Well Done

“I don’t like steak!”

Hang on a second.  That came out a little abrupt and apparently needs context.

I was a junior in high school and my girlfriend asked me over for dinner.  I inquired about the fare and she replied that her dad was grilling steak.

"I don’t like steak.”

My comment was followed by the retort, “Well, you’ve never had my dad’s steak.”

She was right, of course.  I knew her mother worked at the Jewel meat counter, but this was probably the first time I’d been invited over for dinner.

A couple of hours later, I was sitting at the table when her dad placed an inch and a half thick slab of meat in front of me.  I looked at my girlfriend and asked, “What’s this?”

“That’s steak!” she answered. 

Apparently, my context needs context.

My mom made steak rather regularly, but it didn’t look like this.  You see, our steak came on a shrink-wrapped Styrofoam tray.  It was about a half an inch thick and probably didn’t reshape the plastic that was stretched taut across the shallow plate.  Mom would transfer it from the packaging onto a pan, then it went straight into the broiler.  I’m not even sure if she stopped to season it.

Some 20 to 30 minutes later, the steak would be done it was time to eat.  Eating my mother’s leather required a sharp knife, A-1 sauce, and lots of chewing!

That high school family dinner-date opened my eyes to a whole new world.  There was this thing called steak that was easy to chew and rather delicious!

The best steak I’ve had since then was on another date, this time with my wife.  We were in New York for a couple days and I decided to call around to find a nice dinner reservation.  I obviously started at the top of the “Best restaurants in New York” list.  The #1 restaurant told me their next available reservation was in three months.  But it only took 2 or 3 more calls before I found a 9:30 PM on a Thursday reservation for two.  After promising them $450.00, I took the reservation.

The meal was spectacular and I may blog about that another time.  But right now, only steak matters.  It was Kobe steak, or some other trademarked slab of beef.  Shaped like a 2 1/2" circle and standing 2” high, it was unlike anything I had ever seen.  From the top, the outer edge was dark gray, while the rest was a warm pink.  It was like they had rolled it once across a 500° grill, then dropped it on a plate.

I cut into it, first tasting the outer edge.  It was exactly like my mother’s steak!  But beyond that outer edge, was a soft, delicious meat that absolutely melted in your mouth.  Even thinking about A1 sauce while eating it would have brought the chef and his largest knife out of the kitchen in a fit of rage.  No such thought crossed my mind.

I’ve come a long way, as far as steak is concerned.  Every time I order or grill, I find slightly less done is always better.  From the extremely well done my mother made, to the medium well I ordered through my twenties, I now prefer a thick cut grilled to medium.  Recently, I’ve been toying with the idea of trying medium rare.

But even with all that experience behind me, I still don’t like steak.

I love steak!

Comedy is (Not) for the BIrds

There are certain opportunities that only come along once in a lifetime.  Sometimes you can see them coming, jump on, and ride.  But other times, only hindsight is cruel enough to point out the opportunity missed.

Now one could easily cite missed stock buys or other life changing decisions that have passed most of us by.  But I’m talking today about one of those potentially life-altering events above and beyond just striking it rich.  I’m talking about… the first Angry Birds movie.

The movie was fine and, on a whole, lived up to my rather low expectations.  But its creators missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be immortalized for their comedic genius.

It was somewhere near the middle-end of the movie when the birds somehow decided it was reasonable (I’m sure they didn’t do it just to be true to the game) to launch themselves out of a giant slingshot.  Their target was piggy castle.

First, they launched a little orange bird who came up significantly short before exploding in an orange powdery puff.  The pink girl-bird was next, but she also came up short.  Other birds were launched, mostly forgettable, especially if you didn’t play the game.  At some point they decided to launch the mime-bird.

Now let’s stop right there for a minute.  There have been some outstanding mimes throughout history: Charlie Chaplain, Marcel Marceau, and dare I say it, Tape Face.  Tape Face’s ‘Lady in Red’ bit is absolutely hilarious and Marcel Marceau’s ‘Walking Against the Wind’ bit from Mel Brook’s Silent Movie is spectacular.  I have no idea how he manages to move backwards while leaning forward with the appearance of walking forward.  It puts the Moonwalk to shame.  Both clips are worth a quick Google! (Hey, where are you going?  After you finish reading my blog.)

Mel Brooks was able to catch one of those opportunities I spoke of earlier in that very same movie, a movie titled Silent Movie, when he gave the only spoken line to the mime.  Pure. Comedic. Genius.

Which brings me back to the birds.  They loaded the mime into the slingshot and sent it flying.  The movie then cuts to the Piggy King walking confidently in front of a large, glass window.  Do you hear opportunity knocking?  A mime?  A window?  I sat in the theater with anticipation growing.  I just knew the mime was going to smack into the window, then do the ‘Stuck in an invisible box’ bit before gravity finally smeared him off the glass.

Alas, history is cruel and I was left disappointed as the bird instead bounced about amidst a tumble of falling buildings far from the castle.  The writers, producers, directors, voice actors, gaffers, and even the best boys for the movie failed to see the historic moment staring them in the face.  It could have been great.  It could have been epic.  They could have written their names proudly alongside the likes of Robin Williams, George Carlin, and Tina Fey.  But they didn’t.  And the world is a more dreary place for their failure.

Pure. Opportunity. Lost.

And Then I Got Covid and Almost Died...

 You may not realize it from reading my blog, but I’m actually a rather funny person.  Just ask anyone.  My daughter will proudly proclaim me as funny and The Boy will describe me as humorous.  Even my wife will occasionally admit I have a mildly amusing sense of humor.  (Please don’t ask anyone else, as their opinions do not count.)  I’m the guy who giggles like a school girl when someone uses consecutive “dos” in a sentence.  It is my firm standing opinion that everything is funny if you look at it the right or wrong way.

As an example of my clever wit, we were walking into church a week after there had been a small fire in the attic and the water sprinklers had flooded portions of the building.  (See, funny already!)  The pastor was standing in the atrium, greeting us late-comers.  Above him, the drop ceiling was missing various tiles, obviously those that had been damaged in the flood.  My mind raced for the right thing to say.  My first thought, something about water, was a fail, but two or three trains later I had it.

“What happened?  Were you guys playing Mario?” I asked, jumping and swinging alternating fists into the air while doing my best impersonation of the “you got a coin ding” from Super Mario Brothers.  They laughed, The Boy laughed, and we proceeded into church.

On that rather short walk, Andrew, still laughing a little, asked, “How do you come up with that stuff so fast?”

I don’t really know.  The quick-twitch function of my funny machine parses situations rather quickly.  It can amend or rewrite thoughts about a situation at blazing speeds, finding just the right words to express the humor in most any situation.

Not having a filter assures that those thoughts are always shared with the world, for better or worse.

As it turns out, humor is my security blanket.  It is what I turn to when I am stressed, worried, or something is going horribly wrong.  As doctor visits of this aging male have gotten more and more interesting, I remember one time declaring to my primary doctor before an “exam, “Remember when we used to be friends?”  A similarly themed ER visit found me in prime form entertaining the doctors and nurses with every inappropriate ass joke I could muster.

And then I got Covid and almost died.  Technically the Covid was a few months before the Mario jumping incident.  But trust me, it ties in reasonably well.

My wife got Covid from a patient at work and was kind enough to share it with the rest of us.  She got a little sick, the kids took it better than Mom, and Grandma weathered the Covid onslaught better than all of us.  Then there was me.

I started out feeling sick.  My lungs began to struggle.  I tried doing breathing exercises to keep them open, but the illness progressed.  Exertion of any sort, especially walking up the stairs, would send my Oxygen levels in a downward spiral.  It took two trips to the respiratory clinic and a second visit to the Emergency room before I was finally admitted.  By then, I felt like the breathing capacity of my lungs had been reduced to the size of a walnut.  All humor had left me.

I was locked in an isolation chamber (i.e. specially adapted hospital room) and was occasionally visited by the extras from the ET escapes scene.  For four days, I lay in bed, tethered to various machines.  I had an IV in my arm, pressure collars on my legs, a glowing OSAT monitor taped to my finger (I could make another ET reference here), and that oxygen hose thing (Google tells me it is called a nasal cannula, or NC) wrapped around my head.

Sometimes I had enough energy to sit the bed up and watch TV, but most of the time I just lay there like Mojo the Helper Monkey, struggling to breathe.  One time I tried to roll over and lay on my stomach, per Mollie and the doctor’s advice.  After 30 minutes of trying to figure out the logistics regarding my multiple leashes and lack of energy, I found myself face down and more uncomfortable than I have ever been in my entire life.  It only took a minute to roll back over, followed by 15 minutes to recover.

Going to bathroom was the worst.  I had to sit up, disconnect my tethered legs, take off my Oxygen, unplug the OSAT monitor, and drag my IV poll around behind me.  By the time I made it to the bathroom, worked my magic, and lumbered back to bed, I was so extremely short of breath, it sometimes took 20-30 minutes to recover enough to reconnect anything beside the Oxygen.

One time, I sat on the toilet after a really bad coughing fit with my hand on the red emergency cord, ready to pull it.  I held it for about a few minutes before stubborn pride got the best of me and I managed to stumble back to bed. 

After about three days, a nurse pointed out that my Oxygen cord was too short and suggested she get me a longer one.  I regaled her with the struggle I faced just getting myself to the small water closet less than 10 feet from my bed.  How did she describe it?  Oh yeah, they had “…set me up to fail.”

The longer cord meant one less thing to detach from myself when getting up.  It helped a little, making the experience only absolutely miserable instead of completely defeating.

I occasionally had enough energy to reach my phone when someone called.  From those calls I garnered that Mollie was extremely worried about me.  My parents were worried.  My siblings were worried.  The dog was worried.  The doctors were worried.  The threat of being moved to the Intensive Care Unit, intubated, and put on a ventilator started to come up.

I remember my father calling me and encouraging me, in earnest, to do everything I could to get better; a difficult task when it is already all you can do just to breathe.  He asked me if I was scared.  Thinking about it, I wasn’t scared throughout the entire episode.  I was sick, but just waiting to get better.  It didn’t really cross my mind to be scared.  “Maybe you should be,” he advised.

Somewhere about day four, I was told I would be receiving convalescent plasma.  They hooked a new bag of liquid up to me and I fell asleep.  Some five hours later, I woke up feeling better than I had in days.  Instead of breathing through a walnut, my lung capacity had expanded to the size of a softball.  While still terrible, I can assure you even a little increase in the ability to breathe is an extreme comfort.

It took a few days to be discharged and two months to feel somewhat okay.  After leaving the hospital, I was talking to Mollie about her ongoing concerns during my internment.  She showed me a text conversation she had had with our pastor.  He had asked what he could pray for.  “That Mike would get his funny back,” she replied.  Obviously hesitant at such a dangerous request, he only offered to pray for “my funny to get an upgrade.”

Now five months post-Covid, Mollie has learned my humor is a necessary tool.  She can often be heard declaring, “If Mike loses his funny again, I’m taking him straight to the hospital.  If they ask what’s wrong with him, I’m telling them he lost his funny.  He must really sick!”

I’m not sure how funny my Mario impression really was, nor whether the pastor considered it an upgrade, but I have learned that even a bad sense of humor is better than Covid.

Who Likes Short Shorts?

I’ve always been short.  I was born short, I’ve lived short, and I’ll die short.  It all started back in grade school.  We used to line up by height for certain events: assemblies, photo day, and such.  While other people wandered around, saluting each other from the crown of their head, I would walk uncontested to the front of the line.  A new kid once usurped my position for a year, but I spent most of grade school as line leader when height was a considered factor.

It's not that I come from a particularly short family.  I just got, dare I say, the short end of the gene pool.  My brother and one sister are taller than me, as is my dad (I honestly have no idea how tall my other sister is).  I have tall uncles and tall cousins.  One grandpa was what others might consider tall and I remember the other being really tall, though he admittedly died when I was only 3.  When you are three, everyone seems exceptionally tall.  But not me.  I’m just short.

Five foot, six and a half inches, to be exact.  That’s eleven and a half inches shorter than Michael Jordan and over a foot and a half shorter than Shaquille O’Neal.  I am three and a half inches taller than Mugsy Bogues, but he was the shortest player in NBA history.  Those three and a half inches also accurately describe my vertical, while Mr. Bogues could leap 44.3” to dunk.

I do, however, tower above the shortest man to ever play baseball.  That would be the 3’ 7” Eddie Gaedel.  He was a bit of a publicity stunt for the 1951 St. Louis Brown.  He had one at bat, walking on four consecutive pitches, after which he was promptly removed from the game for a pinch runner.  Besides him, the list I found notes only one other MLB player who was shorter than me, while four players match my 5’ 6”.

Probably the most demeaning measurement of my height is this.  I am roughly as tall as four of Shaquille O’Neal’s size 22 shoes stacked heel to toe.

I also married short.  Mollie, my wonderful wife, was kind enough to let stand a whole 3 inches taller than her.  While that did restrict the height of the heels she chose to wear for our wedding, it has at least allowed me to occasionally ‘feel’ tall when I can reach something on the middle shelf that she cannot.  I do, of course, need two ladders and an elevator to get anything off the top shelf.

Given our children contain our mixed DNA, I had very little hope for their future stature.  Annaliese, as she has always been, will remain tiny.  But Andrew apparently dove deep into the gene pool and found some recessive height trait. 

I have enjoyed watching him grow, taking every opportunity to rag on him for being shorter than me, knowing full well a time will come when he will echo my insults from far above.  That day is fast approaching.  Just last week, Mollie stood by him and declared, “Andrew, you’re really tall!” 

I was overjoyed.  Grinning ear to ear, I thanked Mollie for her compliment.  If she thought Andrew was really tall, and I stand an impressive half an inch over him, then I too, for the first time in my life, must be really tall!

Excuse Me, Do You Work Here?

Have you ever been walking through a store and been stopped by another customer who asked if you work there?  I have.  Just the other day, I was browsing for some crafty thing I needed at Joann’s (please don’t tell anyone I shop at Joann’s) when a woman walked up.  “Excuse me.  Do you work here?” she asked.  I, despite a strong urge to play along, told her I did not and she moved on to ask some other lonely schmuck who may or may not work at Joann’s.

While in recent years I have only been asked 2-3 time a year, it used to be a more common occurrence.  Perhaps an older, fatter me doesn’t look like they work anywhere, let alone the place in which I am currently standing.  Perhaps it’s the two children in tow that make me look more like a shopper and less like an employee.

I think it may have to do with the way I shop.  I often spend way too much time in a store.  I wander.  I meander.  I browse.  Perhaps that type of shopping makes me look like I am supposed to be working.

I once asked a woman why she thought I worked at a particular store.  She explained that it was winter and I wasn’t wearing a coat, so I must have a long-term plan for staying in the store (i.e. employment).  That made sense, well at least more sense than the fact I rarely wear a coat in winter.

A younger me would get asked if I worked somewhere every 1-2 months.  Every once in a while, I knew the store well enough I could help the poor, lost soul who thought I was worthy of employment, but more often than not I was just as lost as they were.  The type of store I was in didn’t seem to matter, though I was stopped more often in one particular store.  More on that later.

Orange is my favorite of color shirt to wear.  It’s not my favorite color, that honor is reserved for slightly brighter than street sign green.  But as far as shirts go, orange is the best.  They look great and are always more comfortable than a similarly designed blue, or perhaps black shirt.  My earliest encounter with orange shirts was in high school.  Our school colors were blue and orange.  For PE my junior and senior years, I took a weight lifting class.  Our 'Excel' gym shirts were a fantastic orange with a blue panther across the front (and my last name written in black marker across my back).  A classic look, if I do say so myself.

Another class I took in high school was wood shop.  Mr. Groth’s amazing woodworking skill and teaching instilled a life-long love of tools in me.  As a result, there no store in which I aimlessly wander more than The Home Depot.  Aisle after aisle of wonderful tools I didn’t need and couldn’t afford.  All in my orange shirt…  It’s no wonder I got asked if I worked at Home Depot so often.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

I've been back to blogging for only a couple weeks and I've already forgotten to post.  That's okay because it means the four to seven of you who actually read this will just have to wait until Thursday to read my blog on Wednesday.  At least I'm pretty sure that's how it this works.

What is actually good about my latency is that you don't have to read the blather I previously patched together and was supposed to put up this week.  You'll have to wait until next week for that particular manuscript.  Instead, I've been inspired to tell a story.

It was long ago when I was young and naive.

Side bar.  How the hell do you spell naive?  I've tried nieve, naive, naieve, neive, neieve, nieive, naeive, naeve, naieve, niave, naeive, neive, neaive, pnaieve, mnieve, and knaive, but they all get underlined in red.

Is it because I'm missing some stupid French accent mark? naivú, naivð, now which Alt+### do I want? õôóôñëêaèçèé  There it is.  Good old Alt+0233.  naivé, nievé...

That's it, I give up.  The French, or whoever the hell came up with the spelling for that stupid word can keep it.  Back to the story.

It was long ago when I was young and stupid.  You may be thinking, "But Mike, you're stupid now.  I mean, you can't even spell...," but then you'd stop yourself before speaking because you can't spell it either.

No, this was a kind of stupid that surrounds youth and inexperience.  I'm sure there's a word that aptly describes it, but I don't know how to spell it.

Such naiveté...  Seriously???  I got that one right? I mean, come on.

(Editor's note: Microsoft Word properly shows I spelled it correctly the second time.  The inept spell check in Chrome apparently wants me to type 'naïve' with two stupid little dots above the 'i.')

Such naiveté can be observed on a college campus near the dining hall as unlearned youth wander up to a table to fill out an application for a credit card for the promised reward of a 1-pound bag of M&M's.  Nothing says putting my education to good use quite like the simultaneous formation of an unhealthy addiction to both chocolate and debt.

It also rears its head when said college student attends a Chicago White Sox game (questionable in and of itself) without bringing extra cash or bothering to fill up the gas tank.  Thus, I found myself leaving a crowded parking lot with a yellow light reminding me how stupid I was.  To my relief, there was a gas station a couple blocks South of the park that still bore Charles Comiskey's name.  I parked my car near a pump and went inside to pay.

No cash.  I was stumped.  Here I was on the Southside of Chicago at a rather sketchy gas station, with no gas, and no money to fix that problem.  The only bright side I could find was that if I got mugged, I'd only be out an empty wallet.

Did I mention I also didn't have a phone?  No?  Well I didn't have one of those either.

I talked to the gas station attendant, explaining my plight, but he didn't see, or at least didn't offer any solution.  I paced around the gas station and checked my wallet one more time to make sure I hadn't missed some quantity of cash hidden in a secret pocket.

Then I saw it.  A plastic rectangle I kept in my wallet, though I'd never gotten around to using it.  I pulled it out and asked in the most awkwardly uneducated manner possible, "Do you guys take these things?"

The attendant, who was apparently familiar with credit cards, confirmed they did.  Relieved, I returned to my car and filled my tank, using a credit card for the first time ever.

Only now, in retelling this story, did I realize my true blunder in this adventure.  It was not the lack of cash or my unfamiliarity with credit cards.  It was my failure to remember the association that first provided me with the credit card that may or may not have saved my life that summer day.

I should have bought some M&M's.

Dreams

I had a rather vivid dream last night.  I hopped a bus to a creek on the North side of Springfield and started walking up the creek.  Reaching the first bend, I started searching the creek bed rocks for Indian arrowheads.  My first few finds that looked suspiciously like arrowheads, but I decided they weren’t.  Digging deeper near the bank, I found a trove of treasure.  There were eight to ten knives carved out of rock.  A few were broken, or only partially carved, but many were pristine.  I gathered my finds in my arms and climbed out of the creek.  I stopped quickly to examine some sort of Bob Ross game that had been lying in the creek, but decided the knives were enough and headed back to the bus.

The bus was a self-driving and I was the only person on board.  I laid my ancient knives on a seat and worked on packing them into my backpack.  As the bus worked its way in the general direction of home, though on the far East side of town, other people began to board.  A rider mentioned their stop and it caught my attention. 

“This bus goes all the way to Jacksonville?” I asked. 

She confirmed and I began worrying about which stop would let me out closest to home.  The road names didn’t make sense to me and I was having trouble reading the schedule.  I finally decided there was only one left, which I missed.  I tried to use the ‘Stop’ button beneath my window, but the driverless bus wouldn’t listen and pulled onto the interstate.  A short jumble of exits and turns later and I was awake, safely in my bed without having to walk across town to get home.

It's no surprise I would dream about Indian arrowheads.  I really love old artifacts and fossils.  I have a small collection that includes numerous crinoids, a trilobite, a fish, a piece of dinosaur bone, and a small lump of petrified sloth poop.  Geodes dot my collection, as do other small fossils.

My greatest fossil find was about the size of a coconut.  It was a coiled snake with its head raised, ready to strike.  The detail was amazing, right down to the impending doom written in its beady eyes.  I have no idea how it formed, but it was truly beautiful. 

A few months ago, I sat down at my computer to work.  An hour in, I thought about my new fossil find, deciding I should show it to my wife when she got home.  But where was it?  My brain skipped for just a second, before settling on the unpleasant truth, a truth I literally exclaimed aloud.

“No!  It was a dream!”