I have never been a smoker except for one puff when I was six years old, but that one puff has produced some weird stories.
Several years ago, back in the day when we still answered the phone without knowing who was on the other end, I got snagged by a survey taker.
The questions had to do with tobacco use. Had I ever used tobacco?
I am entirely too honest. That puff at age six leaped into my consciousness and I told her I had once. I regretted that transparency shortly.
No Obsession Like a Survey Taker
She jumped on my admission like a starving wolf. “What did you use?”
“Um, well, I was six years old, and I took one puff.”
“Was it menthol or filtered?”
“I was six years old. And it was one puff.”
“What brand of cigarette was it?”
Really? You’d Ask Again?
“I was six years old, and it was one puff.”
“Did you continue the habit?”
“I was six years old, and I never wanted another puff.”
She kept asking, and I only had one answer.
What I’m going to share with you didn’t fit into her survey questions. But we’re friends and I am entirely too honest.
Here’s The Story
At age 6, I approached my dad after supper one evening. He sat at the dining room table with a cigarette poised between two fingers, white smoke drifting like a lazy river toward the ceiling, and a glimmering glass ashtray beside him.
I guess I was staring with eager eyes. I thought he looked sophisticated, although I’m certain I didn’t know that word yet.
“Would you like a puff?” He beckoned to me.
Yes, I would. I scooted up to him, eager to share this special moment. I lifted the white tube to my lips and took a long pull on the cigarette.
A loooong pull. One loooong draw.
White Heat
Dragon’s breath first roasted my tonsils before descending with white raging heat down my throat. My lungs were seared and my stomach rolled with burning coals.
The scalding smoke slammed into my eyes and my nose filled with the stench of dead mice and scorched banana peels. Angry flames blew out my ears and singed my eyebrows.
My throat cramped like a sore muscle. My toenails curled with the heat and hot tears ran down my cheeks.
Certain that my life was about to end, I spun and sprinted on my hot, toasted legs into the bathroom. I stuck my mouth under the faucet, slapped the cold water handle open, and tried to drown myself.
As rushing water sluiced across my tongue in the faint hope of dousing the fire, I had one thought, assuming I survived: Never again. A single swallow of the dragon’s breath was more than enough for me.
Done, Done, Done
I imagine that was Dad’s idea, and it worked.
Besides making me a lifelong nonsmoker, the experience also had another benefit. My experience roasted the caller’s survey results.
I had considered titling this post “News You Need” because I am a former small-town journalist and my brain thinks that way.
But then I found out that I had missed the rapper feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Obviously, I’m not keeping up on the news. So don’t count on me for that anymore.
Veering off into left field (something I’m known for), I set journalistic intent aside and instead move to the next obvious thing: open my computer supply cabinet.
A Trip Back in Time
I like technology, and this cabinet is a treasure chest of years of technological changes.
I don’t have my Apple IIc up there (I wish I did!) but, of late, opening the door to that cabinet means a spaghetti snarl of cables and discs emerging like hungry pythons that I have to push back with my foot while I slam the door.
It’s made finding a USB charging block challenging.
I finally gritted my teeth, started pulling stuff off shelves, and found Monkey!
Monkey Now
Monkey is a little plush monkey with a coin purse for a backpack. I carried him for years when the kids were home. Monkey marked the location of car keys and carried quarters for gum ball machines in his backpack.
Our Fellow Traveler
“Go get Monkey,” I could tell the kids, and they raced back with the fuzzy guy in their hand. He was part of our travels.
He retired when his backpack zipper split and the cord tying him to my purse broke. Maybe at the same time. He had the Velveteen rabbit look to him.
And I had saved him?
As I turned him over in my hand, the memories bubbled up from times when the kids were at home. Trips to the park. The flip house the kids and I gutted. County fairs where they showed goats and a horse. A flight to Los Angeles to visit the USS Iowa. Our laughter when the mint plants were pummeled by hail. The trees we planted together.
So many memories.
Moving On
I set Monkey aside and kept digging.
A crumpled earbud set curled in the back corner of the cabinet. Oh, yeah, I wore those on the flight we took to San Diego. We visited the zoo and Sea World and watched whales from a boat.
The 30-pin to VGA Adapter (don’t ask) pushed up to the surface as I dug around. I used it in a photography class I taught. You had to stand on your ear in those days to be sure the adapter connected the laptop to the classroom projector, but we managed and had a great time talking about photos of kids, flowers, and dogs. Sunsets, too.
Some misguided person (that’d be me) saved Apple product boxes, thinking those could help value when re-selling said product. I had a white rectangular Apple mountain on the second shelf, which made a Minecraft square-block avalanche.
The boxes don’t help resale value much, but didn’t even trigger memories. I had an iPhone X once? And an SE? An iPad Air? Some of these could have been for my husband or kids, but for some reason, I was the box keeper. I mean, Apple makes beautiful boxes. But still…
Some Old DVDs
Moving on, I found several old DVD programs on the top shelf sitting like tombstones. OLD means dinosaurs installed those programs on their Commodore 64s. Not really, but can you say Windows 98?
The shelves were an archeological dig. I had a great time remembering. Then I threw handfuls of cables and cords and disks and adapters into the trash bag.
The old computer stuff is mostly gone. (I took a couple of pictures but, really, who needs to see a 30-pin to VGA adapter?)
What about Monkey?
He’s staying. His memories are far warmer than Windows 98 and the iPhone X box.
Him and the USB-C cables. I’m not completely impractical.
This morning, I buckled on my sharp shiny sword and stepped out the door to do battle with the monsters growing at the edge of my property. I had postponed this for weeks, but it had to be done before the day got any hotter and the monsters got bolder.
The cult movie, The Little Shop of Horrors, featured a sentient carnivorous plant named Aubrey II that fed on human blood. My own monsters were threatening to swallow vehicles for the moment before moving on.
I wasn’t sure if my plants were carnivorous but why let them keep growing?
Was the dog safe? The chickens? See why I needed the sword? [spacer height=”30px”]
Prone to exaggeration
Because I have been known to exaggerate, I need to clarify that my sharp shiny sword is really a DeWalt cordless pruner, but hey, tomayto, tomahto.
This pruner can cut through three-inch limbs, so I strapped it on and headed for the monster forest surrounding my wood pile. Oh, the irony.
We’ve had a Seattle kind of year in normally arid northeastern Colorado. Really. We usually get about fifteen inches of rain a year while Seattle gets more like 34. Flip-flop those this year and you get the idea why the monsters were so eager to stretch into trees.
They’ve been thirsty forever and finally gulping gallons of rain.
Gulping gallons
This year, entire stacks of wood have disappeared within their jungle. Maybe devoured by the hungry dripping teeth of the Aubrey II’s out there.
Just for clarity, these are more like hybrid Aubrey II’s. Some people call them wild sunflowers. But potayto, potahto.
These guys are threatening to blot out the sunlight and swallow not only the log splitter in the yard but the privacy fence. The uncut logs. My entire house.
Last month’s hail storm left dents in heavy metal but didn’t even bruise these plants.
The trunk of several were bigger than my wrist. Huge by wrist standards.
I started by gripping the base of one and pulling in case it didn’t have a good root system. Maybe they’d all fall like dominoes and my work would be done.
As it turned out, if they could stand up to the pounding hail, my grip was a mere annoyance and no more.
I was kind of afraid of that.
Out came the sword. (Remember: tomayto, tomahto.)
Wrong choice
I should have worn a hard hat instead of gloves because it turned out the sword was mightier than the monster. The sunflowers began falling with a crash onto my head.
Imagine sunflowers succumbing to my trusty sword (humor me here) and slamming onto the ground. Or me, depending which was closer.
It was usually me.
Domino effect. Clunk, clunk, clunk. Onto my head. (That alone may explain this post. Brain injured.)
I now have a pile of slain sunflowers by my driveway. The monsters had surrounded an old coffee table, two tree stumps, and a tomato cage.
And, boy, am I glad that I got those rescued.
That’s my report for today and you can believe whatever you want. Just like The Little Shop of Horrors.
I didn’t know I was a contrarian until I bought that mouth guard set.
I had noticed in the last few months that my teeth were tired every morning. I had never been a teeth grinder before, so I resisted the idea for a while.
But I finally buckled and ordered in a mouthpiece kit. It came with four gummy pieces that looked like what the dentist used to fill with some goopy paste and then stick in your mouth to get an impression of your teeth. The goop tasted okay but sometimes persisted.
So that, maybe you went out to eat after the dentist appointment and discovered, after smiling brightly at the waiter, that paste crumbs were hanging from your lips like miniature stalactites. Theoretically.
Well, this kit didn’t have any goopy paste.
No goopy paste but stern instructions, though, for molding the mouthpiece.
So, I quote:
Immerse mouth guard in hot water 175 to 180 degrees.
Where was my candy thermometer again?
Oh, yeah, my daughter had borrowed the thermometer. So I would not know exactly what the water was.
I guessed. I still wasn’t in contrarian stage. Just practical, although that might be the precursor to contrarian. Still puzzling that idea.
Next instruction: Soak for ten to fifteen seconds. Must be less than twenty seconds.
Wait, what?
Must be less than twenty seconds?
I’m pretty sure this is when the contrarian started to lift its head. Just what would happen if I left the mouth guard in the water for, say, twenty-one seconds?
Maybe at twenty-three seconds, the mouth guard turned into a gelatinous mass like a jellyfish floating in the water. Or like a glass octopus. Or a transparent sea cucumber. (Who came up with that creative name? Probably the same scientist who named his dog Dog.)
So theoretically, there was a jellyfish floating in the water after my temperature guess.
Since there were four mouth pieces in the kit, I wondered if they assumed somebody might test their instructions?
After the fifteen seconds heating-up period comes the next order. I mean, instruction.
Use a wooden spoon and wooden chopsticks to fish the mouthpiece out of the hot water.
I double checked.
Yep, it said AND. And wooden chopsticks.
I don’t have any wooden chopsticks. Whelp, time to just figure it out myself. I used a wooden spoon and then plopped the piece on a dish towel. I didn’t need another jellyfish if this mouthpiece was allergic to metal spoons.
Oops. I didn’t read ahead. I was supposed to lower the mouth guard onto a paper.
A paper.
Sure.
This was getting dumb.
Then the instructions said to let the mouth guard cool for three to five seconds.
I didn’t know I’d need a stopwatch when I started this process.
Well, I lowered nothing onto a paper.
I plopped the piece onto the dish towel and then shoved it over my teeth. I had watched the dentist do that, so I knew how.
I bit down into something slightly firmer than Jello at a church potluck.
By now, I was in full rebel mode.
Fifteen seconds here. A paper there. And then the last instruction.
Leave the piece in mouth for exactly ten seconds.
Uh-huh. Exactly ten seconds. I’d have chastised the instructions, except it was hard to talk with that piece of old Jello in my mouth.
Just to show them, I pulled the mouth guard out when I felt like it. I wasn’t timing that.
Good grief. I can count one-Mississippi as well as anybody, but there was a principle here. The principle of “don’t be ridiculous.”
Then….
No more instructions.
What do I do next?
Well, at that point, I did what any contrarian would do. I figured it out. Included in the kit was a little blue plastic case for the mouthpiece so it’s resting there until it cools into something stiffer than melted gelatin.
But now that I know I am a rule breaker, I suppose I’ll find out at bedtime if I will even use this gummy thing.
I didn’t notice the rug burn on my knee until I was ready for bed. Hmmm.
Couch potatoes don’t have these issues.
Couch Potatoes Don’t Have Those
I have old scars on my knees from that cruel and ancient practice of requiring girls to wear dresses to school. I may still be bitter about that rule.
This elementary girl couldn’t stop running and somehow my feet didn’t cooperate all the time. Crash. Another scraped knee. Another scar.
Couch potatoes don’t have those.
My high school hosted a girls’ football game to raise funds for something that I’ve forgotten. We played flag football. No tackling. Just powder puff style.
I remember running with the football tucked under my arm and getting hit so hard that my breath flew away as I hit the ground. I fumbled the ball too. So much for the flag.
I could barely walk at school the next day, what with the sore muscles and bruises.
Speaking of barely walking, I was tossed over the head of my horse one weekend when I was home from college. Gypsy was galloping, and I asked her to slow down. She stopped. Dime kind of stop.
And I went over her head. I was nineteen, but I walked around like a ninety-year-old for a few days.
As an adult, I mellowed into more gentle sports. Like softball. Cycling. Skiing.
Speaking of softball, I once found my left foot trapped under the fence behind home plate. As the catcher, I had to retrieve any balls that got past me and went to the fence. I knew the opponent was steaming home from third base, so I hustled to the fence, planted my foot, and went under.
It took both coaches and an umpire to lift the stiff fence off my ankle. My team didn’t have another catcher, so I limped back to my position.
Couch potatoes don’t have to put up with that.
Memories of softball games came up recently over lunch with a friend. She perked up. She’d played softball, too.
“Do you still have your softball glove?”
“Of course. You?”
We planned to play catch just because we miss throwing a ball around. Feeling a little nostalgic and unfulfilled, maybe.
Couch potatoes don’t get those urges.
I was five months pregnant, downhill skis strapped to my feet and our four-year-old sitting on the chairlift seat beside me, when the lift died.
We had hoped for one more run down the slope. Instead, we hung for an hour before the crew started lowering people to the ground on ropes. I never told them I was pregnant. I didn’t have time for the panic.
Couch potatoes don’t have to swing on a chairlift with a little boy for an hour, keeping him calm and warm.
Why do I complicate my life so?
The Watch Panic
Recently I crawled inside an enclosed cage retrieving young roosters. I had to roll onto my side to turn around so I could crawl out. No problem. I dropped onto an elbow, scotched around, and headed for the cage door.
And I heard a wild beeping. Was someone calling me?
I glanced at my watch, affectionately called “Dick Tracy” by my sister. Well, maybe not affectionately, now that I think about it. My watch sometimes poaches calls from my phone, which she thinks is goofy.
This watch plays music, tracks my steps, and alerts me to texts and calls. It ought to cook meals too.
Back to my story. My watch was shrieking, gaining volume with the second. Almost the shaking in terror. I looked closer. It hovered over the 9-1-1 call, assuming I had fallen. I punched a button. No, I didn’t need 9-1-1.
My watch was stubborn. Was I sure I hadn’t fallen? Yeah, pretty sure.
Can you imagine explaining that to the deputies who would have had to respond? No, officer, really, I’m fine. I just planted my elbow in the rooster pen.
Yeah, rooster pen.
My watch panicked last winter when I had to knock the ice out of a rubber pan so I could put out more water for my ducks. I slammed the pan on the frozen ground and my watch immediately leaped to alert mode, ready to call the deputies again.
“I didn’t fall,” I told the Dick Tracy. “I didn’t even leave my feet.” So why I was talking to my watch? My sister hadn’t even called.
Couch potatoes don’t have these problems.
New Plan
I have a new plan for this year. I’m slowing down. It’s time.
But I have to run a 5K with my grandson. It’s his first and he’s only nine. How could I refuse?
I’m riding my bike five or six—OK, sometimes ten miles a day—because it’s a new bike and I have a new helmet. Can’t let those go to waste.
I’ve started lifting weights, too, to keep the kids happy. And those extra muscles handle the feed bags a lot better.
So you can see that I’ve slowed down. No more skinned knees or planted elbows.
My watch doesn’t hover in ready mode anymore. It probably thinks I’ve retired into couch potato mode.
Well, yeah, I did shut off its fall alarm.
Out of concern for the deputies.
It is totally my fault that CAPTCHA has returned to my computer.
I tumble down the rabbit hole every time the little box comes up for me declare that I am not a robot. I check that I am not, and obviously the programming has second thoughts about that. Understandable, actually.
By Nikolay Shaplov – Transferred from en.wikibooks to Commons by Adrignola using CommonsHelper., GPL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12813815
The idea of CAPTCHA is that humans can handle these puzzles while current bots – computer programming – cannot.
I was almost nostalgic the first time I ran into a new CAPTCHA. I rarely saw one. The nostalgia faded quickly, like remembering the smell of mentholatum.
The new onslaught of paranoid puzzles threw nine photographs in front of me. Click on the ones with cars in the picture.
One of the photos was so grainy and dark that it could have been a runaway giraffe for all I could tell. Another had a shadow under a tree that might have been concealing a car or cheerleading squad.
And then there was the shot down a highway with lumps of something in the distance. Were those cars or elk? Who could tell? Was I supposed to know?
Who would think that proving I’m human would be so challenging? (Siblings are not allowed to join the discussion at this point.)
I clicked three photos with cars and leaned closer to my monitor, hoping the other photos would somehow enhance.
If you’ve seen CSI shows, you know what I mean. They take a street video that consists of grainy pixels and enhance it about 100 times until the license plate magically -and clearly -appears. Or they can do facial recognition on that shadowy form in the front seat that could have been a bag of groceries as far as I could tell.
Trust me on this: that enhance technique would produce a photo as sharp as a blob of gray clay.
Then there are those letters that you have to read and type in the box below.
CAPTCHA letters may have been created by optometrists waiting just outside the door for your next eye exam. You’ll think you need it after trying to untangle blurry, elongated, and overlapping letters politely called distorted text.
Although I have to admit that there are guys in my life who don’t write any better.
CAPTCHA now happens every time I log into a website, throwing goofy letters or blurry photos in my face. These are puzzles that I’m supposed to solve.
I guess bots can’t do those things. Neither can half the adults, I suspect.
The reason for CAPTCHA reappearing in my life is my fault. When I got concerned about tech giants tracking my web browsing, I shut off the permissions. Suddenly my digital fingerprint disappeared.
For years, websites knew it was me – not a bot -by the fingerprints I was leaving. When I shut off that permission, CAPTCHA got suspicious.
I’m stuck with CAPTCHA or leaving fingerprints. The CAPTCHA tests seem fiercer now than what I remember. I can hardly wait for the one that asks me to count all the blades of grass on the out-of-focus lawns.
There could be a plausible reason for this stiff response. Since I’ve gone rogue on the internet harvesting, a new movie could be in store: CAPTCHA’s Revenge.
Snag a copy of my newest story, Escape, and join my group of newsletter friends to receive the latest news, updates, and resources. I hate spam, too, and will never spam you or sell your email address. And you can unsubscribe at any time.
This morning, I buckled on my sharp shiny sword and stepped out the door to do battle with the monsters growing at the edge of my property. I had postponed this for weeks, but it had to be done before the day got any hotter and the monsters got bolder.
These guys are threatening to blot out the sunlight and swallow not only the log splitter in the yard but the privacy fence. The uncut logs. My entire house.
No goopy paste but stern instructions, though, for molding the mouthpiece.
So theoretically, there was a jellyfish floating in the water after my temperature guess.
