Monthly Archives: February 2007

How many teenage guys does it take to change the oil in an SUV?

Three, apparently. One to drive it to the quick-lube shop, and two to keep him company.

I recently took my car in for an oil change. The place had a waiting room that might generously be described as “compact.” It contained two easy chairs, a couch, a kiddie table with two toddler-sized chairs, an end table strewn with magazines, a decorative shelf holding a plastic plant, a service counter, and the inevitable television set. The space would have been comfortable for two people, cozy for three, and claustrophobic for four. My arrival put the occupancy count at eight, no doubt violating several sets of safety codes.

One man stood at the counter clutching a magazine. Two middle-aged women sat on the couch. A small boy bounced back and forth between the two of them and the kiddie table. The two chairs and the third seat on the couch were taken up by three young guys. That’s seven people, six of whom were presumably qualified drivers. There were three vehicles in the service bays.

Okay, it was unfair of me to be annoyed by this. There is no law against taking a friend along when you go to get your oil changed. It wasn’t unreasonable of me, however, to be annoyed because it didn’t occur to any of the teenagers to offer me a seat.

I’m neither decrepit nor elderly. I’m perfectly healthy and quite capable of standing, purse and all, for 15 or 20 minutes. Still, manners are manners. If you are a teenager, sitting in a crowded room that has no empty seats, and a woman old enough to be your mother comes in, isn’t it basic courtesy to get up to let her have your chair? I thought about asking for a seat, but my inner wimp talked me out of it.

The three guys were leafing through magazines. One had a Redbook, and the other announced that he was reading "Good Housewives"—apparently comparing them to their desperate TV sisters. After a while the Redbook reader said, “Hey, there’s some pretty good stuff in here.” He brought the open magazine over to his friend’s chair.

The friend looked at the page, said, “Wow!” and settled in to read. Since I was standing behind him as a result of his not offering me a seat, I had no compunction about looking over his shoulder. The article was something along the lines of “What women really want in bed.”

Poor kid—he may never know. Before he had a chance to read more than the first paragraph, the technician came in and announced that the SUV was done. The three young guys jostled their way out the door, leaving the magazine behind.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I sat down in the chair. After a minute I casually picked up the Redbook. What page was that article on?

Spelunking. What a unique word, especially if you say it out loud several times. It sounds like a 30-ton dinosaur stomping through the swamp. “Here comes another brontosaurus—spelunk, spelunk, spelunk.”

Maybe that’s why people who explore underground prefer to call themselves “cavers.”

The other night I attended a talk by a man whose passion is caving. He was a good speaker, and it was fascinating to listen as he shared his delight in underground exploring. He showed us amazing photographs of caves he has been in—giant pillars where stalactites and stalagmites had grown together, draped “curtains,” delicate crystals that looked like frost, and dramatic underground waterfalls. The beauty was breathtaking.

The most literally breathtaking picture for me, though, was one that a fellow caver had taken of the speaker. Part of him, anyway—his boots. They were sticking out of a slit in the rock. The rest of him (did I mention this man was very slender?) had already disappeared into the narrow hole. It was like the last sight someone might have had of Jonah just before he vanished down the gullet of the whale.

Just seeing the photograph made me shudder. Crawl into dark, twisting passages so slim that if your navel were an outie instead of an innie you’d never make it to the other end? No, thank you. Not on your life.

I have visited a couple of caves. Touristy caves, with walkways and railings and comforting electric lights. They were spectacular. The day I went to Carlsbad Caverns, I’m sure I set a personal record for the number of exclamations of “Wow!” in a single day. Carlsbad, or at least the parts of it they let the visitors see, is a huge place of high-ceilinged caverns and vast spaces. That much I can handle, at least as long as they leave the lights on.

Anything smaller I’ll leave to the real cavers. It’s fun to see the pictures and to hear someone describe something he is so excited about. It’s wonderful that there are people willing to venture into the world’s less accessible places and then tell the rest of us all about them. More power to them. May they stay slender and may their headlamps never fail.

I’ll just stay out here in the sunlight and enjoy playing with words like “spelunking.”

I was going to get a flu shot. Really. At the one-day “flu shot clinic” advertised last fall at the drug store. When they were offered at the health fair. Or maybe even at my doctor’s office. I was going to. I just never quite got around to it.

Maybe that’s why I’m sitting here in my recliner, tucked in under a soft, cozy throw, with my forehead feeling hot and my hands feeling cold and an ache across my lower back that even Ibuprofen won’t get rid of.

What hurts the most is knowing that at this very moment I could be relaxing on a massage table under Nikki’s skilled, soothing hands. It was no doubt considerate of me to cancel my appointment rather than to risk spreading the flu, if indeed I have the flu. She appreciated it. I didn’t. I’d rather be getting a massage than sitting here aching and whining—to myself, yet, which is no fun. What’s the point of whining, after all, if there’s no one to listen to you?

Since whining isn’t doing any good, I might as well acknowledge that my failure to get a flu shot was more than just not getting around to it. I never really intended to get one at all. It’s not that I’m afraid of shots. It’s not that I don’t believe in them—though I do have some doubts about the efficacy of one shot against a multitude of ever-evolving strains of flu.

No, I simply am not ready to admit that I belong to a category of people advised to get flu shots. People who are considered to be at higher risk. Not because of chronic illnesses, or because they work in hospitals or nursing homes or day care centers. People who are considered at risk because of the dreaded A-word. Age. People who are eligible for AARP membership and “keenager” checking accounts at the credit union and even senior citizen discounts in some restaurants. “Older people.” People over 50.

I am not an “older person.” Never mind the grown kids and the four grandkids. Never mind the hair color; it’s still all mine. (You buy it, it’s yours, right?) I can still run up the hill to the mailbox on a chilly morning. I can still hike all day or dance all night—just not on the same day. I can still touch my toes without bending my knees. On second thought, never mind the toe-touching—my grandmother could do that when she was 80.

Still, anyone who is as active, healthy, and energetic as I am—at least after my third cup of tea in the morning—certainly should not be classified as “high-risk” when it comes to the flu. I shouldn’t need a flu shot. I didn’t get a flu shot. Nyah, nyah, nyah. So there.

After you’re done saying, “I told you so,” could you please hand me some more Ibuprofen?

It isn’t fair. Once again, circumstances have conspired against me. Once again, I fell victim to my own bad timing.

I am one of those people who are “organizationally challenged.” I don’t have a desk in my office, I have a horizontal paper storage facility. Said papers are filed by the stratigraphic method, with the oldest being the deepest.

Yesterday was one of those days when I had had it up to here—“here” being the height of the stack of papers on my desk. The last straw fell when I needed to write a check and realized that I didn’t have a level spot on my desk big enough for my signature.

It was time to clean. I stacked papers, organized papers, filed papers, and tossed papers. By the time I was done, I had excavated down to the surfaces of both my desk and the “credenza” (okay, the refinished closet door laid across two cheap metal file cabinets) behind it. Between the two pieces of furniture, I had created at least six square feet of bare wood. I even dusted.

Feeling wonderfully pleased with myself, I sat down to read the January 29 issue of Time magazine. And there it was, on page 136—an article by Jeremy Caplan entitled “Messy is the New Neat.” The story, citing a book called The Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman, maintains that “neatness is overrated.”

Forget hiring an organizational expert to help you clean up. Instead, you should learn to “make peace with your clutter.” I guess that means I should become okay with the necessity, every time I want to write a check or sign a letter, of freeing up a couple inches of desk by moving three stacks of paper out of the way. Oops, I shoved a little too hard, and one of the piles went over the edge. So much for my stratigraphic filing system.

I should have put those papers in a filing cabinet, you say? Not according to Abrahamson and Freedman. Filing is so last century. Stacking stuff on your desk is more effective “intuitive organization.” This allows people to “stumble upon serendipitous connections between disparate documents.”

Oh, now I understand. I’ve stumbled upon just those connections. Usually by discovering “Oops! This bill was due last week. Oh, that one was, too. How delightfully serendipitous!”

Apparently, getting rid of clutter doesn’t increase your efficiency, it just destroys the personality of your space. Believe me, if my desk had any more personality, I wouldn’t be able to find it at all.

But why, oh why, didn’t I read this article before I cleaned my office? I wasted a whole 37 minutes filing and organizing. Minutes I could have used learning to accept my inner slob. Minutes I could have used being creative and intuitive. Maybe, if I were lucky, I’d even have been able to find a paper and pen to write down my creative, intuitive thoughts before I forgot them.