BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

“The what?” I asked.

I wasn’t trying to be difficult, and even though my hearing is really and truly shot, I thought I’d heard him okay. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be sure because what John had just said didn’t make any sense whatsoever.

“You know,” he replied. “The rankstankle.”

“What the hell is a rankstankle?” I asked.

“You know.”

Obviously – well, to me at least – I didn’t. John, however, was absolutely certain that I knew just what a “rankstankle” happened to be. Everyone should. After all, it had been on TV.

I suppose I should back up just a second…

You see, John was a guy a worked with. In fact, this was back in the days of T & W Typewriter and Computer Repair… And just as I have explained before, NO, the T didn’t stand for Typewriter and we didn’t spell computer with a W. Those were the owner’s initials. But, I digress… My point here is that this was eons ago, back when I worked in the computer – printer repair field. This is the company where Chris worked (see Whoa! Was That A Sasquatch?). Mike too. And Bill. In fact, the owner used to call us the “bearded wonders,” because we could fix just about anything and we all had beards. Except Mike and Bill that is. But, they were the new kids on the block, relatively speaking.

Anyhow, there we were, in the shop, working on stuff and chatting about all manner of inane crap. It’s how we would pass the time while waiting for the three or four pieces of equipment we had on the bench to finish testing, or formatting, or whatever. And that’s when John mentioned the “rankstankle.”

You see, we were talking about stuff from our childhoods. Television shows, games, and all sorts of other crap. Like I said, just passing the time. The thing that really made this all surreal is that “rankstankle” wasn’t the first thing he’d said that had us all scratching our heads. It had actually started out with one of his favorite shows when he was a kid, that being, “The Sea Hag”…

We’d never heard of it. Of course, that didn’t mean much. They’d never heard of “Cousin Fred” either. He was the host of a morning kids show back home in Kentucky. I suspect nobody outside Paducah and surrounding area had any clue about “Cousin Fred.”

However, John claimed that “The Sea Hag” was one of those big time national shows on a major network. And then, he came up with “rankstankle.” It seems that the “rankstankle” was an integral part of a board game he’d played as a kid. So integral, in fact, that it was prominently mentioned during the commercial for the game.

After pondering all of this for a while, I asked, “What game was this again?”

“You know…” he said. “The one with the fat guy and the tweezers.”

“Fat guy and tweezers?” I asked. Obviously, there were all sorts of places my warped mind could take this, but since we were talking about a childrens board game I knew they wouldn’t fit.

“Yeah,” he said. “And his nose would light up.”

Pieces fell into place – figuratively, that is – and I put two and two together to come up with seventeen. “You mean, Operation?”

“Yeah, that’s it!” he replied. “You had to take out his rankstankle.”

I kept putting two and two together with the seventeen, trying to remember the commercial. Finally, after running through all 206 bones in my head, it dawned on me.

“Do you by any chance mean, wrenched ankle?” I asked.

“Oh,” John said. “I always thought it was rankstankle. Guess that’s why it was shaped like a wrench, huh?”

And, “The Sea Hag”? Well… Turns out that was “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.”

More to come…

Murv

Competition, in and of itself, is a good thing. A bit of healthy competition helps folks to strive toward excellence. It forces them to work harder for a reward, thereby helping them become better at what it is they are competing over, about, around, on, under, or otherwise with.

In the marketplace, it even tends to promote a little better pricing here and there. Sometimes it even spurs honesty – but then again, sometimes it spurs dishonesty, which is a bit less than healthy.

But, we aren’t talking about the marketplace here today. What we are talking about is “healthy competition” among friends. A contest, as it were, on an impromptu family & friend game night.

And it all starts with coffee…

You see, a dear friend of mine – we call her DeathStar because… well, if you ever meet her you’ll understand… Anyway, this dear friend of mine is a coffee roasting hobbyist. Actually, I think she has migrated from hobbyist to professional in recent months, but the real point is that DeathStar  hand roasts and custom blends some of the most INCREDIBLE coffee on the planet. And, since I am her friend I am fortunate enough to receive freshly roasted – as in less than 3 days old – coffee beans on a regular basis. If you are a coffee drinker at all you understand me when I say this is almost literally a case of “Java Nirvana. ” The aromas when you open the sealed package, the aromas when you grind the beans, and everything else that comes along with it… Because of DeathStar I even went out and purchased a French Press… Well, actually E K picked it up for me, and she doesn’t even like the smell of coffee, which just goes to show you that even someone who hates coffee with a passion knows how to respect the “Beans o’ DeathStar”.

And so… I have this coffee. And, I have this other friend who is a coffee fanatic. We’ll call her Anastasia. We won’t, however, call her ‘Stasia Mae. Only her husband gets away with that. But, if we’re going to be honest, we mostly just call her Luets. Long story there… But, anyway, Luets is a coffee fanatic, and whenever I come into possession of the sacred beans, she shows up at my door. As was the case recently.

Luets and her husband came by for freshly roasted, ground, and pressed coffee one Saturday. After juicing several of the beans and sitting around talking it had progressed into the late afternoon, so we invited them to stay for dinner. Afterwards, as we all sat around drinking Vodka-Tonics the Evil Redhead decided we should play a game (see… now I need a friend who distills their own Vodka…)

Now, normally when this happens it usually involves me wearing a collar and fetching sticks, tennis balls, and various chew toys for E K. However, on this particular evening the Redhead was looking for something we could all do, and she didn’t have enough leashes on hand to accommodate everyone.

But, seriously… E K came up with the idea that maybe we should play Uno or some other card game. Since the O-spring was involved, we let her pick and she decided upon Phase 10. If you’ve never played it, Phase 10 is sort of like what would happen if Rummy and Uno had a child. It’s a lot of fun, and we really enjoy it. And, it’s healthy competition…

Or, so we thought.

You see, Luets is competitive. When I say competitive I don’t mean healthy competitive. I mean insano, take no prisoners, needs a straitjacket competitive. With everyone…

Her husband, Mike, however, is not what you would call competitive at all. He’s more along the line of “Yay! Everybody wins!”… In fact, he is sooooo diametrically opposed in “competitiveness” to Luets, that he will literally go out of his way to help someone else win, even if it costs him points. In fact, he readily admits that he is happy to lose as long as he is able to drive Luets up a wall. It seems that when it comes to games, making Luets crazy is Mike’s real entertainment.

And so, we discovered this… with extreme prejudice, mind you…

At one point during the game Luets used a skip card, but didn’t skip Mike, even though he wanted her to. The reasoning, announced loudly and without apology, was that, “You don’t play the cards right.” You see, had she skipped him it would have set him up to help someone else win on the next round. She knew he was going to do this and was vying to prevent it, all the while seething and generally turning into a psychopath whenever anyone would inch ahead of her. To give you a verbal illustration of her behavior, Luets was even going head to head with our 10 year old, and was being brutal.

Fortunately, the O-spring can hold her own, as I shall now illustrate…

During a later hand, as Luets whined, seethed, grumbled, and shrieked, it came around to the kid’s turn. O-spring was in possession of a skip card herself, and she played it. On Luets…

Well, I probably don’t have to tell you that Competition Girl immediately became pissy. She demanded to know why the O-spring didn’t skip Mike instead because in her mind that would have been a better play. Without missing a beat our 10 year old looked across the table and completely owned her by saying, “Because just like you said, he won’t play the cards right!”

Yeah… The O-spring doesn’t fall far from the tree… Next time we play cards though, I’m thinking we might need to dial back on the amount of DeathStar Coffee we allow Luets to drink…

More to come…

Murv