10 Rules For Home Remodeling

We recently finished installing new flooring in our home. I've learned a lot that I'd like to share with any prospective DIYers out there. So grab a pencil and paper and get ready to jot down these 10 rules for home remodeling.

#1 Don't Remodel Your Home - Sure, it sounds great now; you haven't started yet, but think about it, you'll be dead in a few short, miserable years and none of the suffering you're about to endure will amount to anything. Someone else will just come along behind you and wonder what you were possibly thinking when you chose to paint your bedroom Mauve and then they will paint over it in an offensive Chartreuse and the cycle of madness will continue. Just leave everything as it is and let those fools who come after you wonder why you never pulled out that orange shag carpeting from the seventies. You will die with a smile on your face and they will be left with the disgusting task of finding forty years of dead skin cells under the carpeting they pull up. Take the money you save by not remodeling and go on a nice vacation away from your disgusting house; you will thank me when you're sitting on the beach.

 

A lot better than remodeling!

#2 See Your Doctor First - Okay, your wife has totally shot down the awesome vacation idea because, let's face it, it's her idea to remodel in the first place. You'd still be content with milk crates and bean bag chairs, but she won't have it and before she nags you into powder you give in and decide to remodel. Go see your doctor first. There is always the small chance he will say you are too unhealthy to remodel and then you can show the doctor's note to your wife. She will just hire people to do the job at ten times the price, but you are off the hook buddy! Just stay out of everyone's way for about six months and you are home free.

                                    Congratulations! If you build that add-on you will die!

#3 Plan Your Budget And Multiply By Some Big Number - So the vacation idea and the doctor visit have both failed, nothing left to do but start planning. Add up the costs of all the materials you will need and then multiply this amount by at least twelve. This will cover the unforeseen costs associated with you knowing absolutely nothing about do it yourself projects. Costs like: 

• Money for gas going back and forth to the store ten times trying to figure out what part you need for the plumbing that you were certain you had figured out by trip number four. 
• Money for all the tools you don't have and never knew you would need. Also, be prepared to buy these tools because even though you will only use it once in your entire life, renting is somehow more expensive than buying a cheap version that will work just fine. People who own tool rental shops are about as evil as North Korean dictators.
• Money for things unrelated to the remodel that you will either break along the way or will discover were not done right by some other husband thirty years ago and now you have to fix it before you can go any further with your project.
• Money for materials that you didn't calculate correctly in the first place. 
• Money for food. You will be way to tired to do all this stuff and also cook. Your spouse won't be able to cook either. Whoever is the usual cook in your house will have been sucked into the black hole of "helping with the remodel" from which they will never return.
• Money - (are we seeing a pattern here?) - for eventually paying a professional to fix everything you've screwed up in your house.
• Money for additional doctor's visits and therapy.

 

Your approximate budget for week 1 of your project

#4 Buy A Truck Sure, I could've included that in the list above, but this is important enough to consider on its own. You probably own a sedan or an SUV. Maybe you think you can have the store deliver supplies to your house and are willing to pay the extra amount for that service. Just buy a truck. You will be free. Free like an eagle. You no longer have to ask for help from your friends with trucks or rent a truck or wish you had a truck. You will have a truck and can go spend ridiculous amounts of money at the home improvement store any time you want. You also no longer have to use a scientific calculator to figure out how to fit those 2x4s into your Hyundai Sonata with the trunk open and the seats down.

 Don't let this be you

#5 Avoid Watching DIY Networks You probably think you can learn a lot from watching home improvement shows, and you can. You can learn that these people are all liars and fakes and they really need to be rounded up and forced to work on your house for a while. All the parts are shiny and new and fit together perfectly on these shows; you never see a DIY star going back to the store ten times for the right piece of plumbing. Don't be fooled, this isn't because of their vast experience; it's because they have interns that do all the suffering for them. Think about the shows you like in this genre, they all show the stars having fun on demo day. Then, later, they just smile for the camera and put everything together nice and easy. All the in-between suffering that you don't see was done by minimum wage gophers like you and me. Take a good look at the well-manicured hands of a DIY star and tell me they actually do this work for a living. You never see them come out from under a sink covered in twenty-five years worth of life-threatening ooze like you discovered under your sink. Their hands and clothes don't even get dirty. And if they do get some dirt on their hands, watch as they recoil in horror and reach for a towel, or the shirt of an intern. These shows are phony and will only set you up for heartbreak while destroying any self esteem you have left. You are not the failure these shows make you feel like! So don't watch them.

#6 Get Familiar With Youtube When I was a kid I had an Encyclopaedia Britannica. Every report was done from this reference source and we pondered how amazing it was to have so much information collected into one place. Times have changed. If you have any skill at all, or even if you don't, you can repair pretty much any device ever invented by man by looking it up on Youtube. Dryer broken? There's a Youtube video- and for your specific model. Installing some obscure brand of laminate flooring? Don't worry, Youtube can get you through it. Just don't get distracted by all the Pop Sugar, Wiz Khalifa and Taylor Swift videos or you'll never get finished with your project. Which brings me to my next point.

                                                               We're here to help

#7 Establish A Deadline For Finishing ... And Then Laugh And Laugh You watched those shows even after I told you not to, didn't you? Now you're thinking that installing new flooring throughout your entire house will only take a couple of weekends. You probably think you won't get dirty either. You're still in the excited, beginning stages. Maybe you've done the demo and you're thinking, "Hey this isn't so bad, we should be done by Thanksgiving when family comes." Boy, are you a sucker. You wanted to be done by Thanksgiving? You should have started the day after last Thanksgiving. You have lots of things ahead of you that are going to set you back. Things like:

• Reality. You've been avoiding it so far, but it's going to creep up and bite you on the rear end here real quick. 
• Those hidden things I warned you about earlier. You think things are going smooth and you're making good time. You are about to find out that your home's entire foundation is sinking into a prehistoric burial ground that can't be disturbed so you will have to move your house to another lot somewhere in a neighboring state. But then you will find out that your house was an experimental home built completely out of asbestos in the 1950s and you need special permits to prevent the government from launching it out into space and away from the earth forever. Good luck Mr DIYer!
• Exhaustion. Those DIY shows that made everything look easy? You're starting to really hate them now aren't you? You are about to discover muscles you had forgotten about since high school and will have to expand your already blown budget to include Ibuprofen, Tylenol, Alcohol and time off from work. Oh yes, work. You forgot about that too, didn't you? You have to work and do your home improvement project and spend time with the kids and your wife and eat and sleep and somehow not deteriorate into a mindless psychopath, hell bent on painting and plumbing. Zombies on The Walking Dead move quicker than you do at this point. Face it, the only reason you and your wife haven't killed each other is that you're too tired. Which brings up another bullet point.
• Apologizing. You and your spouse are about to learn a lot about each other. At some point you will wonder why you ever married in the first place. One or both of you will break down crying because the other has turned into a homicidal maniac at the thought of going back to Home Depot. Then you will have to apologize. You will spend a lot of time apologizing. Plan on adding about two weeks to your finish time just to include apologizing for yelling at each other.

 

DIY project, week seven

#8 Learn To Accept Failure Let's face it, you suck at this DIY thing. The last thing you tried to make by yourself was a toolbox for your dad in 8th grade shop class and that somehow transformed into an ashtray. It's okay. Just deal with it. Here is one piece of info they don't tell you watching DIY on TV: the final result is fake. A lot of home remodeling is learning to cover up your mistakes. That horrible job someone else did thirty years ago in your house that you uncovered during your own project? You never noticed until you got close and looked, huh? Ta da! That's the secret to happy DIYing my friend. Just figure out  a way to hide your mistakes and get over trying to do it perfectly; you're never going to get it perfect because no one ever does. That poorly painted wall? Can you say shelving unit? Those gaps in your baseboards? Fill 'em in with putty and paint over 'em- let some other schmuck find them thirty more years from now. Maybe even leave them a fun note to find: "This was a crappy job, wasn't it? But we did it!" Then include a selfie of you and your strung-out wife cracking open a cold one to celebrate. Professionals who are honest will even tell you this, that a lot of home improvement work is knowing how to just make it work and hide mistakes. If the professionals say that, then that leaves you a lot of room for leeway, so don't be too hard on yourself. 

Make it work!

#9 Wear Your Safety Equipment! I'm including this for two reasons. One, so I don't get sued by some moron who reads this article and says I never warned him about wearing safety equipment. And two, because it's really important, but not for the reasons you might think. There will come a time during your remodel where, out of desperation, you consider not wearing your respirator so you get asbestos poisoning and die. Or maybe you will think about leaving those goggles on the table so a nail "accidentally" goes through your eye and into your brain, sparing you from any further suffering. These feelings of self-destruction are perfectly normal for the DIYer, but don't do it! You know as well as I do that you won't be lucky enough to die and then you'll end up having to finish your project with one eye, one hand and a feeding tube while your wife nags you about going to slow. The real reasons you want to wear your safety equipment are all the disgusting things you're about to come in contact with: thirty year old, highly-stained carpet padding, some substance the slides off the plumbing and up your arm, seeking a new host, the dust of an ancient civilization, lurking within your walls. Wear the gear for your sake, so when this nightmare is over you have all your eyes and limbs with which to appreciate your hard work; which is my 10th and final rule.

Bad safety choice or suicidal DIYer?

#10 Enjoy it! Any home remodeling project eventually turns into a nightmare. I hope you eventually reach the point in your journey where you are kneeling on a floor, laughing hysterically with aching knees while looking for the screwdriver you've misplaced for the hundredth time. This is when you'll turn the corner and realize that perfection doesn't matter, the end result doesn't matter, what matters are the things you've learned about yourself and your spouse along the way. You've learned to work together in a way you never would have imagined before this adventure. You've learned to be more accepting of each other's short-comings. You've learned just how much whiskey your wife can drink before passing out. Somehow, you've learned some Armenian cuss words, but in the end you can stand back and admire your incompetent, shoddy job and say, "We did this."

Then, you can start planning your next project!

Where Have All The Tricks Gone?

Unfortunately, I'm part of the generation that witnessed the birth of political correctness. The generations before me were too busy fighting wars and surviving depressions to entertain the luxury of whining whenever someone expressed a negative thought. They sucked it up and moved on, folks today want to whine everything into conformity. This is the result of giving kids trophies for being losers- they think they should always be made to feel good and if something makes them feel bad about themselves it should be done away with. We have bred a nation of weaklings. I'm glad this isn't the generation that had to stand up to Hitler- hash tags wouldn't have won the Second World War.

You could get away with a lot more funny business back then. Sometimes this wasn't a good thing, but for the most part I think it was. People could be funny without fear, men could compliment women and kids could take peanut butter to school. Let's look at Halloween as an historic example of a time when people could be incorrect and get away with it.

Halloween used to be more fun- and safe; kids could run the streets without the fear of ending up on the back of a milk carton. Nobody complained about this or that costume hurting someone's feelings. People were mature enough to understand that if so and so dressed up in an offensive costume then that was their own bad taste. It didn't hurt anybody, it was just unpleasant, but hey, so are a lot of things- deal with it. So they dealt with it. People appreciated freedom much more and would not consider taking it away from someone due to a tacky error in judgment around the holiday season. Especially if alcohol had been involved.

People also understood the concept of Halloween more clearly. When people go trick or treating they ring your bell or knock on your door and say, "Trick or treat." We seem to have forgotten that this gives us options. We don't have to mechanically hand out expensive chocolates to kids that ride bikes through our flowers the other eleven months out of the year. We can strike back. And that is just what somebody did.

The following is an absolutely true story.

My grandparents knew a man in the small town they lived in. This man felt kids were generally a pain in the neck and decided to have some fun at their expense. Halloween night comes around and he's ready at the door with their treats.

Ding dong! "Trick or treat!" the kids demanded, excited about getting free candy from a person they cared nothing about.

"Hi kids! Here you go, here's your treats!" he said with a big grin, plopping the homemade goodness into their bags. "Some for you ... and some for you ... and for you." He made deposits into each child's bag, taking pleasure in their horrified faces with each scoop. Plop ... plop.

"Mashed potatoes?!" one of them cried out in alarm.

"Yes! Mashed potatoes!" he agreed. "What's wrong, you don't like mashed potatoes?"

This guy could be part of the reason parents do go trick of treating with their kids, now that I think about it. Sure, there are creeps out there who dress like clowns; and worse, if that's possible. But who wants to pay for child therapy because some loose screw dumped mashed potatoes all over their kid's Halloween candy? Of course, no one got therapy back then, you were told, "That's life," and you soon learned that that was life and you'd better get used to it. I'm starting to wonder if this guy wasn't performing a public service.

But; because parents rarely went trick or treating with their children back in those days, he was able to keep it going. This probably lasted until the kids got word around that night: "Stay away from mashed potato guy." But he clearly had his fun at their expense, no one called the ACLU, people moved on with their lives and another year passed.

Kids forget, kids move, kids get older, but the roster of kids in a neighborhood is constantly changing. And so, the next Halloween, kids came to his house.

Ding dong! "Trick or treat!"

"Hi kids! Here you go, here's your treats!" he said smiling, just like the year before. Plop, plop, plop went the treats into the bags held by excited faces. Faces which quickly turned downcast as they witnessed the abomination being tossed in with their precious candy.

"Broccoli?!"

"What's the matter, you don't like broccoli?"

That was it, his house was marked as the house to never go to again. Ever. His house was also never vandalized or toilet papered. Who would dare desecrate an asylum? You never knew when the crazy person would come out and chase you down.

 (Probably not the actual house)

The following year the kids were all avoiding his house. He had to call out to some of them to get them to come to the door.

"We're not coming to your house! You give out broccoli!" they hollered back in disgust.

"No kids! No broccoli, no mashed potatoes! I've got good treats for you this year! Come look, I've got ice cream!" His argument was persuasive.

"Ice cream!" they shouted, running toward his house. They crowded around the door, holding their bags open in anticipation of an ice cream sandwich of maybe a fudge bar.

Plop, plop went the ice cream into the bags. Drippy, runny scoops of ice cream right out of a container splatted into bags of candy with a gratuitous chuckle. The original Good Humor Man.

"Oh man!" they groaned retreating from his house. "You're crazy!"

And maybe he was. Or maybe he just had a great sense of humor. I never met the guy and I like him. I think I still have time for a trip to the produce department before the kids start coming to my door.

I Really Am A Materialistic Jerk

Back in 2006 my grandparents flew my wife and I out to New York State to bless us with a new car. Our little clunkers had been nickel-and-diming us for years and we had no savings. They wanted to buy us a car so we could set a little money aside and not have to constantly live paycheck to paycheck. I was flabbergasted; It’s not every day you get a phone call like that. Before I knew it we were off to New York to get our new car.

My wife is Mexican and had never been to Nueva York. She fell in love with the trees. It was fall and the leaves were changing. My grandmother thought it was funny that my wife wanted to pick up and keep every leaf she saw; red ones, yellow ones. In Tucson, we are used to dirt, rocks and cactus; it was a welcome change to see colorful plants that don’t fight back.

 A picture from Syracuse.com shows how beautiful New York is in the fall

Unfortunately, the time in New York was kept short due to us having to be back to work. We took a long weekend and burned rubber from New York to Arizona, driving about 16 hours per day. Thanks for the new car guys, bye!

We drove away in a 2007, Jewel Red, Chevy Impala. Buying the car had been a mind-blowing whirlwind. We were only in town a few hours, maybe a day, when Grandma asked if we had any cars in mind. We left to check the local lots and quickly found the little beauty we now own, shining in the sun. Grandpa, who we all called Uncle Kurt; which is another story I'll explain another time, stopped the car and my wife and I got out to check the price. I was thinking there was probably no way this was going to happen. We quoted the price to him and he announced, “That’s in our range!” And that was pretty much it, less than an hour later I was the bewildered owner of a new car.

The trip back was uneventful except for a few things, like almost getting killed and my wife having strange medical issues. We managed to make it to Erie, Pennsylvania and eat lunch at a lakeside restaurant, when my wife suddenly developed a rash. Lumps and bumps broke out all over her body and she began to itch like crazy. She took a Benadryl and that was the last I heard from my wife for 12 hours. As she sat drooling and snoring in the passenger seat I admired the beautiful Pennsylvania countryside, wishing she were awake to enjoy it with me. As the trip progressed she developed swelling in the legs from sitting too long. You could make a dent in her ankle flesh and it would just stay there. Besides being creepy, it’s also dangerous; we had to keep her hydrated and get her legs up as often as possible all the way home.

I’ll get to the almost dying in a minute. First I want to tell you about the most disgusting motel in all of America. After driving for 16 hours we were in Illinois, it was close to two in the morning and I needed to stop before I fell asleep at the wheel. When what to our wandering eyes should appear, the 5 Star Motel. I looked online and found a picture of the actual sign. It looked a lot more foreboding at 2 a.m., here it looks like a cheerful example of Americana.

If I were wealthy I would consider buying the place just to demolish it. Being poor, I can only consider a late night arson attempt. After paying, we went to our room. We opened the door and an odor lunged out to assault us. My wife used to smoke, I asked her to light up just to try and kill the stench. It didn't work.

We turned on the lights to get a better look at our little oasis. Remember orange shag carpeting? If you didn't live it, you can get a look at a disgusting, matted, threadbare version of it here. This carpet was installed back in the 1960s or 70s and had never been shampooed. Trust me, the tests came back and this is a fact. It was trampled flat, but you could see the outlines of various pieces of furniture that had once stood in different places in the room and had been moved. The carpet was festooned with patterns of orange squares and rectangles from the ghosts of dressers past, mixed with intriguing black splotches and stains. I think I could almost make out a faint, thirty-year-old outline of a body from a crime scene.

The walls were covered in ancient, and cheap, wood paneling that was popular during the era of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. Old, forgotten thermostats- yes, plural- that no longer functioned adorned the walls. I’d never seen a cast iron thermostat before. On one wall, a three inch screw protruded from the paneling for no obvious reason. Their version of a coat rack? I mean, you wouldn't dare to call yourself 5 Star without a coat rack, screw ... thing, for your guests convenience.

The lamps had cracks and holes in the shades, but surprisingly they worked. It would’ve been better if they hadn’t. The beds were covered with cigarette-burned blankets and comforters that, upon looking at them, didn't give us any comfort. The stains on these will not be discussed here except to say that there were plenty of them. The only thing that could improve the overall appearance of this room, short of demolishing it, would be blindness.

The bathroom wasn’t that bad; I considered sleeping in there, but it was too small for both of us and the cockroaches and that would not have been fair to my wife or the roaches. I’m sure even the roaches would not have appreciated being kicked out of their cozy bathroom to crawl around in the filthy bedroom. Keeping our clothes on, we lay on the creaking bed and gravity pulled us down to meet in the sagging center. Obviously, the mattress was as old as the carpet, maybe older. This may have been mental, but as we lay there in the dark, gagging on the noxious stench, we began to feel … things … crawling on us.

“Are you itching?” I asked her.

“Uh-huh, this is disgusting.”

As I said, my wife is from Mexico, and once lived in a little one room house with a dirt floor. I’ve been homeless and lived in a tent at one point in my life. So it’s not like we are picky people, we just want to be able to breathe and not catch something terminal from the sheets when we lodge somewhere.

As if all this wasn’t enough, the room next to ours must’ve held the boilers or heaters or some kind of plumbing because suddenly deep groanings, clankings, gurglings, and other sounds associated with medieval torture devices, started penetrating through the walls.

That was the last straw, I decided to brave exhaustion and drive to the next motel, campground or Walmart parking lot if necessary. I had reached a point where falling asleep on the interstate would have been an acceptable alternative to staying at this motel. I went in to get our money back and upon stating my many and varied reasons why, the mild mannered lady made the confusing statement, “Well, it’s clean, it’s just old.”

My jaw hung open in disbelief; I actually felt sorry for her just then. I’d hate to see this lady’s house if she thought that was clean. I guess if you vacuum a decades-old stain then it technically becomes a “clean” stain in her world; it no longer has fresh dirt on top of it. Just like all the blanket stains were “clean” stains. Maybe she was blessed with the blindness I spoke of earlier.

We drove on to the next town and mercifully got some sleep.

I did mention the almost dying right? Even though you would think I was referring to the motel, something even more life-threatening happened after driving through New Mexico all day. New Mexico is a weird place; the state motto is The Land of Enchantment. They are the home of Roswell, enormously long interstate speed traps and the world's first atomic bomb detonation. Alamogordo landfill was the site supposedly chosen by Atari to bury any existing copies of their biggest flop of a game: E.T., a rumor that was proven true by a group of nerds dedicated enough to track it down and uncover them. You can read about it here: Alamogordo Landfill

New Mexico has a strange vibe to it; you feel it when you enter the state. I think this is from the brainwaves of the all artists and pseudo-spiritual people that live there affecting the atmosphere in a way that you can literally feel. Kind of like the non-existent bugs we felt crawling on our skin at the 5 Star Motel. Wait, now I'm starting to sound like I'm from New Mexico. Moving on...

We were just getting near to Arizona when the weather turned foul. The sky got dark and it started raining, nothing too bad, but then my wife motioned out her window.

“Is that a tornado?” she asked, nonchalantly.

I glanced that way and saw some low clouds, but no tornado, “I don’t see one,” I replied.

Just then hail began hitting the car; small, pea sized clumps of ice. It started slowly.

“Oh, man!” I said. “I hope this doesn’t damage the car!”

It began to hail harder, so I pulled over. Then it got harder and faster. It picked up in speed and intensity until we were enveloped in a deafening roar of hail the likes of which I have never experienced before or since.

It was so loud, my wife was crying and screaming something to me, but I couldn’t hear her over the tremendous noise of thousands of hailstones hitting the steel and glass of our new car. I was afraid the windshield would shatter at any second.

To my shame I have to admit that I was more concerned for the new car than I was for our lives. I was praying to God that the car wouldn’t be damaged; we still hadn’t insured it because of the time frame of the trip and thinking that nothing could possibly happen on the way home. Boy, were we wrong.

The monumental roar of the hail continued for what seemed like a full minute, then stopped. On the car’s dashboard thermometer the outside temperature had dropped from the 80s down to the 40s in that short period of time.

I stepped from the car into a vast icebox. As far as I could see there were inches of hailstones covering the ground. Vapor from the ice wafted lazily into the air. It was, as they say in New Mexico, enchanting. I looked at the car. The pretty car we had left New York with now looked like a jewel red golf ball; dents covered the entire top of the hood, roof and trunk. At least the glass all around was intact; a miracle actually, not one piece of glass or plastic light was damaged. I ventured over to check on another car that had ended up in the ditch while my wife called 911. The people in the car were okay and were waiting on a wrecker to arrive.

When I got back to the golf ball my wife told me that the 911 operator said a tornado was in the area and we needed to leave as quickly as possible. A little late to the party, but thanks, 911 lady.

Our agent wouldn’t cover the damage since we hadn’t gotten the car covered yet, and we had just called him that day inquiring about setting it up, go figure. Mercifully, Uncle Kurt paid for the repairs.

The car has been a blessing. There were times when I thought it might not be, but it hasn’t sucked our money away like the old cars did. It’s only recently needed a new battery, along with the regular oil changes. and has enabled us to save some money.

Now, if I can just remember to pray for what’s important.

The Huber Ridge Riot

Do you remember what it was like to be in 5th grade? I'll bet most of you can name your best friend from 5th grade and you probably remember the name of the teacher you had a crush on. I had the world's most beautiful teacher; Miss Ontrop. Miss Ontrop bore a strong resemblance to Wonder Woman; she had the same hourglass figure and the same dark hair- 1980s hair. I miss the women’s hair styles of the 1970s and 80s; the women's hairstyles back then looked feminine and elegant. My memory could be skewed considering I was a hormone-fueled, pubescent boy, but the nostalgic part of me feels that feathering needs to make a comeback.

I met my best friend in 5th grade and we have been lifelong friends ever since. We have shared many adventures and crazy times together, as well as a love for Miss Ontrop, but the story I want to share today was a real riot.


Back when I attended Huber Ridge Elementary, a school lunch was thirty-five cents; forty-five if you wanted an extra milk. You didn’t get all the choices kids get now: a la carte, salad bar, balanced meal, vegan, paleo, lactose intolerant, low-carb, etc. You got a faded-green, Melmac, prison tray with little square depressions to plop the food into and something that usually resembled food served on it.

Most of the time the food was in a recognizable shape: pizzas, hamburgers, or maybe chili, with tater tots and a dessert; and I’m sure there were vegetables. Vegetables, the bane of children worldwide, are the easiest part of school lunch to forget about. There was corn, I know, and I seem to remember Lima beans; which I actually like, but we usually didn't give the vegetables much thought, they were ignored and we tossed them in the trash can. There was one notable exception which I'll be getting to in a moment.

Miss Ontrop would line us all up for lunch and we would obediently march down to the cafeteria, pass through the line, get our tray and our milks and sit down for a typical 5th grade lunch of verbal abuse, potty language, taunting and needling. The teasing got so bad once that I distinctly remember another boy telling me, "Oh yeah, well you live across the street from Frankenstein!" The shame and horror of such an address! The only reason I remember this verbal assault is the fact that my best friend and I were laughing so hard about it we were crying. The poor kid ended up feeling ashamed at his own choice of criticism. People paint hardened criminals in a bad light, but they're nothing compared to kids. Children fool people with their cute faces and angelic smiles, when in reality they are merciless barbarians; eager to step on the necks of the vanquished.

One day in particular we came out of the line and were walking to our tables when we saw it, right there on our trays. It looked unearthly. It was square. It was gray. It was purple. It was gray and purple. It jiggled and appeared to contain ... vegetables! It had a translucent quality, enabling you to catch glimpses of cabbage, onions, carrots and other violations of the Children’s Ingredient Convention trapped within its quivering structure. Someone; probably the lunch lady, but it could’ve been one of those secret, NSA, black ops groups, had tried to get one over on us by combining Knox gelatin with vegetables. It was obviously a twisted attempt to fool us into eating something healthy. The red cabbage had stained the bottom half of our portions purple, which then gently faded to clear gelatin at the tops of the little squares, giving them a gruesome and decidedly unappetizing appearance.

Being a cook, I have since noticed that a trend of that era was to make Jello molds of practically everything and call it a Jello salad, the irony of which is not lost on vegans. I wouldn't eat this now as an adult that likes vegetables and I find it hard to believe that someone seriously offered this monstrosity to children, but yeah, it happened.

I can only imagine the lunch lady was thinking, "Oh, they’ll love this!" She was excited that she could finally use the recipe she got from Moonbeam at Woodstock and thought it would be a huge hit with the kids. Unfortunately for her, this was before drug testing or she may have been stopped during the hiring process and avoided being tagged as The Evil Jello Lady for the rest of her life.

Fifth graders are not only a merciless lot, they are also prone to mob mentality when under extreme stress. Like being faced with food from Planet X. I don’t know who started it, but somebody said, “Boo Jello!” Then another kid said it; and another; and another, and soon it was like being at a Cleveland Browns game when the ref blows the call, minus the profanity.

“Boo Jello! ... Boo Jello! ... Boo Jello!” A chorus of more than one hundred voices cried out in unison. Our teachers had the stone faced look of prison guards during a riot at Attica. My friend, Joel and I were at that awkward age when boys can crack up about practically anything and this was even funnier than being told Frankenstein was your neighbor. We were laughing hysterically, others were laughing and chanting. Some kids began rhythmically banging their trays on the table. Teachers were getting furious. It was one of those great moments of education that public schools are known for.

This went on for several minutes until Miss Ontrop opened up a can of Wonder Woman and started yelling at us all to shut up. In her full fury, her voice easily rose over the din of several classes of kids gathered in the lunch room and combined with the ferocious look on her enraged face we all fell silent. Finally under control, we were marched back to our classroom and politely informed, “WE DON’T YELL IN THE CAFETERIA WHEN WE DON’T LIKE THE FOOD! THAT WAS OUTRAGEOUS!!!” This was the only time I saw Miss Ontrop’s face turn such a dark red, the veins popping out on her forehead with spit flying out of her mouth, and I’m glad; murderous rage takes the luster off of the boyhood crush.


We were threatened that our parents would hear about this, but I don’t think they ever did. At least I don’t remember any punishment or even a conversation with my parents about it. That seems odd, but knowing my parents they would’ve wondered why on earth they were feeding us experimental food anyway. Then the embarrassing topic might have arisen as to why the teachers couldn’t control a group of young kids and before you knew it, the public school system would have had to start explaining itself. Our public school system is having a lot of problems lately. All those public schools closing in your area? You can probably trace it back to some Jello that was served back in 1979.

The 1980s- Old School Meets New Fangled

The 1980s were a great time to grow up. It was the era of baseball and bicycles, Atari and computers; a mixture of old and new as history collided with the future. For better or worse, we would have to wait and see, but all these new gizmos held such promise. Mostly, they promised to make our lives easier and more efficient. I doubt anyone envisioned people sitting around in their underwear eating cheese doodles and surfing Facebook as the ultimate goal of modern technology, yet here we are.

There was a time in the late 1970s and early 80s when groups of people would gather at someone's house to watch in amazement as two white lines tried to contain a moving square on a TV screen. Simple blips and bloops were the soundtrack to this first home video game: Pong. People didn't even have to be playing, they were content to merely sit and watch, astounded by the new technology available to them and the world. The Pong console was quickly surpassed by the Atari 2600 and a song dedicated to Space Invaders, one of Atari's most popular games, got regular airplay. Technology had instigated not only an industrial revolution, but a cultural one as well.

We stayed up all night playing Berserk, Breakout, Kaboom!, Missile Command and Donkey Kong on my Atari. My best friend spent hours memorizing the patterns of Pac Man so he could get the high score at the arcade. Looking back, it’s all so primitive now; pixelated images on a screen that held our attention for hours at a time while we guzzled Pepsi and scarfed pizza. Modern games have the look of a highly produced film and are nearly impossible to control if you’re from my generation- unless you’re willing to spend hours reading the instruction manual that comes with each new release. My son makes me look like a bush leager whenever we play a game together. He takes great delight in carving my electronic avatar into numerous pieces with his lightsaber or shooting me from a hidden location before I can even say, “How do I move forward?”

I can beat him at Madden, maybe … sometimes. I’d like to see his face if I broke out with the old vibrating football I had as a kid. “C’mon son, let’s play! What’s that look for? Yes, I really used to play with this for hours; your dad is even more lame than you thought. You see, what you do is,  you try and complete a pass by sticking the little foam ball on the quarterback’s hand and then flicking it down the field toward your receiver. If you hit him, you've completed the pass, but you’ll never hit him in a million years so just run every play." As kids playing the game, we would line up all our guys on offense and defense and then turn the game on and watch the little dudes vibrate around and never get anywhere. This was marketed as being fun. "Countless hours of family fun," was the catchphrase used in commercials of the day, obviously targeting imbeciles. Actually, it was only fun when you would turn up the game until the neighbors could feel their own floor vibrating and the teams were jolted off the field. That was fun!

Imagine the reaction if you took away a kid's PSP and gave him an old, handheld electronic football game. “Okay; get ready for this unbridled excitement, you move these little red dashes around and that’s football. Don’t look at me in that tone of voice; I’m serious, and with this one you can run and pass.” Even with the wonderful, new technology of our day we still had to use our imaginations and pretend that we were playing football. There were no touchdown dances for our little red lights on the screen. And it was still addicting. Electronics had found their way into our minds and hearts even in their most primitive forms.

Speaking of primitive, my friend got a Vic 20 for Christmas the year they came out. Remember the Vic, with 20 K of RAM? The Wonder Computer of the 1980s? William Shatner used to advertise it on TV. It was the first  computer to ever sell one million units. The stuff of Science Fiction had become reality in our homes. As an optional expansion pack you could buy a little plug in; a peripheral, they were called, and add another 2K of extra RAM memory. Here's a commercial I found on Youtube:

Hey, we all have to start somewhere; right? Without these humble, 20 K beginnings you wouldn't be reading this now. It was only a dream to one day save up and get the Commodore 64, with; you guessed it, 64 powerful K of RAM.

K, that’s funny isn’t it; K, as in kilobyte? Then, before you knew it, Megabytes took over the memory world and now it’s all about the Gigs. They say the Eagle Moon Lander had about as much memory as a modern cell phone. And I read that fact back when most of us had flip phones, not the portable computers we carry around now. It seems scary going all the way to the moon with computing power so feeble you can't even post about it on Facebook.

We would stay up for hours programming the Vic 20 only to get a syntax error. Syntax is an ancient Greek word that translates to: waste of time. We endured for eight hours, painstakingly typing basic language gibberish, only to get that reward on the screen at 2 AM. Let that be a lesson to all you kids out there. When your parents tell you not to stay up all night it's because they know that only bad things happen after midnight; things like drug overdoses and syntax errors. And even then we were pretty sure the big payoff would’ve only been; wait for it … one dot shooting a dot at another dot in a game called Hunt the Wumpus. I’m not making this up and I wish I were. I wish I could say I wasn't that gullible as a kid to spend eight hours grasping at such a feeble dream, but back then it was all new and exciting. The blurb for programming Hunt the Wumpus sucked us in, the description sounded incredible; something about seeking out mythical creatures in the bowels of the earth with only your courage, bow and arrow and sword by your side. We never got it to work, but I found out five minutes ago- thanks Google- that Hunt the Wumpus was actually a text based game. It didn't have graphics, you just answered questions about choices you could make by typing them in and hitting enter. Meaning we would have programmed a pathetic version of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. We could have saved time and just read an actual Choose Your Own Adventure book and enjoyed ourselves a lot more.

Now how is this for irony? We could have read a Choose Your Own Adventure Book called Supercomputer:

The plus side to this would have been reading stories about computer programs that actually worked.

 

The Vic did have lots of cool sound effects, like bombs dropping and explosions that could be programmed with a countdown timer to work as an alarm clock. The effects could also be programmed to run on a continuous loop by adding a command to return to the first line of programming and start reading all over again. One time this was programmed into a Vic 20 on display in a store by some teenagers looking to harass and annoy everyone within a 100 foot radius; one of the first cyber attacks in history. Those goofs walked away laughing while a sales manager tried desperately to figure out what had happened to their computer. We also did this once when planning on waking up early for some stupid reason- probably to get an early start at programming Hunt the Wumpus. The Vic worked perfectly that time. The countdown timer reached zero and we were abruptly awakened to the sound of the German blitzkrieg, bombs dropping, explosions, alarms going off, all on a repeating loop which; at five in the morning, after finally drifting off at two, no one remembered how to stop. Joel came to the rescue with the tried and true American method of getting something to work properly, be it a TV, a radio or anything electronic: he bashed the crap out of the keyboard until it stopped. Smash, smash, smash, smash! Ah ... silence. No one considered unplugging it. Surprisingly, the Vic still worked fine after that, but one thing I wonder to this day; why did the Vic 20 have function keys? I don’t even use the ones on my computer now except to hit them by accident and wonder how to reverse whatever it was I just did. If we were smart, we would have programmed two function keys for the alarm; one for snooze and one for stop.

Another computerized toy I really loved was my Big Trak, a programmable vehicle that could go forward and back, left and right and fire a red light "laser" with sound effects. My uncle came for a visit and we spent hours programming it to go on a long journey down a hall, around several corners, through the kitchen and back into the living room to a strip of tape we had stuck to the carpet as our start and finish line. I also had the trailer that was sold separately. You could haul things around and it could be programmed to dump them out wherever you wanted.  As I'm typing this, I realize that this is a really great toy. Bring these back, I want one again. Just think of all the sandwiches wives could make and send to their husbands with one of these. I'm kidding ladies, calm down. My wife can't even cook so it would definitely be me sending the sandwiches to her, but what a cool way to do it!

We were also a generation that still enjoyed non-electronic toys like army men, basketballs and BB guns. My mother would never dream of letting me get a BB gun, but thankfully my friend got one; a nice one too, the American Classic. It looks lethal, but only shoots BBs. It's something Democrats would definitely try to ban because it's scary looking and Republicans would want as required curriculum in schools. The American Classic is a handgun model that you can still purchase, you pump it to compress air for firing the BBs. Once we were bored sitting in Joel’s room, shooting BBs at a drawing of our science teacher, a perfectly normal thing for teen boys to be doing if your science teacher is a tyrannical hag. He left the room to answer the phone or something and I took over the target practice. A few minutes later he comes in looking shocked. “Man, I can hear that all the way downstairs!” he said. “How many times are you pumping that thing?”

“Ten,” I proudly announced. “Why?”

“I was only pumping it once! Ten times is for maximum power,” he declared nervously, digging back into his closet behind our target. There, under the cardboard box and the pile of clothes behind our helpless target, were several BB holes in the drywall.

"Oops, sorry! I didn’t know. Powerful, isn’t it?"

Maybe the moms and the Democrats have a point? Nah...

The American Classic Pellet Gun

There were also some weird toys back in the 80s. Remember Stretch Armstrong? He was a rubber, muscle-bound doll that you pulled on, stretched and tied into various knots. What were people thinking? Maybe this was an attempt at getting kids to exercise by subterfuge. How long could something like this possibly hold a kids attention? I probably spent more time playing with the box it came in. Plastic army men could be burned and blown up with firecrackers, Big Traks could run them over, even Slinkys could hold your attention with nothing more than a staircase or a stack of books. What did this thing offer more than a minute's amusement? The only thing intriguing about Stretch Armstrong was wondering what was inside of him. I always was tempted to cut it open and find out; probably some cancer causing hydraulic fluid. If anyone knows, leave a comment.

 

Out of all the things we had to amuse ourselves with back then, even considering all the new technology that changed our lives and the world, I still think the best toys we had were sticks and rocks. We would all gather in the woods wearing army jackets and camouflage, form teams and launch full-scale wars against each other throwing spears, rocks and chunks of wood. Occasionally the odd BB gun would be involved, but it was usually all organic material; the original Green Party Movement. Nothing beats outdoor activity: being chased by an enemy combatant, jumping over streams, laughing and shouting while getting pummeled by sticks. Some things are just better without electricity.

Action-Packed Boredom

I'm glad I grew up in a suburb with both woods and shopping malls as opposed to the city or the country; in Westerville we got the best of both worlds minus the gangs and the smell of cow poop. I have many good memories of spending time in the woods, walking all over town with friends, going to the school football games, hanging out at the bowling alley. It sometimes seemed boring while I was living it, but I wouldn’t trade those times for anything. Sometimes our abject, teen boredom would cause us to do crazy things; resulting in the makings of a good story for years to come. Other times we would end up wandering our way into a stupid situation that; if we survived, would make for a funny story later.

Take for example the Pits of Hell; as we affectionately called them. No, not the real pits of hell, but a gravel distribution business; complete with huge piles of rocks and a gravel elevator. It was a bleak and mysterious place. I don't ever recall seeing people working there; it always sat quiet, as if deserted, but consistently had mountains of dirt and rock at the ready. I never knew the real name of the company, but it was somewhere you could go to buy clean fill dirt and gravel, located on a flat, desolate plain near the railroad tracks. 

Everyone should have some wooded railroad tracks to hang out around when they're kids. We practically lived at the ones by our house. You could go jump off the trestle into Alum Creek, hang out in the surrounding woods smoking your first cigarettes, climb trees, go fishing, and flatten coins on the tracks when trains came by.

The Pits of Hell were right off the tracks next to the I-270 outerbelt. The tracks ran under the 270 bridges, another favorite hangout for bored, angst ridden kids with cans of spray paint. If you got off the tracks near the bridges and headed west into the Pits there were huge mounds of dirt piled high for sale near the entrance. You would continue walking between the dirt piles and enter onto a flat, lifeless piece of land that stretched for about a half of a mile before reaching some woods.

One day, after Joel and I had spent most of the morning wandering around in those woods to escape the boredom that was always hot on our heels, we ended up emerging from the trees at the edge of the dirt flat with the intention of heading across the plain toward the bridges.

A storm was brewing overhead, and fast. Knowing it’s not smart to be in such an open area in a thunderstorm, we thought we could hurry across the plain before it struck and find shelter under the bridges. As usual, we were wrong.

Almost immediately after emerging from the woods and into the open the rain began. We picked up the pace. The normally dry, dirt plain was rapidly turning into a sticky field of mud. Back in those days everybody wore jeans with a comb in their back pocket, flannel shirts and hiking boots. The hiking boots began doing a marvelous job of picking the sticky, Ohio clay up off the ground and holding onto it.

The sky darkened as the storm got more intense, it was really turning into a downpour. Lightning flashed all around us and deafening thunder exploded overhead as we trudged through the mud, terrified now of getting electrocuted. We had no choice but to keep going for the safety of the bridges, the woods would be just as dangerous with all the tree roots under foot. We had a long way to go.

As the rain continued the mud became ridiculous. I’ve never seen mud like this before or since. With each step more and more clay would adhere to our boots, making walking nearly impossible and running completely out of the question. Before long we had accumulated huge clumps of mud on the bottom of each foot that had to weigh at least twenty pounds apiece. With chunks of mud the size of basketballs adhering to our feet each step became a chore. We would kick the mud off and scrape at it the best we could, only to have just as much back on our boots within two to three steps.

The rain and lightning continued. Now we were getting tired. If you don’t believe me, try strapping a sandbag to each of your feet and go for a walk, you’ll see what I mean. We were actually taller because of the inches of mud stuck under the soles of our boots. We stopped and huddled next to the tallest objects in the field; the piles of dirt and gravel, as we got near to them, just to rest.

Of course; being complete goofballs, we were scared silly, but still cracking jokes and laughing at the ridiculousness of our situation. I specifically remember Joel yelling dramatically, “Were gonna die man!” and both of us laughing hysterically. We were always able to find the humor in terrifying situations; I've come to believe these are some of the best laughs you can ever have.

Drenched, we finally made it to the bridges without being struck by lightning and spent several minutes scraping off our platform mud soles while laughing about the whole ordeal.

***

Another example of boredom-turned-stupid took place one winter. We were wandering around looking for trouble and there it was, sitting in a parking lot. The day was cloudy and cold with snow on the ground. As we walked we could see our breath. We chatted and made the usual jokes when suddenly the clouds parted, the sun briefly came out and we heard an angelic chorus. Sunbeams shone down from the heavens to illuminate the previously unattainable dream of any teenage boy.

There in the Kroger parking lot it sat: a car bash, a whack a wreck, whatever cute little nickname you want to give it, it was our opportunity to pay a small fee to smash a car with a sledge hammer.

We raced across the lot like boys possessed, huge smiles breaking out on our young faces. Money was no object at this point, it could’ve cost hundreds of dollars and we would’ve shelled out our last dime. Two women sat huddled in a cold car next to the wreck, the marooned victims of whatever fundraiser it was for, forced to sit there all day and collect the money of any unsuspecting fools who happened by. Us, for example.

We couldn’t give them our money fast enough. Cash exchanged hands and I was given a sledge hammer and told to wear some goggles and a hard hat. Joel; to his credit, was at least too cool to wear the hat, whereas I; in my geekdom, eagerly donned them all and looked all the more like the dork that I was. The hat was too small and stood high on my head and only added to my already goofy look; appropriate for the fool that had just handed over his last dollar.

That’s when the clouds slammed shut, the singing stopped and reality snapped back into focus. As I looked the wreck over for a choice area to smash away to my heart’s content, I realized that all the glass was already broken. Everything down to the turn signals was already gone. There was nothing fun or cool about this all of a sudden. I inspected every square inch of the car looking for an undented section of sheet metal and found none. Glumly, I swung the sledge against the wreck doing minimal damage to an already ruined area. “Whunk!”

That was it. That was all the fun we got out of it. Three whunks apiece. No satisfying smashing of glass or crushing of quarter panels. Just a whunk as we hit an already demolished car. I hope those ladies felt guilty taking our money, but I can’t really blame them, we were the dopes who ran up to do it. I can still remember how surprised they looked when we came dashing up waving our money at them. They probably figured no one else would come by in the freezing weather and they were stuck there until their fundraiser was over, when along comes Dumb and Dumber.

“Well, that was stupid,” we agreed as we walked away, bored.

There's No Eye In Team, But There's One In Pain

I've been sitting at home with a painful knee injury. One day- I don't remember specifically which day, as they are all blending into a blur of writing and sleeping- I decided to take a personal inventory and ask myself, "How else can I make my life miserable?" Since I'm limited in my mobility I didn't have many options to consider. I can't exercise or do anything that would be considered strenuous, other than become a vegetarian, but bacon is one of my few remaining pleasures in life so that's out of the question. I don't have dental insurance either, so; while getting my teeth examined, drilled or removed would add considerably to my misery, that dream is also far out of reach.

Then I remembered that I have optical coverage through the VA. That's it; I realized, I can go to the eye doctor. For some reason we forget how miserable it can be to go to the eye doctor for an exam until we are actually sitting in the chair. This latest trip was filled with discomfort from the moment I walked into the waiting room.

I made my appointment and when the day arrived I hobbled into the waiting room and went to the desk to check in. There were three people behind the counter laughing and talking like it was a holiday office party- one that I clearly wasn't invited to judging by how well they were ignoring me. I was the only person in line and was surprised that I was being so completely ignored while there were three people working; one of which could have at least said, "We'll be with you in a moment."

"Look at my crutches," I was thinking. "Take pity and check me in so I can go sit down." My Jedi mind trick failed miserably and I stood there for several minutes waiting for someone to acknowledge my presence. A line of five more veterans formed behind me while the clerks sipped champagne and regaled each other with tales of making other people wait for no obvious reason other than their own self-absorption.

I should mention here that, while I sincerely love this VA Medical Center and the top-notch care they provide, the service from the desk at the optical clinic is always lacking. They never answer the phone when you try to call and make an appointment. NEVER. In the past I've had to go through what is known as a Patient Advocate to get me through to the people partying at the desk. I think the Patient Advocate disguised himself as the pizza man and when he got there with their order he told them to answer the phone. That was the only time I've ever gotten through to them via telephone in fifteen years. Being injured was actually a blessing in this case because I was off from work and already at the VA when I made my appointment in person a couple weeks before.

Finally, a girl reluctantly called me forward and asked for my check-in information. She did this with all the warmth of a Popsicle; I'm pretty sure we never even made eye contact. "Have a seat sir and they'll call you in a minute. Next!" she called to the person behind me, an elderly war vet.

She asked him in a loud voice, "Sir, did you try using the kiosk to check in?" while pointing toward a computer terminal installed against a wall, off to one side of the waiting room. He looked around bewildered; he was from an era in which people dealt with people, not machines. We all looked at the computer; the entire waiting room of forty people glanced at it. It was located in a place where it could be easily overlooked or I might have used it myself and not had to lean on my crutches for five minutes.

"It's for your convenience," she announced in the same loud voice.

"Or for your convenience," I muttered, taking a seat. If they moved the kiosk over to the desk where people would notice it, we could get rid of at least two of the three people that had been ignoring us inconvenient morons waiting in line to be helped. I know who would go first.

The TV was on, but it was mounted to a wall with no remaining chairs facing it; they were all occupied. I took a seat pointed away from it and tried to turn around enough to watch, but soon gave up with a sigh; it was too uncomfortable. Normally I wouldn't care about watching TV, but I wanted something to pass the time in the waiting room and the magazines weren't an option.

I don't consider myself a germaphobe, I'll drink out of a public fountain, I'll use public restrooms- something my wife will avoid to the point of her extreme discomfort and the discomfort of those around her being forced to listen to her pleas to hurry and get home. But I've recently developed a deep disgust for waiting room magazines. My skin crawls thinking about all the sick and disease-ridden people that have held a waiting room magazine. I imagine myself contracting some incurable disease like Leprosy, or at the very least, Cooties, from a water damaged issue of House and Garden. I avoid them like the Plague.

So I waited patiently until my name was called. I also accidentally discovered where the expression "waiting patiently" originated. It was obviously derived from hospital patients that have to sit around and wait whether they like it or not; hence, waiting "patiently."

My name was called and I crutched it into the exam room. The doctor was a young kid; a nice enough guy, but I really start to feel old when my doctors would look more at home in a performance of High School Musical than in a medical office. Sitting down he asked me all the routine questions, had me read some lines off the chart with my glasses on and then the real exam began. He pulled the lens machine over toward my face and cleaned it off before having me place my head against it. I always have a problem with that initial reading of the first line they show you when you're looking through the machine. "Can you read this line please?" they ask. "Um, let's see now, P or maybe it's an F, V, A, D or maybe an O and some kind of squiggly thing, maybe a K or an E?"

"Perfect," he said. They always say this. It must be an attempt to comfort you so you don't realize you are going blind; they don't want people in the waiting room to hear you start weeping. How could that have been perfect? I had to guess at three of them. Two out of five ain't bad? I hope this average isn't considered perfect in other areas of the medical profession. Would a surgeon losing three out of five patients on the operating table declare that a victory? "Perfect, and I can still get in a round of golf at the club."

The thing is, they trick you. The first time looking through the machine they don't use your current prescription. It's as if they want to make sure you haven't experienced a medical miracle and suddenly have perfect eyesight since taking off your glasses five seconds ago. Then they'll flip the lenses around until it is your prescription and have you read it again. When you get them all right this time they act as if you have them to thank for this vast improvement. Maybe we could skip the initial fear mongering and get right to the part where we check my vision with the right lenses in place?

Then comes the part where they try and make improvements to your prescription for you and they keep flipping the lenses around. "Which is better, one or two?" You don't want to get this wrong. Suddenly there is all this pressure to have the right answer when most of the time you can't tell if there is any difference at all.

"Um- one. I think. Can you do it again?"

"One or two."

"Two?" I hope.

"Three or four?"

"Three?" maybe.

"Five or six?"

Long pause.

He flips them again, "Five or six?" he repeats in a singsong voice.

"Umm, Six?"

"Seven or eight?"

By this point I don't care if there's a difference, my self esteem has already been destroyed by indecision. I make a decision quickly to try and regain a sense of assurance, "Eight."

"And nine or ten?"

"Ten," I declare firmly, finally taking charge of my life.

"Perfect," he says. "Now we're going to take a quick look inside your eye with an industrial laser that will melt your optic nerve and burn a hole through the back of your head."

Okay, he didn't say that, but he should have; there needs to be more honesty and transparency in the optical field. What he did say was he was going to take a quick look at my eye with a light. This is the part of the exam where they shine a light into your eye to look at how healthy your eyeball is. If someone ever comes up with a better way to do this they will never have to work again. I; for one, would also be happy to reward them with never having to pay taxes again and a private island in the Caribbean. This is such a painful experience for me that it's difficult to put it into words. I think what really happens is that they first blind you with the light and then they jam an ice pick into your eye. 

"Look riiight here at the tip of my ear," he says, pointing, while looking through some high tech binoculars and focusing the beam of light off of a mirror and into my eye. It isn't a natural thing to keep your eye open with a bright light shining in it. I try valiantly to obey, my eye trying it's best to squint itself shut while I try to force it to stay open through a superhuman act of will. My whole body tenses and I clench my fists as the light stings it's way through my pupil.

"You have to hold your eye open," he tells me.

"I'm trying."

"Here," he says, reaching for my eye and causing me to flinch, "let me help you." He uses his thumb and forefinger to hold my eye open while he directs the super-heated beam of plasma energy through my eyeball and into my brain, causing my eye to water and instinctively want to blink. I force myself to stare at the light as long a possible and then I can't take it anymore; I have to pull away and blink and rub my eyes. The doctor seems upset that I've interrupted the fun time he was having.

"It's okay," he says, sounding exasperated, "go ahead and blink."

I force my head to go back into the machine so I can get this procedure over with. After a few more minutes of intense suffering, it's done. But I have to do it again.

"Okay now we're going to put some drops in your eyes to dilate them and have you come back in in about twenty minutes." The first drops burn and the second leave a yellow stain on my face. I go back out to another waiting room that is smaller. This is for the happy people waiting for their eyes to dilate. No one talks. At least there is a TV and all the chairs are facing it.

Twenty minutes later and back in the chair, the exam resumes innocently enough. The doc uses a small, circular instrument with a purple circle of light on it to measure the pressure in my eyeball by pressing the circle directly against my eye. No problem, this is a vast improvement over the old method of shooting a needle thin blast of air against your eyeball to get the same information. And my eye is numb from the drops, so I don't feel it.

But then comes the light again. This time he's trying to look at the back of my eye and my optic nerve, but it's the same excruciating light being shined into my peepers. Now, with my eyes dilated, my pupils can't contract in self defense and it seems even worse than before. Again I have to turn away from the light, blinking and rubbing tears from my eyes. Feeling less of man, I force my head back into the cradle and press on.

The kid chuckles, "It's funny, you know, everyone reacts differently to it. We had to do this to each other for four years in school and people just have different reactions." This; of course, is an obvious lie. It's as if he would have me believe that some students reacted with joy and excitement when experiencing what felt like a light saber being shoved through your eye.

Again I stared into the beam of death, and again I had to turn away, blinking and tearing up. Then I notice him making some kind of adjustment to the machine. This time, when I put my head back in the cradle, the light isn't nearly as bright. He had turned it down? I was silently calculating how much time I would have to spend in jail if I punched him in the face. He had waited until the last two minutes of my eye exam to provide me relief that he could have chosen to give me from the beginning. He had to use a little telescope now to see what he needed to see, but so what; Dr Mengele here could have turned the light down earlier when he saw my obvious suffering. I'm sure he only chose not to because it would have inconvenienced him. Maybe he was dating the receptionist, they seemed to have a lot in common.

With the pain significantly reduced, the procedure was a breeze after that. So take that away with you, if you ever have your eyes dilated you can ask them to turn the light down. In all the years I've had to experience this torture, I never knew they could do this; they probably don't want the secret getting out. Knowledge is power my friends. Is that a black van parked across the street from my house?