Author: docthink

no one of consequence

The Result of a Fundamental Disagreement

Nobody loves your kid like you do.

No. Bod. Dee. So

  • Don’t expect people to want to kiss their snot encased visage. You might be able to look beyond it. Others see green–literally. Don’t put your kid’s face expectantly in mine.
  • Don’t be angry when someone begs off from listening to your child play their musical instrument. Even if they are objectively good (which isn’t that likely) your guests may not want their conviviality interrupted. Even if it is Mozart that is being attempted played. Even at your house. Unless you invited us to a recital, and we had the chance to beg off in advance. No fair bundling your concert with a traditional family get-together, unless you don’t care if we aren’t paying attention and downing shots in the other room.
  • Multiply the negativity above by about one-thousand if the sharing entails a video and people are asked to stop everything, shush, and watch. Shush!
  • An exception is if you are passing around your iPhone with a < 30 second video of something that is funny or is an at-the-buzzer game winning 3-point shot. But only twenty-nine seconds or less. Get to the punchline. Don’t say, “Oh wait, you gotta see this, too.”
  • You want to bring your extraordinarily precocious and mature child you to that adults only event? Don’t ask if it’s okay to bring her or him if “No” will piss you off. That’s not really a choice. You don’t get credit for asking if all you will accept is validation of your parental desire.
  • Movies, let’s go there. Unless it’s a kids’ movie, get a damn babysitter. Their stage whispered cute comments are not what I paid for. Also, they’re only cute to you. See first line in this post.
  • At a sporting event, you bring your children. That’s cool. Other people are not as aware of your kids and their needs as you are. This is especially true in crowds. Your kids are short. They are unusual features of a crowd. They are frequently not seen. I’m not saying stay home, I’m just saying it is what it is. You have to be careful for them, not the strangers. It’s on you if they are jostled or hear curse words. These people left their kids for a reason. They’re off duty.

Let me be clear. I really like your kids. I will make goo-goo faces at them on the subway just to elicit a toothless grin. The drunken old man walk of a toddler really tickles me. I like to sit next to the parent on the plane with the screaming kid to reassure them that not everyone hates them at that moment. Been there.

I watch and like your posts with your adorbs kids on Facebook all the time. I even share some of them. And, it is a known, that I am bonkers for my kids.

But, bottom line, nobody loves your kids like you do.* You shouldn’t be disappointed, mad or rage-quit because of this true fact.

* [Except maybe grandparents. Okay, got me there. This post also applies to them.]

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Matter Does Disappear

On today’s lunch hunt, I walked past the building I jokingly call The House That Doc Built.

I looked at the wall of glass and steel and concrete. Not gonna lie. I felt a prick of pride as my mind floated to creators, builders and fixers. Thinking about people who have a big impact and then fade away. In fiction, Harry Potter modestly worked in the bowels of a bureaucracy after setting the world free from evil. Katniss went back to the rubble of District 12 to anonymously raise a family with her co-victor.

If you look for “impact investing” and “social entrepreneurs” you’ll find names that once meant something. Scores of people who wore the green White House badges now toil away on whatever the next job is. Many still making a difference, just on a different, less sexy, stage.

Looking around the lunch place, I wonder how many of these people work in the building That Doc Built? They don’t know that the nondescript Doc eating the humana tahina salad in the corner knocked together a king-sized income stream that allows their revenue sucking programs to exist.

And I realized that sometimes things are from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Nobody remembered Luke anymore, either.

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Clifden, County Galway

Clifden, County Galway.

“You’ve never been out drinking before with the Doc.” Spake the Big Guy to Baby Bear.

We had driven our longest stretch, from Belfast to County Galway. We bid our proprietor, Joe, goodbye. We had no idea what he said in return. Didn’t have a clue what anyone said in Belfast.

Except when Joe kept asking the other B&B guests if they “carikikeee reedeey.” We pieced together that he was asking about the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge that was closed due to wind the day we were there. The young woman getting her tea did not understand and batted the old man away.

Joe the Proprietor asked us if we wanted him to take our picture. At least that’s what we think he said, since he motioned to the camera. He took a great one. I wish we got a photo with him.

He waved us away early that morning, after a full Irish, for some.  Not for me. Too much food. Seriously, who can eat that much?

We had a day’s goal to cross the country and make it to Kylemore Abbey for an afternoon view. Legs were folded and bodies curled in the back of the bitty car. The soundtrack was the white noise of light snores.

We drove across green rolling fields spotted with bright yellow bushes that over the miles was recast into the brown mountains of the West. The road was a taupe ribbon on the flats that looped around the feet of the brown peaks. Some turns unveiled blue and green flecked water pocked with a flurry of little white waves.

We had a map and a better than decent idea of where we we were headed. GPS was spotty, but based on our Belfast wifi’d  maps, we made it to the Abbey for an explore. The castle and formal garden were charming, but, oh, the wild grounds. The Victorian era lord planted a zillion trees and brought in pheasants and foxes and stag and a gamekeeper so he could host hunting parties. I’m thinking The Rules of the Game.

Long day. We followed the coast on mission for dinner and a bed. Leenane was behind us. We followed the coast through delightful Letterfrack and pressed on a few miles to Clifden.

Still hugging the coast, we pass some green covered ruins and roll into the nominal capital of Connemara. The main street is a ring, but we didn’t follow it to infinity. As we were making the first lean around the loop I saw the name of a B&B that The Spouse found in his Kindle Fodor’s.

“Go straight!”

The overtaxed, driving-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road operator rolled down the hill to the sought respite. We were welcomed by the glance of a fluff of a mostly sleeping dog  next to a stoked fireplace. Fire. Pup. Good signs.

The host came out and gave us two rooms. We gratefully walked the steps and put our bags down. The Spouse asked me about the price. I hadn’t asked. I just made the deal. Two rooms with breakfast. Host gave us the keys. It wasn’t like a real transaction. Nobody asked for a credit card. It was friendly. We would pay.

We made friends with the host who spent a decade a decade ago in D.C. environs. Small world. He returned to Ireland, developed the guesthouse and was raising his family with the white fluff dog, Roxy. He pointed us to dinner options 93 steps away. We stepped.

The season was just beginning and all the pubs and restaurants were open. We walked up and down the main drag and settled on a dining room that was beautiful and beautifully delicious. I still don’t understand how such a small town could support quality fine dining. But fine it definitely was.

The non-drivers wanted to spend time listening to music with a pint. The driver had had enough good craic and walked the 93 steps back to the guesthouse to settle for the night.

And that’s how Baby Bear had his first time out drinking with the Doc.

We sat at the bar at the pub with the chalkboard promising live music. We ordered a pint. The joint was shyte. We finished and moved on.

Two storefronts down we found a young man singing and playing his guitar in a window bay, opposite a bulky bar and next to a fireplace hearth. We sat in front of the hearth and ordered more pints. We had the type of talk you have when you’ve eaten a great meal, consumed a few pints, are surrounded by good music and have no place to be.

As we walked the 93 steps back to that night’s headquarters, we crossed a street to see a beautiful moon hanging over the street lamps, watching us from a comforter of clouds.

It had been building all afternoon and evening, but at that moment, when I saw that moon, I fell utterly and completely in love with Clifden, County Galway.

Sláinte

 

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Blighted Bud

earbuds

Open office spaces are very au courant. They are all about collaboration and breaking down hierarchies, but they end up being insulating. Because headphones.

You walk up and start “collaborating” to a colleague with their face in a computer screen. No response. You say their name. No response. You say their name louder. No response. You tentatively tap their shoulder, like some creeper. The colleague jumps out of their chair while pulling at the string around their neck to pull the bud out of their ear. Then they profusely apologize as you interrupt with your own set of “sorries.”

Meanwhile the person in close quarters NOT wearing headphones is totally disturbed and now reaches in their desk for something to plug into their speakerboxx thereby closing themselves off from the collaboration.

It’s worse than that.

I’m walking The Dog. It’s stunningly beautiful–sunny and warm. We stop frequently and at length so he can smell the hell out of every last blade of grass and dandelion to be. I spy a guy with a dog a block down. Those of you who are not dogwalkers may not realize that you must be ever vigilant for other creatures–squirrels, cats, birds, skateboards, baby carriages and dogs–just in case someone decides to bolt. You work to get the attention of The Dog as you choke up on the leash preparing for a burst of muscle that taxes your own.

As the guy approaches, The Dog notices the other. I’m prepped. The guy gets closer and asks me, “Is this your dog?”

Odd, but I’m like, “Well, yeah, I’m walking him.” I’m thinking he’s wondering if The Dog is friendly. We are close to the physical rendezvous, and he leans away a little as his dog with his waggy tail tries to make contact.

Guy is looking straight at me, and I start to tell him that The Dog is friendly. He abruptly waves me aside while telling me, “I’m on the phone.” I hear him say something about being “right in front of your house. I thought he got away. Where should I go?” He hadn’t been talking to me at all. He was asking somebody else about a dog. I didn’t see the telltale cord, but, as I dragged The Dog past, I saw his earbuds. I hope he reunited the other dog with his family.

He was disconnected from our false encounter while making a connection somewhere else.

There’s a great outside service window at the local watering hole, restaurant and grill. I perched on a stool at the smoothed concrete bar because the billowing smoker beckoned me to beer and BBQ.

A woman asked me if the seat next to me was available and settled in. She left the menu alone and began flipping through on her phone. I turned to the friendly people on my right who were downright hysterical pontificating on the different styles of sauce, bracket deadlines and other trivial matters.

The bartender approached the phone clutching patron for her order. The woman was unresponsive. Bartender looks at me to make sure that she was in fact making sounds when she was speaking. I indicated that she indeed was. We shared the moment of realization that you couldn’t hear if you were wearing headphones. Again, the headphones. Self-isolation from the surrounding conviviality.

The woman looked at the bartender and pulled out the bud. She ordered a house white. Then she put the earpiece back in and went back into herself. A few minutes later I heard her emotionally asking her phone, “Is that how you are treating me?” She was talking to someone who wasn’t there.

I didn’t want to eavesdrop on her pain. The conversation must have ended because she stopped talking. She kept flipping. I wish she took out the noise-cancelling and secluding earphones. I wish that she could have joined in the moment that was around her. Mostly, I wish she’s going to be okay since I somehow connected with her even though she doesn’t know.

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At My Fingertips 

There just may be something seriously wrong with me. It’s like I don’t need to wait for a physical internet implant. I think that maybe I’m becoming The Internet of Things. I’m reduced to an acronym: IoT.

How did this get to be?

So today I was hungry and thinking about lunch. That’s what you do when it’s 12:08 p.m., and you’re working on an epic procrastination. You exit your 11:30 a.m. meeting that was blissfully over by 11:48 a.m., even though you were seven minutes late. On that happy note, let’s think about lunch.

There’s tons of choices within a few blocks. I have the curse of choice. (Don’t hate. I used to work at a secure location with the only choices being the type of bread for your Subway sandwich. After 2 weeks, I recognized that all the meat choices tasted exactly the same, so I’d get the veggie and save a buck. Sometimes I’d order the the wheat bread and sometimes the salty spicy bread that I don’t remember what it was called. I’m trying to forget. I can’t even walk by a Subway today without gagging.)

Back to my surfeit of choice.

I didn’t know what I wanted. There was nobody to ask. I looked around, and they were all gone. Siri is more than (or is that less than?) useless. I looked at my screen and asked,

“What do I want to eat?”

Nothing. Fingers to keyboard,  I googled,

“What do I want to eat?”

I half-imagined, with great hope, that the results would be topped by one of those Google cards that you gives you the answer when you type, “How far to Dublin?”

Screen Shot 2016-03-15 at 8.10.58 PM

or what is the “French word for bread?”

Screen Shot 2016-03-15 at 8.09.40 PM

“What do I want to eat?”

 

 

 

 

 

Nope. Nothing. Nada.

Always hopeful, I looked down a bit. Sometimes there isn’t a card. Like when you say, who won The Bachelor last night? (Really, is winning what they do? Another post, another time.)

Screen Shot 2016-03-15 at 8.15.45 PM

The all knowing Google has a variety of ways to answer.

I looked down the search results. There was no answer. There was, however, a Buzzfeed Quiz.  A few clicks later (Do you eat meat? Are you hungry or hangry? Which image of the sky do you prefer? Unicorn or Winged Horse?), I had an answer.

A sandwich.

Fine. A sandwich it would be. At least I had an answer.

I pulled on my long black trench and made like Snape and his billowing robes around the corner and down the fire escape to the street. Before I reached ground, I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and powered up Yelp–location on–to find sandwiches, current location.

Standing outside on the sidewalk, I started poking the little pins on the screen. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Wait. Is that the one I was thinking of?

I click through to the restaurant deets. I don’t think it was the one, but maybe this is that other one I walked by before? I can’t tell for sure from the address. I pinch my fingers out on the map. Not the one I was thinking of but the one I walked by. Might as well try it. I’m now headed east at a clip.

It was a great sandwich. Bigger than The Dog’s big head. I sat there and looked out the window at the scurrying lunch goers as I munched away. Good choice, Yelp!

I pretty much finished my sandwich, tossed the paper remains in the trash, used the hand sanitizer to clean away the mayo that had leaked, ambled up the stairs back to the lunch-bustle and took the sidewalk headed back West.

My hand rested on the phone in my pocket and my mind went to another app. What am I going to enter for this calorie buster into my Fitness Program?

I decided to make a new entry. Big ass sandwich, 750 calories. But wait, nobody knows what I ate. I paid in cash. It’s a secret from my Internet life. Not even The Google knows, and I don’t have to ask. I can do whatever I want.

Ha! I got back my humanity.

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How I Select My Brackets

Technical foul against Kentucky, NCAA.

First thing, I open up the app. I need to be able to see what’s happening and make frequent changes. A pencil and eraser would simply not work when you approach bracket making like Rothko.

I pick a quadrant and zoom in. I work in one quadrant at a time. Some years I think I’m done only to realize there’s a block that I missed. So, this year, I’m thinking quadrants. That’s four. I can likely realize if I don’t do four. Likely.

Here’s my next challenge. When I zoom in on a quadrant, I can’t see what I’m doing. So there’s a bit of blindness that I use to my advantage, like Zatoichi. At least that’s what I tell myself.

Next up, selection time. First things first, I’m looking to bump out my rival schools. Even if they’re a #1 seed. There’s always an upset early on. Why not those stupid schools that beat my team?

I click through a quadrant or two, only now I have to do something else. This bracket stuff takes a real time commitment. I can’t save my work. I have to leave it and redo it again later. I always think my second set of picks are likely better. Or, at least, no worse.

The quadrants don’t make any sense. Who can find Yale in the West? West of what? Providence? How does Buffalo get put in the South? Who placed University of SoCal in the East? Also, where is the North? Are there no North schools? Does the NCAA spell North as M-i-d-w-e-s-t? If there is a reason, I don’t feel like figuring it out. I have random teams to feed into my Final Four. If I’m googling anything, it’s where the hell is Weber State?

I select by schools I like, schools I like the name of, and schools playing against schools I hate–all with a splash of seeding. By the time I get to the 3rd and 4th brackets the second or third time, I’m more like working a divining rod. I let the cursor move itself toward a decision. It’s as good as anything else I do.

See Doc. Doc doesn’t know shit about college basketball and still plays March Madness. At least there’s no money on the line. Doc plays for pride. Don’t be like Doc.

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Wag More

Seriously, what’s with this car anxiety? Every single time we get in the car, the damn Dog barks like crazy. Like frothing at the mouth, I-don’t-want-to-kill-Old-Yeller-but-we-have-to-save-the-farm, mad.

People walking on the sidewalk point and stare as we drive by. I weakly smile and grimly wave. They feel much better when they realize he’s not yelling at them, that he’s just yelling.

We took the Dog and his Uncle Dog to the dog park. You can see from the above that half of them were insane. Please note that the barking goes on the entire time from leaving the house to parking the car. The. Entire. Time. Oh, except when we go over the train tracks. For an unknown reason, he stops as we span the bridge. Then back on it.

After a pleasant romp in the park, full of butt sniffing, polite humping and an occasional sharp reminder of manners accompanied by a snarl, we’re back in the car.

C-SPAN is rerunning the Sunday morning talk shows. Presidential contender Marco Rubio is on CNN. I’m trying to hear Senator Rubio’s remarks on hating less and listening more. I’m straining to hear. I’m turning up the volume.

Since I’m deafened by the barking, I decided to hate less and listen more. I’m not saying if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. I’m talking about becoming one with the bark, transcending the noise and searching for a lesson.

I’ll get back to you on how that’s going. Woof!

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Moshi Moshi

old fashioned rotary phone with the reciever off the hook.

It’s over. I killed the landline.

It was pretty much a waste of budget since nobody has used it in years. We kept the account for Internet–a sluggish DSL service that we never bothered to upgrade because of my absolute HATE for Comcast and because FIOS isn’t an option in our part of Ward 5.

But even after we switched to grown-up Internet, I kept the landline. I said it was because I was being lazy. It was really because I was being sappy.

This was the phone number we had when we we were first married. I put my office number on the invitations to the Spouse’s surprise party and reminded our guests that it would be extraordinarily bad for them to leave a message on our answering machine at home. Only one person did. I don’t think we know them anymore.

This was the line that the Spouse used to tell his Mom that we were going to have a baby. He was instructed to pass the phone over to me. She told me that she didn’t believe him and that she needed to hear it directly from me. Then she whooped.

This was the line that traveled with us from our first house to our current house that delivered more than one conversation with teachers–and more than one conversation with the principal. I dreaded the phone ringing at six o’clock.

This was the line that The Big Guy proudly broadcast his armpit fart version of the ABCs as I sat on the side of the bed in my room on the 33rd floor in a Chicago hotel. The Other Parent had to assist. I pictured the receiver being held inches from his skinny ribs as he went all the way through to X-Y-Z. I don’t remember if that was the call when The Big Guy complained that the Other Parent kept messing up the lunches, but that happened, too. I tucked my boys in via that line every night I was on the road.

This was the line that was attached to the answering machine to which my Sibling delivered a remarkable screed that could be a totally different post except I don’t want to go there. Suffice it to say that I am sorry I wasn’t the first person to hear that message, and I am most sorry that was a very bad turn for us.

This was the line that I would pick up and answer questions about my music preferences, give my opinion of local politicians, take a CDC vaccination survey, test messages with the PR firm for the electric company, and, my favorite, spend time with a stranger talking whiskey. She asked, “When was the last time you drank whiskey?” and I truthfully responded, “about five minutes ago.” The next twenty minutes were hysterical as I asked her to repeat the five choices on the Likert scale almost every time.

A landline is very quaint. It is from a time before we all had our own personal communications devices. It was a shared resource. It created obligations. If I answered the phone I was duty-bound to “take a message.” I had to make sure that it was passed on. My children have never taken a message.

This landline stopped being of any import probably nine or ten years ago. It didn’t bring the news of my parents’ deaths. It didn’t keep me in touch with The Spouse when I was in the hospital. It didn’t participate when someone made the call from the police department. Nobody left messages on it anymore–especially since robocalls don’t count.

I’ve had the same cell number for about fifteen years. I think that everyone who needs to get me has that new number. And now, the old one is gone.

I dialed the old number. I am not sure why. A lady that I didn’t know answered.

The number you have dialed, 2-0-2-2-6-9-3-0-6-5 has been disconnected. No further information is available.

Goodbye.

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Puzzled Solution

Pile of old crosswords in the Sunday Magazine appropriately piled in the recycling basket.

Got a confirmation query. We were going to get lunch, but hadn’t zeroed in where.

FRiend: I know I said that cool new place, but I couldn’t find it. I can’t find the review of the restaurant I was looking at and I don’t remember the name.  Where do YOU want to go tomorrow?

ME: Did you really look?? Was it in the Post? Give me a clue.

FR: I went to the pile of stuff where I tossed the Magazine.  Yeah, online.  Duh.  It was in the Magazine week before last.  Local organic stuff.  Touchy feely in all the right ways

ME: The Magazine? I bet it’s over here. Spouse prolly has it since he hates to throw away the Magazine after he has completed the puzzle.

Yes, The Spouse completes the Sunday crossword puzzle at some point in the future that is not Sunday. He leaves the completed artifact laying around. He’s like some proud Tom Cat strewing small animal carcasses around like trophies. But it’s the strew that should go in the newspaper recycling bin.

If this was a cartoon–and it’s close, cuz that’s the Doc’s life–you would now see a light bulb pop over my head.

The Spouse had just triumphantly completed a puzzle not 20 minutes before.

I knew this to be true because he chortled. Really, a weird sound. Chortling. And he slapped down his pencil like a basketball dunk.

He never uses pens when he does his hallowed puzzle. He can barely conceal his exasperation with my nonchalant use of a pen. Okay, truth? He doesn’t hide that he finds my use of an ink pen in a crossword puzzle positively philistine. Also, I don’t care.

ME: Got it. If it was The Dabney. It’s not open for lunch.

FR: Yeah, that was it.  OK, where to Magellan?

Down
28.  See 36 Across.

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March Madness

Like ten tubas sitting all lonely on the grass.

I watched as a tuba walked out of the Starbucks on the side of the hotel. It was accompanied by a guy with a funny light blue and white flat cap. It shot out lasers from the sun reflected on its shiny brass face as the funny-hatted guy twisted it 270 degrees back and 270 degrees forth. Trying to get his bearings.

The tuba was closely followed by some brass cousins–trombones and trumpets–as well as a twin tuba sib. There was a clarinet and a saxophone, too, as the band spilled out the door.

Drum line! Well at least a few percussionists. Hey! The instruments weren’t packed away. These folks were ready to play. I stopped. I’m crazy for the sound of a marching band. I stood listening for the staccato roll of the snare.

There were some cheerleaders with bows in their hair and that careful warpaint with an intertwined N and C that first looked like an N and a D. Even though I know the warpaint is actually little stickers, I imagine that thick oil-based makeup was carefully stroked and patted on with skinny little brushes on smooth, unlined cheeks.

There were also some jumping people. I don’t know what their official names are, but they were wearing blue jumpsuits in that same blue hue, so I bet they jumped. Maybe they are the hype men.

The instruments and their holders amassed on the plaza behind the subway escalator where people sometimes eat their lunch and near the fountain that hasn’t been filled up yet and where some people spend their entire day speaking very loudly to themselves or to someone that I can’t quite see. The instruments and their performers roiled around in that space like foaming bubbles. Moving but not really going anywhere.

The big man was the last of them to come from the coffee shop at the side of the hotel. He had a clipboard for his instrument. He circled around them on outside and, as he was moving, he lifted his right arm over his head and pointed away from the hotel to the other end of the block. The instruments and the people who played them moved as one. Away. Likely toward the Verizon Center.

And there I was. Left alone, wishing for at least SOME cowbell. It wasn’t to be.

 

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