Crater Lake Crayfish Crisis

Crayfish final

By Jack Edwards

Loyal readers know that I nearly lost my life at Crater Lake National Park last summer hanging on by my butt cheeks as I traversed Rim Drive to brave my way to the Rim Village Gift Shop (AKA Future Garage Sale Item Warehouse). I have not been eager to return, but my help may now be needed to address the rapidly emerging Crayfish Crisis recently reported by journalist Lee Juillerat of the Klamath Fall’s Herald and News. It appears that a Rumble Down Under is in full swing. The lake’s crayfish are locked in an epic battle with the lake’s newts. So far, it’s a bit lopsided. It looks like a battle between Seal Team Six and the Cloistered Sisters of Perpetual Peace.

Crater Lake newts aren’t just any pedestrian newt. They are special Mazama Newts, only found in Crater Lake. They are darker than the common newt and “less toxic” (just ask any Crater Lake crayfish). No one knows how these newts got into the lake, but scientists believe they may have been there for thousands of years. The crayfish on the other hand are nothing but a bunch of crustacean carpetbaggers. They arrived in 1915 and have been swaggering around acting like they own the place ever since. “[Y]ou can hardly pick up a rock without finding one,” the article quotes Mark Buktenica, who worked as Crater Lake National Park’s aquatic biologist for 30 years. These crayfish are the pit bull of crustaceans. Juillerat’s article references a YouTube video that depicts crayfish as, “voracious, efficient killers” presenting a scene “reminiscent of a horror movie.”

Proof, the scientists say, that the crayfish are driving out the Mazama newt, is that the newts used to hang out near the lake shore sipping tiny umbrella drinks and mugging for park visitors, but now the only places you can find newts are the few places where the crayfish thugs have not yet arrived. While I am not a fully licensed crustacean biologist, I have my own theory. It’s called “Mazama newt flight.” I think the Mazama newts, with all their old money and traditional ways, are simply stuck-up and think they’re too good to live near the crayfish. The newts are packing up their tiny station wagons and moving deeper into the lake. Scientists have spotted them living 820 feet beneath the surface living in miniature three bedroom, two bath subdivisions.  (Okay, the article only mentions the newts found at 820 feet.  Mr. Juillerat was vague on their accommodations, leaving me draw logical inferences).

Park aquatic biologist, Scott Girdner is quoted in Juillerat’s article pondering the effectiveness of possible solutions, “We don’t know if anything would be successful. Will newts exist or be driven to extinction.” I think I speak for everyone who never heard of a Mazama newt before reading this article – I don’t want to even THINK of living in a world without Mazama newts.

Lucky for everybody, I visited New Orleans last year. The New Orleans City Code requires every resident to consume twice their body weight in crayfish each year. Crayfish are in every dish that comes out of the kitchen except chocolate cake – and I think I even had a piece of that with a crayfish that tripped and fell headlong into the batter. So here’s my plan. We import a team of crack, yet rotund, Cajun chefs from New Orleans and turn them loose in Crater Lake National Park. Trust me on this folks, crayfish are De-Lish. Within a month, the only surviving crayfish left in Crater Lake will be wearing Mazama newt disguises and tiptoeing lightly near the nether reaches of Wizard Island. I’m already suggesting they rename the place Gumbo Crater Lake National Park. Visitor numbers will shoot through the roof. And they can use the extra money to finally fix that deathtrap they call Rim Drive.

In 90 Seconds or Less

90 Seconds Final

By Jack Edwards

Every once in a great while, you come across a book that changes your life. One of those books crossed my path this week, and I will forever be grateful to the author, Nicholas Boothman. The book is How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less. You may recall from your high school psychology class something called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow created a pyramid listing, in order of importance, basic psychological needs. These include “Self-actualization,” “Esteem,” and at the top of the chart, of course, “The need for people to STOP BOTHERING YOU.”

Those who know me best, know that I don’t like people, and I’m not particularly interested in any of them liking me. (For example, I don’t know this Maslow guy, and I’m sure he’s nice enough and well-groomed, but I probably wouldn’t like him). So I realized immediately, that if I embraced the techniques in this book, and then conducted myself in the precise opposite, people would finally leave me alone. Peace and quiet – tranquility itself – would finally be mine.

I dove into the book like a starving man into a vat of SPAM.

I quickly discovered that I didn’t need to master anything beyond the first lesson: The greeting.

Mr. Boothman explains that the greeting can be broken down into five parts. (Yeah, I know. Somebody had some time on his hands). He abbreviates the steps of an effective greeting as follows: 1. Open, 2. Eye, 3. Beam, 4. Hi, and 5. Lean.

“Open” refers to opening your heart with a positive attitude. This causes your body to send out all kinds of warm and welcoming signals to the other person. My usually attitude should suffice.

“Eye” refers to being the first to make eye contact. To quote the author: “Eye contact is real contact.” ‘Nuff said. High, low, left or right – I’ve got plenty of options.

“Beam” refers to a warm smile. Okay, remember Joe Friday on Dragnet? Remember his expression when he finally confronted the suspect and made the big arrest? Time to channel me some Joe Friday.

“Hi.” Here’s where the author shows us his real expertise – his in-depth knowledge of human psychology. He explains that we should say, “hi” when we meet someone. Thanks, Nicholas. I’ll be grunting my greetings from here on out.

“Lean” toward the person as you open your heart, make eye contact, smile like a maniac, and say hello. I’ve signed up for lessons at the local gymnastic school to learn how to lean backwards. My instructor tells me that this may not be possible without putting fishing weights in my front pockets.  I’m stopping by the sporting goods store later today.

According to Boothman, the real key to making people like you in 90 seconds or less, is your attitude. Apparently, your body can’t help but send out about million nonverbal signals per nanosecond that you’re a swell chap worthy of instantaneous lifelong friendship if you have the right attitude. He suggests doing a drill where you sit in a quiet place and visualize a moment you’ve had where you felt an overwhelming sense of whatever positive attitude you want to greet people with, and then recall that sense when you greet someone. The moment I’ve chosen is the time a drunk transient riding a bicycle ran into the side of my pickup truck causing a severe amount of damage to my front right quarter panel with her head. The dent is still there, so it’ll make it easy to recall each time I greet someone new.

It is, therefore, with enthusiasm that I highly recommend Mr. Boothman’s book. Mr. Boothman, wherever you are, thank you for telling me How to Make People Dislike Me in 90 Seconds or Less. Just don’t get the idea that if you were in the area that I’d like to actually meet you. We’re good from right here.

Adventures in Soap Making

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By Jack Edwards

My Michigander sister is always busy – the type of person that is so active she makes you feel like, well, the television watching slouch that you are. She has a barrel load of hobbies. The three things she looks for in a hobby are: 1. Convenience (something she can do at home), 2. Productivity (the creation of useful product), and 3. The opportunity to permanently blind herself or a loved one.

Amateur soap making fit the bill perfectly because it involves using lye. For those of you who don’t read books about pioneers or who aren’t aficionados of Little House on the Prairie reruns, lye is a key ingredient in soap. Only one problem, lye is a teensy bit toxic. Take a look at the warning label on the bottle. The first thing you’ll notice is that the warning label is the size of Kansas. The second thing is that Rule #1 is that under no circumstance should you handle the bottle unless you’re wearing one of those Ebola protection suits.

Perhaps I’m overstating the concern. The warning on the bottle simply mentions that you shouldn’t let it touch any part of you or your clothing. And warns you to wear chemical resistant gloves, protective clothing and goggles (chemical resistant goggles I suppose). The warning includes a laundry list of the types of accidental exposure, and after each, it directs the victim (i.e. amateur soap hobbyist) to seek medical attention IMMEDIATELY. Under “Ingestion,” it says that you may give the soap maker sips of water if the person is “conscious,” but emphasizes that you should not give the person sips of water if the person is “unconscious or convulsing.” So, as you can see, amateur soap making sounds like a lot of fun. It’s really just like bread making, that is, if accidentally ingesting yeast caused you to collapse into a writhing, convulsing coma.

My sister came out to Oregon to visit and tried to get our mother to start making her own soap. But our mother pointed out that she can afford 69 cents to buy a bar of soap, and flatly announced, “I’ll pass.”
On the other hand, the thought of mixing toxic and potentially explosive chemicals naturally appealed to me. So I eagerly volunteered for a soap making apprenticeship.

There was much to learn. First off, you might think that soap is soap. But it turns out that soap isn’t soap. There are about a bazillion decisions to make. What do you want it to smell like?  (You have three trillion choices).   What color do you want it? (If you want your soap to look like dirt – put honey in it; it’ll come out brown – not a good brown, more of a… yeah, that shade of brown. I like my soap white – the way God intended). I stood back and watched my sister mix and stir and boil and finally pour the concoction into a plastic mold. She handed it to me and told me to leave it in the mold until it was dry, and then she took off back to her soap making headquarters in Michigan.

This is where the trouble started. I let it dry, and then for the life of me, I couldn’t get it out of the mold. I shook it. I pounded on it. I slammed it against things. I used a butcher knife to slice it into bars. Over several days, I fought an epic battle with my soap to remove it from the mold. It wouldn’t budge. It’s sitting there now, mocking me. This temporary setback aside, it has been a very positive experience, and I strongly recommend soap making as a hobby. Trust me. I wouldn’t lye to you. And I’ll even loan you my Ebola suit.

My El Capitan, “Actually”

Driving

By Jack Edwards

I belong to a pot-bellied demographic that doesn’t need to seek out thrills to satisfy my desire for excitement. I don’t need to climb Yosemite’s El Capitan free handed, run with the angry bulls or skydive from the edge of space to feel the rush of adrenaline. You see, I’m teaching my 15-year-old to drive. My daughter Emma has a “strong sense of self” and pretty much declared after her first lesson that she was good to go. Unfortunately, as much as I dread clinging to the passenger seat and praying for just one more day of precious life, I had to insist on additional lessons to fine-tune a few essential skills. Little things, like not ramming into stationary objects. My work continues, and the status of my situation can best be described using a term you hear a lot  at the US War College: fluid.
Things got off to a rocky start. At the beginning of Emma’s first lesson, she hopped in and began situating herself – not by positioning the mirrors, but rather the stereo. I, still clinging to the hope that I might survive the experience, flipped the stereo back off, only to be met with the type of reaction you might expect after zapping someone with an electronic cattle prod. Emma, with the type of energy only a high school sophomore can radiate, quickly and excitedly explained that the stereo helps her concentrate and, “actually” would help her drive safer (or more precisely, “Music helps me concentrate, actually.”) This is the same logic she uses when she studies, but because my life is not in immediate peril of slamming into an oncoming semi in those circumstances, I acquiesce. Here, no can do.
Timing is still an issue. One minute we are sitting at a stop sign waiting for a vehicle that has the right-of-way bearing down at a distance of three miles away – a speck on the horizon, really – enough time for us to finish our lesson and put the car back in the garage before it arrives. Sea creatures have crawled up on the shore and evolved legs in less time than she sometimes declares the road clear to turn. However, don’t let this apparent sense of over caution fool you, because the next minute she’ll see a light turn from green to yellow one town over and she punches the gas to try to make the signal – only to be deterred by my high-pitched shriek of terror.
The biggest mystery is her parking technique. My daughter has proven extremely consistent in her parking. She manages to turn into the spot and put her right tires directly onto the right divider line. Not occasionally. Every time. She’s 100%. Like a pirate lacking depth perception because of his eye patch. She has what I call Pirate Parking.
One thing I have to give her credit for is her ability to adapt to the changing environment. Case-in-point, and I don’t know why, I routinely tell her to turn right, when I mean left and vice versa. Not only does she know what I mean, which as I have said is the opposite of what I’ve told her, she usually just ignores my mistake. But when she does correct me, she does so politely, at least for a high-schooler, “It’s right, actually.”
Side note: If you are a person of faith, desiring to lead a diehard atheist to a belief in God, try letting them take your daughter on a driving lesson. They’ll be applying for seminary by the time they pull back into your driveway.
Well, I gotta go. It’s time for another lesson – actually.

The Happiest People on Earth

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By Jack Edwards

The three happiest people on Earth are, in ascending order: #3. Lotteries winners (before the relatives find out), #2. Patients whose cancer tests have come back negative, and (in a dominant first position) #1. Airline passengers who have just landed after a long flight seated in the dreaded middle seat. Here are five rules to help you survive this ordeal:

1. Never, repeat, NEVER, travel in the middle seat. Ask the boarding agent if there is room on the exterior of the plane – someplace where you can get a good grip and increase your chance of survival. (Ask where that kid who made it to Hawaii rode. Ask for that spot.)

2. Mentally prepare yourself by studying The Pastor’s Guide to Preparing the Condemned Inmate for Execution.

3. Read one of Leo Buscaglia’s books about how to get in touch with your sensitive side. (To prepare for all that shoulder to shoulder contact with your two new best friends).

4. Upon sitting down, take both elbows, then jam them out and down like an NFL linebacker getting down into position. You own those armrests. They’re yours. It’s the least the world owes you.

5. If you know anyone with a serious illness who has access to coma inducing pills, raid their medicine cabinet and wash a handful down just prior to take-off. (Official Jocularious.com Warning: Consult with your doctor prior to doing this. If your doctor approves, consider having the following dream during the flight; it’s called: “The airline pays you to sit in the middle seat.”

On a more positive note, try to make the best of it. General George Patton once said, “People are always asking me, ‘General, where did you muster the fortitude to conquer the Axis Forces and bring victory to the U.S.?’ Simple, I tell them. I have always made it a point to sit in the middle seat.” Harry Houdini perfected his greatest tricks by practicing escaping from the middle seat.

I have never understood why the CIA has been willing to take the heat for waterboarding terrorists, when all they had to do was make them fly from city to city strapped into the middle seat. In particular, the middle seats immediately in front of the exit row and in front of the rear toilet – because those are very special middle seats: They don’t recline those luxurious four inches!

While I’m handing out free advice, let me give a little to the money grubbing airlines who are now charging passengers for each square of toilet paper. If you bloodsuckers really want to make extra money, take a lesson from all the science fiction movies that involve space travel. Whenever the spaceship is going to travel light-years from one galaxy to the next, the humans lie down in clear Plexiglas capsules and are put into a sleep-like state. I’m not saying that airlines should install capsules between the window and aisle seats, but they could install masks which hang on the back of the seat directly in front of them that dispenses that gas that dentists use. Put a credit card swiper next to it. You’ll make a bundle. You’d have passengers begging to sit in the middle seats. Knife fights would break out over who gets to sit in the middle seat. (Okay, I know I said this advice was free, but now that I think about it, I should at least get a coupon for a coach round-trip fare).

Well, according to the captain, it’s time to stow my laptop away. We’re beginning our descent. For the third flight in this three-leg journey, I’m going to be the happiest person in the world.

Surviving the Blue Gatorade Tsunami

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By Jack Edwards

My wife recently informed me that I’d volunteered to help out at a fundraiser. This has happened before. So far, I had narrowly survived these bouts of my wife’s generosity of my time. In this case, they needed parents to staff the concession stand at our daughter’s school during a football game. Some vague percentage of the profit would benefit some vague aspect of her cross country team – perhaps paying off the coach’s gambling debt. (Official Lawsuit Avoidance Notice: My last comment is a joke. I don’t know if the coach even plays Go Fish. The fact that he was observed sitting at the high stakes Baccarat Table at Caesars last summer proves nothing.)

It turned out that my wife had volunteered both of us. She signed us up the same night as friends of ours, who for the purposes of this column I will refer to as “Lisa” and “Dennis” because their names happen to be Lisa and Dennis.

I decided to put on a happy face. If my wife was willing to devote her time to the cause, heck, the least I could do is stand shoulder to shoulder with her. My respect for her dedication to the cause continued to grow right up to the point she disappeared. Yes, the day before the event, she hopped on a plane and took off. (Some lame excuse about needing to attend a board meeting of an organization that helps needy children in foreign countries.)

I decided to do the only thing I could. I started practicing my cough. When you call in sick you have to slip in at least one authentic sounding cough, two if it’s a really important event. This was a one cough event. Unfortunately, my wife was one step ahead of me. She had somehow developed an inkling that I might skip out. This was perhaps due to my negligently telling her that I was planning to skip out. She contacted Lisa, and they jumped into action like tag team professional wrestlers, only instead of climbing up on the ropes with folding chairs and flying off to body slam me, they used text messages.

Defeated, I showed up. To my surprise, the time flew. My shift started at 7:30, and before I knew it, I looked at my watch and it was already 7:35.

I was relieved to find that Dennis was not given a candy-related assignment. I felt very strongly that his selling candy would be a direct conflict of interest. You see, Dennis is a dentist – a Pediatric Dentist. I would have had to have intervened.

My assignment was to stand behind the guy taking orders at the window, and when someone ordered a drink, to retrieve it. Only I didn’t need to listen to every drink order, because every drink order was the same. We had every soft drink available, but the only drink anyone ever ordered was blue Gatorade. I don’t drink Gatorade, but if I ever do, I’m going to drink the blue flavor. They must put crack cocaine in it or something. We sold gallons of it. By then end of the first quarter of the football game, we had to call the Gatorade hotline for emergency reserves. Three forklifts worked in unison offloading pallets of blue Gatorade though the back of the concession stand. We were ceremonially placing the bottles in the cooler and then retrieving them before their temperature had dropped a degree. We were serving lukewarm blue Gatorade. And the masses were guzzling it down like camels.

So, once again, I survived my wife’s generosity. But I sense that wherever she is right now, I may be volunteering for something even more challenging. So I’m doing the only thing I can. I practicing the perfect cough.

If You Want to Feed Your Family for Free – Move to Montana

Roadkill

By Jack Edwards

If I had to describe myself in one word, that word would be “omnivore.” “Omni” meaning “eats everything.” And “Vore” meaning “which is not securely nailed down.” Merriam-Webster.com defines omnivorous as, “avidly taking in everything as if devouring or consuming.” Not merely “taking in,” mind you, but “avidly taking in.” (Avidly, meaning enthusiastically, eagerly, fervently.) So, essentially, according to Merriam-Webster, I am a gigantic, snack food devouring locust. Sadly, this is true.

Omnivores eat a wide variety of meats, including the beef variety, the pork variety, and, I am now learning from reliable news sources, the roadkill variety. Lawmakers across our fruited, and apparently carcass-strewn, plains have been busily making sure we can legally announce that roadkill is “What’s for dinner!” According to a Fox News article published last year, Montana has joined about one-third of U.S. states to legalize “harvesting” roadkill. The article includes the following actual statements:

1. Roadkill “provides a leaner alternative to factory-raised meat.” (If you don’t mind the aftertaste of road tar.)

2. Certain states that allow the harvesting of roadkill require a permit. (Perhaps this is an option sportsmen can check when buying their annual hunting tag. Instead of just choosing firearm or bow, they have a third option, “Ford Taurus.”)

3. Residents in certain states are apparently just too good to eat roadkill, including: Texas, Washington, Tennessee and California. (Who would have thought that Texans were so hoity-toity?)

The article didn’t clarify whether you needed to buy the roadkill permit before or after your lucky twist of fate. I once drove from Great Falls, Montana, to Havre (also referred to in Montana as, “You can Havre”) late at night. The woman at the airport car rental kiosk told me it was a dangerous nighttime drive because of the deer. It turned out that she had a gift for understatement. Conservatively, there were about one million deer per highway mile – all staring with their beady, glowing eyeballs at me. Several times, I had to stop my car, get out and lure them off the highway with a bag of caramel corn which I had the good fortune to buy at the airport. Now that Montana has joined the civilized world, I want to go back and purchase a permit. I’ll rent a Hummer, you know, just in case I accidentally hit a deer.

A few years ago, creative entrepreneur-chefs in a small Oregon town opened a place called “The Roadkill Café,” surprisingly, it went belly up. It now appears that they were culinary geniuses ahead of their time.

For years now, I’ve been thinking of starting a bumper sticker company. This is because I feel passionately about a deeply personal and truly heartfelt message. And that message is that printing a ten cent sticker and selling it for three dollars is about as close to printing money as you can get without those goons at the Treasury Department throwing you a little surprise party which ends with them dragging you off by your ankles never to be seen or heard from again. But I digress. One of the stickers I’ve always thought would be a red hot seller would read in large bold letters, “I Brake for Animals,” and then directly below in lower case it would say, “taller than my bumper.” But now that I’ve been educated to this hip new wave of eating roadkill, while the top line of my sticker will still read, “I Brake for Animals,” the bottom line will now read, “after impact.”

Well, it’s been a long day. I plan to unwind by going on a leisurely drive through the countryside. I’ll take my F-350 4×4 Ford Pickup, the one with the reinforced steel front bumper. You know, just in case I accidentally hit a freezer full of venison.

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Underwear Wars

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By Jack Edwards

When trendsetting Americans think of weight loss, they think of three things: Diet, Exercise and, of course, Caffeine-infused underwear. Well, at least they used to think of caffeine-infused underwear, until the Federal Trade Commission gave the companies marketing these undies an atomic wedgie two weeks ago.  (FTC motto: “We spend billions saving people from their bone-numbing stupidity.”)

According to this VERY TRUE, ACTUAL QUOTE from an Associated Press article: “The Federal Trade Commission announced Monday that two companies – Norm Thompson Outfitters of Oregon and Wacoal America Inc. of New Jersey – have agreed to refund $1.5 million to consumers who bought “shapewear” that supposedly can reduce cellulite and fat because it is infused with caffeine, vitamin E and other things.”

That’s a lot of undies, infused or otherwise.

If you still don’t believe this is true, Google it on your phone. It’ll take you three-quarters of a nanosecond to confirm the disturbing accuracy of this underwear scandal, or as I have so cleverly, and capitalistically copyrighted: “Undie-Gate.”

While I admittedly lack a formal education in the field of infused underwear, I think I know where the developers of this underwear went tragically awry. They picked the wrong breakfast-related ingredient.  My answer – strawberry jam. Everybody loves strawberry jam.  As podcast superstar Adam Corolla keeps yammering on about, restaurants put an equal number of single serving strawberry jam containers on the tables as they do, for example, grape or mixed fruits, but you can never find any of the strawberry jam ones because those are what everybody wants.  All you can every find are the lousy grape.  So this obviously makes my point that strawberry jam would translate brilliantly to the underwear infusion industry.

In any event, the FTC is hanging caffeinated underwear out to dry.

The AP said that neither of the companies it mentioned in the article could be reached for comment. However, the AP did acknowledge that it had an unsubstantiated report from an anonymous source, that the CEO of Norm Thompson was unavailable for comment because his fifth grade granddaughter was currently lecturing him on the basic elements of human physiology, which lecture concluded with a sentence containing the word “bonehead.”

The AP article also including the following: “The Federal Trade Commission is accepting public comment on the proposed settlement until Oct. 29.” It’s unlikely too many people will be beating down the doors of the FTC to provide comment, in that said aggrieved consumers would have to admit that they had the IQ of sauerkraut to have bought the garments in the first place (then again, maybe these “target audience” consumers WON’T make this connection).

In the meantime, I’m not waiting until October 29th to move forward on the patent of my strawberry jam infused underwear.  My marketing plan is going to lay waste to every big underwear tycoon in North America, including competitors, such as Mr. B. V. Dees and Ms. Fruit O. Loom.  I’ll let you in on it, if you promise to keep your big yaps shut until I spring it on the unsuspecting public.  I’m going to hire the most world renowned chemist and the most world renowned nutritionist.  Then I’m going to have them stand in front of a giant photo of sexy models wearing my strawberry jam infused underwear.  I’ll have them smile warmly, yet in a professionally confident manner, while reading this script:

Famous Chemist: “Strawberry jam infused underwear….”

Famous Nutritionist, completing the sentence: “… just as effective at helping you lose those extra pounds as traditional caffeine-infused underwear.”

Talk about truth in advertising. Try to hit  me 1.5 million for that, Mr. FTC.

My Middle-aged Marathon

Marathon

By Jack Edwards

Few things are more fundamentally wholesome than a high school fundraiser – a bake sale, a bottle drive, or, in the case of my daughter’s cross country team, a forced run of out-of-shape parents over a grueling 5K race course. And if you aren’t a runner or haven’t used the metric system lately, five kilometers in miles equals three heart attacks and a stroke.

Some number of years ago, a group of demented high school runners at my daughter’s school, which should remain nameless, so I’ll only reveal its initials – Sheldon High School, hatched a cunning idea. These young minds, with as yet undiagnosed psychotic tendencies engineered a scheme to recruit unsuspecting and wholly unprepared family and friends to participate in a 5K run at the bargain price of $25, or $5 per “K.”  And, like a fungus, it spread.  I personally found out that I had signed up three days after I had signed up.  One little problem – I had not “technically” run in 35 years.  The good news was that I had four days to train.

The first challenge I faced was that the closest thing I had to running shoes were a pair of leather wingtips, which feature all the impact absorbency of granite. So my wife took me (yes, like I’m ten) to a specialty running store.

A female clerk approached us and asked if she could help. Of note is that it was 100 degrees outside, and she was wearing a giant stocking cap.  No, it wasn’t 100 degrees inside, but it was like talking to someone at the North Pole who was wearing a bikini.  She told me to walk across the room while she kneeled down like she was lining up a putt – except she was looking at my feet.  Understand that I had no idea who this woman was.  I wasn’t 100% certain she even worked at the store.  Then she stood and announced that I was rolling my ankles.  She told me that the solution was a pair of running shoes that will push my retirement back three to five years.

Upon arriving home, I immediately announced that I was going on a run. My run consisted of bolting from my driveway like Prefontaine and maintaining a blistering pace for a full five yards before remembering that the final remnants of my knee cartilage parted company with me during the Carter administration.

Finally, the Big Day arrived.

My wife and I arrived for the race thirty minutes early. People were jogging around warming up.  I walked slowly to the check-in table, strategically reserving my energy for the race.  I signed in, they issued me my “bib” (the paper number you pin to the front of your shirt so they can confirm you came in last).  After a period of milling about, we lined up (or really “grouped up”) behind the starting line.  I positioned myself toward the back, so I wouldn’t get run over by all the skinny moms who had a take-no-prisoners gleam in their eyes – one of which was my wife.

The race was pleasant enough with the high school team members lined up along the race to make sure we didn’t accidently veer off course and end up sitting in a bar someplace. Their common refrain being, “Keep it up!  You’re doing great!” which was code for, “We can’t believe you’re still alive!”

I managed to “finish strong.” I blazed down the homestretch into the shoot like a lightning bolt as a result of my clever strategy of walking long stretches of the course along the way.  As proud as I was with my performance, however, next year, I’m begging them to hold a bake sale.

 

The Great Chicago Toilet Massacre

Outhouse Final

By Jack Edwards

I don’t know why we humans are so fascinated with toilets. But we are. It’s in our DNA. From the first time a Neanderthal dug a small hole in the ground and presented it with beaming pride to his Neanderthal wife, we have found few items of greater interest. This is especially true of toilets with unusual features. World literature is replete with toilet stories, and I’m about to add another. But first, a couple of toilet related items.

I recently took a road trip and stopped at a rural rest area – a small park featuring a cement block restroom with a pit toilet. It must have been 15 feet from the toilet rim down to “ground zero.” I immediately thought, ‘Wow, and someone who carelessly lets his cell phone slip into the water of a regular toilet thinks he has a problem.’ Imagine trying to fish that out! (Note to self: Consider a start-up company aimed at fishing people’s cell phones from pit toilets. Slap 800 number stickers throughout. Charge a bundle).

I was watching a baseball game last summer and noticed a row of porta-potties lined up next to the field. In large letters across each one was the company’s name: United Toilets. Struck me as a little too corporate. Frank’s Toilets, San-it-tory Toilets, okay. But United? Was this a multinational outhouse conglomerate?

So, back to Chicago, and the great toilet massacre.

I’m cruising from one gate to the next at O’Hare Airport. And as with any public building, it has its pluses and minuses. On one hand, the entire complex has a grand total of one electrical outlet. It’s located on concourse K. The line to use it is longer than the main runway. On the other hand, it has those neat toilets that automatically slide a new plastic toilet seat protector over the seat after each use. Naturally, I had to make time to enjoy this feature.

I slipped into a restroom and found a stall. I briefly admired the slick unit prior to taking position. Then, after completing my assignment, I stood and turned around to see it do its thing. But nothing. Nadda. The electronic eye should have flushed it, but it didn’t. So, not wanting to leave without watching the plastic sleeve slider show, I pushed the little black button.

This is when IT happened. Up rose a swell of water – a tsunami that made the flood that lifted Noah’s Ark look tame. The tide was rapidly rising toward the rim with no sign of stopping, and I was trapped. My luggage was between me and the stall door. As the water edged to the rim, I desperately lifted my suitcase and swung around to escape. I managed to slip through the door just as the wave crested over the edge. Water poured down and flooded the floor in all directions. A man’s voice from the next stall cried out, “Oh my God!” as the tide rushed his feet. (If I had the means to save him, I would have. But, alas, I was without the means. It was every man for himself). Chaos ensued. People everywhere screamed and fled for their lives. I swept past the stunned face of a bathroom attendant (Motto: We run toward the sound of danger). It was like that scene in the first Mission Impossible movie where Tom Cruise breaks the giant fish tank and then runs for it. In fact, exactly like that. I will concede that I probably didn’t look as debonair as Tom did as I turned the corner out of the madness and back onto the concourse.

As my plane lifted off the runway bound for the land of the (far) less interesting toilets, I must admit that those fancy O’Hare contraptions had lost their appeal. I am now actively working to find investors for my enterprise: United Phone Recovery, Inc. – “You sink’em, we spulink’em.”