Category: Humor

Chompers

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

Children are always curious about things they aren’t allowed to do.  If you warn them to stay away from something all they want is to go near it.  If you tell them something is dangerous, they want to investigate, to find out why.

Children also like to mimic the behaviors of the grown-ups they are around.  This is frequently proved when little children see grown-ups chewing gum.  As soon as they’re old enough to speak the words, kids will ask for gum if they see adults chewing it.  Of course you don’t give gum to little kids because they don’t know not to swallow it or they are more likely to choke on it.  Eventually, though, children are old enough, knowledgeable enough to be allowed to chew gum and they feel more special for their achievement.

And then kids go to school and once again, gum is not allowed.  Once again, all they want is what they can not have.  Who among us never snuck chewing gum in grade school, as if holding the softened, flavorless lump in your mouth is equally as satisfying as chewing the gum, because you can’t actually chew for fear of being caught?  Which of us did not chew a mere fraction of a piece of gum in the hope that we could chew subtly enough that our teachers would not notice.

Eventually, as we age and we can be trusted not to stick our gum to the bottom of any hard surface within reach, that restriction is removed and we’re free to chew all the gum we want.  For some people, the loss of that restriction removes the appeal and chewing gum becomes less important; something that’s saved for a quick breath freshener after a meal, or a means to moisten a dried mouth and sometimes to satisfy a craving without actually ingesting extra calories.

For me, gum became an almost constant pass-time.  I liked small pieces of gum, spearmint, whitening.  I loved to chew gum.  I was never tacky with my gum, believing fully that gum seen or heard by others was gum that should be in the trash.  Gum chewing was for my own personal pleasure and so three years ago when I embarked a journey to straighter teeth, by way of Invisalign invisible braces, I knew that the thing I would have the most difficult with, would be the inability to chew gum.

Invisalign aligners are supposed to be worn 22 hours a day.  You take them out to eat a meal.  As soon as the meal is finished you’re supposed to immediately floss and brush your teeth and then reinsert your aligners.  That doesn’t leave any time for chewing gum.  When I first started Invisalign I really missed chewing gum but of course I couldn’t do it while wearing my aligners and eventually I got used to it.

Three years later, I hardly think about gum at all.  In fact, on Tuesday, I finished my course of Invisalgn treatment.  The dentist removed the attachments that have been adhered to my teeth for three years and I walked out of his office a free, un-tooth-encumbered man… For now.

Tonight, as I was changing my clothes after work it suddenly dawned on me, out of the blue, I haven’t had a single piece of gum since. Haven’t even thought about it.  What on earth has happened to me???

I’m Getting Married

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

OK.  I’m not getting married…  But I can!

Well, no, actually, I can’t.  But if I could, then I could.

Maybe I better explain…

One summer when I was young, my sister and I were visiting my father and on one particular day, I overheard my father telling my sister about a popular “game”, when he was in high school that he heard the girls playing.  I assume it was the girls.  It sounds like a girls kind of game, but who knows.

Anyway, the game goes something like this.  You pick your favorite car.  Whatever your favorite car is, you look for it everyday all the time when you’re out and about and you count it; only, you only count the red ones, ’cause, you know red and love and all that.  Anyway, you count your favorite car, in red only, every time you see it and then when you reach 500, in theory, you will marry the next boy you kiss.

Erin’s favorite car at the time (roughly 1985) was the Mercury Cougar.  Mercury Cougars, in red, were not exactly common place and to be honest, I don’t know how far she got before she lost track, gave up, outgrew the game.

I didn’t see any reason why this had to be a girls only game.  I was such a romantic as a kid *cough, cough* yeah right *cough, cough*.  So I decided I’d count my favorite car, a Pontiac Fiero, in red only, of course.  I liked the Pontiac Fiero because it was, in my 10-year-old estimation, the closest attainable facsimile to a DeLorean/Time Machine I was ever going to get and that was enough for me.  Red Pontiac Fieros were a little easier to come by than red Mercury Cougars, but before too long my favorite car changed to something else and I had to start over.  And it changed again, and I lost count, and it changed again, and I lost count again, and eventually, I just gave up.  I was pretty young after all, marriage seemed a lifetime away.  Little did I know…

~~~~~

One of the first things that I discovered I had in common with Lil’B is that we are both very fond of Ford Mustangs.  We’ll be driving down the road and suddenly I’ll hear his low, excited voice from the back seat saying “Moostaaang!!!  I see one!  Over there!”  I quickly began to realize that THERE ARE MUSTANGS EVERYWHERE around here!

One day, just for grins and giggles I counted how many mustangs we saw.  I don’t remember what the count ended up being in a one day period and counting all of them, not just the red ones, but it was significant.  And counting them that day reminded me of this game my father had inadvertently taught me lo those many years ago. So I thought, “What the hell?  I’ll count the red, late-model mustangs, my dream car, and I’ll see how long it takes me to get to 500.”

And last night, on my way home from work, merely five months since I started counting, I passed my 5o0th red, late-model mustang on the highway.  And now the next guy I kiss, is the guy I’m going to marry… Right?

Look out boys!

The End of The World As We Know It

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

I’m continuing this habit of going to the gym during the workday in order to make sure it happens.  So far so good, but on my way back to the office today something unexpected happened.

As I walked up the tree-lined sidewalk across from the park next to my building a strong gust of wind blew down the street.  The gust of wind is not particularly unusual.  The far end of Harrison Street begins by emerging from an underwater tunnel from Alameda, serving as the primary means of reaching downtown Oakland from the far side of an estuary.  In other words, the street begins at the edge of a body of water.  Alameda is a relatively small island, and beyond it is the San Francisco Bay.

Incidentally, the beach on which I spent my afternoon yesterday, flying kites with Lil’B and, as it turns out, getting a rather unusually shaped but bright red sunburn on my right forearm and backs of both calves, which, naturally I was completely unaware of until later in the evening when I randomly scratched an itch on my arm with my meant-to-clip-those-a-week-ago too long finger nails before crying out in pain and looking down to see my glowing red flesh with the half inch wide pale strip where my LiveStrong bracelet had protected my skin, was in Alameda and the waves that rushed upon the shore were in fact from the San Francisco Bay and not the Pacific Ocean.   (Was that really all one sentence?  Heather Armstrong would be so proud.)

Lil’B spent more time with his kite in the air and looking at the ground collecting Sea Shells than he did actually paying attention to his kite which only prompted me to reprove him, I don’t know, A FEW HUNDRED TIMES.  “You’re getting too close to that tree, you’re gonna get tangled up.”  “You’ve got to keep your distance or our kites are gonna get stuck together.”  “My kite is not coming after yours, but that’s why you’ve got to keep a little distance between us.”  Finally, I reeled my kite in and followed him around as he wondered up and down the beach looking for more shells.  He told me, though how he would know I have no idea, that he’s going to have to collect sea shells for his class next year in the third grade.  I’m not sure what was behind that statement, but I told him I guessed we’d have to make some more trips to some more beaches then.  So all of that is to say that you can potentially look forward to more beach pictures that are of the actual Pacific Ocean in the future… Maybe.  Also, that my skin really hurts.

But I digress.

This wind tunnel affect on Harrison Street is not an unusual thing especially since there is a “lake” on the far side of the park and my building is surrounded by wind causing bodies of water.  So as I walked up the street, it wasn’t the gust of wind that caught me by surprise; I’m used to that and it felt kind of nice after heating myself up in the gym.  No, what surprised me was the considerable number of dried or drying leaves that fell from the trees.  It is still July, isn’t it?

I am not a fan of extreme heat; it’s the reason I moved away from Oklahoma, after all.  I don’t mind it so much in the evenings when I’m at home and I can open up the doors and windows and wear fewer clothes to keep cool, but during the work day when I have already had my work-out and showered and I’m heading back to the office, I sure don’t want to be getting sweaty all over again if I can help it.  So with that in mind, I know better than to complain.  But I’m a bit surprised because while it is still July, it is also July and we haven’t had summer yet.  We’ve had only a handful, maybe a child sized handful, of days this year that have gotten into the 80s and many that have gotten just barely into the 70s, but most days it is in the 60s.  Being anti-heat (anti-sweating) as I am, I’m truly not complaining about this.  It’s just that, well, it’s rather like waiting for the other shoe to drop.  You know its coming.  It should have already happened, but it’s not.

A lot of the continent is experiencing summer now.  Places that are farther north than I am are having blazing hot, humid weather.  Even the southern half of the state I live in is having high heat, but here in the bay area…

And now we’re starting to experience autumn?  Are we skipping summer altogether this year?  Is this the end of the world as we know it?

It’s A Mystery

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

Sometimes this whole blogging thing is just a mystery to me!

I average anywhere from zero to eight hits on any given day.  I’d love to have more, of course, but that’s not the only reason I keep this blog so whatever.  I’m grateful for the readers I do have and I’m really grateful for the creative outlet (thought sometimes it doesn’t feel so creative.)

Yesterday, I had 44 hits!  Today I have 24 and it’s only 1:30 in the afternoon!  I don’t know what’s caused the surge in visit’s to my blog and I’m not deluding myself into thinking that it’ll stay this way but it’s kinda cool to see that spike in the graph.

But here’s the mystery part, in my mind anyway.  The top “search term” on my dashboard right now is “Gang Showers”.  Now, I know exactly where I used that term but it is not a category, or a tag on my blog.  Yet the post in which I made a reference to a “gang shower” has the most hits of all the posts listed.

Makes you wonder sometimes, what people are hoping to find… I’m sure they didn’t find it here.