Near Reunions

One day back in 2003, me Pops, me self, and me son Charlie sat at the office in the Shop, drinking coffee. Hey, it was a well deserved break. We'd been working hard that day.

Anyway, for whatever reason me Pops was staring up at the calendar on the wall. He observed, "Man, time flies. I have my fiftieth high school reunion coming up."

Curious myself about mine at that remark I did some quick math and said, "Yeah, really. Looks like my twenty-fifth is next year." 

As a little smarmy smile grew on his face, me son Charlie remarked, "I'm coming up on my second."

Touche, boy. Touche.

I Forget

Whelp, I was supposed to blog about something particular this morning, but I can't remember what it was. The only thing I definitely recall is a promise not to say, Quiet Ron. So I guess the floor is yours Ron old buddy, because I got nuthin'.

Rand Paul's Tax Plan

I just read where Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has proposed eliminating the income tax and replacing it with a national sales tax. I could live with that.

He would exempt necessary items from the tax, things such as food and clothing. Very nice. The tax would be 23% on all else. Yes, that sounds like a lot. At almost one dollar in four it should sound huge. But what percentage of your paycheck is held back each week anyway?

A sales tax is automatically graduated, meaning the rich will naturally pay more. They're not going to hide money in a hole in the ground like misers, after all. Not the vast majority of them anyways. And it rids us of the income tax which, and I will insist on this point, is immoral anyway. It's none of the government's business how much money you make. With an income tax it becomes their business. That's. Just. Wrong.

So there's my mini-rant for today. Oh, Paul's plan will fail, because the government doesn't really care about the people after all. But that's another mini-rant for another mini-day.

Teen Cloyce

A few years back (okay, quite a few years back; quiet Ron) when my children were in middle school, I spent some time as a baseball coach on their various teams. It was generally fun, and made for easy Dad points. I got credit for doing stuff with the kids all the while doing something I liked, namely messing around on a ball diamond hitting and catching and throwing with relatively like minded young individuals.

One day before a practice a fellow dad of a young boy on the team, I'll call the kid Teen Cloyce just to give him a name, asked if I could possibly give his son a ride home. "Sure," I told him. It was no trouble at all, and it wasn't. Mostly.

After practice I waited for all the other kids to get picked up, as I was head coach at the time and that was part of the job. When the last left I told me son Frank and Teen Cloyce, "I'm a bit hungry. You guys feel like McDonald's?"

It was surprisingly easy to convince a couple of 13 year olds that that was a fine idea. So we headed for the nearest Mickey D's.

We went inside and ordered at the counter. That's when Teen Cloyce out of the blue asked the young woman cashier, "Do you guys have one of those hidden warning buttons that you push to call the cops when someone's trying to rob the place?"

I'd have rather he had been brazen enough to ask her for her phone number. Instead she stopped suddenly and, mouth agape and eyes becoming pied, stared at Teen Cloyce. Then she looked fearfully at me, who was standing aside stupidly, my hands in my hoodie pockets exactly as though I might be carrying a hidden weapon. Her eyes began darting around for the manager.

That was when it hit me what Teen Cloyce had asked. "Cloyce! You don't ask things like that!"

"I was just curious!" he replied, slightly panicked by then himself.

Turning to the cashier I said, overly and overtly calmly, "We're just here for a late lunch." 

With a nervous smile she gave me my change. But I insisted to the boys that we would take our meals to a nearby park to eat.

Columbo: Master Plumber

You remember how Peter Falk as the TV detective Columbo would always set up the guilty party? He'd pester them with visits and queries all through the show. He'd eventually go back to them towards the end of an episode and ask a few more questions before appearing satisfied. Typically he would turn to leave, only to reverse course and say to the perp, "But one more thing..." You knew he was going to ask the crowing question, the one that would seal the deal and show the guy did in fact commit the murder. It became Columbo's catchphrase. I always looked forward to it.

I no longer do. We have our own version of Columbo who comes into the Shop, a plumber who never seems quite finished with us. We dread his arrival, me brother Phil and I, because he'll always start with a couple things for us to do. Then he thinks another, and afterwards typically a third or fourth. Finally he will always actually leave the old barn, to reappear at the door a minute or two later to say, "But one more thing..."

Yeesh. Especially when both my brother and I are there, if he would tell us everything at once we could both attack his repairs (or fill his orders as the case may be) and expedite things. We've even told him that. He will comply on the next trip, maybe, and then go right back to being Columbo the Master Plumber.

The other day was no different. He didn't pull out of the driveway for 90 minutes. After the first 60 he left only to come back in about that one more thing. Then he sat in his van for 15 minutes longer before finally leaving. It was an eternity for me and Phil; we kept expecting one more one more thing.

I would have confessed to murdering the Queen Mother by that point.

Danger, Will Robinson

Dashboard warning lights. They're there to help. But hell, if one of my vehicles didn't have the check engine light on it wouldn't feel right.

Oil lights are another thing entirely. Mine came on my new old van this morning. I turned off the car to check the oil level. It was full and clean.

I turned the new old van back on. No oil pressure light. I've driven several miles now and everything appears fine.

I call that problem solved, and am going about my day.

Bread and Circuses

I normally don't swim in these waters anymore. But at times the atmosphere gets to me just the same.

I don't like playoffs. They're one of the reasons, and perhaps the main reason, which turn me off from sports. If you'll excuse the admittedly vague pun of a dad joke, I don't like being played by playoffs. And that's what playoffs do. They try to manufacture excitement solely for the sake of cash and prestige. And that, I will argue, diminishes sports and wastes time.

Take Indiana's win over Ohio State yesterday. A great win? Not in this day and age. Sure, they beat OSU for the first time in 31 games. It's Indiana's first Big Ten Championship since 1967, when even I was but a child. And what's their reward for it? Basically, a pat on the head followed by, 'win two more games to prove yourself'.

If they don't win a national championship the conference title is no more than a footnote. If they should meet Ohio State again and lose, it will be thought of as a fluke. Indiana will have effectively won the wrong game.

Yes, it may not happen that way. Maybe the Hoosiers will win a Natty. That still accomplishes the same purpose: a meaningless and forgotten win over the Buckeyes on a cold December Saturday. Win it all or you're in the dustbin. Losers rarely get more than apologetic afterthoughts.

The championship is all that matters. And that has to be made even more difficult by adding more hoops to leap through, all so that more money can be made. There's talk of expanding college football playoffs to 16 for no other purpose than that. Don't try to argue integrity. All adding four more teams to a playoff field means are four more teams without a realistic chance to win. 

Now, if watching and rooting are your hobby, by all means enjoy. We aren't talking about any evil. At least, I don't think so anyway. But I am open to the question, quite frankly. Bread and circuses don't strike me as the best expressions of humanity or human effort.