Month: February 2016

My hope is that I have found the solution to one of the great problems plaguing mankind: My disappearing earbuds.

I know what you’re thinking: You’re thinking, “Mike, of all the troubles facing humanity, I HAVE been very concerned about your earbuds disappearing.”

I appreciate your concern.

I used to not have this problem. I also used to not have kids.

The problem became a serious one about 10 years ago, when my daughter discovered that, through the miracle of headphones, she could have her own private concert and bellow Hannah Montana songs at the top of her lungs, all the while dancing around the house without a care in the world. (For those of you with kids that age, I apologize for getting “The Best of Both Worlds” theme song stuck in your head. I know you thought it was gone for good.)

My wife and I got my daughter her own headphones so that she could enjoy her music. I don’t recall the exact model we got, but I feel confident they had some theme associated with them that bumped the price up 20 percent.

Those headphones lasted about 11 seconds. So we decided it was time to teach her a lesson about responsibility and … ah, who am I kidding. We bought another pair. And another. And another. Yes, we’re those parents.

Soon, our son began to get into the music listening age, which meant we had two kids consistently breaking headphones because kids are destructive little menaces.

As earbuds became more commonplace, we graduated to those, and we found that earbuds are not only as easy to break as headphones, but far easier to lose.

Eventually, there came a point where my wife and I had no choice but to make an edict: You get one set of earbuds, and they are yours and yours only. You lose them, break them, sell them on Craig’s List — your problem. No replacements.

I attacked this problem by getting four different colored earbuds. Everyone in the family had their pair. Mine were black. No one was to touch the Dad Black earbuds. Those are Dad’s. Those are when he wants to listen to some tunes while doing yard work, maybe a podcast in the evening while emptying the dishwasher. Those are Dad’s. No one else’s. Only dad … HEY! What are you doing with my earbuds?

“Mine broke,” said the sad little girl. I’m a sucker.

And so it became the norm, again. We would replace earbuds, and invariably I would be the one drawing the short straw, trying to find a pair when none were left.

It came to a head the other morning when my daughter was heading to school. She’s 15 now, and if she does not have her earbuds, she might as well not have clothes on. It would be that detrimental to her standing in society. (Side note: She invariably has one earbud in, and spins the other one on her finger like a lifeguard whistle. I have suggested that maybe that is why they break so often. She feels that is utter nonsense.)

She couldn’t find her earbuds, and her ride for school was about to leave. “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!?!?!?” she told me. She was correct.

Later that day, I was at the store, and waaaaay down on a bottom shelf, I saw a package of earbuds. The price sign above them read $1. A dollar? Really?

I took the earbuds to the counter and asked them for the price. Indeed, a mere dollar. I bought five pairs.

Now, I know you may be wondering about the quality of $1 earbuds. To which I say, who cares? I’ve seen them ruin really nice earbuds or headphones in the matter of minutes. The price is right for me.

So for now, when a set of earbuds is missing, I just go to my hidden stash of earbuds and voila! Problem solved.

Now I know that you’re thinking this is the time that I should be teaching my children about responsibility and the economics of life and all that good stuff. And to that I say, that is why we have pets. There are some real life lessons to be learned when a living creature is involved.

I also know that there some forces of nature you just can’t fight, and one of those is a kid’s ability to render earbuds inoperable or nonexistent.

Hopefully, my collection of El Cheapo earbuds will last for a while. But if they don’t, I’ll just refill the pool. If nothing else, I know it will guarantee I have some when it’s time to do the dishes.

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Charleston. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.

For as long as I can remember, people have asked me, “Do you prefer Mike or Michael?”

And, of course, the answer is that I prefer Leonard.

Ok, so truth of the matter is, I don’t really care. And I tell people that when they ask. Whatever you want to call me is fine, as I answer to both Mike and Michael. (My wife calls me Michael, but it has very different meanings based on how she says it.)

But as much as I consider the two interchangeable, I have found that one is, in fact, superior to the other, and that is Michael. I learned this because the DMV said it is so, and if there is one thing I have learned this past week, it’s that the DMV does not change its mind.

I learned this when my daughter went to get her driver’s license. Under state law, she can take her driver’s test from a certified instructor, and then take the paperwork to the DMV to keep the actual license. (Hey, states that aren’t South Carolina — if you’re not doing it this way, do it this way. Makes it way easier than having to take the test at the DMV.)

So she passed her test on a Sunday, but had to wait until Monday to get the actual license. We waited a short while until her number was called. We had all of the paperwork that the driving instructor had filled out, as well as a few extra pages the DMV had us fill out for fun.

We handed the paperwork to the clerk. After a few moments, she looked up and said, “Who’s Mike?”

“That’s me,” I said.

“Well then who is Michael?”

“Uh, still me. I go by both…”

“Your legal name is?”

“My legal name?”

“What name is on your driver’s license?”

“Um, Michael.”

“Then who is Mike?” she said, holding up the sheet from the driving instructor.

“Pardon?” I said.

“Mike is not your legal name. Michael is. You wrote Mike here,” she said pointing at a spot on the paperwork. “Mike is a nickname,” she said, in a quite disappointed tone.

I explained to her that I use the two interchangeably, but that I see her point about how using “Mike” vs. “Michael” could very well collapse the very infrastructure that keeps our state afloat. I asked her for the paperwork, and told her that, thanks to my exceptionally poor handwriting, I could turn that “Mike” into a “Michael” in seconds.

“No, sir,” she said. “We need a new form.”

“Fine,” I said. “Give me a form and I’ll fill it out again.

“You need to get that from your driving instructor,” she said. Keep in mind this was 4 p.m. The office closes at 5. And there is a 15-year-old who was this close to having her actual driver’s license, and it was being ripped from her until tomorrow at the earliest, which is like forever away. I looked at my daughter. She paused from angrily Snapchatting her predicament to give me the “Daddy, do something!” look.

“Look,” I said. “My daughter just got her license. She has been working so hard for this, and I don’t want her not to get it because I wrote ‘Mike’ instead of ‘Michael.’”

The clerk stared at me, and then my daughter. Work a tear, Allie. Now is the time. She told me that she wishes she had a better solution, but she really needed the form filled out correctly. She gave me this option: get the form, fill it out, and come back to the DMV, but don’t wait in line. Slip in, catch her eye, and she’d take care of it.

Fortunately, I was able to reach her instructor on the phone, and he was as awesome of a guy as he was an instructor. In about 15 minutes, he was at the DMV, new form in hand. I filled it out carefully. M-I-C-H-A-E-L — “Allie, check this against my license…”

We slipped back in, and the clerk saw us. She eased over to us and took the paperwork. No one in the waiting room noticed we had circumvented the line that wound out the door, mainly because everyone was staring at their phones.

She had her license just before the closing bell. I get that the DMV clerk was just doing her job. She did what she could to help remedy the problem. While I guess there isn’t much difference to me between Mike and Michael, I can see her point. At least we were able to work through it. Probably wouldn’t have been so easy had I used Leonard.

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Charleston. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.

The other day I spent some time on the interstate. The kids were in the car with me, so I decided to play a fun game called “How Many People Have Wanton Disregard For Everyone Else on the Road?”

Spoiler alert: It’s a lot.

It started when a car approached on my left. A quick glance showed that the guy sitting where the driver normally sits really should not be called the driver, because he was not driving. He was just sitting there as the car sped along. Rather, what he was doing was texting.

And I mean all in texting. Phone on the steering wheel, cradled by both hands, his thumbs just a flying.

“Dad, he’s not even looking at the road,” my daughter noted.

This was an important thing for her to notice, since she will apply to earn her restricted license in just days. It is easy for me to make sure that her phone is not in use when I am in the car. But when she heads off on her own? I need to know that she will stick to that key rule.

So I asked my son, who was sitting in the back, to count how many people we passed were texting. Not making calls or glancing at GPS, etc. I mean full-on texting. Eyes down, fingers in a flurry.

Twenty. Over about 40 miles of interstate, 20 people were texting. Keep in mind this is fairly heavy traffic, all barreling along in the 70 mph range.

I pointed out to my daughter than any of those 20 people would have been in big trouble had anything out of the ordinary happened in front of them. And there would likely be a lot of people who weren’t texting who would be affected in potentially life-altering ways.

And I am going to go out on a limb and say that most — no all — of those texts could have waited.

Here is another interesting observation: Of the 20 texters, only two had passengers in the car. I wonder how many of those 18 solo texters would have pulled their phone out if someone was in the car. They know they shouldn’t be doing it.

The notion of turning the keys over to my 15-year-old daughter is enough for concern. The thought that she might decide to put driving on the back burner so she could text an emoji response to a friend is terrifying. Fortunately, I have told my daughter that I have installed cameras in the car, and I also now have an app called “Is My Daughter Texting While Driving?” that I keep on all the time.

I have no idea if such as app exists. But even if there was an app named that but didn’t even do anything, I’d consider dropping 99 cents for that. It’s like getting a security system sign for your yard, but not actually having a security system.

In all seriousness, I have faith that my daughter will follow the rules of the road — including the no-texting one — has she has always been good at following the rules, as long as the rule is not “Clean your room.”

Hopefully, our super fun interstate game only drove home the point even more. And if you are one of those who goes full-on texter when you’re driving just, please, stop. Seriously. You wouldn’t just close your eyes for three, four, five seconds and feel fine about it. But that’s what you’re doing. You’re taking your eyes off the road. You can’t pay attention to the road when you’re paying attention to your phone. In fact, you can’t pay attention to much of anything else. Major League Baseball is considering putting up nets in front of the fans because so many are getting plunked by foul balls because they are busy staring at their phones. And if you get hit by a foul ball, you don’t cause a chain reaction traffic pile-up.

So just put the phone away. Drive. Enjoy the road. If you’re on your phone in a moving car, you should be a passenger. And you can keep checking your “Is My Daughter Texting While Driving?” app.

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Charleston. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.