Just For Fun

I’m going to have to paint two rooms in my house, pull up carpet, refinish a hardwood floor, call in an electrician, and buy new curtains. Oh, and did I mention write a novel? And it’s all my daughter’s fault.

You see, she bought me a picture. It’s a marvelous photograph titled “Solitude,” done by one of her friends who is a professional photographer. It shows a tall, February-bare tree leaning over an empty park bench. Behind it, just above the horizon, the sun shines through mist rising from the surface of Canyon Lake, casting long, soft shadows across the foreground.

The photograph would make a perfect book cover for a bittersweet, slightly eerie novel. If I write that novel, it might start out with the mystery of someone who vanished early one morning 35 years ago and has never been seen since.

Before I think about writing the book, though, I have to find a place to hang the picture.

I want it where I can see it regularly. The logical place, then, would be my office. Except that with the kids’ graduation and wedding pictures, the grandkid’s school pictures, the quilted pinwheel my mother made, the important quotations in calligraphy, the watercolor of the cat, and the calendar and bulletin board that are supposed to keep me organized, I don’t have much wall space left.

The living room? The spaces there are horizontal, and this picture is vertical. The formal living room/dining room? It’s already filled with prints and carpets from the Middle East. Besides, I don’t spend a lot of time in there.

The guest room? Too unused. The bedroom? Well, possibly. Or, an even better idea, I’ll move some of the things on my office walls into the bedroom and the guest room to make room for this photograph. I wouldn’t dare demote the grandchildren, but maybe the cat and some of the calligraphy could go. I’ve been meaning to put some things on the walls in both of the bedrooms, anyway.

But before I do that, I want to paint those rooms. (This involves spackling the holes and cracks in the wall, applying two coats of paint, and then—using the handy-dandy stud finder and laser level I got for Christmas—putting new holes in the wall to hang pictures. I’m sorry if the logic of this escapes you.)

Painting a room isn’t quite as simple as just painting it, of course. There are those busy brown-patterned curtains in the bedroom—it’s long past time they were replaced. And there is the carpet in the guest room, also brown-patterned, that is probably old enough to have voted for Ronald Reagan. I’ve been wanting to pull it up for months, even though I know that will only lead to sanding and refinishing the hardwood floor beneath it.

Then there is the outlet in the guest room that doesn’t work, and the light switch in the bedroom that only works if you give it that extra little tap in just the right place. Hence the electrician.

But it’s okay. I’m certainly not complaining. I’m delighted to have the picture. When Seth wins his first Pulitzer, I can tell people, “Oh, yes, I knew his work before he became famous. I have one of his early photos. It’s marvelous. And it only cost me $1500 and two weeks of hard labor.”

The letter from the cell phone company was tactfully worded. It informed me politely that analog service was being discontinued and I might have “limited signal availability outside of my home service area.”

Or, as the letter might have said, “This is the 21st Century, for crying out loud! Don’t you think it’s about time to drag yourself out of the Dark Ages and get a new phone?”

Okay, okay. I’d been intending to get a new cell phone anyway. Even if my old one was only six or seven years old. Yes, I do understand that, in technology years, seven is ancient. But the phone still worked. I had only dropped it maybe a couple of dozen times, so the surface didn’t have that many dings and cracks. True, jostling around against all the other stuff in my purse for several years had left scratches on the screen, but it was still readable, more or less. Besides, I still hadn’t gotten around to figuring out how to use the speed dial feature. It was always my intention to read the directions someday—assuming that, after all this time, I could remember where I put the manual.

Anyway, I finally bowed to the inevitable and got a new phone. And that’s all it is—a phone. I can’t take pictures with it. I can’t play games on it. It doesn’t flip open to a miniature keyboard so I can send text messages. (I think I could do text messaging on it; I just can’t imagine why I would want to.) I can’t check email on it. I can’t even download umpteen cute ring tones with which to annoy my fellow patrons at the public library.

Much as I hate to admit it, this is a phone for mature adults. The numbers show up on the screen in print large enough for me to see without my reading glasses. The “quick start” manual that came with it is written in a chatty, condescending tone intended for the technologically challenged.

All right, I’ll acknowledge being a mature adult. I’ll even admit that the large print is helpful. But I resent the implication that, because I want a plain and simple phone with which to make old-fashioned phone calls, I am a Luddite. I’m not.

A Luddite is someone who is anti-technology. The term (after a man named Ned Ludd) grew out of the industrial revolution in England in the early 1800’s. Textile workers, their livelihood threatened by new looms and other machines, rioted, attacked factories, and destroyed machinery. As they discovered the hard way (some of them were executed), when it comes to technology, resistance is futile.

I’m certainly no Luddite. True, I did write the first draft of this article with a pen on old-fashioned lined paper. On the other hand, I used to build computers, “with my bare hands,” as a friend puts it. I would give up my laptop and my email only if someone pried my cold, dead fingers off the keyboard. Besides, I just used the Internet to look up “Luddite.”

I’m not anti-technology; I’m just too stubborn to read the directions. But there’s hope—I’ve only had my new cell phone for a week, and I’ve already figured out how to use the speed dial.

Valentine’s Day, apparently, is no longer just for lovers. It isn’t enough merely to get roses or chocolate for your sweetheart. There are so many other “Valentine’s Day Specials” to choose from: the standbys of candy and jewelry, of course, but also heart-shaped pizzas, heart-ornamented boxer shorts, and an overwhelming variety of toys–in any color you like as long as it’s pink. And let’s not forget the plastic frog prince that sings a romantic tune (batteries not included).

One of the ads that caught my eye this week showed a variety of cute little Valentine’s dresses—pink with ruffles, red with white dots, red with cute sayings, and white lace with pink bows. A model, wearing one of the outfits, was posed gazing back over one shoulder at the camera.

The model looked embarrassed. The model was a dog. A little terrier, it was certainly cute enough, although its whiskery little face and jaunty moustache didn’t quite go with the pink ruffles it was wearing.

The doggie dresses—excuse me, the non-gender-or-species-specific items of “pet apparel”—were priced at $6.97 and available in sizes extra-extra small to medium. No large or extra large. At least the manufacturers must have realized that putting a pink ruffled dress on a German Shepherd or a Doberman would be a really, really bad idea.

I don’t know why the idea of special Valentine’s Day clothes for pets should have taken me by surprise. After all, I must admit to having personally forced innocent animals into clothes—and hand-me-down clothes, at that. When we were little, my sisters and I tried from time to time to dress various hapless kittens in our doll clothes.

Some of the more patient kittens would tolerate this fancy-dress indignity for a few minutes, though I don’t remember any of them staying in the doll bed or the wagon where we tried to put them. Some of them—the skinnier or quicker ones—would crawl out of the clothes at the neck faster than we could manage to get their sharp-clawed little feet through the sleeves.

Sometimes one of these reluctant fashion felines would escape and flee into the space under the front porch. Then we would have to either try to coax it out with a scrap of food or just wait around until it decided to come out on its own—and hope it was still wearing the clothes. I’m sure the remains of several decades-old doll dresses could still be found under that porch.

At least, due to my hands-on experience, I understand why the photo in the ad was of a dog and not a cat. My experience also tells me it’s doubtful that the average pet would fully appreciate receiving its own special Valentine’s Day dress.

Of course, if you really wanted to get your pet something special for Valentine’s Day, you could take advantage of the offer that’s been advertised for the last two weeks in front of a local veterinarian’s office. The sign reads: “Special for Lovers—spay or neuter one pet, the second is half price.”

Is it just me, or is this something of a mixed message? Still, you must admit it would be a Valentine’s present of the most personal and intimate kind. And after all, nothing says "I love you" quite like a gift that will last a lifetime.

In my “odd things to write about someday” file, I recently came across an article I had clipped out of the newspaper last year. It described a rock band whose members had been arrested after a concert during which they set their underwear on fire.

You have to admit it’s a change from smashing guitars. I suspect the reason may be economic as much as creative—after all, it’s a lot cheaper to buy a new pair of briefs than to replace a guitar. My favorite part of the item, though, was the indignant quote from one of the band members who was upset about being arrested: “We know what we’re doing—we’re professionals!”

I’m not quite sure just how one becomes a professional at setting one’s underwear on fire. Maybe you have to take a class in order to get your brief-blazing certification. “Undergarment Incineration 105. Prerequisites: Sock Scorching 102 or Tee Shirt Torching 103. Additional fee for protective lab clothing must be paid at business office upon enrollment.”

If there were such a class, just think of the possibilities for the final test. Essay questions, probably, since this would obviously be a liberal arts course.

In 750 to 1000 words, compare and contrast the relative merits of setting one’s underwear on fire before or after removing it. Salient points to consider may include: possible crowd response, the presence or absence of working fire extinguishers, the quantity and distribution of body hair, and any desire on the part of the performer for future procreation.

In 500 to 750 words, discuss the historical role of alcohol and other drugs in underwear-burning rituals. Extra credit will be given to any student who, in an appropriate context and with grammatical correctness, uses “Fruit of the Loom” and “fruit of the vine” in the same sentence.

For extra credit, in 250 words, compare the flammability of nylon, cotton, and Spandex or discuss the advantages and disadvantages of boxers vs. briefs.

Students must cite at least three sources in each answer. AP style required. Full coverage of the topic is expected.

At our house, we shovel snow the old-fashioned way—with shovels. That is, when we shovel at all. We don’t really have any sidewalks, just a short path of flat slate rocks from the front steps to the driveway. Tossing snow off the path is easy enough, though the unevenness of the stones tends to be frustrating for an obsessive, edge-to-edge sidewalk shoveler like myself. I’m never quite sure where to stop.

The driveway is a different matter. It’s long, sloping, and gravel. Clearing snow off a gravel driveway, while wonderful exercise, is a challenging endeavor. Dig too deep, and you’re tossing gravel off to the side along with the snow. Don’t dig deep enough, and you might as well not bother.

As a result, our primary method of snow removal for the driveway is even more old-fashioned: solar energy. This is also known as the “just wait till it melts” approach. It works best when combined with the "we have four-wheel-drive vehicles" technique.

This is all well and good for us, but it can present problems for visitors. My parents and one of my sisters were here recently, in my parents’ car. It has front wheel drive and is small and light—great for fuel economy, but not so great for driving up a snow-packed driveway, as we discovered when it came time for them to leave.

My sister—with years of experience driving in snow—tried first, with no success. My father—with even more years of experience driving in snow—tried several more times but still didn’t quite make it. Then my spouse took his turn. He was the resident expert, after all—he’s coped with this driveway for over 25 years. Finally, with my father in the car with him to add just a bit more weight, they made it nearly to the top.

My sister and I dug out loose gravel (with our bare hands, I must point out) to put under the wheels. Then, with the two men in the front seat, and with my sister and me pushing, we persuaded the car up and forward, inch by inch, until the front wheels finally crept up over the last little ridge of gravel and onto the street.

Which proves, once again, that behind every successful man is a good woman. And sometimes, she has to do a lot of pushing.

She stood very straight, balanced on her dainty slippered toes, with one arm raised gracefully over her head. Her tutu stood out around her hips with precisely starched symmetry. She was delicate. She was cute. She was five and a fourth inches high and weighed three ounces. She was made out of 460 calories’ worth of solid milk chocolate.

When my six-year-old granddaughters gave me the chocolate ballerina for Christmas, I’m sure they intended for me to eat it. I suspect that someone—it may have been Santa Claus, but it was probably their mother—must have mentioned that, if you want to get Grandma something she’ll really like, chocolate is always a good choice. Being apprentice ballerinas themselves, naturally they would have been delighted to find this little candy dancer—maybe even as delighted as I was to receive it.

There was, however, one small problem. Eating a chocolate Easter bunny is easy. First you bite off the ears, and then you munch your way down. But that’s a different species. Chomping a chocolate ballerina feels just a bit like cannibalism. It evokes less Anna Pavlova than it does Alferd E. Packer.*

So the bonbon ballerina stayed in her box for almost a month after Christmas. Then, finally, the day came. The box of truffles was empty. The mint chocolate meltaways were all gone. The dark chocolates with raspberry fillings had disappeared. It was time.

I opened the box. I cut open the plastic wrapper. I looked at her for a moment, so dainty, so perfectly posed, so unafraid. Then I picked up a sharp knife and cut her legs off. Starting at the toes, I nibbled until they were all gone. True, I felt just a bit like the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood.” Still, chocolate is chocolate.

The next day, her head and arm went the way of her legs. There was nothing left now but her tutu. I ate that the third day, and I enjoyed every bite. Once you start, there’s no stopping. Just ask Alferd E. Packer.

How do you eat a chocolate ballerina? One bite at a time.

*For those not current on their cannibals, Alferd E. Packer was the only survivor of a party of six men trapped by blizzards in Colorado in 1874, and he was convicted of murder and cannibalism. The cafeteria at the University of Colorado in Boulder is named after him.

For someone from the prairie, an aquarium is a fascinating place. Where I grew up, people talked about going to “the river” without needing to name it as the Missouri, because it was the only river within 100 miles. In my experience, “fish” meant bluegills, perch, bass, northern pike, walleye, bullheads, carp, and breaded fish sticks at the school cafeteria every other Friday.

So what were the first kinds of fish we saw when we walked into the Denver Aquarium? Bluegills, perch, bass, and walleye.

Fortunately, that was only the beginning. There were sharks, relatively small but still inspiring respect. (We declined the opportunity, available to those 10 and older, to swim with them.) There were moray eels, in an off-putting lime green, with surprising teeth and cold, predatory eyes. The joke based on the Dean Martin song about “that’s a moray” will never be the same. There was the giant octopus stuck to the side of its tank in a tangled blob of tentacles. There were gnarled rockfish and spiny sea urchins and pulsating jellyfish. There were delightful rainbows of busy small fish in dazzling yellows, electric blues, and dapper white and orange stripes.

There were the otters. Two of them—perhaps it was their turn on duty—were swimming laps, showing off for visitors. They slid into the water, shot to the bottom of the pool, zipped past the glass where we stood and kicked off against it with the white pads of their broad hind feet, added a back flip or a couple of rolls for dramatic effect, rippled up onto the bank, and started all over again. Their short front legs stayed tucked against their sleek, muscular bodies, with propulsion and steering coming from their back legs and powerful tails.

They dived and rolled and spun in the water with casual skill, as cool as skateboarders grabbing air. There was no eye contact, no demonstration of delight at their own abilities, no apparent awareness of their audience—just that competence that is so far beyond arrogance it is the ultimate in cool. We moved on, reluctantly, only because a family came up behind us and we didn’t want to get caught shoving small children out of the way so we could keep watching the otters.

Almost as fascinating as the otters, though, were the seahorses. When I was about seven or eight, one of my Christmas gifts was a starter collection of seashells, about 20 of them mounted in a box. Among them was a seahorse. It was perhaps an inch long, a dried-up beige thing frozen in place with its little horse face and its curled-up tail.

These seahorses came in soft colors—pinks, blues, oranges, and greens—so perfectly camouflaged among the plants and rocks that we had trouble finding them all and watching them became a game of “Where’s Waldo.” Clutching the plants with their tails, they bowed and stretched and floated in the water like a miniature carousel in constant motion. One of them, temporarily losing its grip, flipped its tail repeatedly, rather like a calf roper on an off day, until the loop finally caught and it was safely anchored again.

For years, the word “seahorse” to me has carried with it the image of that colorless, rigid little creature from my shell collection. It was marvelous to have that image replaced by the sight of living seahorses. They were so delicate, so flexible, so colorful, so alive, that they were enchanting.

It was a long way from bullheads, carp, or breaded fish sticks.

It takes a long time to drive diagonally across Kansas. Our starting point, upper east, was rolling prairie, river breaks, and even—according to my accompanying geologist—a couple of outcrops of genuine rock. By the time we got to the lower western part of the state, however, we could see clearly—for miles and miles and miles—why the first word that comes to mind when you say “Kansas” is “flat.”

Dodge City, that Wild West legend, was initially a bit of a disappointment. The famed Boot Hill is now paved over and occupied by a substantial city hall building. It was only used as a cemetery for six years after the town was first founded. Even in its active period—if “active” is a word one can apply to a cemetery—it only contained about 20 graves.

Even though its name evokes the Old West, Dodge City today looks startlingly industrial. The first and strongest impressions it makes, on the nose as well as the eyes, come from the huge feedlots and meat processing plants on the edges of town. Actually, though, the feedlots are probably more authentic representations of the town’s past than the replicated store buildings at its museum. After all, it gained its fame as a cow town. All those wild cowboys only went to Dodge because of the huge herds of cattle they were hired to drive there. In the town’s wild and wooly days (Why “wooly,” anyhow? We’re talking about cattle here, not sheep.), the loading pens packed with cattle, waiting their turn to be loaded onto the trains, probably looked and smelled a lot like the feedlots do today.

Then there is Liberal, Kansas—named, apparently, for the area’s first homesteader, Mr. S. S. Rogers. In a vast, dry prairie where creeks were few and far between and most people who had water charged travelers for it, Mr. Rogers shared his water for free and gained a reputation for liberality.

The main highway through Liberal has been renamed “Pancake Boulevard.” That’s pancake as is “flat as a,” apparently. For the past 50-some years, Liberal has engaged in a friendly rivalry with Olney, England, staging every spring what claim to be, and probably are, the world’s only international pancake races. Women in aprons, flipping flapjacks in skillets, run through town in observance of Shrove Tuesday.

Still, despite having driven across three-fourths of the state the long way, we can’t honestly say we have seen everything of significance in Kansas. We missed the landmark that could have been the highlight of our trip. We were a mere 40 or 50 miles away from Cawker City, and we drove on by, oblivious to our missed opportunity. This is what can happen when you travel without a proper map. We didn’t get to see the world’s largest ball of twine.

The photo in a recent newspaper was eye-catching. A plump mouse was standing up on its hind legs, either whispering into or about to nibble on the ear of—a cat. The cat was looking off into the distance, wearing the detached expression of someone undergoing an invasively intimate medical procedure. It seemed to be trying to pretend the whole humiliating episode was simply not happening.

The accompanying AP article described a research project in which a group of Japanese scientists used genetic engineering to wipe out mice’s natural fear of cats. Instead of fleeing or cowering at the sight or smell of felines, the altered mice approached, snuggled with, and tried to play with the cats who were their companions in science.

The researchers said the cats they used were domestic and docile. Presumably, they were also well-fed. There was nothing in the article about the percentage of fearless mice who failed to survive the experiments.

According to the newspaper article, this research shows that fear is genetically hardwired in the brain rather than learned from frightening experiences. Personally, I think it’s more reasonable to conclude that fear can come from both sources. If you’re interested in finding out more about the fearless-mouse project, the study was published in the November 8, 2007, issue of Nature magazine.

The really significant issue related to this research, however, is much more serious. The big question is whether we—in our work places, our schools, our public buildings, and, above all, the sanctity of our homes—are prepared to cope with fearless mice.

Last fall our house suffered an invasion of the furry little varmints. We were first alerted to their presence early one morning, when I heard suspicious rustling noises in the kitchen. I knew it wasn’t my spouse filching from my hoard of chocolate. For one thing, he was still innocently tucked into bed. Besides, I know better than to keep my stash in a place as obvious as the kitchen.

Investigation revealed a disturbing amount of mouse-related evidence in one of the kitchen cupboards. We set traps, washed pots and pans, and tried not to think about the Hanta virus as we scrubbed out cupboards with bleach. After a couple of our uninvited guests succumbed to traps baited with peanut butter, and after we covered the holes they had used, we went back to a mouse-free lifestyle.

A few weeks later, rearranging furniture, I moved our rowing machine. Part of its frame consists of a hollow steel tube about an inch and a half in diameter, with an open top about 18 inches off the floor. That tube was filled with some 20 unshelled pecans. One of our enterprising little invaders had decided this would be the perfect spot for a hoard.

To get each pecan into the cache, the mouse first had to haul it out of a plastic bag inside a cardboard box, then transport it halfway across a large room. Then it had to hop up onto the base of the machine, climb a fairly steep incline, jump across to another slanted piece of the frame, climb that, then jump down to the edge of the open tube—all the while carrying a pecan almost half its own size. It made this journey at least 20 times, not counting any extra trips due to slipping, falling, or dropping its cargo.

When a critter is blessed with this kind of agility and persistence, it has enough going for it. It doesn’t need reckless courage as well.

Creating mice who don’t hesitate to cozy up to cats in controlled laboratory conditions is bad enough. But think of the possible consequences if they escaped to terrorize the outside world. You innocently open a kitchen drawer, and there stands a defiant mouse, waving a small red flag and squeaking, “Down with the cat-lovers!” It is wearing a tiny tee-shirt bearing the slogan: “Revenge of The Hanta Hordes!”

We have to stop these researchers now. Let’s keep the world safe from rodent rage.

Merriam-Webster has announced its word of the year for 2007—“w00t.” No, despite the fact that it just gave my spell-checker palpitations, that wasn’t a typo. This “word” is spelled—if “spelling” is the correct term—with zero in place of the letter o.

“W00t” comes from the world of electronic game-playing, where it is used as an exclamation of pleasure or triumph. It was chosen through a poll that was conducted online, which may explain why it received enough votes to become the word of the year. Why it is produced with numbers instead of letters remains, to me at least, unclear.

This depresses me greatly, for two reasons. First of all, I had never heard of “w00t.” I would like to believe this merely reflects the fact that I don’t play electronic games. I don’t even indulge in FreeCell and computer solitaire any more, having realized several years ago that I was becoming way too skilled at both and not liking what that said about how I was spending my time. Still, having a venerable institution like Merriam-Webster choose as its word of the year a term completely unfamiliar to me makes me feel terribly out of touch, stodgy, last century, and—okay, I’ll just say it—old.

Secondly, having had a close lifetime relationship with words and a somewhat more distant relationship with numbers, I have always believed the two to be separate species. True, they interact regularly, working together cordially in the common interest of clear communication. Yet each is true to the laws of its own kind. We don’t “spell” numerals, any more than we punctuate words with decimal points.

I suppose “woot” works well enough as a word, though it does sound as if it belongs in a “Tarzan” movie. (Jane: “Here come the great apes! I’m saved!” Apes: “Woot, woot, woot!”)

Edgar Rice Burroughs, however, would have spelled it the old-fashioned way, with four actual letters taken from the alphabet. Replace two of those letters with numbers, and you no longer have a word. Instead, you have produced an awkward hybrid.

Some hybrids, most notably the mule, are useful creatures with a well-earned and respected place in history. Others, such as the lion-tiger combination called a “liger,” seem to be mere curiosities, produced to prove that it can be done.

“W00t” belongs in the latter category. We can only hope, that, like most hybrids, it proves to be sterile.