Recently, my oldest nephew started shedding his baby teeth. This, of course, forced me to recall one of the creepiest of childhood mythical creatures: The Tooth Fairy.

I’ve always thought The Tooth Fairy was a horrifying notion. How could a myth about a magical entity that collects used body parts from children in the middle of the night be anything good?

First off, baby teeth are ugly and frankly, disgusting.  Whatever money that I might get from them was not worth sticking the horrible things under my pillow. I tend to put my hand under there, and I really don’t want to forget halfway through the night that they’re there, and brush my arm against them in the middle of the night when my defenses are low.

Second, and parents, I urge you to consider this point carefully. If some entity said, “Hey, I want to give you money for your kid’s baby teeth, and if you’ll leave them in under your kid’s pillow, I’ll simply enter your house when everyone is asleep, stick my hand under your child’s head take those sweet little chompers. Don’t worry, I’ll leave a few coins in its place,” you would tell that pervert “No *Insert favorite curse word here* way.” Probably you’d also toss a “Keep your *other curse word* hands off my kid’s discarded teeth!”

Frankly, I thought far too long about what anyone would want to do with those teeth, and not once did I imagine it was anything good.  As you have probably guessed, my thoughts generally veered into the realm of horror.  I guessed that the only reason anyone would want those nasty things was some dark magic, which probably could be used against me in my dreams.  That being the case, I really should have gotten more than 50 cents.

I imagined the Tooth Fairy was a terrifying witch, with horrible jewelry made of children’s teeth. I suspected she ground them to powder and sprinkled the tooth dust on her cereal to maintain her youth.

I once had a theory about her planting the teeth in an eerie garden, where she grew gruesome versions of the child whose tooth had been the seed. These misshapen doppelgangers formed an army meant to  take over the world. Or possibly, they would just follow their normal twin into a dark alley, where they would kill them and take all their adult teeth.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have shared those with you.

Will it make you feel better if I told you that I never really believed any of those ideas were actually true?  If I had, well, I suspect that I’d have never put my teeth under my pillow.

 

 

 

 

Must keep this short, I’m watching the Olympics!

How We All Become Olympic Experts

When I was a kid, there few things more inspirational than the Olympic Games.   I imagined visiting glamorous foreign places, and seeing the flag raised for me, and the crowds cheering my name.  I didn’t imagine practice or training or silly little things like that. Which probably explains why I didn’t get very far along that path.

The closest I came to the Olympic dream was in high school.  It was there I took up springboard diving, to satisfy a swimming/PE requirement.   It was the early 90s, which meant that everyone wanted to be Greg Louganis.  The coach, speaking to all us hopefuls one the first day said, “Our goal will be to learn the forms of the basic dives. Now, I don’t expect anyone to be Greg Louganis….”

At which point a voice from somewhere in the crowd (that sadly wasn’t mine ‘cause I’d failed to come up with a zinger fast enough) asked “if I hit my head on the springboard do I get an “A?”

The coach told him, in no uncertain terms, that this would not improve his grade.

I didn’t hit my head on the springboard.  And, while I enjoyed the sport, I learned I was probably not destined for Olympic diving fame.

But this didn’t stop me from becoming an exceptionally annoying commentator whenever diving was on.

I would tell everyone who wasn’t really listening, that “Well, they can’t be doing a reverse dive, because they’re not starting in the right place.” I also had just enough knowledge to notice the most obvious errors, like turns that were over-rotated  and make the universal “Uh. Oh.” of disappointment without explaining why I was making this sound, to force people to ask me what I’d seen. You know the sound.

It’s almost a gasp; but not nearly as dramatic as an actual expression of emotion. It’s a mix of insufficiently stifled glee coated over with the socially expected expression of concern.  This is the same sound made by commentators on TV when someone doesn’t stick the landing or completely falls off the equipment. Strangest to me is that it doesn’t really matter the magnitude of the error, the only immediate acceptable sound of disproving dismay you will hear is “Uh. Oh.”

Of course, these same people who barely acknowledge your bleeding, concussed head after it hit the springboard are the same people who won’t let you forget it. They’ll replay that moment more than the moments when you didn’t end up in a sitting position on the mat after a spectacular tumbling run.

What I love about the Olympics is that anything we know about these sports most of us only pay attention to once every four years comes from watching them every four years.  We all become “enlightened” commentators on these sports, talking about “split times” or “mandatory deductions,” like we talk about them all the time.  For 17 days, we share these experiences not only with our fellow countrymen and women, but, also, with people all over the world.  This is, of course, the entire point of the Games, and why the world has their eyes on London.

 

Call me paranoid, or call me cheap, just don’t bother calling me on my cell phone. This week I explore the reasons for avoiding these technological terrors.

What Your Cell Phone is Really Planning

I don’t own a cell phone.

I know. That’s akin to admitting that I’ve given up bathing and that I’m harboring a secret desire to kidnap babies and love them and hug them and name them George. I’m kidding, of course. I wouldn’t call them George. Not all of them, at any rate.

The cell phone thing is true, however.

I could tell you that I don’t have one because I heard from my cousin’s boyfriend’s sister who found out about it from this guy in her class who read about it on the internet or something, that they cause brains to explode.

That would be untrue. You shouldn’t trust everything you read on the internet.

I could also tell you that I don’t have one because I am really absent-minded, and that I lose stuff all the time, and can’t really afford to replace a cell phone eight times a month. It’s true, I can’t afford to replace a cell phone 104 times a year, even with unlimited texts.

Maybe the real truth is that I’ve become quite proud of my strange little quirk, this weird streak of Luddite-ism from someone who has an obvious geekly pedigree? I could say that I’m so enamored of my own unique and bizarre little foibles that I cling to them like a drowning rat on a matchbook floating in the debris of a sinking ship in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

There might be some truth to that.

Perhaps I am really just afraid the my legions of obsessed fans will find my cell phone number, and call me at all hours, preventing me from sleeping until I have completed the long awaited sequel to my best-selling vampire novel.

I wish.

All of these ideas are actually much better than the real reasons.

In fact, having articulated a number of very intriguing reasons why I don’t have a cell phone, I think that it would simply be a disappointment if I were to give you the real reason. This all builds up my quirky writer mystique, which ought to come in useful when I am interviewed on the Today Show and the totally blitzed hosts of the 16th hour of the show ask about my “infamous” lack of a cell phone in today’s day and age.

It’ll be something that the Wikipedia editors will fight over with regards to my very own entry, and one will delete it as mere “rumor invented to increase book sales,” and another will cite some semi-sketchy source that merely copies part of this column as a reference.

Maybe I should build a bunch of websites, which all have that exact same text, hidden on random pages, and say I have nothing to do with them, but, darkly refer to these sites as evidence that the cell phones are all plotting together and building those sites. I would then tell you this is part of their sinister plan to take over the world by turning everyone to zombies and controlling all the information on the Internet. I would then tell you this is the real reason, no, I’m totally not lying now, this is the real reason I don’t own any kind of cell phone.

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I don’t own a cell phone.

I know. That’s akin to admitting that I’ve given up bathing and that I’m harboring a secret desire to kidnap babies and love them and hug them and name them George. I’m kidding, of course. I wouldn’t call them George. Not all of them, at any rate.

The cell phone thing is true, however.

I could tell you that I don’t have one because I heard from my cousin’s boyfriend’s sister who found out about it from this guy in her class who read about it on the internet or something, that they cause brains to explode.

That would be untrue. You shouldn’t trust everything you read on the internet.

I could also tell you that I don’t have one because I am really absent-minded, and that I lose stuff all the time, and can’t really afford to replace a cell phone eight times a month.  It’s true, I can’t afford to replace a cell phone 104 times a year, even with unlimited texts.

Maybe the real truth is that I’ve become quite proud of my strange little quirk, this weird streak of Luddite-ism from someone who has an obvious geekly pedigree? I could say that I’m so enamored of my own unique and bizarre little foibles that I cling to them like a drowning rat on a matchbook floating in the debris of a sinking ship in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

There might be some truth to that.

Perhaps I am really just afraid the my legions of obsessed fans will find my cell phone number, and call me at all hours, preventing me from sleeping until I have completed the long awaited sequel to my best-selling vampire novel.

I wish.

All of these ideas are actually much better than the real reasons.

In fact, having articulated a number of very intriguing reasons why I don’t have a cell phone, I think that it would simply be a disappointment if I were to give you the real reason. This all builds up my quirky writer mystique, which ought to come in useful when I am interviewed on the Today Show and the totally blitzed hosts of the 16^th hour of the show ask about my “infamous” lack of a cell phone in today’s day and age.

It’ll be something that the Wikipedia editors will fight over with regards to my very own entry, and one will delete it as mere “rumor invented to increase book sales,” and another will cite some semi-sketchy source that merely copies part of this column as a reference.

Maybe I should build a bunch of websites, which all have that exact same text, hidden on random pages, and say I have nothing to do with them, but, darkly refer to these sites as evidence that the cell phones are all plotting together and building those sites. I would then tell you this is part of their sinister plan to take over the world by turning everyone to zombies and controlling all the information on the Internet. I would then tell you this is the real reason, no, I’m totally not lying now, this is the real reason I don’t own any kind of cell phone.

Sometimes, I can really identify with the old woman who lives in a shoe. I can’t imagine living in a shoe, though. Wait a minute. It might have potential as a tourist attraction.  That’s an interesting idea. Oh no. Not another one.

Can I get a Tax Deduction for my Brain Babies?

I have begun to suspect that my maternal instinct, without biological offspring to nurture, has been cultivating the only children I have – my ideas.

I am constantly birthing “Brain Babies,” beautiful, wondrous, terrific notions that demand I give them my full attention. They cry if I try to put them down, they demand I feed them and they all want changing at the same time.

And I love every one of them. They’re all my precious ideas, and I want to share them with everyone. I want to show pictures and tell stories how this idea just started school, and how another got an award. I take pride in raising them, getting them to the moment when they are fully-formed, and ready to take their place in the world.

The only problem is that I have so many of them. They’re all special and charming and adorable, and I can’t let them go, and look! There’s another one right there!

I have so many ideas that turn into projects, and then I have too many projects, and I’m stuck trying to figure out how I’m going to feed all these offspring. There’s so many hungry little thoughts running around that next to me, the Octomom looks downright barren.

While I don’t have to try and figure out how to feed all of these babies with actual food, they do make demands on my time and budget. It’s really hard to be a single mother, especially in this economy.

I have thought about putting some of these little cuties up for adoption, but, I just become wracked with guilt. That little one chose me to be his mommy! I can’t let him down! And, that pretty idea over there, she had such good manners and the cutest dimples! She was the one that could’ve made me a fortune working from home!

Many of these ideas charm me with promises of dollars and fame, or they just tell me that they are so clever that people will want to be my friend just because of how clever my little idea is. They forget to mention there’s a ton of work under their sweet promises. They like to keep the long hours hidden. They don’t mention that even if you put in the work, there’s little to no guarantee of money, fame or friendship.

And these babies never go to school. They don’t take naps. They don’t start doing anything on their own, and are perpetually helpless, demanding I do everything for them. They never get jobs of their own, and they never move out.  The worst part is that they will never take care of me in my old age.

Maybe I can figure out how to get some sort of “intellectual property dependent” tax break. I’m sure I saw something about that in my tax software. It might be too suspicious if I claim all of them this year, though. I’ll limit it to 11 dependents to be on the safe side…

There are dates that stay with you. Some of them are good. Others of them get saved to swap with your friends when sharing your collective bad date stories. Writers just save them up until they’re running short of column ideas.

When You Wish Your Blind Date was Actually Blind

Blind dates are, as you’ve seen on TV, not uncommon amongst single people. The most memorable I have ever had started when a friend told me she knew the perfect guy for me. He had a pulse, a job, liked science fiction and baseball. In her mind, these were clear indications that we were meant to be. We talked on the phone, and set up a date to go to a Rockies game.

He came to the door with a large bouquet of fresh flowers, admittedly, a very nice touch, and off we went. That was when I noticed the first indication of his personality disorder. This debilitating symptom caused his eyes to be locked directly on my chest.  I started hoping an Alien would burst out of there and attach itself to his face.

We got to the ballpark, and found our seats, which were just next to the left field foul line, in perfect foul-snagging space. He had brought his glove. Sadly, that was the closest thing he had to baseball knowledge.

When he tried to impress me with his baseball knowledge,  I nearly cried. Or possibly that was merely the strain of repressed laughter. He knew only the names of the marquee players. He didn’t even have a clue whether the team had a winning record or not. The most rudimentary indicators of a baseball fan were missing, and I quickly realized he wasn’t going to be able to converse about baseball beyond the score and inning of the game. He could not report the current strike count, as he wasn’t watching the field. My chest was, apparently, much more interesting.

At this point, I tried to see if there were any other topics we might be able to discuss, or upon which we could find some common interest. This is when I discovered the second part of his personality disorder. He was one of the most boring people I had ever met.

I tried to talk about science fiction. I liked good stories, with well-developed characters and worlds. He liked cool ships and gadgets. Had I ever read “super-obscure sci-fi book” which had his favorite type of really weird ship in it? Nope. I was pretty sure he was the only one that had read it.

He couldn’t remember the main character’s name, but, he could remember the length, breadth, carrying capacity and fuel source for the JC-99B carbon atomizing teraflop juggernaut carrier vessel.

I listened for what seemed like months as he prattled on about the characteristics of the Crapinator capacitor powering the ZippityWhoCares ionizing burnanator, and as I allowed myself to float away from his monologue and back to the baseball game, somehow, I knew that we were not soulmates. I only hoped that when the night was over I could gracefully exit his car without taking his eyes, which were, of course, still glued to my chest.

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Independence Day has come again, and this year, Coloradoans are thinking more about fireworks of a different sort.  The ongoing challenges of multiple fires has meant loss and tragedy for many. To the firefighters who are working in extreme conditions to preserve lives and property, “thank you” seems to fall far short of our gratitude, but, it’s a good place to start.

Why We Need to Assemble the Vacation Force

This week we celebrate the birth of our fine nation, and this year is one of those that illustrate exactly how little consideration our forefathers had for our long-weekend needs.

Sure, commemorating the actual date of the event is all well and good, but, it’s kind of a cruel joke to go to work for two days, get a day off for late-night frivolity, and then drag our sorry selves back to work for another two days? Yes, it beats going to work, but it would be much better to have built in some sort of federal regulation that states, “Should Independence Day fall on days prior to and including Wednesday, the holiday will include all business days preceding July 4^th. Should the holiday fall on Thursday or Friday, the celebration shall include all dates prior to the weekend.”

In this fashion, the holiday heretofore only celebrated on July 4^th will be not shorter than three days, and up to a delightful five-day weekend. This is how a world power shouldcelebrate.

It seems ridiculous that we should be forced to contain our festivities to a single day. Shouldn’t American excess have gotten us something useful?

I know, I shouldn’t complain. There are starving children in Africa who have to work on July 4^th.  Hunger doesn’t take a vacation.

I’m whining about a decidedly First World problem, and yet, don’t we want to inspire the other worlds to adopt our ideals? Wouldn’t having a five-day weekend go a long way to instilling the American Dream into the hearts and minds of every person in a polyester uniform who has to work over the Fourth of July Holiday anyway?

On second thought, maybe we shouldn’t tell them. I don’t think it will bestow hopeful aspirations, and I am not a fan of burgers with that extra-special disgruntled food service worker “sauce.”

Maybe Independence Day can join forces with the other non-compliant holidays, and they can form a super hero team like the Avengers, and fight the forces trying to keep us away from the long weekends we deserve. We’ll call them the Vacation Force or the Justice League (yeah, I know that one’s taken, but, let’s face it, non-weekend contiguous holidays are clearly an injustice), or the Weekenders. The Vacation Force will be the powerhouse dream team of Christmas and Thanksgiving, Halloween and New Year’s. Independence Day will round out the team with the special persuasive force of explosives.

The Vacation Force will win the day with their ability to induce powerful waves of nostalgia and sentiment that will crush even the most cynical Scrooges. They’ll tear away the resistance of hardened humbuggery and win us our freedom. Clearly, the time has come.

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This week, life handed me baby skunks, so, like any good writer, this means I had something for this week’s column.
When Life Hands You Skunks

I had never imagined that my life resume would one day include “baby skunk wrangling,” but, I admit, I have been woefully incorrect about most of the things that would appear on this ledger, so this should no longer surprise me.

For many months it has become apparent that one of my neighbors has black and white fur, four legs, and could be mistaken by really, really, blind people for a cat.  This neighbor has been leaving evidence of its presence in the form of holes under my fence, an occasionally strong body odor, and attracting the attention of my sister’s trusty canine.

It was on returning late one night, that my sister and I spied a peculiar wriggling mass of black and white in the middle of our street, in front of my house.  Cautiously, we inched closer to home, and realized that my neighbor had, apparently had a visit from the stork.

My sister didn’t want to get out of the car.  I asked if she had a camera.

She did.  I took some pictures of the critters and chivvied them out of the street.  Their mother was not to be found, and we had no idea what to do with her little bundles of joy.

As I stood on the street trying to figure out what to do and whether there was any reason to bother with this brood, a few of the kiddos fell into the sewer.

I recalled that a few months ago, nearby, a skunk had been killed and I imagined that that dead critter had been the father of these adorable stinkers, and that they were being raised by a single mother, who had no job, and had been widowed while in the “family way,” and now had seven mouths to feed. I  figured her house had probably been repossessed, and that’s why she was living under the neighbor’s shed, with nothing to eat except scraps from the dumpster. Plus, now three of her children were trapped in the sewer.

While I was busy imaging this tragic tale, an older lady, driving slowly, pulled up. She asked me if I had seen a cat. I told her, “no, but I have some skunks.”

The random-passer-by called her daughter, who had a thing for rescuing critters. Now, there was no getting out of the situation, I was now responsible for helping with the rescue effort.  Within a few moments, “She-Who-Rescues-Things-From-Sewers” arrived with a kitty carrier and a pitchfork.

Sure. A pitchfork was just what we needed.

I can only guess that she heard “zombies” instead of baby skunks. Maybe this is why I’m not known for feats of rescuing, because I don’t own a pitchfork.

The two of us hefted the sewer grate up, and while I held it, “Rescue-Critter-Ranger” jumped in and put the three babies into her carrier.  We gathered up the remaining babies, and released them to my backyard.

Now, of course, as their particular odor wafts into my house through the open window, I’m wishing I’d come up with a better idea, and taken them to an open space area miles from my house.

I suspect I was caught up in the drama of the widow with seven babies, and no food, and no home, so it seemed the best solution at the time. They are my neighbors, after all.

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First off, Happy Father’s Day to all those men-folk out there who make a difference in the life of a child. Thanks for doing what you do!

This week, I take you to one of Colorado’s strangest roadside attractions. Since 1969, Jim Bishop has been making his very unique perspectives known from his one-man building project, a castle made of stone. If you ever find yourself just west of Pueblo, stop in for a visit. Just don’t ask Mr. Bishop about his views on the government.

One Man’s Crazy is Another Man’s Castle

In my next life, I’d like to come back as someone who makes something tangible. Maybe I could build zombie traps, you know, ‘cause I’m sure by the time I came back the zombie apocalypse would be the new normal. Or maybe I could build flying cars or cyborgs or the jars they fill with nutrient fluids to keep the heads of celebrities going long after their bodies died.

With all of these are things, I can take a moment at the end of each day, and survey the work space, and see, with my own two robotic eyes, the physical output of a day. I can nod with satisfaction at seeing 100 brain jars, and say, “Yes. I did that. It was a good, honest day’s work.”

Seeing the fruits of such a job seems like it would be much more gratifying than looking in my e-mail “sent” folder to count how many e-mails I managed to pound out in a day. How ridiculous is it to measure productivity by the number of times I sent a handful of electrons shaped into pixels to someone who’s simply going to delete it about 12 seconds after getting it. How unsatisfying is it to spend day after day shuffling non-existent paper around and pretend to look busy by clicking the “Compose” button for the hundredth time that day?

In 40 years, will the only evidence of how I spent my time every day be a bunch of replies to people asking for TPS reports?

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately, after returning from my second visit to Bishop’s Castle in about 20 years. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s the work of one man, whose surname happens to be Bishop. He’s been working alone since 1969, building a gigantic stone castle about an hour west of Pueblo.

The first time I saw it, the first hints of towers were just emerging, and there was a scaffold leading to a wire frame dragon chimney. Rough framing of the foundation arches was in, but, it was hard to see it as much more than a squarish collection of large rocks mortared together. It seemed like, if it took him 20 years to barely get as far as this, that he was wasting his time on something that he would never finish.

Now, it’s undeniably a castle. There’s two towers, just like in the movie, and the larger of the two is over 100 feet tall. This huge structure was built by one guy, who has hauled large, very large, very hand smashingly large rocks up wrought-iron death spiral staircases, one at a time, and glued them into place. Today, you can easily see where the labor of more than 40 years has gone. It’s made a real monument.

And while a few decades ago it would’ve been easy to dismiss as some childish, crackpot dream of having a castle, today, it’s a crackpot adult accomplishment that can’t be undone with a few minutes and a delete key.

This all means that I’m starting to wonder if it’s me that’s the crackpot, and I’m looking around for evidence of my years of labor, and there’s less to see than a squarish collection of large rocks.

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