Oh no, he saw me.  How does this always happen.  Definitely not on my Costco game today.

“Hello there sir, how are you doing?”

Do I respond or do what I usually do, and completely ignore this guy?  I always let my guard down at the entrance when I am trying to locate my membership card.  On top of that the Direct TV guys are like fricken chameleons the way they are able to camouflage themselves amongst the televisions.  Wait a minute, this guy may actually be of some type of use to me.

“Terrible, I’m doing absolutely terrible.  My wife just suggested that we give up TV for the summer.  Honestly, I don’t watch that much TV in the summer time and I probably won’t even notice it being gone, but my kids, what about my kids.  I sprung the news on my oldest son Tod and he was beside himself, the kid cried for a half hour straight.  Then at dinner he somehow remembered television was going to be gone soon and he started crying all over again.  Eat you’re taco Tod and quit crying!”

“Not sure where I fit in here, I was trying to sell you on a Direct tv package and it sounds like that is the lest thing you are going to be needing.”

“No, you are exactly what I need.  TV is your profession, TV content at least, look at all of these channels, I bet you have the ultimate package, one that has all the porno channels even though that’s basically what the internet is for now a days.  You have been to the mountain top, what would you do if your wife told you you had to give up TV for the summer?”

“I don’t actually have a wife, don’t tell anyone this, but I live in my parent’s basement.  You see that guy who checks the receipts, a job that is completely unnecessary by the way since there is absolutely nothing to steal once you get through the check out, that guy makes more money than I do.  I have been working here for six months and I have sold three Direct Tv packages and been told to fuck off 3,012 times.  Not a real good ratio, but their Pizza is so good it makes all the rejection worth it, plus I get free Direct TV.”

“Ok, let’s say your mom wants to pull the plug on your Direct TV package because she’s found way too many crusty sweat socks in your room, how would you respond?”

“My mom would probably end up being dismembered and put in our the freezer next to my dad if she suggested that.  I drive a 1994 Kia, live in my mom’s basement, and can’t even pick up fat chicks on tinder, tv is all I have to live for.  Hold on, we are already getting dad’s social security check, maybe I should do away with mom and then I could probably afford a late model Hyundai and I wouldn’t have to pretend like everything Rush Limbaugh says is right, god that guy is such a blow hard and an asshole.”

“That’s all kind of frightening but your secret is safe with me as long as you can somehow convince my wife that television is almost as essential to our sustenance as food and alcohol. I really don’t think she has thought this thing through, is she really going to get up every weekend morning with the kids and entertain them instead of sticking them in front of the tv while she sleeps in?  No, she’s going to make me get up with the kids, she’s going to use her womanly ways of persuasion and I’m going to be the one getting my ass out of bed to entertain the kids.”

“How am I suppose to convince her that all that is wrong with tv isn’t quite enough to overcome the hours of free babysitting it can provide?”

“That’s the problem, I can’t go to that argument, it’s too logical, and too self serving.  She will consider herself a terrible parent, well even more of a terrible parent, women seem to be much harder on themselves when it comes to parenting then men are, if she continues on with television for the singular purpose of entertaining the kids while she sleeps.  I will say this, and this may be my strongest argument, it’s going to be tough for her to wait me out for sex without Masterpiece Theatre or Survivor around.  I like sex a lot, but I have my limits and Masterpiece Theatre plot lines are about as captivating as your actual life, at least your actual life minus the fact that you chopped up your dad and you and your mom are cashing his social security checks.  Furthermore, I could go back to the first season of Survivor and there is absolutely nothing that differentiates it from the most current season.    Jeff Probst looks exactly the same and he still wears those stupid camping/jungle shirts. There’s no way she stays up past 11:30 if she doesn’t have her go to catalogue of shitty shows on DVR to entertain her.  Maybe there is a silver lining to this whole giving up tv thing.”

“You  may want to mention that if your kids don’t have television to talk about they will likely be ostracized by their classmates.  If your kids don’t know the  ins and outs of Spiderman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Paw Patrol you may as well just home school them, they will be socially inept.  Can you imagine the difficulties you would have experienced had you not been able to watch television?  Not being able to talk about the A team with your classmates at recess, the inability to truly see what black life is actually like through the eyes of the Huxtable family, not to mention the sexual coming of age brought about by Daisy Duke.  Television is Americana at it’s finest and to pull the plug on it is akin to an act of treason.”

“You make a great point, my Dish contract runs out in June, what’s your best sports package?  You may get out of your mom’s basement without killing her after all.”

 

It’s an annual tradition here in West Michigan, and for some reason the weather annually sucks for this annual tradition.  Back in the day I actually was a participant in the Fifth Third 25k run.  I think I ran it three times and finished it twice.  All three times I ran the race the weather was horrible.   Once again it is the day of the race and the weather is horrible.  My question to the race organizers is, can’t we have the race in February when we know the weather is going to be shitty anyways?  I’m sick of having to endure this shitty weather every year on a Saturday in May because a bunch of running enthusiasts insist upon having a road race.  However, in honor of this annual tradition I figured this would be as good of a time as any to detail some of my running exploits and thoughts on those who engage in running as a primary form of exercise.

My first two attempts at the River Bank Run were fairly uneventful and in my mind a success.  I was able to complete the race in under two hours and my best time was a little under 1 hour and 52 minutes.  I’m not sure who I was back then, but especially for my first stab at the race I was dedicated to training.  I was training with a friend of mine who I mentioned in my blog before but he didn’t really appreciate having his actual name in print.  He introduced me to the idea of actually running in a race.  For some reason he got in with a group of people who were so dedicated to running that they basically turned their back on every thing else in their life, causing numerous divorces and really bad apparel choices, particularly with shorts.  Not sure how you could feel comfortable wearing shorts so short that your balls hang out of them.  If running was a religion, their spirituality was derived from pounding the pavement on a regular basis.  Regardless of how over the top this seems, my buddy was all in for a period of time and ran with these people.  Our nickname for them was the gay potatoes, so I’ll refer to my buddy when needed as GP.

Gp had run the Riverbank prior to me and it didn’t go well.  He was kicking ass and taking names for the first half of the race but he forgot one important thing, to hydrate.  Somewhere after the big hill he completely lost it and became delusional, urinating in someone’s yard and acting entirely disoriented.  His behavior attracted medical and police attention.   They asked him if he had an emergency contact person, based upon his running outfit, possibly a boyfriend (not husband, gay marriage wasn’t cool back then) they could get in touch with to pick him up.  In all actuality, GP was actually married and surprisingly his marriage actually held up during his gay potato phase.  However, he was so out of his mind he didn’t know he was married and told the medical personal he didn’t have an emergency contact.  I checked the Sunday paper the next day for his name looking at the times below two hours, nothing, I kept expanding my search until I discovered his name somewhere in the 2:40 range.  He somehow talked the medical personnel into letting him finish and he stumbled and bumbled his way through the last few miles of the race.

Prior to setting my sites on the river bank I ran every once in a while as a way to compensate for my love of chocolate milk shakes.  One hot July morning I decided to go for a run down to the Grand River and back, I was living off Knapp and Diamond.  As I made my way back up Knapp street towards home I realized I may have a situation on my hands.  I had a decision to make, do I run as fast as I can in the hopes I make it home prior to crapping my pants or do I stop running clench my butt cheeks as tight as possible, and waddle home?  The second option seemed to be my best chance of maintaining my dignity and my shorts.  The reality was that either path I chose was going to result in catastrophe.  About an eighth of a mile before I made it home I couldn’t hold it any longer and I crapped my shorts.  The remaining walk home was one of the worst experiences of my life.  However, when my kids crap their pants I have a lot more empathy for them.  After telling Cara what happened she mentioned reverse peristalsis, a medical theory that’s basic premise is that if you have to poop your turd will retreat into your colon until you find a place to take a dump.  Bullshit!

My last attempt at the river bank run saw me alienate gp in one of our training runs.  Not sure what came over me, but during one of our training runs I thought he wasn’t going fast enough so I started running faster and he didn’t keep my pace.  I ran the last couple miles ahead of him.  This pissed him off, and rightfully so, he stopped running with me and I lost my training partner.  I’m not saying that had he stuck it out and trained with me the entire time I would have done better running the race, but it definitely didn’t help my training habits.  For some reason I thought my natural running ability (I have none) and my mediocre dedication to staying in shape would allow me to complete the 15.5 mile race. Boy was I wrong about that.  I made it to Millennium Park and had to take a dump.  As I took care of business in the port a jon people were continually pulling on the door, I hated runners at that point more than ever.  I had it locked and it said occupied so I’m not sure why people continually tried to get in, believe me they didn’t want to join me.  After dropping the kids off at the water less pool I tried to get what momentum I had back but quickly realized there was no way I  was finishing the race.  Ultimately I made it to Fulton steer and went to Nawarra Brothers appliance store and got a ride from one of the people who worked there back to my car.  (I knew the employee prior to soliciting a ride from him)

Looking out the window this morning as I type this blog I am thankful for the fact that I decided not to run the rive bank this year.  Not only did I avoid hours of running and miles of training, I avoided another shitty Saturday morning running in the rain.  Good luck to all of those who had the where with all to train, run, and attempt to complete the race.

 

 

 

 

Ladies and gentlemen we are so glad you could make it this evening.  Tonight is a very special occasion that is a milestone few ever achieve, ok, I actually have that kind of wrong. Let me rephrase that, tonight marks a milestone that everyone who makes it to the age of 4 achieves, but still who doesn’t want an excuse to unnecessarily celebrate something that has actually no significance and takes nothing to accomplish?  That’s right, showing up is all you have to do.  Hell, most of the time the kids are either napping, playing on the playground, or eating their boogers.  On top of that our preschool program begins at 9 and ends at 11:11 three days a week. That’s a total of 393 minutes a week.  I’m not even sure why they include the word school in the title,  a better name for it would be “a place to bring your kids that makes you feel like your doing something better for them than daycare but you really aren’t”  It’s like giving your kids yogurt even though it has just as much sugar in it as ice cream and basically the same nutritional value.  Regardless, our fine students have overcome insurmountable odds to get here today.

Our children have learned absolutely nothing while in our pre-school program but we still have an awards portion to our commencement ceremony.  I realize that there is no way to scholastically judge any of the children currently “graduating” from pre-school tonight since most of them just learned how to speak in incoherent sentences this year, but there are certain things that need to be acknowledged when it comes to our students.  The first award we are handing out tonight is the award for the best nap taker.  Now I realize that pre-school is only a little over two hours long three times a week but these kids are fucking nuts, it’s like trying to herd cats when you have more than four of them in a room together. So, in my mind it is entirely justifiable for them to take a  nap even if they typically are only awake for a little over an hour prior to taking that nap.  That being said, we had to disqualify all Dutch students from this award due to their genetic propensity to sleep anytime anywhere.  We weren’t even inducing these naps with a meal of roast and mashed potatoes and they were still sleeping 380 minutes a week.

The award for best nap taker goes to our only student who isn’t Dutch, while she’s actually Korean, but she was adopted by a Dutch family, but still she’s really not Dutch, maybe her parents will tell her that, but once she starts doing really well in math and driving terribly she will know she’s different from everyone else, so here’s to Soo Devries, way to go Soo, you were the only student who refused to take naps, but due to our stringent set of rules regarding this award you win.  Could we get Soo up here to accept her award?

The next award goes to our student who went the most consecutive school days without a skid mark in their underwear.  There were no ethnic parameters for this award due to the fact that all our students seemed to be incapable of wiping their own asses and their parents seemed to have tired of the task for the most part.  However, a few of our, shall we say “challenged” kids were automatically disqualified because they are still in diapers, but we still had enough kids out there in undies to make this award quite competitive.  This year we have a surprise winner folks.  In the ten years we have been giving out this award we have never had a boy take home the prize.  However, this year we have broken the poop stain gender barrier.  Can we get a round of applause for Steve VanSolkema?  He went 7 school days without a skid mark, that’s over 917 minutes of no racing stripes in his under pants.  Way to go Steve!  You are going to make one hell of a kindergartner some day, of course it’s going to be a while though, you still have to get through young fives and then there’s always the possibility of pre-kindergarten, but you’ll get there someday.  What little Steve doesn’t realize is being 16 in 8th grade isn’t such a bad thing, not only are you better at sports than everyone else you also are the only one with a driver’s license.

Our last award goes to the kid who fell from the tallest height from the playground equipment without breaking a bone.  Again, no ethnic parameters and again lots of applicants due to the fact that pretty much everyone of our kids took a major tumble while all of our teachers were busy talking about Survivor, the Bachelor, or who we think Ms. White in the front office is currently diddling.  We actually have a tie for this one, two of our students are coordinate enough to actually climb on top of the monkey bars and attempt to walk across them.  Both Elizabeth Devries and Daniel VanBruggen fell from the top of the monkey bars while standing on them, but we only have one award to hand out due to budget cuts.  So, we had to implement a tie breaker.  The tie breaker is amount of crying after the fall.  Daniel actually cried like a little bitch and Elizabeth didn’t even shed a tear so Elizabeth takes home the hardware.  I’ll be honest, had an adult done the same thing they would have ended up in a full body cast, makes me think kids are made entirely of cartilage.

Well everyone, I’m really glad you could make it out here to commemorate something that is about as remarkable as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.  The children of our class have done very little to distinguish themselves from other children in their class or other children their age for that matter.  Furthermore, I realize many of you have things you could have been doing that were actually much more productive than sitting here watching a bunch of booger lickers progress to the next stage of their fairly uneventful lives, but this is something that these kids will never remember due to the fact that children don’t establish long term memories until the age of 5, and you will likely forget or at least try to forget by the end of June, so I’m sure whatever you could have been doing instead of this would have been a much better use of your time.  Just remember, it’s not too early to reserve your tickets for next years kindergarten graduation for those fortunate enough to actually be attending kindergarten next year.  Tickets are going fast, so if you want to reserve seats for loved ones, friends, neighbors, people you have met on social media, you had better act quickly.

 

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2980740/Elitist-dating-website-beautiful-people-ditches-THREE-THOUSAND-users-piled-pounds-aged-gracelessly-500-Britons.html

Terrific news for all you beautiful single people out there, first of all you’re not married and if that wasn’t enough,  they have established a website that caters strictly to attractive people.  While this may seem shocking to some, especially to those of you who are fully aware of how ugly you are,  my question is, why would anyone who is attractive need a dating website?   In my mind, attractive people hang out with other attractive people, date other attractive people, and procreate with other attractive people in the hopes of creating more attractive people.  (this can go wrong, some times two really attractive people are so attractive that two positives create a negative and low and behold they end up with an ugly child, it’s the equivalent of having a girl in china or anywhere else I guess, but especially in China, truly awful)

In all honesty attractive women don’t even have to try, they merely have to show up, look amazing and they will land an equally, if not more attractive than them, male counter part.  What they really need to do is come up with a dating website for attractive people where they weed out the crazy ones.  Now I realize this takes 98 percent of the female population out of play, but just think if there was some actual barometer for craziness and you could use that barometer as a way to filter through attractive women and make them available to men, it would be a gold mine, assuming you could find women who weren’t crazy and were actually hot, you may have a better chance of taking a unicorn ride or having a campfire with Sasquatch.

The link I have provided, and hopefully actually works (I tried to post a picture a while back and that failed miserably, damn you wordpress!)  Outlines the story of Tawnie Lynn, pretty sure that’s not her birth name, great stripper name or country music singer name, but no way it’s her birth name.  The poor girl tried to get on beautifulpeople.com and was rejected.  Can you imagine the devastation she had to endure when she was rejected?  Fortunately for her she found an amazing plastic surgeon and a glamor shots franchise willing to go on the road and take a round of photos at her apartment complexes pool.  In all honesty, she can’t feel good about her natural beauty not being quite enough to make the grade and having to resort to major cosmetic surgery as her way in to beautiful people.com.  Furthermore, the phenomenal job the plastic surgeon did on her breasts undoubtedly distracted the judges enough that they probably didn’t even look at her face, so if she ever makes the mistake of sending in a pic that doesn’t show her boobs hanging out of a bikini she may end up having her membership revoked.

What gets me, is that a lot of these people, similar to other sites, probably pick out photos that don’t look anything like the person actually appears in real life.  So, when the date actually comes about and the other party shows up it’s the ultimate bait and switch.  I use to  get subjected to this on a fairly regular basis when I was on Match.com and eventually learned that short dates such as grabbing a drink are the way to go in case you need to implement an exit plan. (My pictures were extremely forthright, I didn’t post pictures with a hat on or a hairpiece, I never tried to misconstrue my hair situation and lead a potential date to the conclusion that I wasn’t follicley challenged)  You commit to dinner that’s at least an hour of your time, a drink can cost as little as ten to fifteen minutes.  “I’m sorry, that was my mom, I completely forgot that we do a ball room dancing class at Arthur Murray the first Tuesday of every month, I gotta go”

Now here is an actual excerpt from the article that needs to be discussed:

The most often cited reason for members being removed from the site were piling on the pounds and ‘graceless’ ageing.
More than 500 Brits, the second largest nationality, were among those axed.
The people behind the website say they cull has sent a ‘very clear message’ to its good-looking members: ‘you don’t just need to be beautiful to join; you need to stay that way, or you are out.’
The global website periodically reviews the suitability of all its members, to make sure that quality is maintained.
Beautiful People is run by married couple Greg and Genevieve Hodge and was started in 2003. Since then there have been over 7.5million people rejected from the site.
First of all, graceless aging?  What exactly does that mean?  The unwillingness to submit your body to major cosmetic surgery, or partake in a monthly regimen of botox and other age reversing treatments?  “He was a hell of a guy, and you know what, he aged with grace, not many people have that said about them at their funeral, what a guy, here’s to the memory of Tom.”  Secondly, is it a real surprise that Brits were tossed out more than any other nationality?  They are an overwhelmingly ugly people with terrible teeth.  If they included accent and used that as one of the factors in allowing people to become members it may override their over all ugliness, but it’s not.  In all honesty, I contemplated acquiring a British accent because a British accent is an instant panty dropper.  Not sure why American women fall for British accents but they do, it’s a fact.

Furthermore,  who is on this panel of reviewers who  gets to determine the suitability of the members and the continuing suitability of members?  Obviously Adam Levine from Maroon Five and Justin Timberlake, but who else is beautiful enough to have enough standing in the looks department to have denied admission to 7.5 million people?

Here’s the deal, while I probably could have pulled off a membership to this site with the help of at least $100,000 in cosmetic surgery, I didn’t discover this site back in the day when I was single, although it would have been fun to try and get in just to see how the entire process works.  I discovered the site because they played a a news segment on free beer and hot wings about the site.   On the segment they discussed the site as well as an actual live social event for beautiful people.com where a woman was told to leave because she didn’t live up to her picture.  The organizer of the event said “I could just tell she was really nervous about being there and she understood that she didn’t really belong.”  Not sure why anyone would submit themselves to this monumental form of rejection unless they had a myriad of psychological disorders.  I remember high school and the overall awfulness of it and there’s no way I would set up adult me for the kind of rejection high school me suffered.  Granted, I don’t have acne, braces, and a mullet anymore (I have tossed around the idea of growing a skullet), and it does take quite a bit to hurt my feelings, but I’m sure a rejection from the beautiful people website could easily send me down a path of self despair and self loathing.

Here is one more excerpt from the article that is worthy of comment:

Letting unattractive people populate the site would compromise the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.’
He said that, as ruthless as it may sound, the website has been ‘kind’ in breaking the news to former members.
Mr Hodge added: ‘Each has received an email encouraging them to re-apply when they are back looking their best.
‘They are also offering free mentoring with one of the site’s beauty mentors, who have volunteered to give their time to help improve the looks, style and confidence of anyone who wants join or rejoin the site.’
I suppose it would be like letting someone who couldn’t grow vegetables or milk a cow join Farmersonly.com or someone who doesn’t have kids join MILFmatch.com, but it still sounds a bit too inclusive even if beautiful people are better than everyone else, and believe me they are.  Also of note is that they are kind about rejecting you, it’s similar to when an attractive chick use to tell me “I think we should just be friends.”  Hold on here, how am I suppose to get into your pants if we are just friends? unless you want to be get into each other’s pants friends, I can live with that, actually that’s even better.  Granted, to their credit they were trying to be kind, but who wants to be friends with a girl?

Lastly, what if your the applicant who isn’t offered the opportunity to utilize a beauty mentor?  That’s got to sting.  You’re so ugly that not even one of our beauty mentors could turn things around enough for you to be admitted as a member to our site.  Oh well, I think I will go ahead and start a dating site for ugly people called uglypeople.com since there seems to be a lot more of them around, wait a minute they already have those sites they are called tinder, match.com, and e-harmony.

 

December 9, 2008

 

Tim Baer

Target Inc. Legal Department

1000 Nicollet Mall

Minneapolis, MN 55403

 

 

Dear Mr. Baer:

 

I have been retained by Mr and Mrs XXX. My client’s accepted an offer made by your company on their website to purchase car seats. They purchased five car seats at a price of $42.99 per unit for a total of $227.85 (please see the enclosed copy of the order form pertaining to this transaction). Upon finalizing their purchase by making payment arrangements, they were informed by your company that this transaction would not be honored and the agreement your company had reached with my client was void.

 

Unfortunately, your company made an offer to sell car seats for the advertised price and my client’s accepted that offer with consideration. The Potvins expect your company to honor the transaction that was entered into for the quantity and price originally agreed upon by Target when the initial order for five car seats was placed. Please fulfill your end of the agreement no later than December 27, 2008. If the order is not completed by the requested date we will take legal action to enforce the agreement that was made between my clients and your company.

 

Should you have any questions or concerns regarding this matter feel free to contact me at my office.

 

Very Truly Yours,

 

Jason L. Jansma

Attorney at Law

 

The above letter was in the initial stages of my other wise promising legal career.  I considered redacting (and ultimately did after my buddy said he didn’t want his last name in my blog) the letter to protect the names of the innocent, but there are no innocent when it comes to this debacle.  Let me start out by giving a brief history of my legal career to give this letter a bit of context.  I started out as a prosecutor in Ogemaw County, the county seat is West Branch and it is located between Bay City and the Bridge just off I-75.  I was there for a year and upon leaving they ended up getting a Super Wal Mart, it was akin to a large city landing an NFL franchise.  From there I went into private practice at a firm where we were compensated based upon the actual revenue we brought in the door. This created an environment similar to what you would find at used car lot and it was a constant battle between the attorneys to get the best calls.   My primary practice areas were family law (which I had never done before) and criminal defense, as well as handling a couple of auto cases which were fairly easy and paid out quite well.

From there I went to work for ADAM (American Divorce Association for Men) which was actually HESS, HESS, & KMETZ.  My goal was to grow a criminal defense practice for the firm, but the lead partner unexpectedly passed away a year after I was there and the entire thing fell apart like Swedish furniture.  Ultimately, after dabbling in the mortgage business (have you seen the idiots who do mortgages?  not to mention the money they make) I hung up my own shingle and set my sites on Target.

My clients, the X family, didn’t have five kids in need of car seats at the time I made my demand letter to Target, nor do they have five kids now.  Ultimately, they wanted to resell the car seats at a profit.  Jon, the leader of this whole scheme, was and somehow still is a friend of mine, and is the one who put me up to writing the letter.  In his mind it was an open and shut case, apparently he had watched just enough Law and Order Special Victims Unit to be dangerous.  Unfortunately for him and me, they don’t cover basic contract law or the UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) on LOSV, nor do they address basic common sense.  What they do have which makes up for it is Ice Tea in the prime of his acting career, how the guy never received an Emmy for his role in the show is beyond me.

Needless to say, Target never got back to me regarding my demand letter.  My only regret is that I couldn’t be there when Mr. Baer (or his secretary) opened up my letter.  Here is how I imagine it played out:

Mr. Baer, I feel like I can call him Tim even though we aren’t that close, is handed the letter by his secretary.  Normally a letter  like this goes directly into the shredder, but this one is so ridiculous, and my Tim Baer has a terrific sense of humor, so his secretary hands it to him to read.  He reads the letter once, then he reads it again.  He immediately calls a number of other attorneys from the Target legal department into his office so that he can read them the letter.  One of the newer attorneys begins to ask questions about the advertisement and other issues he believes pertinent to the case so that he can prepare a legal memorandum, all of the other attorneys bust out laughing.  They spend about five minutes making fun of the letter and decide that it needs to be taped to the fridge in the break room for posterity’s sake.

In my mind, the letter is still on the fridge in the break room, likely laminated to preserve it as it was beginning to yellow and fade.  It’s generally acknowledged around the office that if someone seems to be having a bad day the remedy is either a stiff drink or a referral to the break room to read the “letter” in order to lighten their day.  While I realize I may have breached attorney client privilege by posting this letter in my blog, what are your damages Potvin family?  What are your damages!!!

I am considering sending a proposal to John Grisham to co-author a book loosely based upon this scenario where a big corporation like Target walks all over a needy family like the Potvin’s (who reside in Crystal Springs and drive a Town and Country minivan)  it would be similar to the Rainmaker about an insurance company that completely f’s with a kid who has terminal cancer, the name of the book would likely be “Babies on Board” and in the book all of the kids die in a car accident because the parents don’t have the appropriate car seats for their brood of kids.  While Ice T has been over looked for his exploits as an actor, a pulitzer prize would undoubtedly be coming my way if I get this book off the ground, or at the very least it would be selected for Oprah’s book of the month club.

 

 

The first week of April I spent some of my time researching locations to relocate to in light of the fact that it was April but felt like February.  North Carolina seemed to be the perfect place to live, temperate climate, lots of lakes, and Cam Newton.  Amazing what a week can do for your state of mind. Winter?  What winter?  If you live in Michigan the only way you can cope with the cruel and awful season called winter is to treat it like that slump buster you had back in college or the last time  you were single (I feel sorry for my wife, she married a slump buster, never marry a slump buster), “Hey, who is that fat chick  trying to get your attention?”  “What fat chick?”  “The one who is waving at you”  “I have no idea who that is.”  At this point I have no idea what winter is and if it tries to re-introduce itself to me, I ‘m going to tell it to fuck off.

That being said, when the weather does finally get nice the knuckleheads typically get outside and start getting themselves in trouble.  That’s great if you are a criminal defense attorney since the primary  demographic of most criminal defense attorneys is knuckleheads, unless you are one of those knuckleheads.

Saturday was a gorgeous day and I managed to fill my day with early morning golf and an afternoon of spreading mulch (wood chips) and doing chores.  We had family friends coming over later in the day for a BBQ and a campfire so prior to their arrival I decided to get a head start on the campfire.  Unfortunately, I had the intention of having a fire a couple weeks ago and I had put two “fire starter” logs in the firepit along with a few other logs and kindling.  Against the advice of Shirley, I left it all in the firepit and since it had rained and snowed quite a bit since I laid the ground work for my first fire everything was quite saturated.  So, I had a small gas can filled with a mixture of oil and gas or gas and oil which I didn’t feel like dumping out in the woods by my house for environmental reasons, and thought utilizing it to start a fire would be the ideal way to dispose of it.  There was a little bit more in the can than I had remembered but I didn’t think it would be a problem so I poured a good deal of it on the contents of the firepit.

So, I set the can on the ledge of the firepit and ignited the aim and flame to start the fire.   Immediately a wall of flame sprang up from the firepit singing what little hair I had left on my head and starting the gas can on fire (fortunately I had sunglasses on which saved my eyelashes and eyebrows).  Meanwhile, Shirley and the boys were 40 feet away setting up a tent, completely oblivious to the pyrotechnics going on at the top of the hill.   I kicked the can off the ledge of the fire pit and it did a cartwheel into the bed of woodchips near the fire pit.  Not only was the gas can still engulfed in flames, it started the woodchips on fire as well as a couple of recently planted shrubs, while also threatening the well being of a small tree.

I proceeded to kick the gas can through our yard and into a nearby field as it continued to flame due to the significant amount of gas/oil remaining in the plastic container, resembling a molotov cocktail.  I moved at a somewhat brisk pace to go retrieve the hose, but I couldn’t move too fast out of fear that Shirley and the kids would be alerted to the potentially explosive situation that was unfolding.  Sure enough, as I made my way to the hose Shirley noticed the wood chips and shrubs that were ablaze and immediately went into panic mode.  “Hurry up! What were you thinking!  How did this happen!”  Luckily I was able to put out the gas can as well as the wood chips and the shrubs, and I think the small ornamental tree is going to pull through.  However, I left the hose running and Tod tried to put out the actual campfire that I had masterfully constructed.  That would have been adding insult to injury if he had somehow managed to extinguish it.

While I had done most of my mulching on Saturday, I still needed a couple of yards of mulch and was traveling back home from Lowes on Sunday.  I stopped in at Fruit Basket Flowerland to grab more mulch due to the fact that Lowes only sells bags of mulch (buying by the bagged mulch makes the cost of mulch about $100 per yard).   I had been purchasing my mulch from Harder and Warner at a price of $27.50 per yard and felt that that was a bit pricey.  However, it was $35 per yard at Fruitbasket and I almost didn’t pull the trigger on my mulch purchase.

Say what you will about how the price of gas is controlled, but at least I know when I purchase gas at Speedway (and sit and stare at their fountain drink dispenser out of pure amazement) that the Shell station down the road isn’t selling it 50 cents per gallon cheaper.  We need something akin to OPEC to control the global price of mulch.  Granted, a good Hollander would have called around to various mulch dispensing businesses and found the cheapest price, then they would have done a thorough cost benefits analysis based upon unit price/price of gas to get there/travel time, to determine where to purchase mulch.  I went based off what I always go off from when I am purchasing something, convenience.

While I chose Fruit Basket for it’s convenience, my plan was about to become quite inconvenient due to an Asian man driving a Toyota Sienna that was pulling a U-Haul trailer. There was no way my description of the U-haul trailer would do it justice so I had to get a picture of it so those reading this could realize how much of an idiot the guy was, especially in light of the fact that U-Haul rents utility trailers, but who knows maybe he was planning on doing some human trafficking later on and needed an enclosed trailer to effectively transport his cargo.

(it took me 45 minutes to figure out how to do that, and it’s sideways, but still I am pretty damn proud of myself for 1. not  throwing my computer out the window or breaking any thing, and 2. for actually getting an image to upload)

So, the guy had order at least a couple yards of stones that were about the size of golf balls (i’m assuming I don’t have to upload a picture of that since pretty much everyone knows how big a golf ball is) and the Bobcat can’t get the scoop into the trailer to unload the stones because Mr. Dipshit decided to go with the 4X8 enclosed trailer instead of an open air gardening/utility trailer.  The worker, who must have smoked at least 8 bowls of marijuana at that point is shoveling the stones out of the scoop of the Bobcat and into the trailer.  The reason I say he must have smoked a ton of pot is because he was shoveling the stones himself instead of making the guy do it himself.  No way anyone who isn’t baked doesn’t hand the shovel to the guy and say “good luck” or do what I would have done and hit the guy over the head with the shovel and bury his body with said shovel.  You could make a mighty nice life in Mexico with a Toyota Sienna and a 4X8 enclosed U-Haul trailer.

Ultimately, the guy finishes shoveling out the stones, at this point I’m assuming he’s coming my way to load me up with the mulch I ordered, nope, he’s heading over for more stones.  Instantly I run over as if my would be mulch is on fire and needs to be extinguished and ask the guy to get my mulch before he loads up the guy with more stones.  Unfortunately, I’m not as fast as I use to be and the guy already has the stones in the scoop.  I politely ask the driver to put the stones back  and get my mulch with a somewhat exasperated look on my face, immediately the Asian guy starts objecting in broken English “he no, he no, he already have stones loaded up!”  The guy unloads the stones in front of the U-Haul trailer and goes to get me my mulch.

As the worker loads up my mulch I turn to look back at the U-haul trailer only to discover that another worker has stepped in to shovel the stones as Mr. Dipshit talks on his phone. (likely arranging a pick up point for the trailer full of illegals he is about to turn a tidy profit on)  While this is complete bullshit, it doesn’t directly affect me so I don’t intervene since Franks worker number 2 seems like a big boy and perfectly capable of sticking up for himself.  Finally my trailer is full and as I take a final look back I see Mr. Dipshit with a shovel in his hand slowly scooping rocks into his trailer.  I bet he opts for the utility trailer next time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my younger days I frequently woke up in strange places and had no idea where I was.  Construction zones, parks sleeping amongst homeless people, even a park bench in Scottsdale Arizona.  Those instances all had one thing in common, the over consumption of alcohol.  Now a days, other than when I’m on vacation, I’m fairly accustom to waking up in my own bed.  However, my kids seem to find ways to make sure I have interrupted and restless nights on a fairly frequent basis.  A routine has been established where I rub my kid’s backs, say their prayers, and then cuddle.  Somehow I ended up falling asleep with my oldest at roughly 9pm last night and ultimately awoke at 12:30 am with no idea where I was.  Once I was able to collect my thoughts and realized that I had fallen asleep accidentally, I went down stairs to grab my phone, which doubles as an alarm clock, and went to bed in my own bed.

Around 3ish my youngest awoke and demanded that his mom go into his room and sleep with him because he claimed to be scared.  It was a half yell/half cry and my wife’s response was “I’m sweaty and naked so you are going to have to go see what his deal is.”  Sweaty and naked?  How come I didn’t know about this?  And why didn’t I have anything to do with your current condition?  Regardless, I didn’t have time for questions out of fear that my youngest would wake up my oldest and it would be a complete shit show.  My youngest demanded that I sleep in his bed with him, and due to the fact that it was 3am and he had all the leverage, I obliged.  As I got into bed with him I let one go and he immediately responded by asking “did you fart daddy?”  I probably could have blamed it on one of his stuffed animals, or possibly even him,  but due to my lack of sleep I merely admitted to my transgression told him to slide over a little more so that I had enough room to fully sprawl out, and attempted to fall asleep.

Not only is my three year old more fidgety than a Meth addict who can’t score any  Meth, he sleeps on a  twin IKEA bed.  I think IKEA is Swedish for ultra shitty furniture, and there is a high likelihood that if I continue to join him in bed his bed is going to fall apart like a Chinese motor cycle.  (Who knows, now that China is such a world power and may be half way decent at building things the saying moving forward may have to be “it’s going to fall apart like Swedish furniture”)

I wish I could say this was an isolated incident, but it happens quite frequently, both me farting in the middle of the night and me having to get into one of my kid’s beds to placate them or having one of them climb into our bed. My resolve as a parent is usually mediocre at best, but in the middle of the night it is non-existent.  I guess the big question is, what are the long term consequences of allowing your children to run rough shod over you regarding bedtime protocol along with their constant refusals to remain in their beds?  Was Hitler’s mom a sucker when it came to bed time?  Did Donald Trump’s parents come running to climb into bed with him upon his first request for their immediate presence?  What were the short comings in Justin Beiber’s parent’s parenting style?

Obviously there are certain parenting choices that lead to obvious and immediate consequences.  Allowing your kids to eat candy after every meal or feeding them McDonalds six times a week will lead to their teeth falling out of their head and along with acquiring an uncanny resemblance to honey boo boo.  Coddling them, well it isn’t immediately evident that this leads to problems, but it’s quite evident that when kids know they can screw with their parents they screw with their parents.

This is primarily the reason I avoid hanging out with people who have well behaved children, it magnifies my shortcomings as a parent and makes it even more obvious that there will be consequences for my inability to be firm with my children.  One of my friends claimed his children behaved well on their car ride back from Florida, while I would like to think this is complete bullshit, I have been around his kids enough to know that it is entirely possible.  Whereas, had I dared venture with my kids down to Florida in an automobile, the only way my kids would have actually made it to Florida is if we were only driving when they slept, so it probably would have taken us 12 days just to get down to Florida and we would have ended up flying home.

Likewise, I’m sure most parents are hesitant to let their kids be exposed to the Jansma’s.  I’m sure the fact that it makes them realize “yeah we’re doing the right thing in how we parent” is offset by the reality that any exposure to our kids could send their’s into a complete tailspin, our kids are the equivalent of Ebola, any type of contact could lead to life altering consequences.

When I tell stories about my poor parenting to other parents part of my rational for admitting to such parental negligence is in the hopes that they will also share stories of their parental shortcomings.  Rarely does this ever happen, am I the only one who is being dominated by his children routinely?  Another rational is so that the parents I am speaking with will assure me that I am doing a fine job (similar to when your wife tells you she looks fat in something and she is expecting you to tell her she looks lovely) the only problem is these parents, unlike me with my wife, have absolutely no incentive to lie to me and tell me I am doing a fine job.  Oh well, looks like I am going to have to come up with something more creative than farting on my kid to avoid having to spend half the night in his IKEA bed.

It doesn’t take much to figure out that marriage coupled with raising children is a difficult task.  There are a number of reasons for this fact, but basically it comes down to the fact that they broke the husband/father mold when I came along.  I’m not sure on the actual statistics as to marriage failure rate, but I think it is hovering right around the 50% mark.  Now, there has been a steady decline in divorce filings, but that ‘s because more people are choosing not to get married.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  So, why get married when marriages typically fail? Unless you can marry me, and they are currently trying to clone me so that women all across the globe can enjoy the marital bliss that Shirley does, it’s likely to be a constant struggle.

While I am joking somewhat about how truly terrific I am (I am the only one who knows what the lint screen is in our dryer and I do make a mean meatloaf) one of the fundamental problems with marriage is that traditionally it has involved men marrying women.  No new news here that men and women are entirely different in their way of thinking as well as how they go about doing things.  I think my point can be illustrated when looking at at the game of golf.  9.6% of the population plays golf, of that 9.6% 77.5% are men and the rest are women (I don’t think they ran the stats on the trans gender population).   What I also found interesting was the fact that 68% of the golfing population is married, it didn’t say how many times they have been married or wether they are happily married, but a huge chunk of the golfing population is married.

What I also didn’t find out in my little fact finding mission is what percentage of the 68% of married golfers golf together.  My guess is not a real large percentage due to the fact that only 22.5% of the golfing population is female.  Now, why all these statistics abut golfing?  How does golf illustrate the difference between men and women?  Well, it shows what men value and what women value.  Most golfers, unless they are me, or are retired, have to golf on the weekends or evenings when they aren’t working.  For me, weekends and evenings are prime family time where I get to enjoy spending valuable time with Tod and Ted as they find new and exciting ways to torment me.

What the casual observer who is unfamiliar with golf also needs to know about golf is, not only is it primarily played on nights and weekends, it is one hell of a time suck.  On the occasion that I do get out and play on the weekend I typically schedule a tee time around 6am to avoid the typical 5 and a half hour round of golf.  I also avoid hearing “you’re just playing 9 right?” from Shirley due to the fact that I am typically home from golf before she even makes it out of bed.  9 holes? That would be akin to having a date night with your wife and concluding the night by dry humping on the couch (quite unsatisfying to say the least).

Most men who are avid golfers and enjoy playing have no qualms about spending 5 and a half hours out on the course separated from their family.  If you gave a women the option of spending five and a half hours on the golf course away from her kids the only thing that would seem more crazy is giving out bj’s when it’s not a holiday or somebody’s birthday.  (Don’t want to start that precedent now do we ladies?)  “I didn’t think it was my birthday today, but based upon what just happened it must be.”

Now, I realize there are men out there who have been fortunate enough to avoid picking up the sport of golf, and to all of you I say F off, you have saved yourself a lot of time, money, aggravation, and possible marital conflict.  However, the men I know who don’t golf have some other sort of hobby that allows them to escape from their family.  Here in Michigan that hobby is typically hunting or fishing.  In all honesty, I would rather spend my entire weekend with my kids on their very worst days than freezing my ass off in the woods or trying to catch a fish, but some men really enjoy dressing in camouflage and dousing themselves in deer urine.  To each his own I guess.  While I truly enjoy eating fish, the actual task of trying to catch a fish seems extremely boring as well as unnecessary since all of my wife’s relatives fish and are more than happy letting me eat their spoils.

So, a typical problem that men and women run into as they trudge through marriage is the fact that men often times have time consuming hobbies that can even require entire weekends away from their families.  Women typically don’t have similar hobbies and are often miffed by the fact that men are so willing to turn their backs on their families so that they can engage in such fruitless pursuits.  The reason why men are able to do this is two fold:

1. Men are typically better at stuff then women so going on things like a golf trip are actually fun as opposed to complete misery.  (Shirley played in a scramble with four women at Egypt Valley and she said it was one of the worst experiences of her life, it’s what I imagine she would feel about a golf weekend, or any weekend spent entirely with women, women are the worst)
2. We are fully cognizant of the fact that our children, as much as they seem to love us now, will eventually become annoyed by us and even possibly end up resenting us while doing everything in their power to pretend like we don’t exist.  This allows us to have a completely clear conscience  when engaging in our various hobbies.  While I realize this is somewhat flawed logic because we probably should maximize the time with our kids while they still can stand the sight of us, but the male brain rarely thinks on that deep of a level, unless it involves negotiating sex.

This way of thinking, which completely contradicts how the female mind works, results in them often times questioning their husbands and thinking either to themselves or out loud, “you don’t care about our kids as much as I do.”  You’re right.  However, are women void of hobbies? There was only one way to find out, so I Googled women’s hobbies and this is what I came up with:

http://www.herinterest.com/hobbies-for-women/

Yes, foraging is actually a hobby women engage in along with a number of other activities that don’t even seem like hobbies.  Pretty sure cooking is about as much of hobby for my wife as is cleaning out a lint screen.  Some other hobbies of note are :

• Wine Tasting (not really a hobby, it’s a disease called alcoholism)
• Pole Dancing (not really a hobby, it’s a job called stripping)
• Caving-  This seems like something that would be reserved for really outdoorsy lesbians
• Host a Board Game Party-  This is just an excuse to have a bunch of girlfriends over so that you can talk about your kids while you go through the motions of playing board games because you can’t have a party and claim it’s for the sole purpose of talking about your kids, even though it is.  On top of that, playing board games isn’t a hobby, pathetic and depressing yes, hobby no.

Lastly, sports, and more specifically sports radio, is something that truly delineates men and women/ husbands and wives.  I have slowly weened myself off from sports radio and rarely listen any more.  I truly can’t stand the local shows that primarily consist of listener calls, these are the worst.  Who gives a shit what Joe from Hudsonville thinks about the Tiger’s bullpen or who wants to hear Carl from Wyoming weigh in on whatever the latest controversial sports topic is.  I would guess that maybe 2 percent of the sports talk radio audience is comprised of women.  There is no parallel to sports radio for women.  However, I feel like there could be a parallel, and it could be a gold mine.  They need to start a show hosted by a mom or mom’s where other mom’s can call up and talk (brag) about their kids.  “hi, I’m Shirley from Alto, and guess what my kids did the other day…..”  Topics could include:

• Should my child still be having skid marks well into his teens?
• How to broach the crusty sweat sock problem with your teenage sons?
• At what age will your kids stop believing mom and dad were just wrestling ?
• The educational value of cartoons broadcast on the Cartoon Network?

The other night Tod came into our room at around 1:30 am.  Parents with a fair amount of backbone would have immediately sent him back to his room, but when it comes to parenting we have the back bone of a jelly fish and our lack of discipline is exacerbated when our kids try to climb in bed with us in the middle of the night.  I actually suggested to Shirley that we sleep in the basement one night, so that when our kids try to climb in bed with us we wont be there and they will freak out in all sorts of ways.  Surprisingly, she didn’t go for it  (maybe if she ever goes away for a weekend I can sleep in the basement).  Regardless, we put up little resistance and once he was in bed he indicated that he didn’t feel well.  He had done this before, and due to his fragile nature I didn’t take him seriously the first time.  Ultimately he ended up blowing chunks all over our bed.  So, I immediately escorted him to the toilet and turned on the light.  He screamed “the light makes it worse!” and bolted back towards our bedroom.  “Damn you light!”  Upon making it to our bedroom he hurled all over the floor, one of the worst sound in the world is that of vomit being projected onto carpet.

I did my best to clean up the carpet, nothing like the smell of vomit to awaken your senses and make it almost impossible to fall back asleep, and made my way to the guest bedroom.  The smell of vomit, wether real or imagined, was still there in our bedroom so I had to opt for a safe harbor.  It’s amazing how sympathetic even I can be when my kid is sick.  That type of behavior (opting to puke on a carpeted surface when you were appropriately positioned in front of a  toilet) normally would elicit a severe tongue lashing and a threat to take away TV or desert the following day.  Instead I quietly consoled him and went about cleaning up his puke without saying a word.

I have gotten to know Tod quite well, and that first experience with him where he ultimately threw up in our bed was a result of my knowledge of him based upon past behavior.  He’s a bit of a drama queen and has a tendency to exaggerate the dire nature of his condition.  That being said, there seems to be a reluctance to use empirical data to determine future behavior.  What I mean by this is that over my 42 years of experience I have come to certain conclusions based upon what I have witnessed in society.  This is best explained on the road way.  Often times I will be driving and there will be a car up ahed on the highway impeding everyone’s progress.  I immediately jump to a conclusion as to what that driver looks like, age, gender, sometimes ethnicity.  Even if my exit is quickly approaching I will do what I can to catch up to the driver so that I can determine if my conclusion is accurate.  99% of the time I am dead on with my assumption and can exit the highway knowing that if everyone was like me and drove amazingly well the highway would be a much enjoyable experience.

Typically the people impeding traffic have one thing in common.  I use to think handicap license plates were given out so that people could get parking spaces near the entrance of buildings.  However, I have realized that is their secondary purpose.  The real reason for handicap plates is so other drivers can be warned of the ineptitude of the person operating the vehicle with the handicap plate.  When I come upon a vehicle that is driving poorly and I see that they have a handicap plate I think to myself “that makes perfect sense their handicap.”  Then I think to myself why do they let people who are handicap drive?  They are obviously compromised in some way, shape, or form.  Even the people who are merely fat and get a handicap plate because they can’t walk more than ten feet without becoming short of breath  are problematic drivers because their fatness affects their reaction time as well as their ability to turn their head to see if other vehicles are near them, not to mention they are usually distracted by whatever food item they are trying to consume while they are driving along with the customary big gulp beverage to wash it all down.

So why is it that we are only singling out handicap individuals for other driver’s to be cognizant of?  Can’t we utilize this for other segments of the driving population?  How about anyone over the age of 65 has to have a caricature of a person hunched over with a cane in their hand depicted on their license plate?  Furthermore, people should be allowed to take a test to determine if they are good enough at multi tasking, in order to legally text and drive.  These people would be given a plate number that starts with TX and they would be allowed to text in the far left lane.  On that note, and due to the fact that I am an awesome driver, they should also allow for a special lane where you can disregard the speed limit if you have proven yourself worthy (similar to the autobahn)

This special lane reserved for the top tier drivers would likely consist of white male driver’s in their 30’s and 40’s.  This is where you have to understand my conclusions are all based upon my personal experience and are in no way related to what my opinion is of a specific race or gender.  Men are better driver’s than women just like men are funnier than women, it’s just a fact.  On top of that, and I’m not sure why this is, but a lot of minorities seem to struggle with driving.  African Americans for example, now I’m not saying they are all terrible driver’s so don’t go crazy on me  here, are typically gifted athletically.  I have played a lot of pick up basketball and black people are good at hoops, besides you just have to look at the NBA and NFL to realize they dominate when it comes to those two sports.  So, I would think this would translate to exceptional driving skills.  However, my experience on the roads has led me to believe this is not the case. (Pretty much ever NASCAR driver is a white male in their 30’s or 40’s, there’s one women but the only thing she brings to the table is her looks and typically finishes at the back of the pack in every race)

Maybe it has a socio economic aspect to it, inner city kids, who are primarily African American have to go to shitty public schools so they probably also have to go to shitty driver’s education schools.  The inequality in public schools is problematic but the driving thing is something Trump really needs to jump on and put as a major plank in his platform,  he could really go places with that.  Now, the socioeconomic aspect doesn’t explain why Asians on a whole are horrendous drivers.  I don’t have a real theory on why they are, but maybe there is some type of ethnic specific bad driving gene that is plaguing most of Asia.  It may be similar to the gene that is dominant in people of Asian decent that causes them to struggle in metabolizing alcohol.  (Please see below, which was taken from an article on the internet)

Some people of Asian descent have noticed that they have difficulty handling alcohol, expressed by excessive facial redness, sweating, increased body temperature, and a higher heart rate after consuming a small amount of alcohol. This syndrome is called “Asian flush” and can be deeply embarrassing, especially if it arrives unexpectedly. This causes many people to think that people of Asian descent cannot process alcohol, although this is not strictly true. The reaction can affect non-Asians as well, but the genetic mutation that causes it is much more common among people of Asian descent.

To temper my comments about minorities being inferior driver’s (and so I don’t come off as a complete racist, just a partial one) when compared to white males I feel like I need to acknowledge that white males are terrible at a number of things minorities seem to be pretty good at.  Here is a list:

• Dancing
• Being Cool
• Dressing
• Taste in Music
• Sex

I’m sure there are plenty more things white males are terrible at, but I need to keep this thing brief and to the point or I may lose the four readers I currently have reading this thing on a fairly regular basis. APRIL FOOLS!  I don’t really believe any of this stuff, or do I?

Life was much simpler when the one and only way to communicate remotely with someone was through a land line phone.  The rules of etiquette were fairly simple when it came to talking with someone on the phone and telephone protocol was pretty straightforward.  It’s hard for me to pin point a date when text messaging became popular because I spent years resisting texting as a form of communication.  Honestly, I didn’t realize what the fuss was all about and was somewhat proud of the fact that I refused to text.  However, it was only a matter of time before I realized that the fuss was legitimate and that texting was a form of communication that was not only incredibly effective but also quite efficient.

While texting opened up new doors for me, allowing me to send succinct messages to people in order to relay a message without having to get into an all out conversation, it is not governed by the same rules of etiquette and the protocols that phone conversations  are governed by.  First of all, texting allows communication between groups of people to communicate with one another, often times not even knowing who exactly is part of the conversation.   The “Group Text” could be compared to a conference call but for the fact that people can be put on a group text who don’t want to be part of the conversation and are unwillingly subjected to the group’s continued communication. In a conference call if you don’t want to be involved you just hang up.  While I realize there is allegedly a software upgrade that allows an individual to “opt” out of a group text message, I have never actually known anyone who is utilized this supposed software upgrade.

One particular group text I was a party to ended up continuing to the point that one of the people who was an unwilling party began to object to the text.  Once this occurs there are two ways the text can go, it can either result in a barrage of text messages in a further attempt to piss off the objecting member of the group text or it can completely kill the group text.  In my mind neither one of these possible outcomes is a bad thing, but I have a hard time relating to the person who feels the need to object, because it really isn’t that difficult to ignore text messages, they pop up on your phone for two seconds and then they go away.  Unless, there are still people out there who have a certain limit of text messages per month, but if that’s the case that’s on them and I say let the text messages keep coming.

Another thing that is unique about text messaging is the fact that there is never a clear way to end a text messages.  On a phone call you merely say good bye and hang up, but on a text message rarely does someone actually say good bye.  Furthermore, in a phone conversation the person on the other end is obligated to respond to whatever statements you make whether they be innocuous or highly offensive, you will get a response letting you know where that persons stands regarding whatever statement you made to them.  In a text message your text can just be left hanging out there like an 88 mph fastball right down the middle of the plate.  Was that person offended by what I texted?  Will they still be my friend?  Are they ever going to speak with me again, in person?  Should I apologize?   I have way too much self doubt to do this texting thing!  And then a text comes through and you see “LOL”.  Oh yeah, I still got it, I’m a witty and clever texter, this person totally gets me.

Similarly, I have run into situations where a text exchange is going along splendidly, I’m on my A game and the shit I am texting is pure gold.  All of a sudden there’s no reply, crickets, it’s as if that person had to do something work related, pay attention to their family, or actually concentrate on driving.  How dare they!  You’ve got a guy who is probably in the top 5% of all texters on this planet texting with you and your just going to give him the Heisman?  I’m sorry I’m the one who was leading this text exchange, providing witty and insightful comments, and you have the nerve to just end it out of the blue,  sorry it shouldn’t work that way,  I call the shots here.

An additional difference with texting as opposed to actual conversation is the fact that sometimes people will text me and instead of texting them back I immediately call them back.  When they don’t answer it gives me the feeling that that person feels the need to keep our relationship at the high school girls level, we can text but you just aren’t significant enough that I’m going to waste my time actually speaking with you.  Immediately all my insecurities come rushing to the surface making me feel worthless and  causing me to question why that person doesn’t want to speak with me.  (I’ve run into a similar situation  with my wife where she will actually call me, I miss the call and immediately call her back but she doesn’t answer, this drives me crazy because she just called me, it’s like WTF did she just throw her phone out the window of her car as she was driving down the highway?)

Lastly, when I get into group text exchanges I’m typically providing most of the A material in the group text, but when someone else contributes, even though their comments are rarely on par with mine, I feel the need to affirm their comments so they don’t feel rejected or that they are being left out there to twist in the wind.  Maybe it has something to do with my birth order, I’m the oldest and was always doling out affirmation to my siblings so they would have a sufficient amount of self esteem.  On top of that, when I have hit a home run in a group text I feel like there should be someway to end the text with a sign off acknowledging that I am fully aware that I just knocked one out of the park and there is no need for a response from other people on the text because it will merely fall short in light of my textacular text.  Maybe something like ending the text with WO for “Walk Off” would work as a signal that no one else need respond.

On a completely unrelated note I have found myself really liking Justin Beiber’s latest hit, well he actually has two out right now, but I really like “Sorry” but I feel really bad about it.  When it comes on the radio it’s not like Michael McDonalds songs where I turn it when I realize who it is, I actually turn the volume up.  Should I be ashamed of myself for this?  Is it wrong of me to like Justin Beiber?  I need some feedback from the four people who read my blog, I would have sent out a group text on this subject but you know how that goes.