His partner was a full head taller, a feature accentuated by the red and black plaid wool hunter’s cap, complete with earflaps, which topped his frame.  His face was long and thin, matching the rest of his body.  His raincoat matched his partner’s. 

“We’re looking for a book on how to pronounce French names”, the first stated as he reached the desk.  This was a request both broad and narrow.  “Pronounce French names” was typed into the computer but the search came up empty.   The two appeared crestfallen.

“How about I try looking for a book on using French names for a new baby?” the bookseller suggested.  The pair brightened with hope.  Sure enough, the result listed two books on French names for expectant parents.  Neither was in stock but both could be ordered and in the store within a few days. 

“That’s great”, number one said with obvious relief.  “You see, we’re getting a pair of French Poodles puppies next week and want them to have real French names.  Let’s order them both”.  Number two smiled with joy.

A smile crept across the bookseller’s face.  “I’m sure these will be very helpful.” 

Now the tall partner chimed in.  “Yup, and want to be sure that we pronounce the names right so that they’ll know when we’re speaking to them!”

The order was placed and the two left the store smiling and chatting with each other in anticipation.  

The bookseller was left with the image of two middle aged men earnestly calling “Jack! Jack!” to a slumbering dog who doesn’t respond until one snaps his fingers in realization, elbows his partner, and with a knowing look on his face now yells ”Jacques! Jacques!” - at which point the hound leaps to his feet and bounds happily toward the proud, beaming couple.

And so now I consider myself much wiser and considerably more safely cynical.  I’m snug in my skepticism and cozy in my disbelief.  That didn’t prepare me for what I learned last week. How was I to know that 55 years of shoe tying as I knew it was all a lie?

Tying my shoes is as automatic as breathing. I estimate that I’ve tied my shoes more than 30,000 times over the years.  I estimate that the last 29,750 were done without thinking.  I estimate that 10,000 of those shoe tyings were retying shoes that came undone.  I’ve tied my shoes in the dark, looking the other way, and while involved in conversation. I had taken it for granted that shoelaces, by their very nature, become untied during the course of a day.  Just retie on autopilot and go on.

I hate to blame my parents, but they taught me the wrong way to tie my shoes.  I’ve been taught what is known as the “Granny Knot”.  I bet there’s a good chance you were taught the Granny Knot, too.  After you tie you laces, does the bow run longitudinally along the length of your shoe?  Do you laces invariably become untied?  You’re not alone.

Once I discovered this I had to begin the painful process of relearning to tie my laces.  I’m 4 years old all over again. My fingers are spastic.  What once took 3 seconds now takes 10.  What once was done while watching the news or telling a joke now takes concentration that forces my tongue out the side of my mouth.  I now finish lacing my shoes with the same sense of pride I felt 55 years ago.  It’s taking a LONG time to get used to.  All those years of habit and muscle memory won’t go away easily. And I’m haunted by the thought that by the time this becomes second nature I’ll need someone to tie my laces for me anyway.

Learn the correct way to tie your laces at Ian's Shoelace Site. 

I grew up in a home where show tunes were played quite often.  My mother would glom on to the latest Broadway hit, buy the cast album, and then play it ad nauseum until we all were humming it in our sleep.   That is why, to his day, I’ll find myself bursting forth with lyrics like this every once in a while: 

Some enchanted evening
You may see a stranger,
you may see a stranger
Across a crowded room…

I’m not quite sure why this one from South Pacific stuck in my mind and I don’t remember all the words.  Often, the lines after “Across crowded room” become:

Duh blah blah blah blah
Duh blah blah blah blah...

To compensate I’ve invented my own lyrics over the years for those times when I feel compelled to sing past the “Across a crowded room…” part or when I’m in a particularly (peculiarly?) creative mood.

Keep in mind that I don’t have a good singing voice.  I don’t have ANY singing voice.  At best, you might describe my voice as similar to the noise made by constipated geese.  Thus Nancy has to be given a lot of credit for putting up with my spontaneous renditions of this song when the lyrics go something like this:

Sam and Janet Evening
They couldn’t be much stranger,
They couldn’t be much stranger
Than Spiderman’s costume…
Duh blah blah blah blah
Duh blah blah blah blah...

or

Convoluted meaning
Can be a source of danger,
And that source of danger
Can lead to an early tomb…
Duh blah blah blah blah
Duh blah blah blah blah...

Still, I’m happy to carry on the family musical tradition.  I know my mother would be proud.

PS – Here’s a link to the real lyrics.  How about giving me some of your own?  Leave them in your comments.

Once done with the house I was in a little apartment where I spent weekdays working and weekends in Vermont. Here again, leaving crap on the counter only resulted in bad smells and the thought that the landlords were going to soak me for every dime of my deposit if they had to so much as wipe some dust from the floor after I left kept me channeling Felix Unger for the better part of six months.

This has, to a large extent, carried over to the present day. I clean up my dishes immediately after each meal, almost always throw my dirty socks in the hamper, and by and large lead a much more virtuous life than in my profligate youth - which leads me to this morning. On the mornings when Nancy goes to work I get up and make coffee and read the newspaper. Nancy arrives in the kitchen a little later and prepares her breakfast. After my coffee I go downstairs to work out. Before I go, I clean my mug and most anything else that is lying around the sink.

But the spirit of Felix waxed strong in me this morning. Not only did I clean my mug but I also washed the frying pan, spatula, and mixing bowl Nancy had used to prepare her eggs. Then, rapt in this possession, with a smug, self satisfied smile on my face, I wiped and arranged the pan, spatula, and bowl back on the stove and counter so that they would be exactly where they should be when I came back upstairs to make my own breakfast.

I climbed the stairs after my workout beaming with haughty conceit. I was an efficiency god. I’d crank up the espresso machine and scramble up those eggs. Everything would taste just a bit better this morning. Everything would taste, hmm - virtuously good. Nancy however, had been more in the “gotta make the doughnuts” mode. In the 30 minutes she has allotted, she ate her eggs, drank her coffee, and completely on morning autopilot, grabbed the pan, the spatula, and the bowl and dutifully washed them. And so I found them, stacked to dry next to the sink, double washed, sparkling clean. I made my eggs and ate my breakfast. The spirit of Felix Unger, now disengaged, once again floats free in the netherworld. I finished eating 45 minutes ago and the pan, spatula, and bowl lie dirty on the counter. I’ll get up soon and wash everything, but it’s not the same. My eggs tasted okay, maybe good, certainly not virtuous – more, I’d have to say – clean.

When the symptoms started on Sunday I thought it was one of those really minor sniffles that would fade away in a day or so. That's because I rarely ever get colds and didn't remember that there are no such things as "really minor sniffles" and that all the colds I get evolve into those huge, sloppy, runny, sneezy, snotty messes that force you to whine.

The good news is that the sore throat has faded. But you're not getting off that easy. My nose has reached runny perfection - that state where the temperature of the runny stuff exactly matches the temperature of your upper lip so that you can't tell that anything is emerging until the first drip splatters on your (choose one): (a) hand [I should be so lucky]; (b) library book; (c) tea mug; or (d) cat.

I'm trying to be a good spouse about this. I made Nancy go out and buy a pump bottle of Purell. I goop it up every time I blow my nose (or just rub it with the back of my hand). I smell like my grandmother's house. I've wiped down the mouse on the kitchen laptop so many times that it turned and snapped at me this morning.

The cats sense my pain but have started to avoid me because whenever they get close I whine to them in my new, Barry White /chest cold baritone. It scares them. I was hoping that Nancy would find it sexy, but even though I can now do a really fine, "Ooh...ooh...ooh...ooh...ooh...ooh...ooh...ooh...ooh... We better try, Try to get ourselves together, baby..." she just shakes her head and leaves the room.

Ususally I end these peices by saying something like, "There, I feel better now". But I don't. So I won't.

For your sake, I hope I'm feeling better tomorrow.

Any new, important information to be stored, by necessity, requires the elimination of an equal amount of now less important information.

This has been complicated by the fact that I have lived in three different homes in the past 4 years and while things should settle down now that I'll be staying put for the foreseeable future, there will be a period of adjustment.

Therefore, in order for me to remember that my socks are in the top right hand drawer of the dresser, the Weather Channel is now at 23, and the adjustable wrench is hanging in the upper left corner of the tool board in the basement, I can no longer be counted on to remember your name.

I'll probably remember your face and give you a vague "Hi there!" greeting. If so, count yourself as one of the fortunate few.

I take Amtrak between Albany and New York City about six times a year to visit Petunia (and now Petunia and husband). I’ve learned not to expect much. The train rarely arrives on time, half the time it’s either too cold or too hot, and 80% of the time I'm subjected to 2 1/2 hours of Melissa’s divorce, Sol’s business deal, or Mandy’s shopping experience at the usual 100 decibel cell phone voice. I'm resigned to it. But just when I think that my expectations can’t go any lower, Amtrak rises to the occassion.

I sat down this week on the 2:45 out of Pennsylvania Station. The train boarded on time. It wasn’t crowded. I put my book and my Snapple on the empty seat next to me, my camera bag underneath, and began to settle in for the trip.

I picked up my book, dropped the tray table down, and leaned forward on my elbows to read. Little did I know that the tray table was, for some unknown reason, offset 5 inches to the left. My left elbow made contact. My right elbow had nothing to make contact with until it hit my right knee, six inches below the tray. That caused my whole body to tilt about 25 degrees to starboard, bringing my head in solid contact with the window. Maybe it was just the echo in my head, but the noise sounded like a projectile hitting the train window. It turns out I wasn't the only one.

The guy across the aisle flinched. The woman ahead of me got up and turned around to look. I gave them my best, sheepish, “don’t mind me, I’m a moron” grimace and busied myself by listing 25 degrees to port, successfully making contact with both elbows this time. Now I was ready to settle in for the trip.

I placed my paperback and the bottle of Snapple on the tray, picked up the book, and thumbed to my bookmark just in time to see the Snapple disappear over the far edge of the tray – not a surprising event when you consider that the tray tilted about 15 degrees down in the front (or up in the back if you prefer to look at things that way). Of course, it was surprising that I was able to see this because when you lean forward to do anything at the tray table your head blocks off all of the light from the overhead lamp.

After crawling under the seat in front to retrieve the (thankfully sealed) bottle, I decided to stow the Snapple in the seat back pocket in front of me. I reached over the handily tilted tray and tried to slide the bottle into the mesh pocket. It went in about 3 inches and struck something solid. Not having evolved much from my simian ancestors, it took 4 or 5 clunks before I realized that something was blocking the bottle’s egress. Finding out what it was required moving my book and elbows off the tray and folding it back up again. Much to my surprise, I found a folding footrest was the culprit.

I have long legs. Any trip on a plane or train thus involves regular maneuvering of my lower extremities at even more regular intervals to assure the minimal blood flow required to avoid gangrene. Short of a bulkhead seat, this rarely works, but I keep my legs going in the vain hope that I’ll be able to walk once the trip is over (or at least not throw a blood clot). Could this foot rest be a solution? There was only one way to find out. Down it came.

I put my feet in the foot rest, dropped down the tray table, got my book and began to settle in once again. It took all of 30 seconds to realize this wouldn’t work.

I don’t know for whom the foot rest was designed but it sure wasn’t for anyone over 4 feet tall. My knees were up against the underside of the tray, splayed outward – sort of in the same position they’d be in were I to get on a kid’s tricycle. My upper body was twisted 25 degrees to port and tilted 15 degrees forward. I looked like Stephen Hawking on a bad day. That’s when the conductor arrived and asked for my ticket. The ticket was in the camera bag under the seat. In order to reach it without taking 5 minutes to unfold my self-inflicted human origami, I had to lay my face on the tray table and reach under with all the finesse of a Frankenstein monster scratching his ass.

That broke this camel’s back. The conductor walked off, rolling his eyes. I folded up the tray table. I folded up the footrest. I swung diagonally on the seat, stretched my legs out to the seat front next to me, took up my book and settled in for the rest of the trip.

That’s when we made our first stop. The first person to board the train made beeline for the empty seat next to me. My. Empty. Seat. She had a suitcase, a handbag, a backpack, a shopping bag, and weighed no less than 300 pounds. She gave me a withering look.

I curled back up into my side of the seat and settled in for the rest of the trip.

The good news is that it looks like it will arrive before we leave for NYC.

Glad I got that cleared up with my helpful sales rep.

Seven hours later I had managed to salvage about 50% of the boot drive that could be reformated and had reinstalled Windows . Halfway through installing Firefox, it started freezing for 30 seconds at a time, teasing me with what we both knew was inevitable. This morning I logged onto the Dell site and configured a new system.

Before clicking the buy button, I decided to call and ask two questions. One to get assurance that I could run two monitors on the new system so that I could edit my photographs without accelerating the already steady decline of my eyesight, and the other to see if they could delay shipment so that it wouldn't arrive next week when we were in NYC for the wedding.

Who knew that Dell sends their phone reps auto salesman school?

The rep answered the tech quesion immediately. When I asked about the shipping it went something like this:

ME: I won't be home from Wednesday throug Sunday next week. Can you arrange shipping for delivery after the 7th?

DELL REP: Are you prepared to place the order right now?

ME: That depends on whether you can assure me that delivery won't happen until after the 7th.

DELL REP: If you are ready to place the order right now we can see what we can do.

ME: We can't see "what we can do" until I know that the delivery won't occur until after the 7th.

DELL REP: Right now we are showing that the system won't ship until the 3rd and it takes 5 days to arrive. That makes it the 8th or so.

ME: Why didn't you just say so? That looks good.

DELL REP: So are you ready to place the order right now?

ME: Tell me the final price with shipping.

DELL REP: The system is $XXXX, tax is $106.35 and shipping is $75

ME: Yikes, that adds more than 10% to the cost

DELL REP: If you are ready to place the order right now we are running some specials. Can I put you on hold to see what I can do?
(My note - this is the "let me talk to the sales manager" technique)

He's gone for 30 seconds

DEL REP: We're giving free shipping on our XPS systems right now and I can offer you a $50 rebate for placing your phone order right now.

ME: Well then, let's place that order right now.

DELL REP: Would you like to finance that through a Dell Preferred Account?

I've spent less time buying a car...

Line Material was a large electrical manufacturing company which, I believe, was long ago absorbed by another company. Since my father worked for an electrical equipment distributer from the late 1940s through the early 1970s, he often received promotional and gift items during the Christmas season. One of these was a bright red 45 rpm record of specially written carols from Line Material.

The songs were hokey but we were just kids and since every song ended with a variation of the refrain Merry Christmas, from Line Material, it soon became part of our Christmas culture. We would be decorating the tree and that 45 would be played. Not a Christmas has gone by in the last 40 years without one or all) of us singing that refrain.

Much to my surprise, I have received comments from a few people for whom those songs hold a similar meaning. Just today, a year later, I got a comment from a fellow who, like me, cannot say Merry Christmas without adding from Line Material out loud or in his head.

Our 45 has long since disappeared, but thanks to Stacy who commented on last year's posting, I now have six songs from the venerable Line Material discography.

In keeping with the Holiday Spirit, and in order to keep our obscure tradition alive, I am posting all six songs here as mp3s. I took the liberty of cleaning up Stacy's recordings, eliminating pops and scratches as much as possible and fixing the volume. I have guessed at the actual song titles. Some are obvious and some are not. If anyone out there can correct me or provide additional songs, I'd be very greatful.

Merry Christmas (from Line Material...)

(right click each to download)
Santa's North Pole Band
Different Kinds of Christmas
Santa's Underground North Pole Factoree!
Let's Trim the Christmas Tree
The Day Santa Was Sick
The Sounds of Christmas

Note - I've updated four of these files with downloads from Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anyplace Else as they proved to be much cleaner rips - obviously from records never near children.

UPDATE - Thanks to commenter David, I am also posting the Line Material refrain ringtone below. The zip file has five different ringtone file types for you to use depending on your phone's requirements.

Line Material Ringtones

Life Begins at Erection
This is not exactly a new idea, something similar having been drummed into my head during the religious instruction preparation for my confirmation. If just thinking about sex is a sin, then actually ramping up for procreation is certainly the first firm step in the process. Let’s ban all erections that don’t result in successful propagation (except in cases where the life of the man is in danger).

Intelligent Design HAS Been Proven
Just look at the iPod. Would the whimsy of evolution come up with a device that costs twice that of a comparable music player and then force you to buy all your songs from the same vendor; but you actually don’t own what you “buy”, thereby spending your money for nothing; all the time thinking you’re special because you are one of the select ten million who own one? Oh no, I don’t think so.

Area 51
What a fantastic misdirection they’ve pulled off here. All the hype about alien spacecraft being tested and pointy headed little folks being dissected has kept the populous entranced for years. The truth IS out there. It’s the factory where they make all those blue Wal-Mart vests.

Nature’s Perfect Food
Let’s toss out that hogwash we learned in 4th grade science about the basic food groups consisting of meats, vegetables, and such. After all, "it's just a theory". Here's the truth - the basic food groups are chocolate, caramel, and peanuts. Yes, nature’s perfect food is Snickers.