Moving Out

First published May 20, 2005

I fondly remember the day a couple of years ago when my 21-year-old live-at-home college student son announced happily, “Dad, I’ve found a great apartment, and I’m moving out.” While I knew I was going to miss him, I was glad to have him asserting his independence and leaving home without the assistance of federal marshals.

“So, you want to move out,” I said, paternally.

“Hey, you caught on right away,” he replied. “And they say old people have a hard time keeping up with new thoughts and ideas!”

“Right. So where is this apartment?”

“Real close to school.”

“I see. And who are you rooming with?”

“This guy Tony, who used to work with Tom.”

“Now we’re getting some information! And who would Tom be?”

“You know Tom. He was here last New Year’s.”

“Is he the one who slept under the piano?”

“The bathtub.”

“Ah yes, that Tom. Worked with young Tony, did he?”

“In the prison laundry or something.”

“So Tony’s rehabilitated then?”

“According to the parole board.”

And so it went. We learned that Tony was really a good guy, that he had a girlfriend who could cook, and that he had a stereo with butt-kicking speaker columns he bought out of the trunk of a Mazda over by the high school.

Tony’s credentials established, we moved on to financial matters;

“So where will you get the money to pay the rent?

“Well, I’m working four hours a week for $7 per hour.”

“Decided against that math major, did you?”

And so we proceeded, carefully discussing and weighing all aspects of the pending move. Eventually we worked our way around to the actual logistic considerations;

“So when are you moving?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What will you be taking?”

“I don’t know. Some stuff, I guess.”

“And how are you going to move everything?”

“We’ll get a truck or something.”

Thus reassured that all the details had been carefully ironed out, I could relax until moving day rolled around.

I came home the next evening to find the living room couch, the coffee table, and all the furniture from the den missing. I intercepted my son and five of his friends out in the driveway, loading a rusty pickup truck.

“Where are you going with the pool table?”

“Mom said I could take it.”

“Do you have room for it in the apartment?”

“I’m pretty sure it’ll fit out on the deck.

After five or six trips, the house was pretty much looted and my child was gone. The next evening, I sat alone on the carpet where my favorite chair once was, looking at where the television used to be, and waxing nostalgic over passing one more milestone through the kidneys of my life. Then the phone rang;

“Dad?”

“Hi son! How’s the apartment?”

“Great! It turns out there’s a party store right next door! And, even with two couches and a coffee table in the living room, there was room for six people to sleep on the floor last night. Say Dad, what does it mean when the smoke detector goes off?”

“It means the place is on fire.”

“That’s what I thought. (aside) See, I told you dude. It’s not a real fireplace. Ok, thanks Dad. Talk to you later. Bye.”

“Goodbye son.”

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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Can You Get A Hemi In Mauve?

First published May 27, 2005

I’m going to go way out on a limb here and make a bold statement:

Men are real different from women!

There, I said it. If this is going to ignite a firestorm of controversy, so be it. I can take the heat.

Now I’m not talking about the kind of differences your little friends used to point out when you were nine years old and trying to figure out why boys and girls use separate locker rooms. I’m talking about some basic differences in the way our brains are wired.

Suppose I say, “Hey, I got a new car.”

A man will ask, “Did you get the hemi and the towing package?”

A woman will ask, “What color is it?”

Or I ask, “What kind of car are you shopping for?

A man will reply, “A Viagmobile GT. It’ll do zero to sixty in 4.8 seconds – equipped with a hemi and a towing package.”

A woman will reply, “A blue one.”

Let me hasten to add here that I, like every married guy who doesn’t want to sleep in the garage tonight, will testify that women are at least as smart as men, and are entirely capable of understanding complex mechanical things. Women make great scientists, engineers, astronauts, world leaders and even combat pilots. It’s just that you know the female wing commander will wind up standing next to her F18 saying, “Yeah, but I really wish they came in something more interesting than silver.”

Of course, women’s sensibility for appearance goes far beyond colors. Before she leaves the house, my wife spends an minimum of an hour making sure every hair is in place and that she doesn’t have lipstick on her teeth. She knows that every article of clothing she’s wearing looks good together. On the other hand, I go out half the time with my sweatshirt on backwards.

I think the most likely explanation for this discrepancy is that in the case of men, our eyes don’t seem to completely connect to our brains. How else would you explain aloha shirts?

Men actually are theoretically capable of understanding aesthetic concepts. You can explain to me the principals of what looks good and what doesn’t, and I’ll grasp the meaning of every word you say. Then I’ll put on my favorite t-shirt – a kind of faded blue number with a mustard-brown “Barefoot International” logo on it, decorated with a gala pattern of ripped seams and moth holes – look in the mirror, and think I look great.

See? The eyes and the brain just aren’t hooking up.

There actually are a few rudimentary synaptic connections in men’s heads, though. For example, you’ve probably noticed that we’re obsessed with keeping our cars clean and polished. This is because, like most primates, we are attracted by shiny objects.

We can also see things much better when they are in motion, which is why we can spot a phantom tag at second base from three hundred feet, but not the way socks, sandals and hairy legs look together.

This, incidentally, is why a man holding a vacuum cleaner can’t seem to spot a clump of dirt the size of a Hummer on the living room carpet – dirt doesn’t dribble a basketball.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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Fuzzy Guys

First published May 13, 2005

A number of readers have emailed with comments about the photo of me that runs with this column. First, let me clear up the main point of confusion – I’m the one on the right.

The one on the left is Brenna The Dog, who not only thinks she’s human, she thinks I’m sending her to Princeton next fall.

We have three cats and Brenna The Dog living in our house right now, which leaves us just about one goat short of a petting zoo. All four members of our livestock contingent enjoy a similarly elevated view of their position in the overall scheme of things.

This, like pretty much everything around our house, is my fault.

In this space a few weeks ago I mentioned that if something is alive around here, my wife is in charge. In the case of the animals, this is because when it comes to anything with fur and sad eyes, I’m a C. P. – a Complete Pushover.

Being a C. P. has its advantages. When I come home, all the animals converge on me like hungry panhandlers. If I’ve been gone for more than about fifteen minutes, they hold a tickertape parade and present me with the ceremonial Key to the Litter Box.

As much as I’d like to think this adulation reflects their undying esteem for me as a person, I know better. In their eyes I’m really more of a giant Milk Bone and Tuna Snaps dispenser.

This leaves my wife to be the disciplinarian. She’s the one who has to say things like, “No! You do not eat Hondas! Bad Dog!” while I stand behind her and silently make conciliatory gestures in Doggie Sign Language. She takes them to the vet and throws the pills down their throats, while I let them lick out the ice cream dishes. She makes them get off of wherever they’re not supposed to be on, and I… don’t.

Of course, this inter-species love fest is a two-way street. Brenna The Dog is always willing to snuggle up with me and share the scent of the dead bluegill she’s been rolling in, while the cats are glad to favor me by hocking a hairball into my loafers.

One thing I don’t understand is how every animal everywhere seems to know that I’m a C. P. All I can figure is that there must have been some sort of feature article about me in the Fuzzy Guys Newsletter.

In any case, everywhere I go I’m a magnet for everything from pet ferrets to a friend’s little dog that is basically a cotton ball with a tail.

The ultimate expression of my C. P-ness came a few years ago when my son, then about eleven, came home with a puppy that was apparently half Rottweiler and half kangaroo.

True to form, I said, “Sure, let’s keep… it!” I was already designing a brand-new Beast House by the time my wife came home and sent little Slobbery back to the neighbors who owned the mother and who had discovered that my son and I actually did just fall off a turnip truck.

It’s a good thing somebody’s in charge around here.

If you have a great pet story, please send it to mike@learnedsofar.com.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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Minuet in G? It's For Me.

First published May 6, 2005

In my opinion, the two greatest inventions of all time are cell phones and those little plastic dealies on the end of shoe laces (those of you who think I should promote things like penicillin or nuclear power onto this list have obviously never tried to lace up a kid’s hockey skate with those little plastic dealies missing).

It’s hard to estimate the impact cell phones have had on our culture. Why, there are people alive today who have no idea what it would be like to sit through a movie without hearing a high school girl a couple of rows back bellowing, “Of course I love you, Bobby. No, moron, I said, ‘I LOVE YOU!’”

Well, I love my cell phone even more than she loves that moron Bobby, and I don’t go anywhere without it. I can’t imagine not having the ability to instantly say to my friends and family, “You’re breaking up. What? HELLO?”

My love affair with mobile communication goes clear back to the 1980s, when I carried my portable “bag” phone around in a thing that looked like a vinyl trombone case with an antenna. I took boastful pleasure in calling my wireless-challenged friends from the golf course and saying things like, “Guess where I’m calling fro… hold on, my battery pack just tipped over the golf cart.”

The 2005-model cell phone I’m packing now is about the size of a matchbook, but it contains technology considerably more advanced than the space shuttle. It has a built-in clock and calendar, so I’ll always know how late I am in minutes, hours, days or months. I can send text messages with it, replacing the drudgery of a 30-second conversation with half an hour on the keypad. It even has a camera in it, with a really sensitive trigger, so I’ll be able to reminisce for years over my gallery of candid snap shots of car keys and pocket change.

My phone came with more than fifty cool ring tones, enabling me to annoy a moderate-sized crowd with the 1812 Overture rendered by what sounds like an orchestra of kazoo-playing midgets.

The neatest feature is something called “voice-activation.” I simply say what I want and the phone does something that more-or-less rhymes. For instance, if I say, “Call home,” I get the Vatican.

Of course there are down sides. It’s rare these days to see anyone driving a car who isn’t holding a cell phone to their ear, and even rarer to see someone who’s been in a fender-bender who doesn’t have a cell phone stuck up their nose.

But I admit that I have mixed feelings about the new, supposedly safer hands-free technology. I find it kind of unnerving when a guy I’ve never seen before walks up to me with some sort of blinking cyborg contraption jammed in his ear, looks me in the eye and says, “Ok sweetheart, you pick up the kids, and I’ll be by to get you at seven-thirty.”

Believe it or not, there are still some people who aren’t completely comfortable around all this advanced communication technology. This morning my wife called me on her cell phone;

“Hi,” she shrieked. How do I get this thing off ‘Speaker Phone?’”

“See the little button with a picture of a “Speaker” on it?”

“Yes.”

“Push that.”

I love being a techie.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball

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