“. . . I Just Feel Better When They're Not Around.”

One night I was on my way to a rock show downtown when I saw a car with its hood up at an intersection. Having been raised properly in a small town, I circled the block and stopped to lend a hand. I soon learned one of the myriad reasons why many city dwellers wouldn't have bothered.

I helped out the nice lady with the radiator problem and sent her on her way. Feeling pretty good about myself, I bid adieu to another fellow who had also stopped to help. I got into my car and . . . it wouldn't start. Dead battery. No big deal, I thought. It's a standard, I'll just get a push from buddy and start it up on the fly. Which woulda worked just fine. Except . . .

As we started to push the car, we heard a siren whoop and lights began flashing behind us.

Here we go again . . .

"I Don't Hate Cops . . . "

The police and I have not always seen eye to eye. When I was a young man, I will admit to feeling somewhat at fault for our relationship problems, but as I grew to be a man, I became more aware of their wants and needs, and began to treat them with the respect they seemed to feel that they deserved. It was then I realized: it really was them, not me. But it did become apparent to me that being polite is generally the best policy to adopt when dealing with assholes whose job it is to strenuously exert their authority over you. However, they say there are exceptions to every rule.

Let's take a trip back a few years, to a time when I was bartender at the local watering hole . . .

Man's Best Friend

                   image © perry bible fellowship http://www.pbfcomics.com/

Front page news today in the hub city: 'Buddy, Maggie Top Names For Dogs.”

Because I'm not much of a dog person, I don't really care.

Because I'm an intelligent person, I really don't care.

Here we go. Let's talk about 'Dog People.'

1 – You don't know what your dog is thinking. Or 'saying'.

You can guess. You can pretend. You can wish really, really hard. But you don't really know, in the incredible detail you think you do, what your dog is 'saying' to you . . . You know why? Because his capabilities of speech are rudimentary. At best.

Spiritual Amway 2

  After school lets out, many parents take their children to the adjacent playground to shut them up about taking them to the adjacent playground. This is another place where you will have to interact with other parents, whether you like them or not. Some of them are great, and it is just like talking to real people. Others . . .

Massive Head Wound Harry

Recently, a friend of mine had a terrible scare when she went down for a much needed nap and awoke to find that her baby daughter was unable to breathe. Every parent's worst nightmare, to be sure. The cause was decided to be an unknown virus, and baby is on the mend. But the feeling it gave me to hear this news reminded me of our own children and our own hospital encounters. One in particular . . .

When our son was 3 months old it was determined that he had a condition known as craniosynostosis, described by the Mayo Clinic Staff as: “ . . . a birth defect in which one or more of the joints between the bones of your infant's skull close prematurely, before your infant's brain is fully formed. When your baby has craniosynostosis, his or her brain can't grow in its natural shape and the head is misshapen.” Which sounds bloody awful, to be sure. Our son's condition was (probably) not going to affect his physical well being, but his quality of life would suffer. It's harder to get dates when your eyes are bugging out of a head shaped like the one on the alien from 'Alien'.

"We Live In A Society!"

I am a huge fan of japanese food, and decide that I want to learn how to make it. So, I procure a cook book and make a list of ingredients. I venture out to get them, only to discover that the best asian food market in town has transformed into yet another whitey food store. Disappointed, I trundle off to the nearest alternative, the great canadian s___ store. I take my 3 year old, because there he is, and leaving him somewhere to fend for himself is frowned upon. When we arrive, I need a cart, which needs a dollar, which I don't have. I am forced to go to customer service and leave them my driver's license, for which they'll lend me a dollar to use. The line is lengthy, but not smack your forehead curse the world and leave in a huff lengthy, so I decide to wait.

Spiritual Amway

  Part of being a parent is meeting other parents and having to spend time with them whether you like them or not. Your kids go to school together, or they're on the same sports team, or whatever.   They become friends.  At this point you begin spending serious time together, all the while trying to find common ground and make conversation. And sometimes, it's not going to happen smoothly.