A Lawyer and a senior citizen are sitting next to each other on a long flight.

The lawyer is thinking that seniors are so dumb that he could get one over on them easily.

So, the lawyer asks if the senior would like to play . . . → Read More: How to make $490]]> Yeah, I got this from a chain mail, but it’s the first one to make me laugh out loud in a few years, so here you go…

A Lawyer and a senior citizen are sitting next to each other on a long flight.

 

The lawyer is thinking that seniors are so dumb that he could get one over on them easily.

 

So, the lawyer asks if the senior would like to play a fun game.

 

The senior is tired and just wants to take a nap, so he politely declines and tries to catch a few winks.

 

The lawyer persists, saying that the game is a lot of fun….”I ask you a question, and if you don’t know the answer, you pay me only $5.00. Then you ask me one, and if I don’t know the answer, I will pay you $500.00,” he says.

 

This catches the senior’s attention and, to keep the lawyer quiet, he agrees to play the game.

 

The lawyer asks the first question. “What’s the distance from the Earth to the Moon?”

 

The senior doesn’t say a word, but reaches into his pocket, pulls out a five-dollar bill, and hands it to the lawyer.

 

Now, it’s the senior’s turn. He asks the lawyer, “What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down with four?”

 

The lawyer uses his laptop to search all references he can find on the Net.

 

He sends E-mails to all the smart friends he knows; all to no avail. After an hour of searching, he finally gives up.

 

He wakes the senior and hands him $500.00. The senior pockets the $500.00 and goes right back to sleep.

 

The lawyer is going nuts not knowing the answer. He wakes the senior up and asks, “Well, so what goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four?”

 

The senior reaches into his pocket, hands the lawyer $5.00, and goes back to sleep.

 

Don’t mess with us Seniors.

Apparently, the time is coming when that will change.

I just discovered a new blog . . . → Read More: Why Dads of girls watch sports]]> I am not a big sports fan. I enjoy watching tennis from time to time, but have even lost touch with that mostly. I like watching televised sports in short bursts. A couple of plays at a time is about the most I can handle of a football game. I can’t carry on an intelligent conversation about sports for long.

Apparently, the time is coming when that will change.

I just discovered a new blog – possibly my new favorite “Dad Blog” – written by a man named Johnny around my age with 2 daughters slightly older than mine. It only started in September, and it is well-written and funny, so I went back and read all his posts. It’s good stuff. I had tears in my eyes from laughing at times. Go take a read.

One of his posts takes on the constant conversations pummeling the ears of Dads with daughters, and how it can make it difficult to watch TV. And it ends up explaining why sports bars exist. In between we learn why Dads watch sports:

So, regardless of who picks the show, [the girls] talk the whole time – to each other, to me, on the phone…etc. I try to watch the show, but I am limited by genetics and gender and can’t follow (or hear) the show and the conversations at the same time – they can.

I think this explains why men watch sports. Guys watch countless hours of sports because you don’t need to “hear” or “listen” to a televised game to understand what is happening. So far, I have yet to find a sporting event that needs to be watched with the sound turned on.

I grew up in a house that was the gender-opposite situation of the one I live in now. My mother had to deal with three males. We didn’t have this problem of words flying through the air willy-nilly 24×7. When we watched TV, we watched TV. When we read books, we read books. Other activities (except eating) ceased. The exception was when we had family parties. People would be milling around playing and talking and my uncle would turn on “the game.” Eventually the Dads would end up sitting there watching the game while the noise happened around them. So growing up, I always thought that was a party thing.

Then I started dating my wife. My wife is part of a family of 6, evenly divided in gender. By the time I got there, my father-in-law had been living with the youngest child for over 17 years. He was not new to this at all. Keep that in mind. The first time I ate dinner with their family was a whirlwind for me. Yes, there was a lot of activity in passing food around, but I could handle that. What surprised me was the mental workout. Between Pam, her sister, and her mother, there were never fewer than 6 conversations going on simultaneously – and none of them were directed to the males in the room. It was like trying to follow the discussion in an open, public, chat room where 50 people are all talking at once. That same volume was coming from 3 people, and there was no ability to scroll back up and figure out to which person in which conversation a given sentence pertained – you just had to know. And they all seemed to do it with almost no effort. I never heard a hint of confusion. On the other hand, I could actually feel my brain getting hotter from all the exertion I was poring into trying to follow this. I made a valiant effort that may have lasted 5 minutes (generously), then, like my laptop when it overheats, my brain shut off. It felt good when my face relaxed and my eyes glazed over.

As my brain rebooted into safe mode I was able to continue eating and carry on standard functions. It was at that point that I looked at my father-in-law. He had the same look on his face as I did. You could see that the words flying around the room were just safely flying past him as he ate his dinner. The rest of the family just thinks he’s laid-back and quiet. I can’t say for sure, but there’s room to be made for the theory that he wasn’t that way before his girls learned to talk.

After dinner the conversations continued while the TV tuned into NASCAR or baseball. The volume was usually not very high if it was on at all. Johnny has explained it perfectly.

That level of talking hasn’t happened yet in my house. The disconnected conversations I’ve heard coming from my girls are from the attention-deficit qualities of their ages. They don’t multi-task well yet. I can see it coming though, as they get older. It’s in their genes.

So, if in a few years you’re able to hold an intelligent conversation with me about sports, you’ll know why.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think we need to leave a half-hour early to get a place 10 minutes from our house. I’m willing to leave 15 minutes early if I have to, but three times the required time is just too much.

My wife gets stressed if we leave on my schedule, but we’re . . . → Read More: Rules for showing up]]> At my house we have a bit of a push-and-pull relationship with time. My wife pushes, and I pull.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think we need to leave a half-hour early to get a place 10 minutes from our house. I’m willing to leave 15 minutes early if I have to, but three times the required time is just too much.

My wife gets stressed if we leave on my schedule, but we’re rarely late. Well, we’re rarely what I consider late. She may differ in her definition. I get stressed if we get there too early. I don’t enjoy sitting around wasting my time some place other than my house (well, or maybe work – oh, wait, that’s the same thing).

So, just to get it documented, here are my rules on when we need to show up for things (thus dictating when we need to leave):

• If something is scheduled to start at a hard-and-fast time, like a class or a doctor’s appointment, you need to be there at a bare minimum 3 minutes earlier than the start time. There is, however, no reason to be there 15 minutes early. Things like movies, plays, or other public functions are a special sub-class in which you need to get there early enough to find a good seat, and thus could extend the early arrival to a half-hour or more depending on estimated difficulty in getting said seat. (You also need to be there before the previews.) Being late is unacceptable, period.
• If you’re catching a plane, 1.5-2.5 hours prior to take-off, depending on the airport.
• If you’re catching a train, up to 30 minutes early, if you’re stressed, but 2-10 minutes is fine.
• If you’re visiting someone you don’t know well, or it’s a business visit, up to 5 minutes early. Period. No earlier, and no later than the exact start time.
• If you’re visiting a friend’s house locally – even if a certain time has been established – 5 minutes either way is acceptable. 10 minutes either way is too much.
• If you’re visiting family locally, 10 minutes early or late is permissible, but you’re pushing it.
• If you’re visiting a friend or family at a distance (i.e., an hour or more drive) your leeway extends to 10 minutes either direction. Leeway increases proportionate to how long you are intending to stay, to a maximum of 30 minutes late, but no more than 15 minutes early.
• If you’re going somewhere to eat, leave now.

Two explanations about these rules:

1. These are rules for me. If I’m coming to your place, these are the guidelines I’m shooting for. If you’re accompanying me somewhere, these are the guidelines I’m shooting for. If you’re coming to me? Well, honestly I’m probably looking for you within these ranges, but you can probably multiply the time frames by 3 and I won’t care. Much.
2. I don’t always make it within these guidelines. If you’re someone I’ve come to visit and I’m really late (or even really early, unless you’re my brother), I’m usually pretty stressed about it, even if I don’t show it. But if I’m close to these time frames… no big deal.

My wife probably generally agrees with this list – I haven’t asked her, so maybe not – but she’s undoubtedly willing to leave 3 times earlier than travel time dictates and then drive around your block 80 times wasting time until we hit an acceptable arrival time. I know for a fact she once spent at least 3 hours in a train station – it may have been 5 – waiting for a train. There was no reason she had to be there that early, she just didn’t want to miss the train. Just this month I spent 20 minutes sitting in a parking lot and wandering aimlessly through a grocery store because we had to leave – ’cause maybe a terrorist will blow up the only bridge between here and there and we’ll have to go 40 minutes out of our way to get there. Just so you understand what I’m working with, and where this post came from.

While that’s not exactly the truth about how it went down, that title does reflect a bit of how I feel now that we’ve completed watching Return of the Jedi, and thus the original trilogy.

I definitely didn’t force my kids to watch these movies. They’ve been asking (and at times whining) to see them. I do think that I didn’t hold out as . . . → Read More: Star Wars Conundrum: Original Trilogy Reflection]]> Maybe I should have called this series of posts “Force Fed”.

While that’s not exactly the truth about how it went down, that title does reflect a bit of how I feel now that we’ve completed watching Return of the Jedi, and thus the original trilogy.

I definitely didn’t force my kids to watch these movies. They’ve been asking (and at times whining) to see them. I do think that I didn’t hold out as long as I should have, though. As I had originally expected, they don’t have the attention span at this age to make it through a 2 hour movie and understand what they’re watching. I should have waited another year, maybe two. By the end of the film, both kids were sort of glazed over and not really seeing what they were watching.

Of course, it’s always difficult for me to gauge my kids’ engagement with a film on the first viewing. They don’t react much. They’ll say they liked it, but that’s about as much as you get out of them for a while. They need time to process it. Eventually, if they’re into it, they’ll start incorporating scenes or lines or characters into their playing. That’s happened to a very small degree with Star Wars so far – which, truthfully, depresses me a bit. But that’s really my issue, not theirs.

I want their reactions to be like mine were, and that’s honestly never going to happen. It’s an unrealistic expectation to place on them. What hooked me initially into Star Wars when I was 7 years old was the action – the pace, the scope, its fantastical nature – and of course the visuals. The action was what drew me to the story, which I also appreciated at the time, but action is an integral part of what I’m looking for in Star Wars. My kids are girls. Whether it’s genetic or nurture, they’re not nearly as impressed by action as I am. They, like my wife, seem to get overwhelmed and can’t really follow the plot of an action scene. To them it’s just a lot of stuff going on on-screen – cool looking perhaps, but unimportant to the story beyond its outcome, and thus unworthy of as much attention as an emotionally laden dialogue scene. Age may be a factor in this as well, but I’m willing to bet that if I plopped a boy the same age as my daughters in front of these films he’d be looking for the nearest lightsaber and blaster.

(As an aside, there’s something to be said here about the poor quality (or at least poor handling) of action scenes in general in contemporary movies that supports the “it’s not important” viewpoint – I’m looking at you, Mr. Bay – but maybe that’s a different post.)

My kids like these movies mostly because I like them and it’s something we can share. They latch on to parts of them – they like Yoda, Leia (her hair especially is of great interest), and the scene where the Ewok steals a speeder bike, for example – but there’s no real engagement with the story. That’s not too unusual for them, though. The only movie we’ve seen that I can honestly say they’ve been engaged with at all levels is The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe – and it’s more than probable that the engagement there is because my wife read them all the Narnia books and explained them painstakingly over the course of months prior to watching first the ’70s BBC version and then the newer film. They knew those stories well – the filmed versions just gave them something a little more concrete to picture. Even with that, though, it’s the smaller, more easily digested action scenes they enjoy more.

To throw a movie full of action at them, whose story they have not yet internalized, and expecting them to come out all excited is unfair – especially expecting them to sit through it all at one sitting.

So now I’m back to the conundrum I mentioned the last time… do I move on to The Phantom Menace, and plan to spend the $45 to take them to the 3D release next month? It’s arguably the ‘kid-friendliest’ of the films, so they might engage with it more. Maybe I should show it to them in segments first? Or maybe we need a break, and I should see the 3D version alone (that would be depressing). I don’t know. I’m sure you’ll all hear what I decide on that in a future post.

Turning away from my kids and toward the movie for a second, here’s something that for some reason I never considered before in all the times I watched Return of the Jedi…

When Luke finally takes a swipe at the Emperor with his lightsaber and is blocked by Vader – what is Vader’s motivation there? Is he really, as it appears, trying to protect his Master, or is he trying to protect Luke from taking his first major step on the journey to the Dark Side? We’ve seen in earlier scenes that his allegiance seems to be wavering, and his compassion for his son growing. Perhaps this block is really his first – perhaps tentative – step to saving his son.

It disappoints me that I never considered that before. I’m going to have to take a hit on my Geek Card for that one.

Before and after

See if you can figure out when my most popular post ceased showing up on the first page of search results.

I think I’ve got it figured out.

We’ve now seen A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back a couple of times. There is some question in their minds as to whether Vader was being truthful when he said . . . → Read More: Star Wars Conundrum: Sorted]]> I wrote before about the problem I have with showing my daughters the Star Wars series (well, some of them). It’s difficult to decide what order to show them which versions of the films, and how quickly.

I think I’ve got it figured out.

We’ve now seen A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back a couple of times. There is some question in their minds as to whether Vader was being truthful when he said he was Luke’s father. I’m going to play that up for a little while, and then we’ll move on to Return of the Jedi. It’s just the most natural progression, and I can’t keep a lid on this Vader thing forever. Someone (my mother) will spill the beans and verify the parentage and the entire history if she gets the chance.

This works out well enough, I think, time-wise. The Phantom Menace will be released in 3D in the theaters in February, and I plan to take the kids. The only real question there is whether they’ll be able to sit through the whole thing. That’s a long film for elementary age kids.

They tend to do better if they know the story ahead of time, so I may show it to them on DVD first. Still debating whether that’s a good move. I guess that’s my new conundrum.

After that, I think we’ll take a breather. There’s no immediate need to go into Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith. I think they need a few more years under their belts before we go there. At least, that’s the current thinking.

In related news: I love this ad for the new 3D release.

I’ve enjoyed almost all the Brisk animated commercials. I’m glad to see them bring that back. THAT’S BRISK, BABY!

Let me be clear about this: these are not hardened criminals. These aren’t even soft-boiled criminals. These are a few teenage kids who need some focus to engage their brains a little. They weren’t really out to be destructive, they were just doing what seemed like fun at the time . . . → Read More: Kids these days 2 (or How not to get away with stuff)]]> Yesterday, I recounted the tale of the hooligans whose plans were dashed when I scared them off. They thought they escaped, but they were wrong.

Let me be clear about this: these are not hardened criminals. These aren’t even soft-boiled criminals. These are a few teenage kids who need some focus to engage their brains a little. They weren’t really out to be destructive, they were just doing what seemed like fun at the time on their way home. It just so happened that what seemed like fun was probably not the smartest thing to do.

I’ve been there. I was them at one point, long ago.

That’s how I knew I could find them.

Ice on my driveway

After I scared them off, I went outside and assessed the side of my house for damage. There wasn’t any I could see, nor was there anything wrong with my car, aside from being a little wet from the shattering ice. As I stood on my freezing cold driveway in bare feet I could see the trio emerge from behind a house about 5 doors up from mine. True to the idiocy of the teen years, they didn’t even look back to see if anyone was looking for them. So I stood there watching while they walked calmly up the street as if nothing had happened. At this point my family was on their way home from a walk. The noise from my returning kids prompted one of the teens to turn around. He may have seen me, because they walked back behind the houses again, out of view.

There were three things that I knew that prompted my next decision. First, I knew these kids had a completely unfocused hour to kill. Second, I knew that they were stupid enough to do something potentially destructive in broad daylight at a house where they didn’t bother to check if someone was watching. Finally, they were so confident in their own indestructibility that they didn’t think they would get in trouble. Put those things together and you’ve got a recipe for continued shenanigans, which could possibly have gotten them or others hurt, or at least caused some real damage (intentional or not).

So I decided to let them know they weren’t as invincible or as slippery as they thought they were.

I went back inside and put on some shoes, then got in my car and drove around the neighborhood looking for them. At first I gave them a little credit – a little too much credit, it turns out. I figured they would at least have been smart enough to double back or cross the main road to get out of my development. Even at their age, I would have been smart enough to take a non-obvious route to my destination after I saw someone watching me do something less than innocent. So I went where I would have gone had I been them, ignoring the obvious straight line path they had been on. Turns out I was over thinking it. I had wasted a lot of time.

By this point they had either had enough time to reach their destination, in which case they would truly have escaped, or they had to be on their original path. So I returned to the obvious route. Along the way I ran into a group of kids, one of whom looked like he might have been with the hooligans. I stopped and talked to them for a second – probably freaking them out as some crazy stranger was asking their names and where they’d been. I felt kind of creepy myself at that point, actually. When it was obvious that they had all been together and nowhere near my house, I thanked them and drove on.

It was just around the next corner that I saw them. It was rush hour now, and they were darting across a busy road with low visibility – a turn on a hill. Two of them on the other side were egging the third on to dart across. There was a break in the traffic and he wandered across the road, stopping to dance on the yellow line, which evoked giggles from all.

I sat at the intersection not far at all from them. If they’d have thought twice about it, they would have recognized the car they almost hit with that ice. Or at least wondered why a car was not pulling out of the intersection. But they didn’t. They just continued on. There was a wooden post in the lawn they were crossing and one of them spent some time trying to kick it loose. That proved to me that they were still willing to be destructive, and it occurred to me that I needed some way other than just pulling up and talking to them to get it through their heads that they can’t just walk around doing this stuff. So I turned around and went back to my house for my camera. As I passed them on my way out and back, I saw them doing a few other things like jumping in and out of the bed of someone’s pickup truck, ringing a doorbell and running, and just being generally stupid and hooliganish.

As they were entering someone’s driveway (it may have been theirs, but I doubt it) on a side street, I slowed as I drove by, aimed my camera out my window and called, “Hi guys!” They turned in unison to look and I snapped the picture, capturing all of their shocked faces.

Then I went home.

It’s possible that the knowledge that they were caught was enough to at least make them think the next time they’re out wandering aimlessly. It certainly would have scared me as a kid.

When I got home, I thought about it some more. I hadn’t seen what else these kids had done that night. It’s possible I only saw the “innocent” stuff. Who knows what else they may have done, before or after the incident at my house. What if they continued on and actually got hurt or hurt someone (accidental though I’m sure it would be). What if they did some actual damage?

So I called the cops and let them know the situation and that I had the picture. An officer stopped by and we went over the story. In walking him through it we discovered the kids had pulled the snap-on label off my air-conditioner in addition to the ice thing. He knew the kids, and confirmed what I suspected: they weren’t really bad kids, but certainly flirted with the darker side and had been involved in previous incidents.

I’m sending the picture in to the officer. I doubt it will ever be needed, unless he wants to take it further and scare them. I’m not pushing for anything to happen. I just hope the kids get some kind of lesson out of this. Something like: if you’re trying to escape, walking in a straight line is stupid.

The art of the stealthy escape seems to be gone. I blame the lack of quality ninja movies, like we had back in the ’80s.

My house is on a cul-de-sac and there aren’t a lot of kids. It’s pretty quiet, usually. It . . . → Read More: Kids these days (or Get off my lawn!)]]> Yesterday afternoon I was, as usual, working from my office upstairs. Pam and the girls were on a walk around the neighborhood, so it was just me in the house. The room had gotten a bit stuffy, so I opened a window to the front of the house for some fresh air. That’s how I heard them.

My house is on a cul-de-sac and there aren’t a lot of kids. It’s pretty quiet, usually. It was pretty cold yesterday, too, so that cut down on the joggers who come through periodically. I hadn’t heard anything outside for a while, so the voices coming from my lawn caught my attention. I got up and went to my window to see if I needed to avoid some salesmen or Jehovah’s Witnesses or something.

It turned out to be a kid. He was standing at the far end of my driveway talking to some others I couldn’t see beside my house. They were talking about something I couldn’t quite make out, but I did hear one of them say they had about an hour to kill. I assumed they were using my lawn as a shortcut to get into the neighborhood on their way back home. But it seemed odd that the others were taking so long to come into my view. And the laughter I heard started worrying me.

It wasn’t an evil laugh or anything. It’s just that I’d heard that teenage laughter before. I’d laughed that teenage laughter before. It was light, but with a mischievous bent to it. There was something conspiratorial about it. At the very least they were thinking of doing something that probably wasn’t the brightest idea, and they were going to do it soon. So I watched.

I was going to go downstairs and “happen upon them” but I figured I’d miss it by the time I put my shoes on and got outside. I was right. A couple of seconds later, I saw it, and I was shocked.

The remaining two teens came around the corner of my house carrying a huge chunk of ice. At least 5 inches thick and 3 feet around, this was a heavy chunk of ice that could do some damage. And they were headed toward my car.

I don’t know if they really intended to throw the ice at my car or not – or even if they could really throw something that heavy – but it was definitely time to act. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do from my perch other than scare them, so I did. With all the authority and depth I could muster I yelled “Hey!”

“Hey!” is not a really articulate or well-reasoned argument, but in forcefully breaking the relative silence it had the intended effect. It scared the pants off them for a few seconds. When they panicked, the ice dropped onto the driveway and shattered. I could almost see the blood drain from the kid at the end of the driveway as he physically recoiled.

They ran headlong across my neighbor’s yard (one of them through a bush) still laughing that teenage laugh – this time laced with profanity – and escaped. Or at least they would have if they weren’t just stupid teenagers.

Here’s a hint for people trying to get away from someone: go somewhere they can’t see you, and change direction.

Maybe it’s a sign of the decline of America that kids these days aren’t even smart enough to escape properly from a guy who isn’t fully dressed and can’t immediately follow them.

But for that story, you’ll have to come back tomorrow.

There is no way she’s done this without cheating.

See, it started out innocently enough. She started putting up cute little statuses on Facebook about the things our kids were doing. Her friends started encouraging her to write them down and save them. Then even non-kid related statuses started generating discussion. Along the way the idea of a blog came along.

But she didn’t want to do it. She was afraid no . . . → Read More: Cheater!]]> My wife cheats.

There is no way she’s done this without cheating.

See, it started out innocently enough. She started putting up cute little statuses on Facebook about the things our kids were doing. Her friends started encouraging her to write them down and save them. Then even non-kid related statuses started generating discussion. Along the way the idea of a blog came along.

But she didn’t want to do it. She was afraid no one would read it. She wouldn’t know what to write, she said. She didn’t know how to use blog software, she said.

I kept telling her to stop worrying about that stuff. The blog software was easy to use, and I could set it up for her. I knew she’d have an audience because she’s been cultivating one on Facebook for years now without even trying. All she had to do was write stuff and let them know.

So yesterday, she finally launched her blog. Personally, I think she should have gone with the title “Show Dem I’m Wordy” which was one of the front-runners, but the title she settled on – Clanging from the Clock in the Hall – is good too. (Both titles are based on Sound of Music quotes.)

Anyway, she launched the blog yesterday. It’s good already. She’s a good writer.

But there is a serious problem.

Her stats are already outstripping mine.

She started yesterday. Yesterday. 

Her blog got more hits yesterday than my daily average for every day last week, and she didn’t launch until 4:30pm.

I’ve been writing this blog for over 6 years and she outstripped me in under 6 hours. And she doesn’t have a single spammer hit (which makes up about 50% of my readership).

This is outrageous. It would be humiliating if she wasn’t cheating.

Obviously she’s hired someone to infiltrate the servers at my hosting service and doctor her logs. It’s the only explanation.

Whoever she hired is pretty good. I can’t find any proof yet. But when I do, I’m going to yank all the fake entries. I don’t want her to feel too bad when her stats drop back to 3 hits a day, like I was lucky to get when I started. I don’t want to put up with the whining that would cause, so do me a favor. Go over and take a look at her site so there will still be some hits left once I clean up this debacle.