front yard.”

One particular day, my granddad had decided I was going to help him garden.  I’ve never really done a lot of outdoor type stuff, and never had much interest in it either.  But his NT need to make me do things he considered “man’s work” made for interesting episodes.  He grew up on a farm, and because he was so familiar with all of the tools used in gardening and making repairs, he assumed I was as well.   He had ordered me to help him ready a garden, and barked out “Hand me the hoe.”

Now, I was about 17, and the only kind of ho I was familiar with came with two legs and a 50-50 chance that you’d need a trip to the free clinic for some penicillin.  I didn’t know there was a garden tool called a hoe, and certainly didn’t know what it looked like.  I stood there, trying to figure out which tool he might be talking about.

“Dammit, son, the hoe!  THE DAMNED HOE!!” he bellowed.

Finally, he just reached over and grabbed the hoe, muttering something under his breath that I feel sure was unflattering.

Another time, he and I went on a trip together.  He took me to Los Angeles to see the Dodgers play a game at Dodger Stadium, my favorite MLB ballpark.  It was really cool of him to do that, since I know he thinks Californians are all hippies and freaks.  I had a good time with the old guy, for the most part.  He was patient about letting me take pictures of the ballpark and even took me down to Anaheim and San Diego to see the ballparks in those places.  But for some reason, he wanted to have at least one meal a day at the Denny’s down the street from our hotel.  We were in Los Angeles, with every kind of restaraunt imaginable, and we were wearing a path to the local Denny’s.  There are worse things, of course, but I thought it was really weird, and I’m usually the one being told I’m weird.

One night, we were in the hotel room, and he needed to make some notes about directions for the trip to San Diego.  The hotel had a few desk-type items provided with the room, like pens, pads, and envelopes. 

“Son, had me an envelope”, he said.  But he pronounced it “envelop”, as in the verb.

“What, granddad? Envelop what?” I asked.

“Dammit son, an envelop”, he sternly said, stabbing the air muderously with his index finger as he pointed to the small stack of ENVELOPES.

My grandmother still laughs every time I tell that story.

The Yankees won again last night against the Rays, with my man Hideki Matsui popping a home run.  I have to say I’m a little concerned about Girardi’s insistence on playing Jason Giambi so much.  He isn’t really contributing to the team right now.  I never have understood why they don’t try Matsui at first.  He has good enough instincts to learn the position.  He sure couldn’t be a worse defensive first baseman than Giambi.  Like most big, slow, power hitting first baseman, Giambi’s decline looks like it might get really ugly.  Matsui at first would free up Damon to play left full time.  His arm sucks, but he still has pretty good range.  The team opens a short series against Boston tonight, which means the return of the preposterous hype that accompanies every Yankees-Red Sox series.

People seem to be enjoying the way I rag on ESPN and some of their more irritating employees.  It makes me feel good to know that there are a lot of other sports fans out there who don’t like the direction The Worldwide Leader in Self-Congratulation has been going in the past several years.  I get so sick of their overestimation of their place in the sports world.  The schmucks have to butt into everything.  Like these interviews with mangers mid-game.  What they consider cutting-edge is really just voyeuristic and obnoxious.  I wish the MLB managers would get together and refuse to do those ridiculous interviews.  The play-by-play announcers ask the same boring questions, and the ex-ballplayer color commentators fawn all over the managers and players because they lack any understanding that they are now the sports media and no longer “one of the boys”.  Pathetic.  Oh, and they have dumbass guests come into the press box and do more tedious interviews.  Then they top it off by having the con known as “user generated content”, where viewers send in questions and comments that are posted or read on air.  Hey idiots, they aren’t doing this because ESPN cares what you think about anything, they’re doing it because you are filling their time for them and making their workloads lighter.

Although baseball and football are my favorites, I also really get into hockey.  I’m a New York Rangers fan, and the Blueshirts are taking on the New Jersey Devils in the opening round of the playoffs.  They’re up 2 games to 1, with Game Four on tap for tonight.  Even if they win this round, I have to admit I don’t have much faith that they’ll get any further.  The team is maddeningly inconsistent, looking like the best team in the league some nights and getting pushed around by the positively awful Tampa Bay Lightning on others.  I hope the team will make some moves to get younger and not always count on bringing in veteran free agents.  Signing young goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, a home-grown Ranger, to a 6-year extension, was a step in the right direction.

Being an Asperger, I’m pretty funny about the way clothes feel.  Most days I wear t-shirts, and they have to be made of soft cotton to not drive me crazy.  Yeah, I know it’s weird, but I’ve always been that way.  Sometimes people ask me where I get my soft t-shirts, like if I give them one as a gift.  So, here’s an Asperger-approved list of places to get comfy t-shirts:

Tailgate Clothing Company www.tailgateclothing.com

Banner Supply Company www.bannersupplycompany.com

Banner shirts at shop.mlb.com and shop.nhl.com

Brass Tacks shirts and Retro Sport shirts at www.distantreplays.com

Anyone else excited about the new Grand Theft Auto game coming out in a few weeks?  My wife is already stockpiling dvd’s to watch and books to read while I make her a temporary video game widow.  The Vice City game from the GTA series is on my all-time top 5 games list, and I hope the new one will at least crack the top 20.  It’s been too long of a wait to have to be disappointed. 

All right, dear readers, everybody have a good night.

 

trained monkeys with tape recorders

So I’m sitting here watching the Texas Rangers and L.A. Angels playing on a Tuesday afternoon, and had to go off on one of my adjective filled tirades about the broadcast.  I’m watching the Rangers FSN southwest broadcast on the mlb extra innings package.  They have some dolt “reporter” walking around in the stands with a mic asking people how old they are.  In the meantime, there are pitches being thrown, outs being made.  This is the kind of crap that wears on my nerves.  It’s like tv networks are afraid to just show a damn ball game.  We have to interview the nine-toed locals in the stands in hopes that it’s someones birthday.  Or have the so called sideline reporter prattle on about the latest string of cliches the manager gave them.  Or show countless shots of a player’s mommy, daddy, wifey, etc.  Or show an interview with some no-talent celebrity who happens to have attended the game.  Anything but baseball.  Yeah, baseball just ruins a good baseball game the way apples ruin a good apple pie.

I worked for a few months at the local newspaper, in the sports department.  Although I liked my boss, he was a cool guy, the job just was not what I thought it would be.  I was hired to cover high school football games, which was really cool.  It was a lot fun to travel to the different games, keep my own set of stats, and experience from the press box what is like Southern  small town religion.  But as time went on, I figured out that the paper didn’t really want to hire a writer.  They wanted to hire a lackey to collect quotes, then vomit them out onto a computer screen.

The first question I was always asked when returning to the office was, “Did you get any quotes?”  I never did, because having seen the game, and being a guy who enjoys writing, I didn’t really need any fluff cliches from the coach to fill out a write-up.  But the paper was really adamant about collecting these lameass quotes from the coach.  Seems the local idiots never tire of reading the same garbage.  They would rather hear the coach praise the offensive line using the exact same words for the tenth week in a row than hear the perspective of the writer who not only watched every play, but filled up a stat sheet of his own.  It was very frustrating, but looking at the sports pages in much bigger cities than my hometown, you can easily see this is the general direction sports journalism is going.  There is very little writing that takes place, just lots of quotes.  A trained monkey could wave a tape recorder in some coach’s face, recording that week’s cliches.  It was very disheartening as a writer to have the pen taken out of my hand like that.

If you watch sports highlights shows, it’s the same way.  ESPN is the worst, as is to be expected.  Listen to how many quotes are spat out during sportcenter, especially when world-class douche Stuart Scott is on.  He gets so serious looking and sounding while regurgitating some tedious nonsense that flew out of an athlete’s yap, then stops for the big dramatic pause, after which he concludes in his preening jackass sort of way by saying “Close quote” like it’s the most important thing uttered since Moses came back down from Mount Sinai.  Honestly, who did Stuart Scott have to blow to land that job?  And I can hear the fool now if he read this: “Yo, wuzgood?  Why you playa-hatin’ yo?  Don’t playa-hate, a’ight?” like he’s straight out of the ‘hood.  He and many other “personalities” like him have made sportscenter an unwatchable mess of pop culture references and attempts to tattle on athletes for saying things about other athletes with a tiny amount of actual sports content thrown in.  You know, just in case real sports fans might be watching.

So my Masonic Lodge is getting ready for ANOTHER barbecue.  We have 2 barbecue fundraisers a year.  I say fundraiser, and we do raise money for a new building, but the main function of the barbecues is it gets middle aged to elderly married men out of their house for a night to cook barbecue, drink beer, and play cards.  The barbecues have a life of their own, and there is no way the Lodge would have much to talk about without them.  It often feels like it would be more honest if we took down the Lodge sign and went into the barbecue business full time.  The old guys at the Lodge seem to view these things as the end all be all experience of Masonry.  I usually handle mailing out the tickets for it, and the old retired men are unbearable, always making unsolicited “helpful suggestions” which are really just insinuations that no one under 50 years old could possibly know how to drop an envelope in the mail.  Thankfully someone else fell on the grenade of mailing out the tickets this time, a huge favor that I didn’t ask for but definitely am grateful about.  In theory I’m the Lodge Chaplain, and I do a lot of Chaplain stuff, like give devotionals, lectures, offer prayers for the sick and troubled, and so forth.  Those are the things I love, and those, along with the support of my dad and a handful of other helpful, kind-natured, and patient Masons in the Lodge, are what keep me hanging in there as I put up with the endless arsenal of b.s. from lonely, bitter, mean old men.  For a lot of those retired old guys, the Lodge is all that they have.  They don’t have work to fill their days, and most of them really don’t seem to like spending much time at home.  So they just focus completely on the Lodge, and expect the younger guys to do likewise.  They say they want young members to help run the Lodge, but what they really seem to want is younger guys who pay their dues, fill the offices in a figurehead capacity, and take orders from the elderly members on the sidelines.

For any Atlanta Braves fans out there, what’s up with those new jerseys and caps they wear sometimes on the road?  I don’t mind the caps so much, they’re the same as the regular ones except the bill is navy blue instead of red.  I like the red-billed caps more, but the solid blue ones don’t repel me the way the Disney-era Angels caps did.  The new alternate Braves road jersey, though, I can do without.  I told my wife they look like loose-fitting wetsuit tops.  Some teams got it right with their old original style jerseys, like the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Giants, Tigers, and except for brief dreadful variations in the ’70s and ’80s, the Braves.  I understand that marketing and business are a huge part of baseball, I’m a Yankees fan for God’s sake, but if you’re going to mess with a traditional style jersey and create something new to sell, you have to do better than that garish new Braves jersey.