Month: February 2017

Being the better human

I try not to be an inconvenience in other people’s lives.

For example:

When I am walking across a street, I actually get on across and, to the best of my knowledge, have never once stopped to respond to a text message in the middle of the road.
When my kids were little, if they turned into tiny balls of rage and fury while in public, I would take them out of that situation and thereby away from people who don’t want to have their dinner music accompaniment be screams.
I know that the only proper way to put toilet paper on a roll is the over method, and anyone who thinks it’s under should be viewed through suspicious eyes from that point forward.
Grocery carts. Duh.

So imagine my dismay when I was called out for inconveniencing another person. My first reaction — what have I done? Me? Am I monster? That lasted about 1/10 of a second, at which point my reaction turned to, “Are you kidding me, pal?”

It happened at the grocery store the other day. I had gotten the groceries and was wheeling my cart out to my car. Because I plan ahead, I had parked right next to a cart corral. Maximum efficiency, maximum awesomeness.

I put the groceries in my car and sent the cart to its proper destination.

I hopped in the driver’s seat and went to put on my seat belt. At that point, the sound came.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!

I looked over my right shoulder, expecting to see a collision near-miss between other cars. Nope. It was clearly directed at me. The horn continued, and a hand extended out of the window, giving off a great-big “What is wrong with you!?!?!” vibe. Which is why I had my initial reaction. And then it occurred to me that I had been in my car for about three seconds.

I wasn’t hanging out placing a call or adjusting the radio or anything non-mission critical.

Sit. Insert key. Buckle seat belt. Reverse. I know this drill.

Clearly, this guy wanted my parking space, and he wanted it right then. And I was not moving fast enough for him. Well, good sir, guess who just got waaaaaay slower than he normally is?

I also noticed there were plenty of other open spaces in the lot. He was going to honk at me to hurry rather than walk an additional 10 feet?

Again, he was having the opposite effect of speeding me up.

I considering just getting out of my car, locking it up and heading back into the store.

Then the part of my brain that is slightly more evolved made the point that this guy who was honking at me was probably not going to see me go inside and say, “Well, he showed me. I should probably be nicer to people from this point forward in life.”

Some people just aren’t nice people. Some people are just rude. And it’s not worth my energy to be an active part of their world or attempt to help them evolve as civilized humans. Some you come in contact with are as far along as they’re going to get.

So I backed out and headed on my way, not even looking back at Beepy. As I pulled toward the exit, I approached a crosswalk. A shopper was exiting the store with a cart. I stopped, and waved her across. She smiled and waved back as she scooted across the lot to her car. A little mutual civility back and forth. That’s where I’d prefer to spend my energy. That and making sure toilet paper is placed over.

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

Uncategorized

A free lunch

I try to eat fairly healthy. We have never been much of a junk food household. And most of our dinners are homemade affairs that only on occasion involve deep frying wings. (Those occasions are football related, so that counts as healthy.)

Alas, I am not perfect when it comes to eating, in particular when I am left alone. For example, there may have been a time within the last year that my family was out of town and I ate pepperoni pizza for four straight meals. Maybe.

Other times when I find myself eating less than healthy are when I am hurried for lunch. Oftentimes, I come home for a standard turkey sandwich-type lunch. However, when I am rushed, I find myself grabbing a quick bite on the go. And pretty much as a rule, you can’t combine healthy and quick. While I am not a nutritionist, I am just guessing that a gas station hot dog is not exactly the pinnacle of healthy eating. It is the pinnacle of delicious guilty pleasures, but I digress.

So I was in a rush and in need of lunch the other day. I decided I would swing into a drive-through and grab a burger and fries to eat in the car as I traveled to my next appointment. It was right about 12:30, so there line was fairly long. That said, it is fast food, and none of us were going to stump the chef with our orders, so the line would move quickly.

I placed my order and made my way to the first window to pay. The window opened, and the woman told me my total. I extended my hand to give her my bank card. “Oh, our credit card machine is broken,” she said.

Now for plenty of people this would not have been a problem. They would have just handed her some cash and moved along with their transaction.

I am not one of those people. For one thing, I have teenagers. On the rare occasions I do have cash, it usually disappears a few minutes before school starts, when a panicky teen comes to me and says, “Dad! I need $10 for the field trip t-shirt and the order is due today!” Or “Dad! The shaved ice truck is at school today and I need $5 or I will be ostracized by all the kids if I am the only one without a sugary and colorful cup of ice!” Or “Dad! I’m taking money out of your wallet as a constant reminder of how much children cost!”

I told the woman that I did not have any cash. She said, “Oh, well.”

“Um….”

“I’ll void your order. Thank you.” And she went to close the window.

“Um….”

I sat there for a moment trying to figure out what my next move was. And what lunch would be.

At that point, I heard a voice behind the woman. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!”

A manager emerged and fully opened the window. “Sir, just a moment,” she said.

She turned to the employee. “Yeah, you need to tell people the credit card machine isn’t working.” The employee gave her a rather blank stare.

“Sir, please pull forward and get your order. It’s on us. Have a good day,” she said.

And off I went, free lunch in hand. (Fun fact: There IS such thing as a free lunch!)

My day got immediately a little bit better, as would anyone’s who had just gotten a free burger and fries. Had this been a mom and type of place, I would have gladly gone to a bank machine, gotten some cash and gone back and paid for my order. But I feel fairly confident this company will be McFine.

Now that I’ve had my less than healthy quick-fix lunch, I will try and get back on track and get back to eating healthy. Granted, I know at some point I will have a lapse and I will find myself needing to get a quick bite on the go. Hopefully, I can I find a place where their credit card machines are down.

Home improvement Uncategorized

Let there be lights

My house is currently not on fire. I consider that a big win.

While I know most of you operate on your day to day life without your house on fire, most of you have not just changed out four light fixtures. And most of you are not as inept at home improvement as I am.

My wife decided we needed new light fixtures when we bought our house. The light fixtures we had were fine with me, as they did their no. 1 job, which was to provide light. Apparently, that was not enough.

We visited a few lighting places, and she spent a prolific amount of time online researching lights. On occasion, I reminded her that our house was, in fact, bathed in light. This did not stop her.

The fixtures all arrived on the same day. My son had gotten home from school and he called me. “Dad! We’ve got, like, six boxes on the front porch!”

“They’re light fixtures,” I said.

Cue the disappointment. “Oh. Well, yeah, I’m going for a bike ride.”

I installed the first one fairly easily, with only one text message to my brother-in-law, who is an electrical engineer.

Next two, piece of cake. Only caused my wife to say, “That’s it. I’m going to the store” one time. In case you are wondering, I’m a lot of fun during home improvement projects.

The last one was the real challenge. And that had a lot to do with the fact that the instructions appeared to have been written, fed into Google translate as one language, and then fed back into Google translate as another. And then repeated 11 times. Among the instructions (and any typos and errors (including “elecrian”) you find here are verbatim from the instruction sheet, which tells you how helpful they were):

“Please cut down the power when you instaII Ihe Iamp or wire.”

“Please follow the install procedure when install the crystal and the shade.”

“The lamp should hang on the humidity lesser and in breezy environment.”

And my personal favorite: “Please asked professional elecrian(who had got electrician certificated) to install your Iamp.”

Feeling confident here!

The directions were, frankly, pointless. And the last fixture had three different sets of wires for three different lights. And by my math, there was only one set of wires coming out of the ceiling.

So I called my brother-in-law. He gave me easy to follow directions on how not to burn my house down. Apparently, all the black wires on the fixture can go to the black wire coming from the ceiling. Same with the white wires. Prior to getting my brother-in-law’s OK to do this, I just assumed that doing this would make our house explode. In short order, the last of the lights was up and actually working.

My wife has since identified some other lights in our house that she feels are worthy of replacement. Now that I have the procedure fairly down, I think I will be up for it. I shouldn’t even need to call a certificated electrician.

Childhood Family

You’ll be fine. In three-four weeks.

Post author By Mike Gibbons
Post date February 3, 2017
No Comments on You’ll be fine. In three-four weeks.

Parker, clearly thrilled with his new cast.

The door flung open, and I heard a cry I heard many times before. It was my son, screaming, “OW! OW! OW! OW!”

This time he was holding his hand close to his chest.

I get these calls from him a lot. Not that he’s a hypochondriac. But rather, because he is a boy, and is prone to put himself in situations to get hurt on a regular basis.

A few of them have required medical attention: A cut knee, a broken thumb, and, my personal favorite, a magnolia branch to the eye, just to name a few.

But normally these wounds heal up in due time. A little ice, maybe some Neosporin and a bandage, and he’s ready to go back out and injure himself again in no time.

He had been playing on his slackline in the front yard. For those of you not familiar with a slackline, it is a thin strip of fabric made out of trampoline material. You attach the line between two trees, and can then bounce along several feet off of the ground. The amount of time you can stay on the slackline is very much dependent on your balance and slackline skill.

Parker has been working on a fancy move in which he stands on the slackline, drops to his bottom, and then bounces back up to his feet. Pretty nifty trick, actually.

I asked him what happened. He told me he was working on his trick, and he somehow got his hand in the way of the bouncing slackline, which smacked his hand when it bounced back.

He held his hand out for me to examine. “Ah, you’ll be fine,” I said. I’m a GREAT doctor.

He reiterated to me that it hurt. Bad. I told him we would ice it down. After a good three seconds of having the ice on it, Parker established that ice was cold, and that now his hand was both hurting and cold. I tried to reason with him and explain that ice was necessary. He reminded me that. IT. WAS. COLD. We were at an impasse. “I wanna call Mom,” he said. My wife was out shopping, and I figured I had this under control, so I told him that wasn’t necessary. “Call Mom,” he said. I told him I was not going to call mom, but then realized he was not talking to me, but rather Siri, who was happy to make the call.

My wife was home in short order. Apparently, she is a way better parent than I am.

She came in and examined the hand. She walked over to me in the next room. “Yeah, I think it’s broken.” I was unaware that my wife had X-ray vision, an observation I am sure she appreciated. I told her he was fine, and it would be way better the next day. “Not so sure about that,” she said.

Hey, guess who had a swollen hand and was still in a whole bunch of pain the next morning?

We made our way to the doctor’s office that day. As the nurse was getting his vitals, I asked her if he could get a shot just for fun. “Oh, dad,” the nurse said in a manner that indicated she was used to dad humor.

The doctor checked him out and then sent him for x-rays. A few minutes later, the doctor came back in the room. My son was on his phone playing some game. “I’m impressed you can play on your phone with a broken hand,” he said, breaking the news to us. The doctor said that it was a “greenstick fracture,” and that had the break been in an adult, it would probably require surgery. We are heading to an orthopedist next, and hope that since he is young and still awaiting his final form that will not be necessary.

He is in a brace for now, but will probably be graduating to a cast very soon. Kids heal quickly, so hopefully it won’t be for too terribly long. My hope is that he will be back in action in no time, finding new and exciting ways to injure himself.