Author: Mike Gibbons

So there’s this guy I know. He’s got a meeting Monday. But he might be able to do to get with you Tuesday. But what he really wants is to make sure the contract is signed.

OK, I don’t know him. At all. But I do know all of that other stuff. Why? Because he decided to have this conversation extra loud while pacing back and forth in a coffee shop.

Now I’m not one of those luddites who can’t stand if someone is using technology in public. We live in a world where people are mobile and on the go. Coffee shops are the people’s office. I often work in one, and I on occasion take phone calls when I am in there. I see no problem with taking a phone call if you talk in a tone that you would if someone were sitting across from you.

My problem with this guy was that he was not sitting in one spot, speaking in a normal tone. He was a loud person. And I get what it’s like being loud. My wife is constantly reminding me that I have a rather loud voice, usually when we are in public. Normally, it’s over very unimportant things, but she will tell me that we don’t need to ask the entire supermarket what kind of hummus to buy. (Our daughter inherited this gift, which provides me the opportunity to be a raging hypocrite and point out when she is talking loudly.)

The guy was also strolling back and forth through the store, from one end to the other, and then back to the other side.

Again, I get the pacing. I don’t think I have had a phone call in my house while seated in 20 years. I, too, am a pacer. But not in a coffee shop. It’s a social contract we engage in. Your conversation is yours, and it doesn’t need to become mine.

I continued working away as the gentleman paced back and forth, but I have to admit, I spent less time looking at my computer and more time watching others in the coffee shop. There were probably 15 other people in there. And every time the dude strolled passed their tables, someone would look up, having their at-the-table conversation disrupted by the guy who really had to finalize some contracts.

So what I want to ask each and every one of you today: Start today asking yourself, with everything you do, are my actions going to have a negative impact on someone else? I tell my kids this all the time. For example, when strolling through a parking lot, is your desire to play Pokemon Go or Snapchat something that critical that you should slow down traffic? No. It’s not. But my kids are teenagers. They’re expected to be knuckleheads. Adults shouldn’t have to be told this. But apparently they do.

So adults — time to reset. Time to remember what I always tell my kids — other people exist on this planet. And life is so much better when you realize that they are there. So don’t stroll through a coffee shop having a loud conversation. Also, don’t:

• Mosey through a parking lot while staring at your phone, as I’ve already pointed out.
• Take 11 items to the express line when it clearly says 10 items or less (even though it should be “fewer”).
• Leave your grocery cart in the middle of a parking spot (pretty sure any long time reader of my column saw this one coming).
• Continually switch lanes trying to win a traffic jam.
• Litter. Seriously, it’s 2017. Who’s OK with that now?
• Stay on your phone call when you are checking out at the store.
• Stay on your phone when you are checking someone out at the store.

I am sure I could write on and on and on about little things people could stop doing that really shouldn’t have to be said. But let’s start with some of the basics. Come on, people. We can do this. We can remember that other people exist around us. And we can still probably get that contract signed by Tuesday.

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.

Just wanted to reach out from the other coast and offer all of you understandably hurt Chargers fans a possible path back to professional football. As the recently self-appointed fan spokesperson for the Atlanta Falcons, I invite all scorned Chargers fans to Rise Up and hop on the Falcons bandwagon. We don’t have much history — only 10 games against each other ever. So we don’t have a rocky past. You know there’s no way you could possibly shift to the Chiefs or Broncos or Raiders. Too much history. We’re a lovely fanbase with a brand spanking new stadium starting next year. And Samuel L. Jackson is in our hype video. What’s not to love? So come on Charger, fans. Become Falcons fans. It’s only about a four-hour flight, which is probably about the same amount of time you’d spend in LA traffic. Look forward to seeing y’all.

We have floors again.

Well, we’ve had floors all along. It’s not like we ever lived on the edge of a bottomless pit. But we recently had new flooring put in, and I am pleased that (a) it is over and (b) my wife is happy with the results.

We have lived in our house for more than two years. But we leased for the first two, and just recently purchased it from the previous owner. Since we were leasing, we hadn’t done a lot of interior work because, let’s face it, not many folks remodel other people’s homes.

We had carpets in most of the downstairs, along with tile in the kitchen and hardwood in a hallway. My wife wanted a hardwood laminate throughout the downstairs. Works for me.

I’ll spare you the details of the task of picking out the flooring, mainly because it was me letting my wife pick out what she wanted. And that’s not because she doesn’t want my input. It’s because I don’t really care what the flooring is. You could cover my floors in gym mats and I probably wouldn’t notice.

My wife and I went into the flooring place to set up the installation schedule. Jeff, our salesman, said he could do it the following Wednesday. “You mean the Wednesday before Christmas?” I asked. He assured me that was no problem whatsoever, and they’d be in and out before Christmas.

I wasn’t totally sold on the possibility of having our Christmas morning be amidst construction debris, but Jeff assured us it was fine.

Deep breath.

The night before the installers were to arrive, my wife and I set about prepping the house. We moved anything that was not needed downstairs upstairs. Which means we moved 439 pairs of my daughter’s shoes up to her room.

My wife then said, “We need to vacuum before they get here.”

I responded, “You know they are tearing up all of this carpet and hauling it away tomorrow, right?”

My wife looked at me. With one of those looks. I went and got the vacuum.

Our next move was to relocate our small dog’s bed upstairs. Our dogs are exceptionally helpful when workers are around, to the point that they will often maintain physical contact with, say, someone trying to install our cable. Thus, when workers are over, we move them up to our room.

Maddux the Stoic is a boxer with a great big crate he sleeps in at night, but he’s also fine without it. We can just move him upstairs sans bed and he’s fine sleeping at the foot of our bed. Murphy the Excitable Dachshund, however, when moved upstairs, just wanders our room looking for something of familiarity. To your bed, sir.

The workers arrived around 8:30 the next morning. By about 9, it looked as if my house had been simultaneously ransacked and hit with a grenade. All of the furniture was stacked together in a small pile on one side of the house. Our kitchen floor was now just a collection of pried up broken tile pieces. This is fine, I said. This will all work out before Christmas, I said. My wife had gone into the office by then. She texted me and asked me how it was going. I sent her a picture of the kitchen. “This will all work out before Christmas,” I said.

They then began cutting up and removing the carpet. They did not tell me how nice it looked being freshly vacuumed, but I am sure they noticed.

I decided I would do what contractors most appreciate and get out of their way for a while.

I came back a few hours later to see how they were coming with the undoing of my house. I walked in the door and there was … a new floor. On like half the house. I sent a picture to my wife. I am not sure she believed it.

They finished that evening with all but the den left. They wrapped that up the next morning in a few hours. Job done, start to finish, in just over a day. Jeff was right. Never doubt Jeff.

The floors look great, and my wife is over the moon with how it looks. The only negative comments we have received are from the dogs, who have made it very clear that this new ice-like surface we have installed means they must seek refuge on couches or in their beds. They would have really preferred we had gone with gym mats.

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.

My wife and I are both 44 years old. We have been fortunate to have six wonderful parents in our lives since we first met more than 20 years ago.

Now, we have five.

My father-in-law, Ron, passed away after a noble and valiant battle with cancer. I will not say that he lost his battle. It was a tie. When he died, the cancer died, too. He fought too hard to be considered a loser in this scrum, and I refuse to give cancer a win. This was his fourth bout with cancer, so you know what? I’m calling Ron the series winner in this. 3-0-1 in my book.

In case you are wondering, we have six parents because my wife’s parents remarried some 30 years ago. But my wife did not get step parents. She always referred to them as bonus parents, because she was fortunate enough to have two new equally awesome people enter her life and love and care for her just as her parents did. And I am fortunate to have been given the gift of four additional parents when we were married.

Ron Heckman was a great father, a great husband, a great grandfather, and just a great man. The world is a little less great without him here.

We knew he was declining rapidly, and my family went to visit him over Thanksgiving. My wife had been spending much of the previous month in Atlanta with her dad, as she should have. We hoped and prayed for many more Thanksgivings together, but we saw the writing on the wall, and we wanted to ensure the kids were able to spend one last moment with Pop.

He was frail and weak, and it was obvious the toll that was being taken on his body. But the smile that came across his face when his grandkids were there was something cancer could not suppress. They brought him joy that could not be defeated.

My daughter was his first grandchild, and I am fairly certain that he went to his final resting place knowing the only reason the moon was in the sky was because she hung it there. He loved her singing more than anything, and he used to embarrass her to no end with his love of her voice. Ron never met a stranger in his life, and he could be in line at the grocery store and strike up a conversation with the person next to him. If Allie was there, he would begin telling them what a beautiful singer she was. You don’t know how many times he put her on the spot, asking her to sing in the middle of Kroger for some random stranger. I always chuckled at how proud he was of her, and how he wanted to share it with everyone he met. During his last few weeks, he spent a good amount of time in the hospital. And he played videos of Allie singing to every nurse and doctor who came in the room. Pop had to share his granddaughter’s gift with everyone.

He loved the fact that my son loved sports, and he loved taking him to ball games. We all went to a Falcons game on my birthday, Oct. 2. In retrospect, it is one of the greatest birthday gifts I have ever had. He loved playing catch with him or watching YouTube clips of awesome sports plays that Parker wanted to show him. He was a diehard Georgia Tech and Georgia State fan, but knew how much Parker loved Alabama football, and would text him or call him during Bama games when something awesome happened for the Tide. I’m not sure how many Bama games he watched 10 years ago, but I know that when his grandson became a diehard fan, glued to every Bama game, so was Pop. The last thing he said to my son, holding his hand tightly, as we were preparing to head back home after Thanksgiving, was, “I love you, boy. Roll Tide.”

Most of all, he loved his daughter. I am the luckiest man on the planet to have the wife I do, and I remind myself of that every day. And there is now a void in her life that will never be filled. I’ve rehearsed a thousand comforting things to tell my wife, but I know there is nothing I can ever say that will make the pain of her dad no longer being here go away. They were as close as a father and daughter can be. They talked every day. They talked at any hour she needed him. When our daughter was a baby, she decided she would sleep roughly never. As my wife and I were finding out that being parents of a colicky baby was no fun, I remember plenty of nights at 3 or 4 in the morning when she would call her dad. Because she needed him. And he was always there. I would like to say I will fill that void, but the truth is, try as I might, I can never do that. No one can fill Ron’s shoes.

Ron’s funeral will be held at Eastminster Presbyterian Church, the church where my wife and I were married. On May 2, 1998, he walked his daughter down the aisle, the proverbial “giving away” of his daughter. As my wife and I took our vows, I know he was letting a piece of his daughter away, as dads have to do. I made a promise that day. And I will keep it, Ron. I promise. Rest easy. You’ve earned it. And you won.

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.