Just For Fun

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.

According to a brief article in this morning’s paper, the Wisconsin legislature is considering a resolution to declare the town of Seymour the official birthplace of the hamburger. This is apparently in response to a movement to similarly memorialize the town of Athens, Texas (a claim which the mayor of Seymour labels as "bologna").

My immediate response to information like this is always to go look it up. I did extensive research, consisting of an Internet search for “history of hamburger” and at least seven minutes spent skimming several sites. That was just enough information to leave me thoroughly confused.

First of all, people all over the world have been eating ground meat in various forms for centuries. Perhaps the most famous version is that of the Mongols, who supposedly slapped ground meat under their saddles and ate it raw after riding on it all day. The rich flavor of horse sweat presumably made salt and ketchup unnecessary.

The name “hamburger” evidently did come from the city in Germany, which popularized a type of ground meat patty that became known as “Hamburg steak.” By the early 1800’s, this term was showing up on restaurant menus in the United States.

The crucial question, apparently, is who was the first to make the “Hamburg steak” patty into a sandwich. At least six or seven American towns claim to have invented the modern hamburger. Its origins are unsurprisingly similar—a food vendor at a fair or restaurant having the bright idea of putting ground meat between two slices of bread for an easy-to-eat sandwich. Purists also debate whether the patty-on-bread version is a true hamburger, or whether that distinction is reserved for the patty-on-a-bun variety.

If I were a more dedicated scholar, I could do further research, delving into the finer points of hamburger history: toasted vs. non-toasted buns, the origins of the cheeseburger, whether ketchup or mustard came first, and the proper place of pickles. But it’s getting close to lunchtime, and all this reading about hamburger is making me hungry. I think I’m going to go to a fast-food place and order a “Seymour.”

I’ve just returned from New Mexico; my fourth visit in the last couple of years. I find the people friendly, the art and architecture marvelous, and the broad sweep of landscape appealing. I can certainly appreciate the state nickname, "Land of Enchantment."

I have a bit more trouble, however, with the official state vegetable. Vegetables, actually—frijoles and chile. (To us northerners, that translates as pinto beans and peppers. Hot peppers. Leave-your-lips-numb peppers. Take-the-surface-off-your-tongue peppers.)

New Mexican cuisine is wonderful, I’m sure, for those who are accustomed to it. Not being one of those people, I find it uncomfortable. This is especially true when the chiles show up in places where I’m not expecting them, like innocent-appearing salads.

I’ve learned there is no point in asking, “Is this spicy?” This foolish question is invariably met with one of two responses. The first is, “Oh, no, it’s very mild.” The second is, “It isn’t hot, it’s just flavorful.”

Either reply means that one bite is going to take out half my taste buds. I’ve finally figured out that they really don’t intend to mislead me. It’s just that the definition of “mild” is in the taste buds of the partaker—and New Mexican taste buds are apparently inured to chile with their mother’s milk. Grocery stores probably carry three types of baby food: mild, medium, and hot.

I’ve also learned that servers aren’t going to ask "Do you want chile with that?" The only question—the unofficial state question, I have been told—is "Red or green?"

What I really have a problem with is not the hot food. I don’t even mind people assuming that eventually I could get used to the spiciness. That, I suppose, is true enough. What I object to is the assumption that I want to get used to it—or at least that I should want to. The air of superiority, served up like a side dish of green chile, is annoying. I personally find a tolerance for spicy food to be an indication of a strong stomach more than a strong character.

My Northern European immigrant ancestors certainly were people of strong character. This is despite the fact that they bequeathed a culinary heritage of three basic seasonings: salt, pepper, and onion. The more adventurous can add ketchup and mustard. If you want a little tang with your food, why, that’s what dill pickles are for.

Oh, we do indulge in hot food here, especially in the wintertime. We just define it differently. “Hot” means a bite of casserole still steaming from the oven, soup that’s only a few seconds out of the simmering pot, or coffee sipped at a temperature just one or two degrees below boiling.

In South Dakota, by the way, we don’t have an official state vegetable as they do in New Mexico. We do have a state dessert. It’s a fruit-filled pastry of German/Scandinavian ancestry called kuchen. What does that say about the difference in eating habits between the two states? I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Perhaps the current styles in women’s clothing aren’t really any more ridiculous than the styles of last year or last decade. Having spent more time than usual in the mall over the past couple of weeks, however, I have my doubts.

We do, at least, seem to be moving away from the stomping-bugs-in-the-corner pointed shoes of the last few years. That would be a good thing, except that they are being replaced by shoes with rounded toes but three- or four-inch heels. The new ones may not be quite as ugly, but they aren’t any easier to walk in.

Then there is the "layered look." One is apparently supposed to wear sweaters over tank tops over short skirts, narrow pants, or leggings. This layering can be done with either long, skinny sweaters or sweaters that stop several inches above the waist. These abbreviated sweaters make no sense to me. I do understand the need to show off one’s belly-button piercings. Still, the whole point of wearing a sweater, which I have always naively imagined to be warmth, seems negated when said garment doesn’t come close to covering one’s tummy.

The layered look, of course, solves this problem with a long tank top that hangs out beneath the sweater. This provides just the right air of sophistication—the same look one might achieve by borrowing from the closet of a small child or wearing a hand-knit sweater from one’s grandmother even though she ran out of yarn before she got it finished.

To some people, the solution is simple and obvious. If you don’t like the look, don’t buy the clothes.

Most of those people are male. The average guy—even the above-average guy—can’t understand why women allow themselves to be such slaves to fashion. They have a point. There are certainly women who seem determined to be fashionable, no matter how awful they may look in the process.

Most of us, however, resist the most extreme styles. We would agree wholeheartedly with the strategy of, "if you don’t like it, don’t buy it." Our preference is to buy more classic styles and stick with them.

There’s just one problem with that approach. It’s finding those classic styles.

For example, I need a new pair of jeans. For the last month, I’ve been trying to find some—ordinary, inexpensive, dark blue, boot-cut jeans, with the waistband located somewhere in the vicinity of my actual waist. It shouldn’t be that hard.

This is what I’ve found in the stores: Low-cut jeans designed for skinny teenagers—not a good choice for those of us whose navel enhancements are stretch marks instead of belly-button ornaments. "Relaxed-fit" jeans that are way too loose. Stretch jeans that are way too tight. "Distressed" jeans that are half worn out—some complete with patches—and look worse than the ragged ones I need to replace. And everywhere, jeans so narrow at the ankle that you almost have to be Cinderella just to get your feet through the openings.

The gods and goddesses of fashion have spoken. These are the jeans that are "in." The stores bow in reverent obedience and order these jeans. And lonely heretics like me wander in the wilderness, hoping to find a stray pair of last year’s pants that might accidentally fit the way I want them to.

I do have one hope left. In January, we’re making a trip to the Southwest. On the way down, we’ll stop at Sidney, Nebraska—the home of Cabela’s, the outdoor outfitters. Maybe, just maybe, I can find a pair of real jeans.

If not, I may have to give up and embrace the newest look of skinny jeans. Or maybe I’ll just go all the way and opt for leggings. They do have leggings at Cabela’s. They just call them "long underwear."

I wonder. Do you suppose one of the "in" colors this year will be camouflage?

One of my most memorable Christmas gifts from childhood was a double wooden desk that our father built for my older sister and me when we were probably three and five. Its two slanted writing surfaces faced one another, each one hinged at the top to allow access to the space inside, each one with its own separate little seat.

My sister still has the desk, which has survived the years well. Her kids used it, and now it’s just the right size for her grandkids. It’s a simple, sturdy little piece of furniture, about knee high to an adult.

When it sat beside the Christmas tree all those years ago, however, to two curious little girls it seemed huge. Wrapped securely (in a blanket, my sister remembers), it was a bulky package that we couldn’t figure out. Its shape suggested a playhouse, but it wasn’t quite that big. A toy box, maybe? A doghouse for Boots?

We wondered. We imagined. We guessed. The one thing we didn’t do was peek.

Our forbearance wasn’t necessarily because we were such virtuous and obedient children—although of course we were. For us, pondering and speculating about the mysterious big gift was part of the fun. Finding out what it was ahead of time would have spoiled the pleasure of Christmas morning.

A few years later, my youngest sister, age three and a little shaky yet about the ethics of keeping secrets, told me a few days before Christmas what my main gift would be. I remember trying very hard not to listen, but she was so excited about her news that she shouted to make sure I could hear her even with my hands over my ears. I worried for the next week, not sure I was up to the thespian challenge of acting surprised when I unwrapped the package.

(Just in case you’re wondering, yes, I have long since forgiven my sister for her innocent transgression. She didn’t know any better or mean any harm. Besides, some years later her son decided to arrive in the world on Christmas Eve, just in time to deprive her of the big family dinner and gift-opening. What goes around does eventually come around.)

I can remember even as a little girl being shocked at two of my cousins, who waited till their mother was out of the house, then partially unwrapped their Christmas gifts. After seeing enough to find out what the gifts were, they wrapped them up again. The sneakiness of this was appalling to me. What I really didn’t understand, though, was how they could deliberately ruin their own fun by making sure there were no surprises under their tree.

All this is by way of explaining to my kids why I never took them to see Santa Claus when they were little. I never had them make Christmas lists or write letters to Santa. It seemed too much like abetting greed and selfishness. But above all, it would have spoiled the surprises. Where’s the fun of opening a gift if you already know what it’s going to be?

No doubt Christmas shopping would be easier if everyone made lists. But, even though it can be frustrating, part of the fun of gift-giving is in figuring out what people might like—being alert for hints, having secret conversations with other family members, sleuthing, and hiding gifts. Then, on Christmas morning, the pleasure is doubled, because the only thing more fun than opening one’s own surprise gifts is watching other people open theirs.

Merry Christmas, and may all your surprises be happy ones.

It’s the first of December. In yesterday’s mail was a flyer advertising "last-minute gifts."

Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve always thought that doing one’s Christmas shopping early meant getting most of it done before, say, December 15. Last-minute shoppers were those few lost souls, predominately male, frantically searching the depleted aisles on Christmas Eve.

Not any more, apparently. Last-minute now seems to apply to anything purchased in December. We’re being subjected to ever-increasing "Christmas creep."

The holiday season—or at least the holiday shopping season—is expanding faster than an elastic waistband during Christmas dinner. Stores routinely seem to be putting up holiday decorations the day after Halloween. Ads for this year’s "must-have" gifts start appearing in early November. And don’t even get me started on the retail frenzy of "black Friday," that overstressed 24 hours formerly known as the day after Thanksgiving.

Christmas creep drives me nuts. It’s outrageous. It’s ridiculous. It’s offensive. My inner Grinch wants to react with a hissy fit—stomping her feet and shouting, "Just stop this nonsense! It’s ruining Christmas!"

Of course, the more logical part of my mind knows that my Christmas is only ruined by this bunch of over-eager retailers if I allow it to be. The challenge is to observe the holiday according to my own season and on my own terms. For me this year, that has meant choosing to ignore most of the pre-Thanksgiving holiday hype. I don’t watch much television, so ignoring those ads has been fairly easy, especially with the help of the mute button on the remote control. The half-inch stack of newspaper inserts on the Sunday before Thanksgiving were useful for starting fires in the wood burning stove. I even chose not to contribute to the Salvation Army kettles (set out by November 20) until December.

My solution to Christmas creep? Don’t participate. Let’s all keep our checkbooks and credit cards in our wallets until such time as seems reasonable for the Christmas season to start. I figure that, if enough of us ignore all this holiday pseudo-urgency, eventually it will go away. It’s a sound theory, and I truly believe it can work.

Now all I need to do is persuade my inner Grinch that passive resistance is the way to go. First, though, I have to find her. I think she’s hiding under the bed. I can hear her muttering to herself. It sounds like she’s saying, "What ever happened to Thanksgiving?"

Over the summer, most of the deer in our neighborhood have been does with their fawns. The guys have presumably been off somewhere doing Important Manly Stuff. Either that, or they’ve been too embarrassed to appear in public when their antlers are soft, spongy things covered in velvet.

But now it’s fall. The guys are back. Their coats are glossy, and their antlers are polished emblems of regal stagdom. They carry themselves with all the assurance of lords of the forest or quarterbacks who have just won the homecoming game in the last minute of the fourth quarter. They look good, they know they look good, and they are ready for love.

Last week, out for a late-afternoon walk, we spotted one of these noble stags in a neighboring yard. A couple of does were nearby, pretending to ignore him but being careful not to discourage him by getting too far out of reach.

As we approached, we could see something hanging from the buck’s antlers. We thought at first it might be part of the antler of a rival buck, broken off in a battle over the affections of the neighborhood ladies. Then it looked more like a broken branch or a bunch of vegetation. We stopped at the edge of the yard to look more closely, and we finally figured out what he was carrying.

It was a mop. A string mop, minus the handle and somewhat the worse for wear, was dangling incongruously from one tine of his antlers. Posing for the ladies, he lifted his head to gaze majestically into the distance. The mop swung back and forth beside his cheek. A kind observer—his mother, perhaps—might have called the effect "rakish" or "insouciant." An impartial observer would have acknowledged the truth. It made him look like a dork.

He dropped his manly pose and sauntered across the yard after one of the does. She seemed to reciprocate his interest. Maybe she thought his headwear was quite the latest thing, the equivalent to a tattoo or a pierced eyebrow. Maybe she appreciated his daring and unique fashion sense. Maybe she thought it would be a funny story to tell the other girls later back at the thicket. Maybe she just felt sorry for him. Or maybe it’s true that love is blind.