With our sons grown and out of the house, my wife and I have completed our legally-mandated term of active service as parents. We find ourselves sliding giddily into the category of empty-nesters. We have the freedom to do what we want, when we want. Travel planning no longer requires us to consider school schedules, after school events and the quantity of fast-food restaurants along our intended travel route. We can be crazy and spontaneous.

So, how did we choose to explore our new independence? Last Sunday I found myself jammed under a kitchen cabinet, wrench in hand, installing a stainless steel sink.

Really.

Like all home renovation projects — including the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Pyramid of Giza, and the Burning of the Library of Alexandria — it started with inspiration; which is defined as a notion that seemed like a good idea at the time. Centuries ago, inspiration was scarce. After the Ingalls family built the little house on the prairie, they had the good sense to be grateful for what they had. Pa didn’t decide it needed to be improved with running water, central air and a redwood deck that included a pergola and a hot tub.

Home improvement stores didn’t do well on the American frontier. People needed to be motivated to buy. They needed to be convinced that their home wasn’t good enough and (therefore) neither were they. They needed inspiration. They needed home improvement videos and TV shows.

Which is how my wife and I hit upon the insane notion that we could improve our lives by replacing our civil-war era porcelain sink with a modern stainless steel beauty. And, since we were tearing everything out anyway, we felt inspired to replace the faucet.

The next phase of our little trip down lunacy lane was negotiation. Having committed to a random act of home improvement, we had to decide what kind of sink best fit with our exciting, thrill-a-minute empty-nest lifestyle. A sink is basically a sink, but the manufacturers give them all fancy names. We spent an hour standing in front of the display debating the merits of the 19-gauge Michelangelo model versus the 20-gauge Rodin versus the pump action 22-gauge Remington. Figuring out which faucet to buy took even longer, but we eventually settled the issue with a spirited best-of-five rock-paper-scissors tournament.

With the new sink and faucet in hand, we were ready to begin the most challenging phase of the process; installation. Unfortunately, the kitchen wasn’t ready yet because we hadn’t completed the necessary demolition. As it turns out — and this is something we hadn’t really considered very carefully — we couldn’t install a new sink until after the old one was removed. Somehow we had expected the sink fairy to come in and take it away while we were out.

An hour later, after I’d removed the original, genuine cast-iron mounting hardware (covered in authentic rust) and discovered that the sink was held in place by an adhesive layer which was equal parts kitchen caulking and dried dish soap, I found out why the sink fairy hadn’t taken the old sink away … it wouldn’t move.

This was the beginning of the phase known as frustration. I pulled on the sink. I pushed on the sink. I yanked and jerked and heaved and it remained firmly fixed in place.

“Are you sure you’re doing that right?” my wife asked.

“Yes.”

“But what about…”

“I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”

“But…”

“Just trust me.”

“Okay.”

Twenty minutes of twisting, tugging, and muttering loosened the adhesive and the sink came free. So did half the muscles in my lower back, but I was too woozy with victory to care about the pain. We’d hit the turning point in the project. It was all downhill from there.

Which is why the next phase was exasperation. The new sink and faucet came with a frightening array of small parts which all had to be installed exactly the right way. The manufacturers had thoughtfully enclosed multi-lingual instructions printed in three-point type on onion-skin paper. These were “clarified” by drawings that might have been penned by the residents of the Brinkvale Art Institute for the Criminally Insane.

“What’s this part for?” my wife asked, pointing at a semicircular object in one of the diagrams. I rewarded her with a blank stare. Wherever did she get the idea that I knew what I was doing?

An hour or two of head-scratching got us to the point of actually fitting parts into the sink. We were doing okay until tiredness set in and we took a side trip through the confusion phase.

With my head jammed comfortably between two pipes and my body contorted like a master thief avoiding a laser detection grid, I asked for an adjustable wrench.

“Here,” my wife said, holding a pair of pliers at the edge of my peripheral vision. By turning my head so that the pipes only gouged my ear a little, I got a good look at the pliers.

“No. An adjustable wrench.”

“Here.” This time she had vice grips.

“No.”

“Here?” Channel locks.

We enjoyed a lengthy and entertaining game of guess-the-tool until I finally said the magic words — crescent wrench — and the project wobbled back on track.

The pile of random parts grew smaller and the sink started to look more … well … sink-like. After a mere four-and-a-half hours we arrived simultaneously at the last two phases; completion and elation. The sink worked, the faucet worked, the drains worked, even the garbage-disposal growled merrily when we switched it on. We high-fived and congratulated each other on successfully attaining our goal of a better home environment. It had gone so well, we started talking about the other, more ambitious projects we wanted to tackle, not realizing that we had slipped into that most dangerous phase; delusion.

Who doesn’t love a trip to the zoo?

Well, probably the animals for whom it is a one-way trip, but that’s not really the point. The point is that you get to spend a happy, lazy day eating junk food and wandering past neat rows of tiny cages containing permanently trapped animals. As you stare at their cute faces, you just know that — if they could talk — they’d beg you to rescue them.

If you can’t afford the zoo, you can get much the same experience with a bag of vending-machine pretzels and a visit to the cubicle farm of any corporation in America. Except, as you walk past the cubicles and stare at the occupants’ cute little faces, they can talk and they will beg you to rescue them. If you’re feeling kind, you might toss a pretzel or two their way. Don’t encourage them too much, though, or they’ll break out and follow you home. It’s not that hard to escape a cubicle — unless all you have is a liberal arts degree.

Just like at the zoo, the residents of the small, plain cages are the less distinguished species. This category includes meerkats, ground hogs, and Assistants to the Assistant Vice-President in charge of Assisting the President. The more powerful and fascinating specimens are displayed in larger, more luxurious enclosures. These include lions and gorillas and CEOs.

The major difference between a zoo and an office is that zoos have convenient little signs covered with photos and maps and charts and text to teach you a little about the animal you’re viewing. The signs are written by zoologists who desperately want to validate their expensive university degrees and, therefore, use complex Latin terms the way most people use commas. Reading one is like taking an crash course in animal classification.

The Vorpal Bat (scythus flyingrattus) is a nocturnal flying mammal with a single sharp tooth mounted centrally on the upper maxillary ridge distal to the spine, but proximal to the gums. The keel-like action of the tooth (dentitious maximus) makes true flight impossible, so the Vorpal Bat (sillius madeupus) hangs from the branches of trees (tallus forestus) and drops on its unsuspecting victims (startledus humanus). Given that the Vorpal Bat (slowus creaturus) isn’t very fast, humans (smartus peoplus) tend to avoid its habitats and, consequently, the Vorpal Bat (starvingus predatorus) must subsist on a diet of leaves (treeus leaveus).

With a little luck, some determination, and your handy Latin/English dictionary you can puzzle through that dense chunk of text (and the accompanying maps, charts and pictures) and learn a thing or two about the fearsome, two-inch beast behind the glass. The people who design offices aren’t nearly as considerate when it comes to providing helpful information about the wild creatures behind the cubicles. It would certainly make things simpler when you’re trying to get something done.

The Corporate Director of Policy (rulesus maximus) is also known by the nickname the Icy No-Man for its cold-hearted refusal to consider any modification of company rules (granitus corporus). By nature it is a solitary creature, unlikely to interact with other denizens of the office (corporatus dronus). At ritual events such as office parties, it can be found standing near the buffet table tabulating the cost of the food to verify that the cost falls within Company Policy #C34/B — Appropriate Expenditures of Company Funds in Relation to Employee Morale. On rare occasions, it can be seen attempting to earn the affection of that cute receptionist from downstairs (attractivus coworkerus). Scientists are puzzled by this behavior as it has never, ever been successful.

The helpful graphics on the sign might include things like the creature’s normal range (large cities, especially those in the north-eastern United States), preferred diet (prune-whip yogurt), and protective camouflage (Brooks Brothers suit and wing-tips shined up to look like the hood of a black BMW.) Just like the signs at the zoo, though, it probably wouldn’t offer advice on what to do if you encountered one of these creatures in the wild.

Still, some information is better than none, right? And there are plenty of other interesting critters to learn about.

The Junior Executive (eagerus beaverus) will arrive early, stay late, and take on any assignment in a quest for approval. Known for its “can do” approach to any situation, the Junior Executive (puppyi enthusiasticus) is frequently observed trailing the majestic Gray-Suited Executive (upperus managementus) hoping it will drop crumbs of information. The Junior Executive (ladderus climberus) frequently engages in colorful PowerPoint displays in an effort to attract attention to itself. It is interesting to note that the Junior Executive (wheelus dealerus) does not reproduce in the wild; instead they are grown in vast industrial farms known as “Business Schools.”

While Junior Executives tend to be dangerous if you get in their way, other office creatures can be dangerous if you find yourself under them.

The Micro Manager (longus workdayus) has an overly large nose which it uses to stick in everyone’s business. From the lowliest custodial worker (cleaneii officus) to the most senior staffer (experienced workerus), all can fall victim to the morale-destroying poison of the Micro Manager (soulus succubus.) This frightening creature uses other employees like puppets, second-guesses their decisions, and tricks them into chasing their own tails. Left unchecked, a small cluster of Micro Managers (tedious supervisorii) can completely strip a workplace of any value in less than a year.

There are, of course, lots of other interesting creatures in the workplace; the yellus horribilus (or hollering boss), the clockus watcherus (or tiny-minded clock watcher) and the exceedingly rare effectivii workerus (or useful co-worker.) Just like the zoologists, the guy who studies the staff and reports on them belongs in a category all his own.

The Office Clown (smartus alecus) is dangerous when left to his own devices and should be kept as busy as possible to keep him out of trouble.

After an extensive examination, the doctor concluded that my wife wasn’t right in the head.

Aside: my wife is glaring at me with a look that could blister the paint on a battleship. In the interest of avoiding incineration, let me provide a some context.

The doctor in question is my wife’s oh-toe-lair-in …. auto-lauren … octo-linen … ear, nose and throat guy. He decided that she was having trouble with her sinuses, but he said he had a fix for that.

I looked up sinuses on-line to see what he might be talking about. Guess what? Sinuses are just holes in your skull. Sort of like damp, gooey caves hidden behind the bones of your face. So, in essence, the doctor was saying that my wife had holes in her head and that was the problem.

Aside: my wife is staring at me with the same frightening intensity of a buzzard watching the slowest wildebeest in a migrating herd. Let me continue in a more scientific vein.

Sinuses are cavities in the skull which serve three primary functions; they warm and moisten the air we breath, they reduce the overall weight of the skull, and they provide employment for a whole bunch of medical specialists including pharmacists, general practitioners, and (most importantly) surgeons … like my wife’s ear, nose and throat guy.

The whole thing seemed a little suspect to me. Let me review the facts. The sinuses are little cave-like openings in the skull. There was a problem, but the doctor was sure he could solve it by operating. How do you operate on a hole? Did he plan to fill them in? Reupholster them, maybe? Should I have advised my wife to go with a conservative striped fabric or the flashier-but-more-likely-to-look-dated-sooner paisley print?

Aside: my wife is gazing at me in a way that puts me in mind of Cyclops from the X-men. I’ll just get back to the topic at hand, shall I?

Although he presented it in a highly technical manner, the doctor’s plan was that he would shove some kind of flexible device up my wife’s nose and clean out the offending sinus. He didn’t call this surgery, he called it a “procedure”. As far as I’m concerned, a procedure is a set of instructions for doing something straightforward like assembling a spacecraft or disassembling a bomb or unblocking a sink. Speaking of which, it occurs to me that I have a small plumber’s snake and recently performed a similar “procedure” on our kitchen sink when the drain backed up. Maybe we should have saved some money, skipped the surgery and I could have solved the problem with some good, old-fashioned DIY.

Aside: My wife…never mind. On with the story.

The first step to performing surgery is breaking down the patient’s resistance to the idea of willingly subjecting themselves to the “procedure”. The usual approach is to deny the prospective patient food or drink for at least twelve hours. At the end of that time, they’ll be positively anxious to cooperate if it means they’ll eventually be allowed to eat again.

Of course, some patients come back after the surgery — once they’ve been permitted food again — and claim to have had a change of heart. They didn’t really want the surgery, they were just hungry and collaborating with the medical personnel seemed to be the easiest way to get food. To prevent any messy legal entanglements, the healthcare community now requires patients to sign a ream of documents covered in dense gray text printed in a font that would seem small to cockroach.

With all of the formalities taken care of, the patient is whisked away to the humiliation room where they are forced into an unfashionably loose cotton garment before being examined, inspected, poked and prodded. If they’re healthy enough the surgery is declared a “go” and the countdown begins.

In my wife’s case, just before the surgery the anesth …. unesthat … annie-this … guy with the knock-out medicine, came in and told her about all of the drugs he’d be using to make sure she didn’t feel sick when she woke up. He threw around names like Decadron and Zofran. I recognized them both from my years of watching TV. Optimus Prime ordered the Autobots to capture Decadron in the second season. And I’m pretty sure that the Power Rangers had to battle Lord Zofran after he threatened the town of Angel Grove.

Aside: my wife’s giving me “the look” again.

The knock-out doc promised my wife two things; 1) the procedure would almost certainly go well and 2) she’d be in some discomfort when she woke up. I give him points for honesty, but now I know why he went into medicine instead of marketing. I can’t imagine him successfully selling a service with the slogan, “It’ll make you better … but it’s gonna hurt!”

Finally it was time for the actual surgery. My wife handled her part perfectly, falling asleep on cue and then lying quietly. The doctors did a good job too and a couple of hours later I was reunited with my wife in the recovery room where she looked … pretty much the way she had before the surgery. Sadly, sinus surgery isn’t one of those operations where you wind up with a cool scar to show off. The best you can do is point vaguely up your nose and say, “It’s up in there.”

For post-op instructions they told me to take over the routine housework and let my wife rest for a week or so. They also added that she was to avoid lifting heavy objects for a month. Oddly, the definition of heavy objects included such things as toilet brushes, feather dusters, and dish rags. Still, I didn’t mind. I was just glad she was finally going to be right in the head.

In this age of heightened security, I’ve heard that the authorities might be monitoring the telephone conversations of ordinary citizens like me. If they are listening in on my cell calls to my wife, I have two words for them.

Good. Luck.

Really.

Our conversations are non-linear in the same way that tires are non-square, fish are non-mammals, and beefsteak tomatoes are non-meat. For example, imagine that I wanted to tell my wife I’d set up an appointment to have the lawn-chemical warfare guys spray the foundation for bugs.

I pay them to do this every Fall even though I’m not convinced it actually works. For all I know the big hose on their truck is actually connected to a tank filled with leftover cologne that stores couldn’t unload on Father’s Day. If I got down close and sniffed, my house might smell of off-brand aftershave like Old Splice, Tommy Hilfinger, or Huge Old Boss. It might repel the bugs for the same reason these scents repel anyone over the age of eight. Or maybe there never were any bugs to begin with. Or there might be a huge army of bugs massed on the far side of the fence just waiting for the year that I forget to tell my wife the be ready to let the lawn-chemical warfare guys into the backyard. That’s why it’s vitally important for me to call her and tell her to expect them promptly between nine and three tomorrow.

In any kind of rational universe, I’d dial her number and say, “Honey, please hang around the house for six hours waiting for the lawn guys to come by with their truck to spray the foundation.” You might think I’d be more effective if I waited to speak until after she picked up the phone. Surprisingly, that’s not the case.

She’ll answer and say, “Oh, I was just thinking about you.”

“Really? Anything in particular?”

“Yeah. I was thinking I’d like you to stop at the store. We’re almost out of coffee creamer. You know the kind I like…that foreign one.”

“French Vanilla?”

“No. That other one.”

“Irish Cream?”

“No. You know. The one I always get.”

“English toffee?”

“Yeah! The foreign one.”

We’ll spend the next ten minutes going over the minutia of household management until we find ourselves at the obligatory I-love-yous and hang up. Much later, while I’m staring at the dairy case trying to remember whether she wanted the Belgian Chocolate or the Crème Brulee creamer, I’ll realize I forgot to mention the foundation spraying appointment. So, I’ll call her again, rationalizing that I have to repeat the whole “foreign creamer” conversation anyway. At this point, the odds are fifty-fifty that I’ll remember the appointment. Scientists at the Cummings Imaginary Scientific Studies Institute (pronounced “sissy”) have a name for this phenomenon. They call it the “Preferred Outcome Obfuscation Field” or POOF for short.

The POOF is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.

Oh. Wait. That’s the Force.

The POOF is much more devious. It’s what gets in your way and keeps you from accomplishing your goals; sort of like if the Force had a clumsy kid brother. You can’t avoid it and you can’t ditch it.

Consider this actual example from your own personal life. Think about the last time you tried mowing the lawn. No big deal, right? You’ve got the lawn, you’ve got the mower, you’ve got the gas. You did remember the gas … didn’t you? After last time you mowed, it was a little low and you were going to refill it, right? No sweat. You just need to drive to the gas station and fill the gas can. All you’ve got to do is find you car keys which are … ? Now where did they go? Did they get left in the slacks you dropped off at the cleaner’s? No. You wouldn’t have been able to drive home. So where did they go?

You see? It started out as a simple, straightforward chore and — POOF! — six hours later you’re digging through the recycling bin hoping to find your keys and wondering where all the of diet soda cans are coming from since it’s just two of you in the house now and neither of you drinks diet soda.

Or is that just me?

If the POOF was a small, localized phenomenon like a dust devil it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Unfortunately, it’s bigger than that. The POOF rolls over your whole life rearranging your plans the way a tornado re-arranges a cornfield.

In high school, I suffered from the illusion that I wanted to study medicine. Then I realized — POOF! — the sight of blood made me woozy and since blood was a major part of medicine I might be better off in a less body-fluid intensive field. The POOF wasn’t done with me yet, though. It swirled me right into Elementary Education which has a surprisingly high body-fluid quotient, but gets none of the respect of medical practice.

That same teenaged version of myself entertained fantasies of fast cars and supermodels. POOF! My college self graduated with a rattletrap Ford Granada that didn’t last and a loving marriage that has. (Once in a great while you luck out with the POOF!)

As new parents we dreamed of raising our children surrounded by art and culture and sophistication. We planned to expose them to the great museums and cultural landmarks of the world. Then … POOF! We had to trade the travel and culture budget for pediatric visits and school clothes and a staggering quantity of Pokemon and Star Wars school supplies and lunch boxes.

Now, the boys are starting their own lives and — POOF!– we’re empty-nesters; watching from a distance while our sons learn about POOF! for themselves.

My lawnmower is gone. He moved away to college. With his departure, my wife and I took off the business casual clothing of active parents and slid into the comfortable shorts and Hawaiian shirts of empty-nesters. And you know what? It’s weird.

Really.

In the evenings, we no longer have to make sure that everyone has finished their math or packed their lunch or remembered to tell us about the forty-page book report about War and Peace that’s due first thing in the morning even though they have yet to technically read any actual part of the book including the title. My wife and I can enjoy meals which include sophisticated adult foods like broccoli, fish, and cheese that didn’t come from the inside of an aerosol can. We don’t have to worry about our television-viewing choices corrupting our children so we are fee to watch the evening news once more. In a lot of ways, it’s like being newlyweds all over-again; except we’re newlyweds with decades of experience.

Adapting to our new lifestyle isn’t easy. We’ve gone from warning our children about strangers to dropping them off on a University campus packed with strangers and now we don’t quite know what to do with ourselves. Somehow, the idea that both of our children are legally adults who can enter into contracts, cast votes, and have us committed to mental institutions has made us feel … old. We suddenly find ourselves lapsing into old-people speak and complaining the prices of things or starting statements with “When I was young…”

To be honest, we’re both a little frightened. So we did what any sensible, mid-life adults would do in our circumstances … ROAD TRIP!

Well, not exactly. It was an airplane trip, not a road trip. See my sciatica has been acting up and so has my lumbago and my trick knee doesn’t much care for long drives and it’s just easier to fly when you’re as old as I feel. So we flew to Buffalo, New York and then drove to Niagara Falls, Ontario which, for complicated historical reasons is located in an entirely different country called Canada.

Canada is conveniently located on the Canadian side of the northern border of the United States. Although Canadians are our friends now, during the War of 1812 they were our bitter enemies. The root cause of the war was a vast international disagreement between the the Americans, the Canadians, the British and the Native Americans over who got to claim which sport. In the end, the Americans got football and basketball, the Canadians got hockey and lacrosse, the British got cricket (which had to be shared with India) and soccer (which had to be shared with everyone else on the planet) and the Native Americans got table-gaming and off-track betting. I don’t think I have to tell you who came out on top.

Another, lesser issue in the war was whether words like ‘center’ and ‘theater’ should be spelled with an ‘re’ or an ‘er’ at the end. One of the key features of the Treaty of Ghent was that each side retained the right to spell words any foolish way they chose.

We went there because Niagara Falls is one of the most romantic places on the planet. It’s better than Paris or Rome or every Senior Prom ever — even the one in High School Musical III: Revenge of the Fallen. The lush, green countryside is home to some of the most beautiful and amazing gift shops on the planet. You can’t walk more than five feet (or one-hundred fifty-four centimeters as they reckon distance in Canada) without encountering a new and different gift shop. If you were caught in the rain you could stay dry by dashing store to store. If you were starving, you could survive on genuine, souvenir Canadian maple syrup and ice cream treats. If you were thirsty, you’d just have to stay that way because I’m certainly not paying three bucks a bottle for water. Especially not when there’s like a bazillion gallons (seventy-one-point-nine kilovolts, metric) gushing over the falls every second. With that much water what gives them the nerve to charge for a few ounces?

Sorry. I got old for a minute there.

The falls themselves are a joint Canadian-American venture that was thoughtfully constructed on a vacant lot in front of a great many expensive hotels and convenient to many nearby attractions including the Hollywood Wax Museum, Skylon Tower, and the Ripley’s Believe-it-or-not Museum. It is also near a surprising number of wedding chapels. In the greater Niagara Falls area there are more places to get married than there are Starbucks locations. (Aside: There might be an opportunity here for Starbucks if they can figure out how to offer a “two lattes, no foam, one marriage license” value deal.)

As the old saying goes, “where there are wedding chapels, there are newlyweds” and this was certainly true in Niagara Falls. Everywhere you looked there were happy couples with shiny, new rings staring at each other with big puppy-dog eyes while they strolled along the sidewalk, bumped into lampposts or went over the falls in a barrel. Seeing them activated my new-found old-guy instincts and made me want to say, “Oh sure it’s all hearts and flowers now, but just wait until you’re up at three a.m. with a cranky, croupy three-year-old who hasn’t slept since the last ice age and an eighteen-month-old who has been teething for approximately the same length of time it takes to earn a degree in neurosurgery.”

Seeing them, and knowing that lay in their future made us feel self-satisfied and smug in a “been there, done that, got the t-shirt and wore it until it was all full of holes” sort of way … until we met the couple who just celebrated their fifty-fifth anniversary and we realized that we’ve got a long way to go.

American daily newspapers are dying in record numbers. Where once these magnificent beasts roamed the plains in great herds, now they have been hunted nearly to extinction by the railroads.

Oh. Wait.

That’s the buffalo. Nonetheless, newspapers really are dying. If your local daily was a guest character on a medical drama, the hunky doctor would be saying reassuring things to the newspaper’s family before telling the gorgeous nurse to have the morgue boys come up the back way so as not to alarm anybody. Which is a shame because the local paper performs the vital service of identifing the dangerous lunatics in your neighborhood.

Don’t believe me? Try this simple test. Pick up any local daily newspaper, turn to the letters to the editor page and read it. Now are you convinced? I thought so.

When the Founding Fathers included Freedom of the Press among the key principles underlying American democracy, they probably envisioned thoughtful public debates on relevant issues of public policy. Instead, we got disjointed rants which serve primarily as an argument for mandatory mental health screenings.

In any given paper, seventy percent of the letters come from people who are completely reasonable, twenty-five percent come from unreasonable people, five percent are obviously from inmates out on day passes from Brinkvale Psychiatric Hospital, and the rest are from people with whom you agree. The members of the second group — the unreasonable people – appear to be representatives of a lost tribe of whiners. They want to use the newspaper to force other people to solve their problems.

Dear Editor,

I want to express my extreme displeasure with the current city council. Their pro-business polices are destroying our fair city and will bring ruin and desecration for generations to come.

It doesn’t have to be just pro-business policies, of course, whatever position the current city council takes – conservative, liberal, libertarian, fascist, neo-Roman, Reformed Druid, or lunatic fringe – somebody will write in to complain about them. The letters always claim that the current ruling power is going to bring about the end of civilization and things would be much better if a new party came to power.

The letters get really interesting as election time nears with writers stumping for and against various candidates.

Dear Editor,

I’m very concerned about the vacant seats on the sewer board which will be filled in the upcoming election. Politics in this town have gotten too dirty. The current administration has done nothing to clean up its act! The process of government in our fair city is clogged. We need a free-flowing dialogue. I urge the citizens to vote for vote Joe Johnston for Sewer Board Representative from District 19. A vote for Joe will get things moving!

Sincerely,

A. Nutter

Of course, the bold people who stand in opposition to Joe Johnston can’t let this go without comment.

Dear Editor,

I stand in opposition to Joe Johnston as a candidate for the sewer board. What evidence do we have that he would do a good job? Has Mr. Johnston ever personally worked in a sewer? Is he, in fact, ready to plunge into the job and get his hands dirty? I think not. That’s why I’ll be casting my vote for Billy Ruben; a man born for the sewers.

Sincerely,

A. Nuther Nutter

Once the election is over, there will be a brief period in which the losing side will grouse about how the voters didn’t understand. Then they can get down to the important task of writing letters to complain about how badly the winner performs the job. At the next election, the cycle repeats itself with the dreary regularity of the sunrise (only it’s a lot less illuminating).

Sometimes the letters actually make you stop and think.

Dear Editor,

Did you know that virtually every person who has ever eaten carrots has died? I can show statistically that there is very nearly a one-hundred percent mortality rate among carrot consumers. Why hasn’t the government done something about this?

A letter like this certainly makes you stop and think … that schools need to do a better job of teaching statistics and that a little knowledge is, indeed, a dangerous thing.

In the entire history of journalism, I doubt that anyone has ever actually been persuaded by something found on the letters to the editor page. If I thought otherwise, I might be inclined to write a letter or two myself.

Dear Editor,

I am writing to express my concerns about recent changes in domestic policy. Specifically, I am speaking of the new policy my wife has instituted regarding the pre-washing of dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. This so-called “green” policy is, in fact, a blatant and unreasonable attempt to foist some of her responsibilities on to me. I daresay, that it is a direct violation to our most cherished document, the Bill of Rights.

Of course, my wife couldn’t let such a challenge go unanswered, so she’d probably pen a response.

Dear Editor,

I have been unfairly painted as unreasonable and it has been suggested that I have violated my husband’s rights under the Constitution. Nothing could be farther from the truth. While holding the office of Head Cook and Bottle Washer I have made every effort to be fair, yet he has never once lifted a finger to help me. This new policy is simply a simple and effective resolution to an on-going problem.

Besides, if he doesn’t like the way I do it, he can do his own cooking and cleaning from now on!

You see what I mean? The letters let you know exactly what the crazies are thinking. They’re a sort of barometer of the public IQ and, if you track what city they’re from, you get a pretty good idea of what neighborhoods to avoid. So do what you can to save your local daily paper…we need to know where the lunatics live.

The history of modern professional sports is a real Cinderella story; a genuine David-and-Goliath fight between the teams on the one hand and an apathetic public on the other foot. Every team out there gives one-hundred-and-ten-percent every time the sun shines just to prove that they’re the team to beat … and watch. And nothing has contributed to the public interest in sports more than the development of color commentary.

Really.

The original public sporting spectacle — the ancient Olympic games — didn’t have any color commentators to explain the on-field action. To attract public attention, the players had to resort to wearing their summer uniforms. This helped draw a modest crowd, but modern historians all agree that more people would have gone to see the games if Howard Cosell had provided his insights into the nuances of the competition. Unfortunately for the organizers, Cosell was about two-thousand years too young to participate.

For hundreds of years after those disastrous early games, sports were just a pastime, something to be enjoyed with friends and family and not a serious business with significant financial implications. Professional sports only really took off when newspaper journalists were assigned to report on the events.

In those simpler times, the reporters stuck to the facts; telling who competed and how well they performed. While this raised public awareness, it didn’t do much to increase public excitement. After all, how thrilled could you be by a report which said, “Harvard and Yale had a rowing contest today. Both teams rowed boats on the Charles river, but the Harvard team rowed faster than their competitors and crossed the finish line first.”

Even the first World Series held in 1903 suffered from this kind of unexciting reporting. Just listen to this actual recording of the coverage of that game; dah-dit-dit-dit dah-dah-dah dit-dah-dit dit dah-dit-dit dah dit-dit-dah dah-dit-dah-dit dit-dit-dit-dit dit-dit–dah-dah-dit-dit. Sure, it conveys the bare facts of the game but there’s no passion, no excitement. It lacks the essential quality of good color commentary; the cliché.

The invention of the sports cliché in the early 1930’s was a watershed moment in the history of sports; a real turning-point in the game so to speak. Early clichés weren’t as sophisticated as their modern counterparts. For example, if a football team was on their last down and had to cover twenty yards to the goal, the early color commentator might have said something like, “It’s the fourth down and they have to cover twenty yards to the goal.”

A more sophisticated modern commentator would say, “It’s definitely a fourth-down-and-long situation down on the field and you really want to come away with some points when you’re this close.” While the nuances of this might have been lost on the audience of an earlier age, modern fans understand this to mean that the team is on its fourth down and has to cover twenty yards to the goal.

Some people assume that sports clichés are created spontaneously by commentators when they’re on the air. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In the early days, clichés were lovingly crafted by individual sportscasters working with primitive tools in their workshops. These were handed down from sportscaster to sportscaster as heirlooms and, today, can be found for sale on eBay.

As the demand for clichés grew, cliché factories sprung up in places like New Jersey and Dallas where they created as much as twenty metric tons of clichés each season. Modern sportscasters go through extensive training so they can safely and effectively drive to the net and deliver the goods every time they’re called upon to use a cliché.

The power of the cliché is that it can make even the most mundane contest seem more interesting. Imagine a grossly mismatched basketball game; say the local Jr. High School versus the Utah Jazz. A game like that would be a foregone conclusion and before you could say “we’ve got an intriguing match-up”, the score would be as lopsided as a houseboat in a hurricane. If it weren’t for the clichés there’d be no need to keep watching, but who can turn off the TV when the commentator is saying things like, “Well they’re hitting on all cylinders and that score gives them a big cushion, but it’s theirs to lose. It ain’t over till the fat lady sings and we’ve got lots of basketball left. The Jazz could still pull it out. Stranger things have happened.”

Up to this point, the awesome power of the sports cliché has been wasted mostly on sports. Oh sure, a few managers try to invoke the competitive instinct by calling their employees teams and telling them that on any given day, any team can beat any other other team … especially if the other team is those punks down in Accounts Receivable. Still, that barely scratches the surface of the potentially useful applications for the sports cliché.

For example, what about the productions of the local high school drama department? Wouldn’t Shakespeare be more interesting (to say nothing of more understandable) with a color commentator. The betrayal scene in Julius Caesar could become a real crowd-pleaser.

“It’s Casca and Caesar on the field and both of these men have come to play. Casca has his game face on. Casca makes the first move. It’s a hit! The fans are getting their money’s worth today. Now Brutus is bringing his A game and Caesar is down! The Conspirators are running up the score and that’s it! This game is in the history books. Come back for next week’s match-up between the victorious Marc Antony and the as-yet unchallenged Cleopatra!”

With a little thought, we could find dozens of ways to apply color commentary to everyday life if we could only answer the call and blow the game wide open. Just remember that you’ll all have to help because there’s no “I” in team.

The Great American Pastime is, of course, taking people to court.

No, I’m kidding. The Great American Pastime is baseball; an event in which small teams of highly skilled and carefully trained individuals convene in a specially-designated location to compete by following a complicated set of rules under the watchful eyes of a team of impartial judges. So, come to think of it, baseball isn’t that much different from court. Except, wouldn’t court be a lot cooler if the lawyers had to wear knee-breeches? It would at least make it easier to identify the prosecutors from the defenders.

On the other hand, what if we used baseball to settle our differences? Imagine that a land developer is interested in turning a hundred acres of forest land into a mixed-use multi-family residential/commercial zone. The current tenants of the land prefer that it be preserved in its natural state. Sure, they could all hire lawyers and battle it out in a stuffy courtroom for a decade or so, but wouldn’t be a lot more pleasant for everyone if they took their fight out onto the ball field some summer afternoon?

The color commentary alone would be worth the price of admission.

Really.

“The Developers will be batting today and first up is Mr. Potter. Taking the pitcher’s mound for the residents of the Hundred Acre Wood is Tigger. There’s the wind-up and the pitch….it’s a screwball. Potter catches the edge of it and he’s off. The ball goes to center field where Roo catches it while inside his mother’s pouch. He throws to Eeyore at first, but Eeyore has his head down and isn’t watching. The ball rolls off! Potter is racing to second and Pooh bear is muttering to himself. Tigger bounces out to get the ball and throws it to Roo who stops Potter at second. Next up, coming out of retirement and batting for the Developers, its Sammy Sosa!”

Come to think of it, this is a terrible idea. The developers would probably use their money to bring in a highly-paid expert to play for their team while the poor hundred acre wood citizens would be stuck using whomever they could find that was sympathetic to their cause. If they went to court instead, both sides would be on an equal footing so long as they could each afford the best lawyers available.

Which is the whole point of our legal system; law is all about bringing civility to conflict. The brutality of an earlier age has been replaced by the sophistication of the courtroom. Simply being the strongest is no longer important; now you must have the strongest lawyer.

It’s a shame that it has taken us so long to get to this point. Many earlier … messier … conflicts could have been avoided if the participants had chosen court instead of combat. For example, the American Revolution would have been much less violent if the Founding Fathers had simply declared that the Colonies and Great Britain had irreconcilable differences and then hired a lawyer to sue for separate maintenance.

With a little foresight, the thirty-second gun battle between the Clantons and the Earps could have been turned into a months-long trial instead. Fewer people would have died, but classic films like Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Tombstone would have to be replaced with less-thrilling versions like Motion to Suppress at the O.K. Corral and Law and Order: Tombstone.

Romeo and Juliet would have taken on a whole different tone if Shakespeare had written it as a legal drama. When Juliet’s father realized she was hanging out with that no-good Montague kid, he could have just hired the law firm of Squire, Squire, Hackam and Dudley to draft up a routine Cease-and-Desist letter.

Dear Romeo Montague;

Mine noble servants have brought to my attention thy interest in the affairs of my daughter. As thou are no doubt aware, our families’ interests are at odds and no commerce can be given or received between our two most noble houses. Thou must divert thy attentions to other maidens for mine cherished child is forbidden thee. If thou dost not comply, I shall see thee in the court of Verona where I shall relieve thee of thy tights. In simpler terms, keep your mitts off my little girl or I’ll sue the pants off you.

Not that Romeo would have listened. He would have used his legal team to counter-sue for alienation of affection or (more likely) unauthorized misuse of the language of Shakespeare.

I don’t even want to think what might have happened if my children had decided to apply the power of law to routine domestic squabbles. A simple matter such as an overlooked chore might have led to a full-blown living room trial with a jury of Star Wars action figures and a stuffed rabbit as a judge. I’d hate to have been called to the stand on that one.

Perry Mason: Mr. Cummings, you claim that your son didn’t take out the trash last night. Correct?

Me: Well, yes. You see it’s right …

Perry Mason: Did you actually see him not take it out?

Me: What? No. I mean, it’s still right…

Perry Mason: So it could have been anybody who didn’t take out the trash.

Me: That doesn’t make any sense. It was his job!

Perry Mason: It might have been you who didn’t take out the trash. Isn’t that right Mr. Cummings?

Me: But it wasn’t my job.

Darth Vader Action Figure: I believe we’ve heard enough. Execute the witness.

I’m even more grateful that my wife never caught on to the idea of using legal pressure to change my behavior. My occasional, inadvertent lapses in the putting my-dirty-clothes-directly-in-the-hamper-instead-of-on-the-ground-in-a-room-more-or-less-near-the-hamper-department would probably have earned me a threatening letter from Crane, Poole and Schmidt.

After we finished installing our youngest son in his Freshman dorm room, he pushed us out so fast he nearly strained us through the keyhole. He hustled us off the way your immune system rejects a disease, the way a sovereign nation rejects an invading army, the way Jennifer rejected Brad when she found out about Angelina. After eighteen years of living under our control, he’s eager to be out on his own.

I can understand that. His generation was the most monitored in the history of education. When I was in school, I had a Vegas-like attitude; what happened in fourth period history, stayed in fourth period history. Except, that it often didn’t happen. I found it difficult to pay attention in Mr. Harris’ class because the girl in the desk ahead of me had the most heavenly scent. When I finally worked up the courage to ask her what it was, she said, “Ivory soap.”

Being an adolescent male, I wasn’t particularly familiar with soap and thus found the fragrance intoxicating. Unfortunately, my brain was so busy processing vital smell-related information, it was unavailable to deal with the barrage of history-related facts that Mr. Harris kept firing at us. It also didn’t have time to pay attention to the fine details of class assignments such as when they were due or what they were about.

Fortunately, my brain possessed enough left-over horsepower to notice when midterms were approaching and it was especially good at begging for extra-credit assignments so as to avoid having to find a way to explain a failing notice to my parents. I graduated with a modest GPA, a small scholarship, and solid understanding of the concept of just-in-time management.

By contrast, my children lived in a hothouse where I could observe their academic missteps. Every assignment, presentation, quiz, or final exam triggered an automatic e-mail home that detailed how many points were possible and how close my child had come to the mark. Ships at sea and spacecraft in orbit aren’t as closely monitored as my sons.

As a teen, I came home to a routine Q&A in which Mom asked what had happened at school and I said, “Nothing.” In teen-speak this translated to, “nothing I’m willing to tell you about because you’d freak out because I’m so far behind but I’ll make it up before the midterm.” My sons didn’t have the same luxury. The e-mail would beat them home and I’d meet them with “I’m freaked out because you’re so far behind and there’s no way you can make it up by the midterm.”

Secretly, I pitied them, but not enough to actually stop reading the e-mail messages.

Really.

So it’s no wonder my son was eager to be out on his own; experiencing the world and learning exciting new things. I envy him, until I remember a lot of the lessons in college weren’t on the curriculum and a few of them were downright tough.

One of the first things I learned was that they don’t take attendance in college. Nobody cared if I showed up. Not having to be in class left me free to explore other interests such as napping, daytime television, and pizza box origami. It also left me free of any actual learning.

At the end of the term when my report card arrived and my GPA looked like the average December temperature at the North Pole, I was very upset with my brain. It had let me down in the neatly-avoiding-disaster department. My brain countered that I had kept it so busy with trivia that it didn’t have time to worry about the future. Besides, it added, there were other factors.

My Calculus class was one of those factors. The instructor had a Hungarian name that defied my attempts at pronunciation and he started the first lecture with, “I speak very small Anglis.” That was the last thing I understood. The failing grade wasn’t a surprise to me or my brain, we just didn’t know what to do about it. The next semester I took Calculus from an American professor and, as it turned out, the biggest barrier to my success wasn’t language … it was mathematics.

I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I didn’t learn anything useful in college. After those rough first couple of semesters, my brain regained its powers and started to develop strategies for dealing with classwork. English assignments could almost always be left to the last minute, particularly those from professors who had graduated during the seventies and wanted me to share my “exploration of the intellectual space mapped out in the subtext of Updike’s novels as echoed in the poetry of Rod McKuen.” Math and science assignments had to be completed immediately and reworked five or six times until I had two sets of answers that agreed to within a value of fifteen percent. Other work was fitted in between those extremes.

Another skill I had to learn was how to navigate a bureaucracy. Fortunately, my Freshman English class devoted a lot of time to Kafka — possibly for this very reason. I’m not saying the university was unnecessarily bureaucratic; unless your definition of bureaucracy includes pointless rules, endless forms and mind — and bladder — stretchingly long lines. My actions (filling out forms and randomly paying people strange amounts of money for services I didn’t want) seemed largely unrelated to my goals (earning a degree and starting a career.) In fact, by following the logic of the University, I might as well have buried a light bulb in the garden in hopes that it would grow into an electrical plant.

Yet, somehow, all of the checks and forms and assignments and grades balanced out and I was awarded a degree. Now both of my sons are playing the academic game. I’d give them advice on how to succeed, but I’m not sure they’d believe me.

When my dinner arrived at the table it looked less like food and more like evidence in an arson investigation.

“I can’t eat this,” I said. “The pork chop is completely burned.”

“Not all of it,” my wife said. “Just cut away the burned part and eat what’s left.”

“What’s left is the bone.”

“Then eat the green beans.”

“Burned.”

“The applesauce, then.”

“Burned.”

“The salad.”

“Burned.”

If it actually had been evidence in an arson investigation, the report would probably have read:

Although the exact nature of the accelerant used hasn’t been conclusively determined by laboratory testing, early results point to barbeque sauce; most likely a cheap house brand. What is clear to this investigator is that the perpetrator is obviously vicious, with deeply anti-food tendencies.

“I want send this back,” I said.

“You can’t,” my wife sighed. “You cooked it.”

Sadly, she was right. My cooking skills are easily a match for Simon Cowell’s gifts at diplomacy or Keith Richard’s highly-developed fashion sense. If we had been forced to rely on my cooking, we’d have starved to death years ago.

This is not to say that all guys are lousy cooks. My brother-in-law Bernie is the MacGyver of chefs. Give him a jar of pimentos, an ostrich egg, and a quarter-teaspoon of flour and he’ll whip up a memorable three-course meal including an appetizer, your choice two entrees, and a dessert. In his hands, food tastes good because it wants to. In my hands, it burns because it is ashamed.

If I had to put my finger on the root cause of my cooking problems, I’d have to say that it’s because I never actually learned to cook. When I was in college, I subsisted by focusing my attention on two main food groups; box-shaped foods and can-shaped foods. Things that met my criteria included cereal, microwave meals, and foods that ended in “roni.” Can-shaped foods included soups, fruit, and gourmet pasta meals that ended in “oli.” I was also partial to anything which featured the words “instant”, “simple”, “fast”, or “quick” on the label. The ideal meal would have been called “Fast and Simple Instant Quick Food.” Even if it had been some form of doggie dinner, I’d have eaten it just for the name.

Later I expanded my diet to include the group of “things wrapped in plastic” which included pre-made deli sandwiches, burritos, and tortilla chips. Fortunately, before I moved on to the group called “foods purchased at the odd lot store because they were cheap”, I married an awesome cook. While we were dating, I took precautions to hide my own culinary deficiencies lest she find a more attractive mate. As a result, she tragically asked me to cook for her after we were married.

Specifically, she asked me to grill some chicken wings. I think she suffered from the illusion that grilling is an instinct for guys and that I couldn’t possibly mess up. She was wrong.

While I grilled the wings on a tiny Hibachi by our back steps, I passed the time reading a particularly absorbing book. In fact, I did more reading than actual cooking and when I looked up again the wings were so charred they appeared to have been retrieved from the bottom of a fire pit at a campsite.

My wife — and this is part of the reason I love her — thanked me and actually ate a couple. More incredibly, she took the leftovers to work the next day. As she gnawed her way through the cinders, a steady parade of her co-workers passed through the break room. Finally she asked what they were all doing. One of them sheepishly admitted that they had a pool going about what her meal had been before it was burned.

Really.

I could probably learn to cook if I could learn to decode recipes. Part of the problem is that I went to school during the brief period when the United States flirted with the metric system. Oh sure, the reliable imperial system with its halves and quarters and eighths had stood beside us for decades, but we wanted a fun new system; a system based on the shapely number ten and all of the interesting ways it could be manipulated. For a while, cars had both systems on their speedometers — kilometers per hour and hectares per equinox. Even some road signs toyed with both systems, but the fling didn’t last long and by the eighties we had gone back to the imperial system with its sensible shoes and its reliance on fractions to get the job done.

My teachers always encouraged me to ignore the imperial system in favor of the metric system and, as a result, both systems are incomprehensible to me. As a practical matter, this means I’m incapable of dividing a recipe when I need to make smaller portions. If the recipe feeds eight and calls for a quarter teaspoon of vanilla extract, I can’t figure out whether to put in four quarts or two centiliters if I’m making the dish for three people.

Decoding the recipes isn’t purely a mathematical problem, though. There’s also the linguistic component. Suppose I want to make a simple, traditional, French favorite such as boeuf bourguignon avec moi enchante fleur de lis ennui. Once I have the ingredients assembled, I’m called upon to do things like “reduce the sauce”, “fold the batter”, “julienne the fries” or “toad the wet sprocket.” I suspect this is actually a massive joke (sort of like the classic snipe hunt) in which experienced chefs compete to see who can taunt a new cook the longest.

Fortunately, as I mentioned, I married a wonderful cook who is content to prepare most of our meals…or maybe she just does it in self-defense.