BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

…Even if you don’t follow them.

A classic line from a classic bit of spoken word, that being Baz Lurhmann’s “Wear Sunscreen.” (To give credit where due, it was written by Chicago Trib Columnist Mary Schmich, actually, and performed by Lee Perry… Produced by Baz, so he tends to get  all of the kudos…)

Now that we’ve set that record straight, suffice it to say, the advice is sound. Of course, as the song also says, advice is a form of nostalgia. A way of fishing the past from the disposal, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

Problem is, when the recycling center isn’t open, all you can do is lob it over the fence and wait to see if they send you a check. By that I mean, teenagers aren’t all that good at reading directions. Maybe some are, but I can only speak from my own experiences. Hey, even I will admit that as a teen I often experienced DADD – Drooling Attention Deficit Disorder – by the time I reached the third sentence in any given set of directions.

It’s probably a hormonal thing, who knows… (Now that I’ve said that, someone with SDD – Satire Deficit Disorder – will be sure to explain it to me.)

The thing about teens afflicted with DADD is that they will do stuff that you just can’t make up. And, in their defense, I’m more than willing to believe that the advances in technology have contributed to this problem.

Case in point, my niece.

Yes, the one who paid someone to stab a carpet needle through the side of her nose and then plug it with a bejeweled booger cork.

Now, the incident in question occurred a few years before the age of Proboscis Piercing arrived, therefore I know it simply had to be a case of DADD, and not brains accidentally escaping through the third nostril. And, I will give her kudos for actually READING the directions. The problem is, she comes from a different time.

Allow me to explain…

It was Christmas as I recall. But then, I’m old, so maybe I don’t recall properly. What I can say for certain was that the family was all gathered at my mother & father-in-law’s house for some sort of all day celebration. Although we had consumed mass quantities of food at some point during this process, the niece was hungry again and wanted something different than the leftovers. In particular she wanted some manner of carb. My mother-in-law rummaged around and pointed her toward a bag of those frozen biscuit pucks.

All good. A biscuit puck or two should certainly fit the bill where carbs are concerned.

Niece read the directions and then set about puck preparation while the rest of us gathered around the table and talked about the various things that non-teenage folks talk about, which is to say, stuff that bores the living daylights out of the teenage folks. Yeah. Grown ups are mean like that.

Four or five minutes into the conversation an odd smell began wafting over the half-wall from the kitchen and into the dining room. I looked up just in time to see the interior of the microwave burst into flames.

Scrambling occurred, and I don’t mean eggs. In a matter of a few seconds the fire was extinguished before it could spread beyond the confines of the newfangled coffee re-heater. Once the crisis was over and the investigation into the origin of the fire began, we didn’t have to look far. There, smoldering in the center of the Pyrex turntable was a charred disc. Truth is, it looked far more like an actual puck at this point than a biscuit.

As one cohesive unit, the entire forensic investigation team turned to the niece (daughter, granddaughter).

“Wow…” she mumbled. “I wonder why it did that…”

We were dumbfounded. “What do you mean you wonder why it did that?” one of us asked.

She shrugged. “The directions said to cook it for ten minutes. It shouldn’t even be done yet.”

The moral of the story? We need to bring back Home Ec in schools. If for no other reason than to teach these kids the difference between an REGULAR  oven, a TOASTER oven, and a MICROWAVE oven before they burn the planet to a cinder. (We’ll save Infra Red and Convection for the advanced class…)

Just think, it could even count as a History credit…

More to come…

Murv

Maybe I’m just old fashioned…

Then again, maybe not.

I just haven’t quite figured it out yet.

But old fashioned or not, here’s my thing – There was one room in her house that always remained locked… It was… The garage.

No… Wait… That’s Keys To Her Ferrari by Thomas Dolby. Great song, but not where I was headed with this. Besides, we don’t have a garage and the only room E K keeps locked is her “play room” in the basement, and she only does that so her “toys” can’t escape.

Let’s see… Where was I? Oh, yeah…

Here’s my thing – There’s one room in the house where I absolutely refuse to talk on the telephone. It is… The bathroom.

Now, I realize this might sound odd. I mean, after all, there is a wide and varied history of telephones in bathrooms. I’ve stayed in many a hotel over the years where a telephone was stuck to the wall right there next to the stool. Hell, I once stayed in a hotel in New Orleans where the phone was positioned in such a way as to be usable from  the stool, the bidet, and/or the tub itself. I actually took a picture of that, although I can’t seem to find it at the moment. Of course, I was probably just as fascinated by the fact that the room had a bidet. Yeah… I know what they are for, but I was hard pressed not to do a Crocodile Dundee impersonation just for the hell of it. And, since the hotel happened to be in the French Quarter (Yeah, I know, French… Bidet… I can add) there would have been plenty of folks down on the street to hear me yelling from the window.

But like I said, I’ve stayed in plenty of hotels where there was a telephone in the crapper. Not just in NOLA.

Of course, I should probably take a moment to note that  I absolutely despise talking on the phone at ALL, and will avoid it at all costs.  Besides the fact that I just don’t like the damn thing, due to an injury during my EARLY teens my hearing has been substandard for the better part of my life, and in recent years has grown much worse… MUCH worse. Literally to the point that talking on the telephone is a rather painful chore for me even under the best of circumstances, because I simply cannot understand the person on the other end of the line.

But that really isn’t my point.

You see, when necessary I will talk on the phone. By necessary I mean it had damn well better be a dire emergency. Seriously. But not when I am in the bathroom.  For me to do that it would need to be a dire emergency squared. Of course, there’s no way for me to know that because I won’t answer the phone when I am in the bathroom. For the record, no, we don’t have a phone in there. However, we ARE in the era of Cell Phones, and I pack one around on my belt just like most everyone else. I use it for emergencies mostly. And I text. I didn’t used to text, but now I do. My eyes still work as long as I am wearing my glasses, so we’re all good there.

But you know what? I won’t even text while I’m in there.

There’s just something about the sanctity of the porcelain throne room that precludes me from chatting with anyone. I just don’t see a reason for telephone conversations in the bathroom. Sure, now that I am getting older I can certainly understand the idea of the classic, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” sort of communication from inside the tiled closet, and that can certainly come in the form of a phone call to 911 or something.

But why in the world would I want to carry on a convo while I’m doing my business?

Chirp-Ring-Chirp-Warble…

(sigh) (reach) (flip) “Hello?”

“Hey, Murv. This is your broker. How are you today?”

“Ummm… Okay, I guess.”

“So, do you have a minute?”

“I guess so. I… umm… well… I have some paperwork I’ll need to get after here rather shortly.”

“Ahh, working eh? Writing a new book?”

“Well, not right at this very moment… Actually I’m getting rid of last night’s dinner.”

“Oh, I see. Cleaning the fridge.”

“Not exactly. More like… Umm… Well. Taking a dump.”

“Your fridge broke?”

“No… Not taking it to the dump. Taking a dump.”

“Ohhh, okay, I get it. Well since you’re sitting down…”

More to come…

Murv