The Checkout Line

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Checkout line photo courtesy of StockCake.com.

Story 15 of 52

By M. Snarky

American supermarkets are true wonders of choice and convenience. You can practically find everything you need at almost any time that you want it. You can also tell a lot about people by observing what they put on the conveyor belt in the checkout line.

I love to cook, and my shopping list is built exclusively around the menu for the week. My product choices are almost never driven by coupons or discounts – they are largely driven by what I want to cook and eat in the upcoming week. Admittedly, I’m a very pragmatic shopper and don’t diverge much from my list. However, if I see that tri-tip is on sale as I’m cruising through the meat department, I’ll grab one and save it for a future meal. Pragmatic, not foolish.

My shopping basket of groceries is practically all-telling with the protein, produce, baked goods, canned items, and condiment choices. I also like a wide variety of foods and cuisines, so my list is never static or based on a standard meal like meatloaf every Thursday night. I don’t even subscribe to the Taco Tuesday craze.

I can also always tell who the personal grocery shoppers, are, i.e., the Instacart and Uber Eats types. They are always in a rush and often have two or three shopping carts in tow clogging up the aisles while scrolling down their shopping lists on their phones. Can you really trust these people to buy produce for you? Like, do they really know how to pick out a ripe watermelon?

The produce department is also an interesting place to watch people. I have personally seen a person squeeze every single lime in the bin and pick out only the ones that apparently have the most juice potential. There are also the ones that grab a handful of string beans and eat them while they shop; grazing while shopping (GWS?), if you will. This is why it’s imperative to wash your produce before eating it.

While waiting in the checkout line, I look at what the shoppers in front of me are putting on the conveyor and play a game where I try to guess what they are cooking, essentially, foretelling their menu. I’m probably mostly wrong, but sometimes I do get some inspiration.

But some shopping carts make me scratch my head. For example, the ones with cases of soda pop, a dozen frozen pizzas, ten cans of canned stew, a liter sized yellow mustard container, and the largest bags possible of potato chips or cheese doodles. Maybe these are the coupon only driven shoppers.

I can ascertain a couple of things from this:

  1. This person absolutely does not cook at home.
  2. If this is what this person consumes on a regular basis, they are not going to live very long.
  3. They are likely diabetic.

And sometimes there’s the female 3-item shopper buying a box of white wine, a frozen Lean Cuisine dinner, and cat food.

There’s also the male counterpart buying a six-pack of beer, a Hungry Man dinner, and dog food.

It’s not hard to guess that they are probably single. I think the supermarkets should use AI to identify shoppers like these in their expansive database and maybe play matchmaker.

There are also the single-minded shoppers purchasing a bottle of tequila, a bottle of orange liqueur, a bottle of agave syrup, and a dozen limes. Margarita, anyone?

Self-checkout is generally limited to 15-items, but people regularly exceed this limit and slow down the entire quick checkout process. The other night I witnessed a woman with two full shopping carts using the self-checkout. These are also the people that often cut in line. They should be banned.

The most interesting and sometimes comical interactions happen between the shopper and the cashier, and the shopper and the payment terminal.

I have seen people with what could be considered a purpose-built coupon wallet pulling out dozens of coupons. Sometimes a coupon is rejected for one reason or another which always prompts some often-intense verbal interaction between the shopper and the cashier. I have seen these people remove items from their purchase because the coupon expired, or it was the incorrect size per the coupon restrictions. I think these are also the people who never pay full price for anything – no ifs, ands, or buts.

Then there are the people paying cash, sometimes with fistfuls of coins. This coin counting takes way too much time and should be outlawed.

An honorable mention goes to the old-timey check writers. Albeit writing anything in cursive these days is becoming a lost art, writing out a check takes way too much time:

  • Date (after asking the cashier what the date is): 10-seconds.
  • Pay to the Order of: 5-seconds.
  • Entering the dollar and cent amount in the $ window: 5-seconds.
  • Writing out One hundred twenty seven & 32/100: 15-seconds.
  • Signature: from 2 to 10 seconds depending upon the number of syllables.

So, 10+5+5+15+5=40-seconds in total, the time of which you’ll never get back. It’s almost exclusively the old folks that do this.

How about using a debit or credit card instead? 5-seconds tops unless you fat-fingered the PIN code and have to re-enter it. The old folks almost never use these because they still don’t trust the system.

Writing checks is definitely a generational thing with the exception of someone intentionally “kiting” or “floating” a check which is to make use of non-existent funds in a checking or other bank account “until payday,” which is technically illegal. Others are “paper hangers,” that intentionally write bad or stolen checks. No matter how good the economy is, there are still lowlifes like this running around.

Anyway, this last Tuesday, someone had the following on the conveyor:

  • Flank steak.
  • Corn tortillas.
  • Two white onions.
  • Six Roma tomatoes.
  • A half-dozen Jalapeño peppers.
  • a half-dozen Serrano chilies.
  • One head of garlic.
  • One dozen tomatillos.
  • One bunch of cilantro.
  • One 12-pack of bottled Modelo beer.

I’m guessing carne asada tacos with salsa verde and pico de gallo and cold beer on a Taco Tuesday night. Hell yeah! Oh, wait – that was me!

Instagram: @m.snarky

©2024. All rights reserved.

Laundromats – Part 2

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Story 14 of 52, continued.

By M. Snarky

To the contrary of Laundromats – Part 1, my extremely frugal paternal grandmother Mary Alice never stepped foot inside a laundromat. She had an old electric semi-automatic open top 1940’s era Maytag washing machine with a wringer that sat out on the back patio. Nothing fancy. I saw her doing a load of laundry once in that odd machine. Odd, in that it was cylindrical and didn’t connect to any plumbing and had to be filled with a combination of garden hose water and boiling water from a tea kettle. It also had an external drain hose that was connected to a wye cleanout plumbing fitting on the back wall of the patio. There was a foot switch, a lever, and a knob to control it. It had a clutch. It also required the user to have one or two rinse tubs full of water available.

The semi-automatic washing machine process went something like this:

  1. Place dirty laundry in the tub and fill with water of the desired temperature.
  2. Add laundry soap.
  3. Turn the machine foot switch on, engage the wash tub agitator, and set an egg timer for 15-minutes.
  4. Disengage the wash tub agitator.
  5. Engage the pump.
  6. When the wash tub is fully drained, disengage the pump.
  7. Engage the wringer.
  8. Wring out the clothes and place them into rinse tub 1. Agitate by hand.
  9. Wring out the clothes from rinse tub 1 and place them into rinse tub 2. Agitate by hand.
  10. Wring out the clothes from rinse tub 2 and place clothes in laundry basket for clothesline drying, or place directly into dryer.
  11. Disengage the wringer.
  12. Engage the pump to drain the tub of the water collected from all of the wringing.
  13. When the wash tub is fully drained, disengage the pump.
  14. Turn the foot switch off.
  15. Drain the rinse tubs.

Obviously, this was really only a semi-semi-automatic process, and a very hazardous and ridiculously tedious one, but she didn’t mind doing it. Thank god for the modern automatic washing machine. I hope the person that invented them won a Nobel Peace Prize!

Mary Alice didn’t have nor apparently need a gas or electric dryer. Instead, she had one of those rotating umbrella clotheslines that looked like a TV antenna that she used for drying her laundry naturally with only sunlight and a light breeze. She also knew not to dry laundry on the clothesline if the gusty Santa Ana winds were blowing, shrewdly circumventing the possibility of having to fetch her undergarments from the neighbors sycamore tree.

Fast forward to when I was about 19 and lived in a 2-story 20-unit apartment building with my younger brother and my mom at 6037 Hazelhurst Place in NoHo. The apartment building had a small room on the ground floor near the pool equipment that had one heavy-duty top-loading coin-op washer and one heavy-duty front-loading coin-op dryer that were situated to the left side of the room and a small, convenient counter to the right side for folding your clothes. Above the folding counter was a soapbox vending machine. It was ostensibly a micro laundromat. Sorry, no fluff ‘n’ fold services available.

However, there were rules for using the laundry room to prevent any conflicts. On the back of the laundry room door, the apartment manager had posted a framed 8 ½ x 11-inch mimeographed schedule with gridlines for which apartment had access on which days of the week and which 2-hour time slots. There was another larger, 2-foot by 3-foot professionally hand painted sign from Erroll Sign Company in NoHo (I actually worked for the owner, Erroll Biggs, over one summer) that was screwed to the back of the door that had the following:

LAUNDRY ROOM RULES       

HOURS – 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM ONLY!                                                    

NO SMOKING!

CLEAN OUT THE LINT SCREEN IN THE DRYER WHEN YOU ARE DONE!

DO NOT LEAVE ANY TRASH BEHIND!

They went a little overboard with all capitalized letters and the exclamation points which gave me the impression that they were a little bit angry and very shouty. Reading between the lines, the sign inferred that people used the laundry room between 10:00 PM and 8:00 AM, regularly smoked in it, didn’t clean the dryer screen, and left trash lying around which probably consisted mostly of empty soapboxes, empty beer bottles, and flattened cigarette butts extinguished on the floor with a shoe. 

One Sunday night when our apartment number had the scheduled laundry time of 8:00 – 10:00 PM, I went downstairs to do my load of laundry at 8:00 sharp, but someone had apparently lost track of time and there was a load of laundry in both the washer and the dryer. Looking at the schedule, it was apartment #10 that had the 6:00 – 8:00 time slot. Not wanting to wait (nor should I have had to wait because of the established rules), I moved the clothes that were in the dryer to the folding table and moved the wet laundry from the washing machine and placed them in the dryer. I figured if the person came back while my clothes were still in the washer, they would just start the dryer and when I came down later the dryer would be available to me.

In the meantime, I went back upstairs and smoked a little weed and was feeling alright when I realized it was time to pop my clothes into the dryer at around 8:30 PM. I went back downstairs, and nothing had changed; the wet clothes were still in the dryer and the dry clothes were still in a pile on the folding table. No biggie – I decided to move #10’s wet clothes from inside the dryer and put them on top of it and put my clothes in the dryer and carry on with my business. But while I was loading the dryer, I noticed a rather large, middle-aged woman in a muumuu with these big curlers in her hair looming in the laundry room doorway, standing there in silence, and puffing on a cigarette. She was straight out of a Gary Larson cartoon.

I turned to say hello when she started in on me in a very nasty, throaty, gravelly tone of voice – the kind of voice brought on only from years of smoking. “What do you think you’re doing touching my clothes, you pervert!” Pervert? I don’t believe I deserved that. I defended myself by saying, “Actually, ma’am, this is my time slot (I gestured toward the posted schedule on the back of the door), and you left your laundry unattended, so I just moved it out of the way to make room so I could do my laundry.” I was talking in a low-key matter-of-fact tone of voice. Then she said, sarcastically, “Actually, it is against standard laundry room etiquette to touch anyone else’s clothes!” Standard laundry room etiquette? I didn’t know this was a thing – they certainly didn’t teach this is school.

Sensing the mounting agitation and wanting to avoid conflict, I said, “No problem. I’ll take my clothes out of the dryer and let you finish drying your clothes first and then I’ll come back later.” I grabbed my little white plastic laundry basket and filled it with my wet clothes from the dryer. Then she said, in a very demanding femdom-like voice, “Now you put my wet clothes back into the dryer!” I was shocked at her talking at me like I was her BDSM partner, and so I looked her straight in the eye and sarcastically replied, “I thought I wasn’t supposed to touch anyone else’s clothes, you know; standard laundry room etiquette!”

This snarky rebuff made her snap – she was apparently an angry woman who likes to get her way – she clenched the cigarette in her teeth and then she stepped into the laundry room and took a right-hand swing at me with all of the flabby power that she had in her big, puffy arms. I ducked and took a quick step backyard like a boxer in a prize fight. She missed hitting me by a mile. I said, “Are you crazy?” Then she said in a huffing voice, “You little bastard!” and took another step toward me as she was cocking her right arm back in preparation of taking another swing at me. I noticed that now there was just enough room behind her to squeeze between her body and the doorway. With newfound cat-like reflexes, I grabbed my laundry basket of wet clothes and faked a step to my right, which she jerkily followed while she was swinging at me which took her off balance making her fall softly against the dryer with all of her mass but catching herself from falling on the floor at the last moment. I took another quick step to the left and ran right by her, slightly bumping her, ah, equally puffy butt which prompted her to yell out loud, “DON’T YOU TOUCH ME YOU LITTLE FAGGOT!” So, within about a minute, I was labeled a perverted little bastard faggot. She was batshit crazy. Good job, Karen.

I had half a mind to call the cops on her for aggravated assault but thinking it through to the logical conclusion where the both of us are interviewed about what transpired while the cops are trying to keep a straight face and ultimately advising us to forgive each other and go back to our apartment prevented me from doing so. That, and I may have had a little bit of weed in my pocket.

This experience made me wonder about the frequency of laundromat violence, what was considered the ultimate unforgivable offense, and what the fatality rate was. It both slightly amused and somewhat disturbed me thinking about people snapping over such a trivial thing like touching someone else’s clothes. How about this, Karen: Follow the laundromat rules and don’t leave your damn clothes unattended!

Fortunately, laundromats have changed much from their utilitarian roots over the decades and have become much more civilized, but nowadays it costs like $5 to wash and dry a load of laundry. There are newer, fancier attended laundromats with attached sports bars where you can get a cheeseburger and a beer and watch a baseball game while you are doing your own laundry, or have someone else do your laundry for you, vis-à-vis, Fluff ‘n’ Fold service.

The fact of the matter is that I really don’t mind if someone else touches my clothes. As far as I’m concerned, standard laundry room etiquette can go to hell.

Instagram: @m.snarky

©2024. All rights reserved.

Laundromats – Part 1

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Our local laundromat at the northeast corner of Cahuenga and Magnolia Boulevards in North Hollywood, CA.

Story 14 of 52

By M. Snarky

Even if you have never personally been to a laundromat or needed to use one because you lived in a sucky apartment building that didn’t have a laundry room, you probably know about these places, or at least are familiar with the laundromat scene in the movie Fight Club or have seen a few of them as you drive through the city.

Growing up, my family moved around about every 1-2 years or whenever and wherever my dad could get work as an electrician. Even though we often lived in the boondocks outside of city limits where renting an old farmhouse was cheap, my parents always managed to make sure that a washer and dryer were available for our family of six. It wasn’t until my parents split up that I had my first of many laundromat experiences in 1973 after we moved into a duplex apartment in North Hollywood, or NoHo as it is now called.

My mom would wait until everything was dirty twice-over before overloading a shopping cart – which was somehow appropriated from the Market Basket grocery store on Ventura Boulevard, about 2-miles away – with a mountain of said dirty clothes along with a box of Tide and a white, plastic bottle of Clorox bleach. She wheeled it on down to the laundromat at the northeast corner of Cahuenga and Magnolia Boulevards, usually with my brother and I in tow. We were 10 and 12-years old, respectively. Our local laundromat was adjacent to the Bamford Liquor store, and my mom would sometimes hand over 10¢ to each of us boys to buy some candy to placate us. Our local laundromat was a very basic, utilitarian, no-frills place at the time.

For me, the laundromat was a wonderland of coin-op vending machines. Of course, there was the change machine, plus there was a mini soapbox machine where you could buy a single load sized box of powdered Tide, Cheer, Ivory Snow, or All. You put your coins into the coin slot below your preferred brand of laundry detergent, push the coin slot in, and the soapbox would drop into the metal bin below with a light thud.

There was also a molded, padded TV chair with a small six-inch black and white TV screen and tuner built into it that cost 10¢ for 30-minutes of broadcast TV. In the greater Los Angeles area at the time, the options were channels 2 (CBS), 4 (NBC), 5 (KTLA), 7 (NBC), 9 (KCAL), 11 (KTTV), and 13 (KCOP). That padded, spongy TV chair was the most comfortable seat in the entire laundromat, and someone – generally another mom – was always lounging in it without paying for the television service. They would get annoyed with you if you asked them to move so you could actually watch TV. I watched many reruns of Star Trek at the laundromat.

Directly outside the laundromat door was a ubiquitous Los Angeles Times newspaper vending machine too – 10¢ for the daily paper, 25¢ for the Sunday edition.

There was also one of those 5¢ triple-head candy vending machines inside the laundromat and it didn’t take long for us boys to figure out that the peanuts and bubblegum were perpetually stale in that vending machine so we would go over to the liquor store and buy candy from there where we could get a 3-foot-long whip of purple grape or green apple flavored bubblegum for 10¢. The flavor in that gum was gone in 5-minutes, and the more you chewed it, the stiffer it got. I’m surprised we didn’t get TMJ from chewing that stuff.

Sometimes mom would let us feed the last three dollars of cash that she had in the whole world into the change machine which was sort of a mechanical wonder when you’re a 12-year-old boy. The machine would only accept the dollar bill when oriented correctly and if the paper money was in reasonably good condition. If you put the dollar bill into the slot incorrectly, or if the dollar bill was too faded or crumpled, it would just spit the bill back out looking as if the machine was sticking it’s tongue out at you with a resounding virtual message of REJECT! In those cases, mom would send us over to the liquor store for change, but the liquor store policy was NO CHANGE – DON’T ASK according to a sign on the wall behind the cash register. So, we had to buy 5¢ of candy to get change, which was usually five 1¢ pieces of Bazooka bubblegum. That liquor store was definitely benefiting from the laundromat. I was also secretly hoping that every dollar bill would get rejected so we could buy more candy. I also wondered how many pints of liquor were sold to the laundromat patrons.

When the change machine did accept a dollar bill, the sound of the four quarters hitting the metal tray at the bottom of the machine was glorious – it was like you won the jackpot from a slot machine in Las Vegas!

Mostly out of curiosity but with a potential monetary side benefit, I tried to trick the change machine once by tracing out the face and the back of a dollar bill on a piece of blank translucent tracing paper using a No. 2 pencil and then carefully cutting it out to the exact (well, mostly exact) size of a dollar bill. The anticipation of getting free quarters for a forged dollar bill as it was being fed into the waiting illuminated slot using the correct orientation of George Washington’s head was met with the cold rejection of a machine that was not so easily tricked. So much for my scheme to make more fake bills if it worked. In retrospect, it appears that my juvenile delinquency started earlier than I thought.

The change machine would also give change for coins: two-dimes and a nickel for a quarter, and two nickels for a dime. This was handy for the 35¢ washer and 10¢ dryer.

My mom would use three or four washing machines at-a-time, all in a row if possible, and separate the laundry mostly into whites and colors and transfer the dirty clothes from the shopping cart to the top-loading, large-capacity washing machines. She would tell us which settings she wanted on each load, for example, hot wash and warm rinse for the whites, and warm wash and cold rinse for the colors. She would then tell us how many scoops of detergent or how much bleach to add to each load.

We got to feed the coins into the waiting washing machines too, I think, mostly to continue keeping us boys occupied. We set the coins vertically into the appropriate slots, and then pushed the slotted coins into the machine which, coincidentally, also sounded like a slot machine payout.

However, some of the washing machine coin slots were occasionally jammed with what appeared to be foreign coins or metal slugs which made them completely inoperable. No doubt this irritated the owner/maintenance guy to no end and made him rethink his life choices. Also, what kind of lowlife cheapskate doesn’t have 35¢ for a load of laundry and needs to resort to such measures?

The laundromat also had these high, square laundry baskets on wheels with a hanger bar across the top. The top of the laundry basket was at the same height as the top of the washing machines, so it made loading and unloading clothes easy. These were also great for wheeling your little brother around inside the laundromat as fast as possible much to the irritation of other laundromat patrons sitting around and reading their copy of the Los Angeles Times or Time magazine while waiting for their clothes to finish.

Laundromat environments are this peculiar confluence of heat and humidity blending with the many laundry detergent scents competing with each other as they waft through the air. One moment you definitely smell the fresh scent of Tide and the next moment you get a nose full of flowery smelling Cheer. Occasionally, you’ll get hit with the chemical smell of bleach. Makes me wonder about the long-term hazards of inhaling all this stuff.

One time, I convinced my little brother to get inside one of the massive front-loading dryers under the premise that it was going to be like a carnival ride. He crawled in and sat in it like a recliner and braced himself. I closed the door and popped the dime into the coin slot and selected the cool setting and pressed the start button. There was a low hum as the dryer started to turn slowly and within a couple of seconds my poor little brother was getting the tumble dry treatment which looked like he was doing endless in-place somersaults. He started yelling “STOP!” and I quickly pulled the dryer door open to stop it. He jumped out of it like he was shot from a cannon. He said, “Now, it’s your turn.” I smiled at him, spun around on my heels, and ran out of the laundromat as fast as I could with my brother hot on my heels, as he was hollering, “YOU TRICKED ME!” I heard my mom yell out, “Knock it off boys!” as we passed by.

Eventually, we helped mom transfer the freshly laundered clothes from the washing machines to the dryers, and within the next 40-minutes or so, we were folding laundry and reloading the shopping cart for the return trip back to the apartment. I have a distinct memory of pushing the shopping cart down Cahuenga Boulevard with the pleasant scent of clean laundry in the air.

To be continued next week…

Instagram: @m.snarky

©2024. All rights reserved.

Hello Back – A Lost Art

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Story 13 of 52

By M. Snarky

I’ve mentioned in a previous post (https://msnarky.com/2024/08/30/walking-in-my-neighborhood/) that I do my best to get my ten-thousand daily steps. It’s good for me. It gets me away from my screens for an hour or so. It gets my heart rate up a little bit. I also benefit from the sunshine and fresh air and the endorphins especially after getting chased by a dog for half a block. I do most of my walking around my neighborhood and I’ve become familiar with the streets and the houses and the other regular walkers.

I’ve gotten myself into the habit of saying hello to everyone that I pass. Not an over-the-top, phony “HELLO!” like what the salesman at the car dealership says as if they know me, it’s just a regular, friendly, low-key “Hello,” which to me is a simple greeting and an acknowledgment of someone’s presence. Oddly, my hello back ratio is lacking, like maybe I get a one out of five response, or 20%. On a good day, maybe one out of four, or 25%. My ratio is 100% because I always say hello back.

There is a semi-regular walker in my neighborhood that I call Bigfoot. He is a thinnish sixty-something year old mustachioed man with a ruddy complexion and thinning hair and he’s maybe five-feet-nine-inches tall. He wears Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses…even at night. He walks with duck feet (out-toeing) at such an unbelievable angle with shoes so large that it reminds me of Bigfoot, hence the nickname. He walks with his head at a downward angle as if he is avoiding making eye contact with anyone. His body language tells me that he is walking reluctantly – as if he’s only doing it because of doctor’s orders.

I have said hello to this man at least dozen times. He has never, ever, said hello back. My first inclination was that he was tuned out with earbuds (which, unfortunately, is often the case) and maybe blasting Liberace’s Greatest Hits and simply didn’t hear me, but there was nothing jammed into his ears. My second inclination was that he had a hearing deficit and simply couldn’t hear me. But then I saw him having a conversation with someone in the neighborhood which ruled this out. So, if he can hear me, there must be another reason. Maybe he’s just a shy person. Maybe he’s just going through the motions of life and not really engaging in it, which is sad, really. Perhaps he is in a witness protection program and is suspicious of everyone, which pretty much borders on paranoia. Or maybe he’s just an anti-social crank that hates the world. I’m leaning toward that last one.

So, this got me thinking about the actual word, hello, where it came from, what it means, etc., and down the world-wide-web rabbit hole I went…

According to Merriam-Webster, the etymology of the word hello is that it is an alteration of the word hollo (14th century) which was originally used as an exclamation or to attract attention. The Oxford English Dictionary notes the earliest known use of the word hello is in the 1820s. Okay, so the word has been in use for a couple of centuries so it’s not like it’s a new word that hasn’t caught on.

According to NPR, Thomas Edison is credited for popularizing the word hello by suggesting that this is how you should answer your newfangled telephone in the late 19th century. His rival, Alexander Graham Bell, however, thought the better word was “ahoy.” I can’t imagine answering my phone with, “Ahoy!” instead of, “Hello!” unless, of course, I was a pirate.

Anyway, I’m not exactly sure why there is a hello back deficit and I do have some theories about this. But first, some definitions (that I made up):

  1. Hello-er [he-loh-er] – the person who says hello first.
  2. Hello-ee [he-loh-ee] – the person who is the recipient of the hello.

Theory 1 – People are Generally Unfriendly

For whatever reason (or reasons), people, in general, are just not that friendly. By default, they are wary of a random stranger talking to them. Maybe they think replying with a hello back will open up an opportunity for a life insurance sales pitch. Or maybe this is just an L.A. thing.

Theory 2 – Avoiding Conversation

People might think that if they respond with a hello back, it will open up the floodgates of a potentially awkward conversation with the unknown hello-er, so they avoid replying back because they don’t want to get pulled into a discussion about politics or religion or veganism.

Theory 3 – Cultural

Unless you have been introduced to a person by a friend or a family member of a member of the clergy, you just don’t talk to strangers unless you want to get flogged. This is probably more applicable to women than men because it is mostly men that make up the rules that incorporate flogging.

Theory 4 – Stranger Danger

Similar to Theory 3 but without the flogging part, Stranger Danger mandates that by default you don’t talk to any stranger for any reason or under any circumstances because they might be a slasher or a rapist or a politician. Don’t even make eye contact. Be a ghost. Indeed, we teach our children to be paranoid and anti-social at an early age here in the USA.

The response of some hello-ee’s is sometimes that of a happy surprise,  as if they didn’t expect you to acknowledge them at all, and when you did, they smile and say hello back. These are my favorite people – they are spontaneous and genuine.

For example, there is a family in my neighborhood that has a special needs daughter in her late teens or early twenties. She is non-verbal and the parents have this special three-wheeled wheelchair contraption for her that straps her feet onto pedals and her hands onto handlebars that are articulated to encourage motion in her withered limbs. It is both heartbreaking and beautiful to see parents that are so devoted to their daughter that they regularly walk her around the local elementary school.

The first time we walked by them we were walking in opposite direction around the school, so we saw them face-to-face. I said hello, not only out of being social, but also to convey to them that I see them and that I acknowledge them. They probably didn’t sense that I silently understood the 24/7 anguish they must be experiencing. The response from the parents was as if they had become so accustomed to being invisible that they didn’t think anybody cared to say anything to them, especially a perfect stranger, and I think that I caught them off guard. My hello evoked from them a quick smile and a friendly hello back. It appeared to me that this family had grown accustomed to people walking silently past them. They were used to people ignoring them, not particularly out of callousness or indifference, but because people don’t naturally know how to act or what to say to someone that is clearly living day-to-day with such hardship.

I strongly recommend that people say hello to the passersby that are less fortunate – you might just make their day.

I’ve also noticed that there are vast differences between the hello back response rates of men versus women. In my experience, the man-to-man hello back rate is probably close to one in two, or 50% while the man-to-woman hello back rate is much lower, like maybe one in five, or about 20%.

Not being a woman, I have no idea what the woman-to-woman or woman-to-man hello back ratio is, but I imagine that it is not exactly the inverse. What I mean is that perhaps the woman-to-woman is on par with the man-to-man ratio but the woman-to-man hello back percentage is probably much higher because most men are, frankly, a bunch of horndogs. I also wonder what the national average is between the hello-er and hello-ee ratios between the sexes.

I recently discovered the Google Books Ngram Viewer, and it appears that the frequency of the word hello peaked around 2012:

Google Books Ngram Viewer results for “hello.”

Is hello getting cancelled? If so, we’re doomed.

I’m going to rebel against this trend and keep saying hello anyway.

Instagram: @m.snarky

© 2024. All rights reserved.

Supporting Links

Hollo – https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hollo

Hello – https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hello, https://www.oed.com/dictionary/hello_int?tab=factsheet#1691340

NPR – https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/02/17/133785829/a-shockingly-short-history-of-hello

Google Books Ngram Viewer for hello https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hello&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=true

Politically Homeless

~ msnarky ~ 1 Comment
Still standing.

Story 12 of 52

By M. Snarky

That divisive 2024 presidential election cycle was pretty wild, wasn’t it? We went from old man Biden falling behind old man Trump in the polls to younger woman Harris surging past Trump in the polls. Some polls showed Harris ahead in this state and Trump ahead in that state and vice-versa. Women favored Harris and men favored Trump. Duh. Projections from the pundits, pollsters, politicos, and pinheads were for a tight election – not chad checking tight like in the 2000 presidential election, but tight, nonetheless. When the dust settled, we got ourselves another old white man, but also a misogynist, a womanizer, and a convict. Good job, America – you just elected the first Convict-in-Chief.

Was this a “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” vote? Perhaps it was, but we can do so much better than this.

Again, as a solid Libertarian (I voted for Chase Oliver and I encourage you to read about him), I find myself politically homeless. Being a social liberal and fiscal conservative makes me an outlier in today’s corrosive Team Red or Team Blue political duopoly.

Also, there is a misrepresentation of libertarians in that all we want to do is legalize drugs and prostitution. This is the bastardized version of the libertarian party. The libertarian party is about much more than decriminalization of drug use and sex workers. It’s also about personal freedom, minimizing government force and government interference in your life, free markets, sound money policy, etc. I recommend that you read all about it over at lp.org before making any judgment.

The best definition of liberty I ever heard was from Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor in-chief of Reason, the magazine of “free minds and free markets,” which, to paraphrase, was, “Liberty is the total absence of government coercion.” Yes!

I was a double-hater from the beginning for many reasons. Neither candidate had a coherent foreign, domestic, trade, or monetary policy. Both Harris and Trump were floating out off-the-cuff ideas here and there (most of them terrible) I think mostly to see what might stick in the news-cycle, but there was zero substance in my opinion. No tax on tips was the best idea they could agree on. Wow. Talk about weak sauce. Instead, how an adult conversation about a simple flat minimum tax rate coupled with a value added tax (VAT) plan like what 175 other countries do? Just floating out an idea here. Also, we don’t need a new Department of the Politically Homeless, thank you.

Neither candidate spoke about reigning in the size and scope and power of the government. It was essentially more of the same – more spending, more government jobs programs, more debt. So much debt that tens of trillions of dollars of it doesn’t even move the needle anymore. I think this is because most people just don’t understand that one trillion dollars has twelve zeros (for a visual reference, that is $1,000,000,000,000) and is too big of a number for the average person to comprehend let alone talk about.

No talk about federal government program reform, or departmental or agency audits, like maybe audit the Federal Reserve, Department of Education, Postal Service, Social Security, Medicare, IRS, ad infinitum. Do we really need the Commission of Fine Arts? Probably not. No talk about shrinking the military budget or de-tangling our very messy foreign entanglements. Balancing the budget? Forget about it! Sorry, Senator Rand Paul: Your Six Penny Plan to balance the federal budget in 5-years is a great idea but is also a non-starter because Congress is addicted to pork. What we need here is an intervention.

It has been said that a government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have, which is something that we are flirting with. This is why further expansion of any existing or creation of any new government program or “service” needs to be curtailed by any means possible, including some old school filibustering.

Also, the voting bloc of unionized government workers is probably going to vote for the candidate that is not talking about reform or cuts, because reform or cuts may cost them their jobs, so there’s that. Essentially, they vote for job security.

Oddly, neither candidate talked about the ever-increasing tax burden placed on the shoulders of the American people because of the federal government’s spending problem. Instead, Harris supports an unrealized gains tax and Trump supports massive tariffs, both of which are unbelievably bad ideas and would increase the tax burden and the cost of goods for Americans across the board, not just the millionaires and billionaires.

To drive this idea home, I’ll flip the script from talking about income to talking about tax burdens. For example, “I make $100,000 per year,” changes to, “My tax burden is $24,000 per year,” which is an entirely different conversation. This is only a 24% tax rate on gross earnings example, so it’s not a crazy high number that I’m hypothesizing with here. Work with me. In some places in the world, that $24K is a fortune.

Can I get a show of hands from people who like having $2,000 a month stolen from them? Oops! What I meant was, can I get a show of hands from people that like making a “voluntary” $2,000 per month contribution to the IRS? Oh, and if you don’t voluntarily give up your money to the government, it will be taken by force. That force being the confiscation of your cash and assets and possible jail time.

Also, that pesky 6,871-page U.S. tax code (75,000 pages after tax regulations and official tax guidelines from the IRS are included) is just too unwieldy for casual political conversation. Let’s be honest here; the U.S. tax code is a bloated tome of the greatest cradle to grave taxation scheme ever imposed upon the public. I say we burn it and start over with a single page tax return.

The only more that I want from the government is more freedom, more personal liberty, more reform, and more contraction. Anything less is anathema to a free society.

Instagram: @m.snarky

© 2024. All rights reserved.

Supporting Links

A-Z index of U.S. government departments and agencies: https://www.usa.gov/agency-index

Chase Oliver: https://votechaseoliver.com/

Libertarian Platform: https://www.lp.org/platform/

Reason Magazine: https://reason.com/

Senator Rand Paul Six Penny Plan: https://www.paul.senate.gov/dr-rand-paul-introduces-six-penny-plan-to-balance-the-federal-budget-in-five-years/

Tax code, regulations and official guidance: https://www.irs.gov/privacy-disclosure/tax-code-regulations-and-official-guidance

Value-Added Tax (VAT): https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueaddedtax.asp

Why Turtlenecks?

~ msnarky ~ Leave a comment
Turtlenecks have been cancelled.

Story 11 of 52

By M. Snarky

Ahh, fall is in the air and with it comes longer nights and cooler temps and the season of the…turtlenecks. God help us.

Guys, turtlenecks just don’t look cool and are a very dated fashion choice. Seriously. It’s a dreadfully old, dull fashion statement that just won’t die and it’s all your fault.

Do you think turtlenecks make you look taller? They don’t.

Do you think turtlenecks make you look smarter? If you don’t mind being judged as an elitist intellectual type – because this is what turtlenecks say about you – then, yes, you look smarter you little snob.

Do you think a turtleneck makes you look trendy? Depends upon whom you ask, but the correct answer is no.

Nobody really likes them, except for maybe mothers and girlfriends and boyfriends with ulterior motives.

Looking back to days of yore, turtlenecks were only invented to protect the necks of medieval knights to prevent chafing from their chainmail armor way back in the Dark Ages. They were not invented for men to wear while singing folk music, reciting poetry, anchoring the news, playing the bongos, or eating a steak at Morton’s with Guido and Tony.

Are these modern turtleneck wearing men trying to signal to us that they are identifying as a bold, horse riding, sword fighting, mace swinging, lance impaling medieval knight with bad teeth and actually trying to subconsciously intimidate us? Granted, this is a massive stretch. Eh, on second thought, probably not.

What looks worse than an actual turtleneck? A Dickie mock turtleneck, like what cousin Eddie spectacularly wore in Christmas Vacation. I guess if you don’t have the bucks for an actual turtleneck, a Dickie is your discount fashion option, you cheap, out-of-touch bastard. Also, I don’t think a man should wear anything called a dickie because the name itself hints that a certain body part may be smallish.

The worst look of all is a turtleneck with a big, chunky gold or silver chain worn on the outside of the collar. Unless, of course, you are Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; he’s the only one that can pull that look off. Ahem, hi Dwayne – I love your work!

Do men really wear turtlenecks to fend off a chill to their neck on a cold day? No. It’s only worn as a fashion statement, not as a practical clothing item. So, you gotta man up, dude – wear something hip like a cravat, or a neckerchief, or an ascot, or a buff, or even a keffiyeh, but wearing one of these might piss a few people off.

Or is it that these turtleneck wearing men are channeling an actual turtle in that they can retreat into their shell if frightened by, say, a snarling Pomeranian gnashing its teeth?

Do these men look in the mirror and say to themselves, “Wow, dude – what an absolutely awesome fashion statement!” Or is it, “Mom love’s it when I wear this!” This is wrong either way.

Or is it that you allow your mother or the woman or the man in your life to dress you in a turtleneck? Rage, rage, against the…wearing of the terribly bad fashion choices.

Does your girlfriend or wife or boyfriend or husband tell you that you look handsome in a turtleneck? They are lying to you through an ulterior motive which is to make you look as unattractive as possible to other people, you know, to fend off any potential competition. The same goes for two-faced lying coworkers who tell you that you look great in a turtleneck but are laughing behind your back. You’re actually being subliminally manipulated, and you should be angry about that!

Whatever the reason is that you’re wearing a turtleneck now, it’s categorically wrong. Please, just stop it.

I’ll concede here that I can only see one, ONE, possible reason to wear a turtleneck: To cover up a poorly executed neck tattoo of a red lipstick kiss that you paid $10 for when you were 20 years old and drunk in Mexico. At the time you thought that it looked like a kiss from Angelina Jolie’s sexy lips, but when you sobered up it looked more like a smeared, sloppy, drunken kiss from the lips of Mrs. Doubtfire.

I encourage everyone to dig through their closets and their dressers and grab every single turtleneck or Dickie that can be found, pile them up high in the driveway, pour some gasoline over them, and torch them. Yes, yes, set them ablaze in the ultimate rejection of a fashion style that should have died out during the Renaissance!

And suddenly, I’m getting notices from Amazon that fall turtlenecks are on sale. “We found something you might be interested in…” with a bunch of turtleneck images and links. This can only be because I had researched turtlenecks on the web, not because I was actually shopping for one to purchase. Yeah, that’s it. Apparently, the app was “listening.”

This creepy AI algorithm stuff is going way too far.

Instagram: @m.snarky

©2024. All rights reserved.

War on Dog Poop – Part 2

~ msnarky ~ Leave a comment

There is only ONE reason these signs exist!

Story 10 of 52

By M. Snarky

Cop, to Rooney, while filling out an FI (field interrogation) card: “Give me your full name, date of birth, street address, and phone number. Okay now, Mr. Rooney, tell me what happened.”

Rooney, with a hint of arrogance: “That terrible man over there chased me down the sidewalk with that pooper scooper full of dog poop and he threatened to hurt me.”

Cop, incredulously: “He threatened to hurt you?”

Rooney: “Well, he didn’t exactly threaten to hurt me, but I felt threatened by him following me down the sidewalk with that thing,” as he gestured toward the pooper scooper.

Cop: “Why would he do that in the first place?”

Rooney: “I don’t know. Maybe he was going to mug me or steal my precious dog, Fang.”

Cop: “Mug you or steal your dog, Fang…really?” Now the cop was shaking his head, I think, because I really didn’t match the profile of a mugger nor a Pomeranian dognapper.

Cop, to me, while filling out another FI card: “Give me your full name, date of birth, street address, and phone number. Now, Mr. Snarky, tell me what happened.”

Me: “Officer, Mr. Rooney over there had been letting his dog poop on my lawn on a regular basis for months without cleaning it up, and I finally caught him in the act this morning.”

Cop: “You actually witnessed Mr. Rooney with his dog, Fang, while said dog relieved itself on your front lawn?”

Me: “Yessir.”

Cop: “And you’re positive it was Mr. Rooney and this dog?” The cop pointed his pen down toward Fang. Fang barked and then hid behind Rooney.

Me: “Absolutely positive, officer – here’s the evidence.” I thrust the loaded pooper scooper toward him.

Cop: “That’s a lot of poop for such a small dog.”

Me: “Fang’s poop is the fresh one in front that looks like a cat turd.” The cop took a closer look and then turned toward Rooney.

Cop, to Rooney: “Well, Mr. Rooney, Mr. Snarky here says that you let your dog poop on his lawn and didn’t clean it up – is this true?”

Rooney: “No, it is not true – that man is a LIAR!”

Cop: “Mr. Rooney, calling someone a liar is a serious accusation. And what about the fresh evidence in the pooper scooper? Are you telling me that this didn’t come from Fang?”

Rooney, in a blustery, dismissive tone: “I have no idea where that came from!”

Cop, sensing that Rooney was not actually telling the truth: “Well then, Mr. Rooney, I guess I have no choice but to take the poop Mr. Snarky alleges as coming from your dog as evidence and also take your dog, Fang, into custody until he poops again at which time the crime lab will perform a DNA test on both poop samples. If they match, Mr. Snarky may sue you for trespassing, property damage, and defamation of character, and you will also be charged with giving false information to a peace officer which is a misdemeanor and could result in up to six months in county jail and a fine up to $5,000.”

Rooney: “Ha! Officer – you’re joking…right?” The officer looked Rooney straight in the eye and shook his head slowly.

Rooney: “You can’t be serious about taking Fang into custody as if he was some common street criminal! You aren’t going to cuff him, are you?”

Cop: “I never joke about making an arrest and taking people or their dogs into custody, Mr. Rooney. I’ll have to radio in for animal control to come and pick Fang up.”

Rooney: “Animal control? Fang will end up in the city dog pound!”

Cop: “Yes, he certainly will. I hope you’ve kept up on his vaccines – you never know what he might pick up at the pound. Stuff like mange, distemper, kennel-cough, ringworm, heartworm, rabies, fleas…stuff like that.”

Rooney, in an excited, wavering voice: “Whoa-whoa-whoa! I-I-I simply cannot stand the thought of Fang sitting behind bars with a bunch of flea-bitten ill-behaved mutts from who knows where. Um, officer, I, ah, I think things may have gotten blown up way out of proportion here. I-I-I mean that I didn’t really feel threatened by Mr. Snarky. I, ahem, I, ah, I was just totally embarrassed that he caught me and Fang red-handed, and I may have, ah, overreacted just a smidgen under such a stressful situation.”

Cop: “A smidgen?”

Rooney: “Okay-okay, I absolutely overreacted. I-I-I owe Mr. Snarky here an apology.” Rooney gave me a sheepish grin and said, “Please accept my sincere apology for acting so foolishly.”

Me: “Mr. Rooney, I was just trying to make a point; please excuse me for my crude, impolite methodology.” We briefly smiled at each other and shook hands. Rooney’s hand was clammy and wimpy; it felt like I was shaking a cold, dead fish.

Cop: “Okay now, citizens, are we good here?”

Rooney and myself, in unison: “Yessir.”

Cop: “Okay now, both of you go home; I have some real criminals to catch.”

And as the cop was walking away from us heading back to his black-and-white cruiser, he reached down to his tactical belt and pulled out a tiny pair of dog-sized handcuffs and twirled them around on his index finger. He was serious after all.

Musing aside, I followed Rooney to the end of the long block where he turned right and headed west. I let him sweat it out for another minute or so and then turned around and walked back toward home. I was feeling some satisfaction that Mr. Rooney now knows that I know that he and his dog Fang are the poop offenders when suddenly the irony of the situation struck me; once again, I had picked up his beloved Fang’s poop. That man was diabolical! I never saw him again.

All of this nonsense could have been avoided if only Mr. Rooney and his ilk would be more responsible about their dog’s poop. This is not hard to do!

The War on Dog Poop needs you to stand up and fight for your right to stroll through your neighborhood without stepping in it and your right not to have to pick up someone else’s dog poop from your front yard.

See something, say something! Call these miscreants out! Take a picture of them and their dog and post them around the neighborhood with some sensationalized tabloid headline, like, “GUILTY OF POOPING IN PUBLIC!” or “IT’S ALL HIS FAULT!” Or something like that.

Or maybe lobby city hall to create a new law for these dog poop ignoramuses that requires them to provide a public service like dog poop clean up, for example. Or perhaps pay a $5,000 fine or spend 6-months in jail. Maybe this will help alleviate the problem. Or not.

Because everyone walking in America deserves public poop-free zones!

Instagram: @m.snarky

© 2024 All Rights Reserved.

War on Dog Poop – Part 1

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A sign of the times. This should NOT be necessary.

Story 9 of 52

By M. Snarky

Authors note: out of respect for my reader’s time, this and future posts will target 1,500 words, or about a 10-minute read per post. Thank you for following my writing journey.

Aside from an IRS audit, stepping into a pile of dog poop on a public sidewalk is the next most hated thing in America. It stinks. It’s messy. It’s disgusting. It gets into the tread of your shoe and now you find yourself trying to get it out by dragging your shoe back-and-forth across someone’s front lawn, looking like a loon in the process, and often exacerbating the problem by driving the poop deeper into the tread. Sometimes this method works, sometimes it doesn’t. Other times, you need to find a stick and try to scrape out the poop from the grooves which is really gross. The last resort is getting back home and using a high-pressure hose nozzle to clean it off which is always effective but now your shoe has to dry out for a day or two. I have much better things to do with my limited time on this planet than cleaning up what was obviously someone else’s mess. What kind of dog owner is it that doesn’t pick up after their dog? The completely arrogant, irresponsible, selfish, and indifferent dog owner, that’s who. These people must be stopped! I declare a War on Dog Poop!

These are the type of people that the “Please Clean up After Your Dog” yard signs were invented for. Signs like this would not be necessary if all dog owners exercised some common decency, for example, picking up their dogs excrement. I’m also pretty sure this group of dog owners are the reason for the proliferation of the “free” dog poop bag dispensers found in public spaces and generally maintained by some city or county governmental department, like Parks and Recreation. Any government entity that tells you something is free is totally lying to you because any good or service provided by the government uses taxpayer dollars to pay for it, ergo, it is not actually free. This also means two other things: 1) Taxpayers paid 10¢ for a 1¢ plastic baggie, 2) Taxpayers are subsidizing people’s lack of proper dog poop clean-up etiquette. There’s probably a free online course about this too, so there’s absolutely no excuse for people not to clean up after their dog. As far as I’m concerned, ignorance cannot be claimed and the lack of picking up after one’s dog is a blatant act of disrespect for the neighborhood.

The not actually free government provided dog poop baggie issue aside, without much effort or expense, dog poop baggies can be purchased almost anywhere. They are in the pet aisle in the supermarket, often at convenience stores, and all over the Internet. Some of them even come with a handy dispenser that can be clipped onto a leash or a collar. They come in various gender specific colors too if that’s your jam. I think the black ones represent non-binary dogs but since dogs are color blind it doesn’t really matter to them. One can even subscribe to have them delivered on a regular basis which is very convenient for busy urbanites. If bought in bulk, they are less than a penny each. So, I think I can rule out inconvenience or budgetary constraints as reasons for not carrying dog poop baggies and picking up after your dog. It must be something else…

Oh! Look! A little satchel of dogshit!

Oddly, some of you DO go to the trouble of picking up your doggos doodoo…and then for whatever idiotic reason you drop the poop baggie to the side and keep moving. You see these everywhere; the little green, blue, pink, or black plastic baggies of dog poop sitting on the sidewalk, or in a driveway, or tossed onto someone else’s front lawn. I just don’t get this half-assed attempt to clean up after your dog. Why can’t you just take the poop bag with you and toss it into the trash when you get home? Oh, maybe it’s the smell that bothers you? Let me tell you something; nobody actually likes the smell of dog poop either except for other dogs and perhaps some super-freaky people, but it comes with owning a dog. You want a dog? Get used to bad breath, smelly poop. and stinky dog farts. If you can’t handle any of that then get a goldfish.

Thinking about this further, I can only imagine the dog poop getting onto the sidewalk or on your front lawn in one of the following ways:

  1. Someone’s dog got loose and relieved itself when the moment came as it was running through the neighborhood. This is free-range poop and there’s not much to be done about it.
  1. Somebody simply left their doggie poop bags at home and didn’t bother to come back to pick up after their dog. These are generally well meaning, but obviously lazy, inconsiderate dog owners.
  1. Someone was physically unable to bend down to clean up after their dog. I’ll give disabled persons and the old folks a pass on this, but maybe they should try curbing their dog.
  1. Somebody just doesn’t care where their dog poops and cares even less about cleaning it up. These dog owners are Public Enemy #1.

There was a #4 in my old neighborhood in Granada Hills who let his dog poop on my front lawn on a regular basis and left me to clean up the mess. He reminded me of an older, graying version of Mr. Rooney from Ferris Buehler’s Day Off, mustache and all. It took me a while to figure out it was him and his ankle biter Pomeranian as he was very sneaky about it. Was it a sign that he didn’t like me? I don’t think so because we never met each other. Or, maybe he thought he was doing me a favor and fertilizing my lawn? Well, I don’t know what he was actually thinking, but one morning I was looking out of my front window sipping my coffee and I caught him and his dog in the act. He was nervously looking around as his dog was dropping a deuce on my lawn. I stormed out of the front door and confronted him about it. There was no use denying it. I said, “I really don’t like cleaning up your dog’s poop; why don’t you pick up after your dog?” He sarcastically quipped, “Or what; are you going to hurt me?” like some schoolyard taunt from a ten-year-old masochist. And then he just casually walked away, leaving the fresh, steaming pile of dog poop on my front lawn. This blatant act of defiance enraged me.

I ran to the backyard through the side gate, grabbed the pooper scooper I used for my dog, quickly scooped up some Labrador poop from the backyard, ran back to the front yard, scooped up the fresh pom poop (indeed, I was going to pay Rooney back in spades) then ran to the corner in the direction that I last saw him walking and looked up and down the street, and there he was, strolling south down the sidewalk like nothing had happened. He was maybe two houses ahead of me. I briskly but quietly walked up behind him, and when I got about ten feet away from him, I said (sarcastically, of course), “Excuse me sir, I think you forgot something!” He stopped dead in his tracks and spun around on his heels to see me standing there with the loaded pooper scooper. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped a little. Without saying a word, he spun back around on his heels and began walking away from me at a fairly brisk pace, looking over his shoulder every now and then to see if I was still following him. Then I said to him, “I’ll just follow you home and leave this on your lawn!” He picked up the pace a little bit more and yelled over his shoulder, “I’M CALLING THE POLICE!” which made me chuckle a little bit thinking about how that interaction with the cops might transpire…

…to be continued next week.

Instagram: @m.snarky

© 2024 All Rights Reserved.

Boy vs. Bees

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Story 8 of 52

By M. Snarky

The hubris of my youth combined with its commensurate ignorance conspired against me for a belief of invincibility. Or so I thought…

Around 1970 when I was 9 years old, my dad rented a single-story 4-bedroom farmhouse on 40-acres of pasture in rural Capay Valley which is about 30-miles northwest of Sacramento, CA, and moved the entire family of six into it. This was boondock living before it was cool. Nothing but silos, cows, and alfalfa fields as far as the eye could see.

I was the 3rd of four children. My half-brother Marc was the eldest by several years, followed by my sister Lisa, followed by me, and our little brother Scott was the caboose of the baby train.

The property also had a scary old, dilapidated 2-story 19th century Victorian farmhouse about 50-yards from the main house. We convinced ourselves that it was haunted, so we mostly avoided it.

Living in the boondocks like we did, Lisa, Scott, and I found unique ways to entertain ourselves often in the form of dares. A dare from an older sibling was a way for us youngsters to prove our worth and stay in their good graces by demonstrating our mettle. Or so we believed.

The first standout dare in Capay Valley was that Lisa challenged Scott and I to climb over the fence of the cow pasture and touch a cow, which we boldly accepted. The problem was that it had recently rained, and the cow pasture was a massive muddy quagmire. This, however, did not stop us boys from proceeding. Scott and I slowly slogged out to about 50-feet from the fence when a bull far off in the distance spotted us and began trotting toward us. The bull had to be at least 200-yards away, but it was making good speed in the mud. Scott and I quickly turned around and began running for our lives back toward the fence. Scott stopped in mid-stride and yelled out, “My shoe got sucked off of my foot; I have to try and find it!” This was a bad idea. I kept heading toward the fence while Scott was hopelessly groping around in the mud with his hands as the bull, now picking up speed, was quickly closing in on us.

I got to the fence and climbed over it and turned around to see Scott on all fours, now covered completely in mud, and still frantically feeling around for his shoe. Lisa and I yelled out to him, “RUN SCOTT, RUN – THE BULL! THE BULL!” as we pointed behind him. He looked back at the bull and realized that we were not kidding. He jumped up and began to run as fast as he could toward us and the perimeter fence of protection. As he continued to run for his life, his sock got sucked off his foot, then the other shoe, then the other sock. By the time he got back to the fence, he was barefoot. Lisa and I helped him get over the fence and by this time the bull was only about 50-feet behind him, which, in my opinion, is as close to a bull as you want to get unless you are a matador.

When we got back to the house, I was half covered in mud and Scott was fully covered in mud. The look on my mom’s face when we got to the mudroom at the back door was priceless. Then the inquiry began. “What were you boys getting into this time? How did the two of you get so muddy? Scott, where are your shoes and socks? Lisa, what do you know about this?” As my mom was stripping us boys out of our extremely wet, muddy clothes, the truth spilled out. A dare. A couple of willing little brothers. A muddy pasture. An angry bull. A near death run for our lives. A lost pair of shoes and socks.

As was typical of my mom, she spoke in matter-of-fact tone. “What were you two thinking would happen? You boys are lucky that you didn’t get gored by that mean old bull. Lisa, stop daring your brothers to do such dangerous things.”

One day not too long after the bull incident, I noticed a swarm of bees under one of the lower eaves of the presumably but probably haunted old farmhouse. It was maybe about 8-feet above the ground. I watched it for a while and was mesmerized by it. I showed it to Scott and Lisa. They too, were mesmerized by it.

Then my sister said something familiar to me that I could not resist; “I dare you to knock the beehive down!” Well, a dare is a dare (it is a personal level challenge, really) so I took it upon myself not to wimp out. I knew where my dad kept some lumber and walked over to the carport and grabbed a 2-by-4 stud and walked back with it. “I’ll use this!” I said triumphantly as I thrust the slightly warped wood stud forward.

I lifted the 2-by-4 up by one end and put the other end along one side of the beehive and gave it a shove. It didn’t come down, but it got the bees riled up and they started buzzing around me as honey started to drip out of the hive. Scott and Lisa took a few steps back. I shoved the beehive again, this time with a little bit more force, and most of the beehive came down with a plop about 3-feet in front of me as I jumped back. Now the bees were very angry and swarming around the beehive pile and darting toward us.

Then my sister dared me to run through it. I knew this was a bad idea, but I accepted challenge #2 anyway and I ran through the swarm of bees not once…but twice.

The first pass was a full-speed run through the cloud of swirling bees and although a few bounced off of me and a few landed on me that I quickly brushed off with my bare hands, I did not get stung. Now, I was feeling invincible, so the next pass was a slow walk through the tornado of angry bees. This was another bad idea. The bees were now landing on me en-masse, and I was brushing them off as fast as I could as my pace quickened because I was sensing that maybe I overestimated my invincibility. Then a bee landed on my lower lip and immediately stung me as my siblings stood there in the distance, gawking. This stinging of the lip was certainly not the fault of the bee that sacrificed its own life for the sake of the colony; I was, in fact, an existential threat.

I’m going to assume that you, dear reader, have never been stung on your lower lip by an angry bee so I’ll explain to you what it was like in an attempt to dissuade you from doing anything foolish with a beehive. You can thank me later.

The initial sting on such a tender part of my face was extremely painful and the rush of the adrenaline induced fight-or-flight reflex shot through my body like I got struck by a bolt of lightning. I panicked and tried to brush the bee off of my lip while also spitting and running away from the swarm as fast as I could. This is when I noticed that my lower lip was already starting to swell up. I started to panic and ran to the house without breaking pace.

By the time I got inside the house calling for my mom with tears in my eyes and a panicked, trembling voice hoping that she could somehow triage my lower lip with some old timey remedy, my lip had swollen considerably to the point that when my mom finally got a look at me, she started laughing. My siblings, who were hot on my heels, also got a fresh look at me and started laughing. They couldn’t contain themselves. Let me tell you, trying to talk when your lip is so swollen that it’s hanging down preventing you from closing your lips to pronounce letters like B, F, M, P, U, V, and W, makes for a very cartoonish Elmer Fudd like voice.

Then my mom started with another inquiry. “What happened?” I was trying to explain but it was hard to talk with my inner tube sized lip. It also didn’t help that everyone was still laughing at me. My siblings gave an abbreviated version of the incident skipping over the part about the dare, but I didn’t care. My mom put together a baggie of ice and told me to hold it on my lip. This is when I rushed to the bathroom mirror to assess the damage. My god! How can my lip balloon up like that? Will it ever go back to normal? Am I permanently disfigured? What will the kids at school say? Will my family ever stop laughing at me? Questions like these raced through my mind. Also, now I understood why my family was laughing at me – I had a freakish appearance with my big, puffy lip hanging down revealing my bottom teeth, looking a little bit like a Shih Tzu with a bad underbite. I could have been hired as a circus sideshow attraction.

For the next several hours, I held an ice pack to my lip while struggling to talk or eat. My mom eventually administered an antihistamine, and I don’t remember the rest of the night. I woke up the following morning and my lower lip was almost back to normal size and by the late afternoon you it was as if nothing had happened.

The only consolation that I had was that I technically “won” the dare, but I definitely lost the battle with the bees.

Boy 0, Bees 1.

IM: @m.snarky

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