The Tao of "So?" III

In the first two missives of my philosophic manifesto The Tao of “So?”, I have offered readers practical tools designed to deflect responsibility without abdication of either authority or credit.  If you recall, the thrust of the methodology is to reverse a question around so that responsibility is returned squarely onto the inquirer. I truly believe that among all the potential motives for doing so, that most completely shrouded in the fog of apathy is personal development.  As leaders it is our responsibility to teach our charges.  And what lesson is better learned than that which one acquires through experience?

So while at first glance, it may seem the primary motive for following the Tao of “So?” is work avoidance, and it may well be, we can always fall back, if our approach is challenged, to this instance being the perfect opportunity for the ever elusive teachable moment. “What path is better remembered than that blazed personally?” you might offer the skeptical minion, “My reluctance to provide a direct answer is predicated on the belief that your struggle will better prepare you for the opportunities soon to be encountered in your assuredly bright future.”

It is unavoidable however, that at some point, you will be faced with that all too uncomfortable scenario; a minion who will not be outflanked by clever word play. You will recognize him by his impatient stare at the ceiling as you apply rhetoric that most likely you have offered before (even a language as complex as English has a limited number of word combinations to be applied to any specific set of circumstances). Confirmation will come when upon your pause he lowers his eyes to meet yours, his face flushes a bit from frustration and his voice lowers a register, “You suggested that yesterday, I was here late last night running it down and I still don’t have an answer!”

Don’t panic! Now is the time for nuance.  First, do not avert your eyes; weakness will be interpreted as surrender. Tilt your head just a bit.  Assume a paternal smile, just a slight upturn at the corners of your mouth. Note; if you are in the habit of wearing a moustache, you might practice the art of releasing just a small tear into your eyes to make them glisten as with affectionate pride, so as to simulate a smile. Lower your voice for sincerity, “So, how do you think I can help you?” You have once again taken the high ground, successfully repelling his attempt at a pincers movement. Important: Do not mix this up with, “How can I help you?” or “What can I do to help you?” Remember, your goal is to avoid participation.

Once you have established that any ideas about your assistance will be born of your challenger’s imagination, you are free to dismiss them without prejudice.  Always return ownership of the solution to your pupil. You are there to support his approach to the extent it is successful.  His success is your success.  But failure must forever be associated with his lack of ability, effort, and intellect!  After all, didn’t you give him the benefit of your assistance to the extreme limits of your experience and insight?

Mastery of deflect and return techniques are only achieved through years of practice, or if one is lucky, an abundant supply of timid or intellectually challenged underlings.  Remember, intellect and intelligence is not the same thing. Intelligence is the ability to learn from experience and assimilate new knowledge. Intellect is the ability to reason. Eventually, your minion will either demonstrate adeptness for intellectual processes or quit in frustration while wondering aloud, “Why did my professors keep telling me I was so smart when clearly I wasn’t?”

This is the moment you have been waiting for and you should be happy to rid yourself of a non-thinker. You should be as proud when you have identified a true thinker.  They have shown a propensity for gleaning the lesson you are trying so diligently not to spoon feed them; namely, the only chance for success is to rely on one’s own talents.  And with this leap in understanding, a self-starter will be born. They will at last make sense of the slogan hanging on the wall above your credenza:

My Job is to Make Your Life Better!

 

 

The Tao of "So?" II

You will recall from my last post the introduction of the Tao of “So?” If you have not read that post or (and this is much more likely) you have forgotten, the few minutes it would take to read it would hardly be worth the effort.  So I will briefly recap: In my quest to understand the world and its workings both physical and metaphysical I developed an approach to answering the great questions. My strategy was to simplify the investigative process by stripping away the complications associated with concern for others’ problems. The key component of this technique was the question, “So, what does it mean to me?” Hopefully you can see the implication therein that if it is not my problem, I am not invested in solving it.

We have seen the power of deflecting inquiries by illustrating that there is no connection between the subject of discussion and one’s self.  But you may be assured that from time to time the more ambitious among your peers and minions will try very hard to pierce the veil of apathy. As beautifully simple as “So?” seems, the master eluder must also be able to employ another technique I have dubbed, “The next obvious question.”

On its face, this seems a simple enough task.  For example, you see that your car’s red temperature light is glowing.  Your first question is, “Why is my temperature light on?” The answer is almost obviously, “Something is amiss with the cooling system!” Your next question would be, “How do I determine the source of the problem?” Once again, the near obvious answer is, “I’ll open the hood and take a peek at the engine.” So far you are doing well and would be on a par with any certified auto mechanic.  Assuming you possess the knowledge necessary to open the hood, upon doing so you encounter steam swirling and rising about your face. Your brilliance up to now emboldens further inquiry, “Where is the steam coming from?”  You naturally trace the steam to its origin where you find a hose connection that is leaking radiator fluid.  I could go on until you break your knuckles with an ill advised attempt to fix said leak yourself, but I believe this sufficiently illustrates my point; every discovery results in a new question until you get to the root cause of the problem where corrective action may be taken.  And for the merely talented this is sufficient.

But for the brilliant, your ambition is to avoid being dragged into both the search for truth and the resulting efforts identified as necessary to solve what you are trying to isolate as someone else’s problem. For this you need a slightly more sophisticated approach to, “The next obvious question.” I introduce to you, “The next obvious answer!”

Don’t panic!  I am not asking you to devote any of your precious time or energy to developing complex, valid answers to questions you deem unimportant anyway. What you need to learn is how to identify a question to which the answer is so obvious it cannot be contested. Thus you have forced your annoying petitioner to start down a path of reasoning that will deliver him, like it or not, to a solution that requires no participation from you.

I warn you, this is advanced deflection and should be attempted only by the most experienced responsibility self-absolvers.  The slightest error in navigating these waters could result in major embarrassment, or worse, additional work.  Read the following very carefully and make it part of your personal toolkit.

Rule one; never, under any circumstances, ask a question to which you do not know the unequivocal answer. Open ended questions are fraught with danger.  If ever faced with someone else’s dilemma, and you cannot counter with a question that will immediately deflect ownership, raise your eyes to the ceiling, stroke your chin and state; “My, that is a poser!  Let me think on it and get back to you when I have something helpful to offer.” Then stare hard into the eyes of your petitioner and say, “Let me know when you have found the answer.”  Then look at your watch, stare absentmindedly in any direction other than your annoyer and walk away as if you’d just remembered you had somewhere else to be.

Rule two; when posing your question to which the answer is obvious, assume an intellectual air. Act as if the connection between the issues at hand and your question/answer is so obvious that your disciple would have eventually recognized this on his own.  Do not say so in as many words!  Let the target of your tactical attack believe he has stumbled onto the truth by himself.  To do otherwise would be insulting and undermine your attempts to make the student believe you are mentoring him.

Rule three; if at any time after contact has been broken off, you stumble upon a solution to subject conundrum, do not seek out the individual you had previously so successfully dismissed and offer your help! You will only reinforce his original undesirable behavior which was to ask you a question in the first place.  Instead, sit on this piece of wisdom.  If, after some time has passed, your nuisance reemerges because he has failed to solve his own problem, be nonchalant. Once again, stare as if momentarily wrapped in deep thought, this time out the window… to demonstrate that your office has windows. Then off-handedly infer your solution in a way your minion will be able to see the answer on his own. Never spoon feed, suckle.

My experience has taught me such concepts can be complex.  If you feel you have any questions at this time don’t ask now.  You will benefit greatly from the exercise of trying to answer them yourself.  And if you cannot, the question was probably not worth asking in the first place.

  

The Tao of "So?"

The universe is a truly complex place: What with the mysterious nature of the big bang and the structure of galactic filaments and the uncertainty of quantum phenomena and Pi. Would someone please explain Pi to me? And don’t pretend to be professorially elusive by passing it off as a simple ratio. Nothing that goes on forever can possibly be simple.

As complex as the physical world appears, its child’s play compared to human behavior. In the physical world, for every effect a cause can be isolated and identified.  Have you ever heard of a planet spontaneously reversing its orbit?. Of course not but we have all changed our minds about something. As complex as the cosmos is, to the limits of our experience, it seems to be predictable; or at least demonstrate predictable patterns.  Can the same be said of people?

I believe that Psychology, Sociology and the balance of human behavioral sciences are severely limited.  The practitioners of these dark arts gather data and apply statistical methods to define the likelihood of human behavior.  But these pseudo prognostications are always couched in averages and probabilities, trends and tendencies.  Their limit is reached however with the attempt to predict the next behavior of the next test subject with total accuracy.  Look to your own life experience and count the number of times you have asked yourself, “Why did I do that?”

Obviously the person uttering that question has recognized a personal failure and in retrospect has identified the moment of critical thinking breakdown.  After the event and its consequences have played out, the errant individual can clearly see what should have been done and where they strayed from the trajectory that would have resulted in a satisfactory conclusion. But that only helps them navigate future occurrences; and then only if they can successfully assimilate their experience into tomorrow’s challenges. And just like the psychologists’ predictions about specific event related behavior, it’s a long shot.

I have learned during my journey through life that my own capacity for recognizing dangerous waters and executing a plan to navigate them uninjured are no better and often less satisfactory than those of my fellow Terrans.  If you are new to these writings or don’t believe me because I have in some previous encounter dazzled you with my B.S. (for the more naive among you, this is not an abbreviation for Bachelor of Science) at some time, refer to my previous posts for examples.

Recognizing my shortcomings I determined to develop an approach to life that would significantly bolster my chances for long term survival.  After brainstorming, defining, executing and reviewing I gravitated toward the notion that simplicity is key.  In fact; the simpler the better!  Thus I committed to constructing my own personal philosophy, “So?”

The journey began by first stripping away all of the philosophical baggage acquired by several decades of life, its challenges and associated failures. What need had I for the likes of Plato, Buddha, Nietzsche or Elmer Fudd?  Had they ever put a rabbit in the pot? No, because they let themselves get muddled in complexities and nuance, subtlety and moral relativism.  I needed a guiding principle stripped of elitism and uncertainty. I had to have a statement that truly defined me: “I yam what I am!” 

Thus, I had begun the journey of self-realization; define yourself in terms that leave no doubt you know who you are. What words more clearly state comfort with one’s self? But could this be seen as vague? Perhaps an acknowledgement of one’s limitations: “I yam what I yam. And that’s all that I yam!” a brilliant blend of self-assurance and modesty.

Once I was comfortable with who I was (am) it seemed reasonable to use the same technique in defining the world.  I began the process of stripping away the layers of complexity.  It was my goal to render the world understandable; only to myself of course, the rest of you can cling to your multi-level misunderstanding of what the heck is going on as long as you wish.  But for me, the quest is to define every observable event in as simple terms as possible.

Now I can see how many of you would perceive this a daunting task.  There is so much to understand and so little brain power to apply.  And very early on, I’d estimate in the first ten seconds of my new crusade, it occurred to me as well. I determined that what I needed was a lens that would allow me to focus on the truly worthy questions of existence. The focal point of said lens would be… Me!

To eliminate the vast majority of subjects that could be pondered, I would concentrate my efforts on only those that affect me.  While contemplating how to separate the wheat from the chaff, I turned to the myriad drill down techniques I had been exposed to by virtue of the seemingly never ending parade of business management seminars thrust upon me by various employers over the course of my career.

But all of their offerings included data gathering, measurement, analysis, flow charting; it seemed counter intuitive to me that the search for simplicity should be so complicated.  I resolved to find a new technique; one that would allow me to strip away the layers of distracting conflicts and identify the truth.  Then the revelation appeared as clear as Johnny B. Good a ringin’ his bell.  Any conundrum encountered or proposed by another would have to pass the test; “So, what does it mean to me?”  I refer to this technique as the Tao of “So?”

Whenever I find myself struggling with an issue of any kind, my first step is to ask, “So, what does it mean to me?” If the answer returned, either from my own internal voice or some other sentient being seeking wisdom, is ‘”Why, nothing at all!” the problem is summarily dismissed. I have found that somewhere between ten and ninety percent of dilemmas are eliminated at this stage.

If, and this happens more often when the question is posed by someone else, the answer is other than, “Why, nothing at all!” I find that a slightly modified test using the proper inflection, “So, what does that mean to me?” will convince the petitioner that we have come to the end of the trail as far as chasing this rabbit is concerned. For particularly knotty inquiries posed by highly energized seekers of truth, this test may need be applied several times before the inquisitor becomes frustrated, exhausted or rendered unconscious by a sharp blow to the head. It is unavoidable that some intellectually talented over achiever will eventually thrust past my parries and identify some connection between his issue and lack of interest.  At that point, I turn to another brilliantly conceived technique.  See my future posting entitled, “The Art of Delegation”.  

 

Suave and Debonair

I haven’t always been the seriously cool cat that you all know.  No, this project took some time.  My early attempts at sophistication would often result in some level of embarrassment.  I can understand why today, knowing the finished product, you would be surprised to read this.  But I offer you a few examples from my formative years.

Sometime in the late sixties, I can’t pinpoint the exact day, while the rest of the world was turning towards flower power; I was discovering my inner cowboy.  Do not be misled.  I was the product of a typical California suburban upbringing.  I wasn’t raised around horses.  My family did not live on a ranch.  I couldn’t tell a steer from a dairy cow.  But there was something about the direction of society, especially its younger members, which put me off.

I did not care for music that glorified the drug culture.  As I believed that the purpose of shoes was to protect ones feet I favored boots to sandals.  I kept my hair short because it was easier to care for and fit more comfortably under a football helmet. I preferred lifting weights to smoking dope. Well, to be honest and fair to the dope smokers, I never smoked dope, or anything else (no, not even once… uh, uh) legal or illegal.

One of the benefits (and there are detriments aplenty) to growing up an only child is that you are less likely to learn to submit to peer pressure because for the first few years of your life, you have no peers.  It never occurred to me that I might not be cool. I can present no evidence today that suggests I was cool, but in high school I never thought of it. I was not a pimply faced freak that others avoided at all costs.  I was a jock!  But I didn’t really hang out with the jock clique.  I spread myself around.  One day, I would hang with the music geeks; the next I would be chillin’ with the student body government types.  Hell, I didn’t even mind being seen talking to the science geeks while they spent their lunch hour playing chess.  Nobody ever seemed to mind where I spent my time… not to my face anyway.  Remember, by the time I was a sophomore; I was six feet tall and weighed in at about two-fifteen.  I was universally respected and a favorite of the football coaching staff.

As I stated, I was finding my inner cowboy while everyone else was turning Haight-Ashbury.  I wore Levis, like everyone else, but mine were tight, not baggy.  And instead of Hush Puppies or Converse All-Stars, I wore Acme boots (until I saved up enough for a pair of Dan Post; sheet, howdy).  I even carried a pocket watch in my jeans watch pocket.

One day while laying a line on some sweetie as we awaited the bell that called our tenth-grade English class into session, a friend, David Jessup, asked if he could see my pocket watch.  I absent mindedly handed it to him while I continued dazzling my retinue of one with sparkling conversation.  David returned my watch just as the bell sounded and I slid it into the proper pocket without a second thought.

At just about the mid-point of class, I believe the topic that day was The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, my testicles began to tingle.  Now when you are a fifteen year-old boy, you are hardly surprised when your body introduces a new sensation to your brain. But this could not be put off as a reaction to whatever daydream I was engrossed in. Jostled out of my Shakespeare induced fog, I realized that my pocket watch alarm was ringing, pressed tightly against my pelvic bone: Whoopee!  I struggled to retrieve the offending time piece while seated, resisted all the way by my thirty-inch thighs (weight lifting).  I finally had to stand up to get the watch out and turn off the alarm. “Thanks, David!” laughter all around. With that, the teacher changed course, “Well, Dale, now that you’re awake we can turn our attention to the annual student body government nominating convention.”

Each spring, my high school engaged in the practice of selecting the following school year’s class and student body government officers.  It began with a nominating convention wherein student delegates would spend a Saturday listening to speeches by office holder hopefuls.  The delegates were selected from grade-level mandatory classes.  For example; all sophomores were required to be enrolled in an English class. So, each English class would select a cadre of delegates to send to the convention. Likewise freshmen were from Geography classes, juniors were from History classes, seniors were from Civics classes.  I’m not sure who represented the guys who spent their entire high-school career in auto shop working on their chopped hogs, but as they all looked like they were thirty-years old sporting pony tails and full beards, I’m sure they would have asserted their rights through the local Hell’s Angels chapter, if needed.  Anyway, by virtue of my errant chronograph, I was selected as one of the delegates from Mrs. Sandra Coler’s third period English class. As I left class that day, I remember hearing from a little voice in my head the woeful refrain, “Beware the Ides of March!”

The big event was to be held on a Saturday in the school’s gymnasium. There were rules: Dress was business office; men wore ties and jackets, women dresses.  Each delegation was assigned a State of the Union and required to impart some information regarding its culture. Seemly decorum was strictly enforced by the Senior Class Sergeant at Arms and his deputies.

I awoke early on the assigned day, eager to play my part in the governmental workings of my alma mater.  I donned a pair of grey dress slacks (boy, these sure seem tighter than the last time I wore them… the freshman class sports award banquet of 1969), a white shirt with one of my dad’s ties and a blue sports jacket.

As my dad was currently attending some kind of professional training in Boston, it fell to mother to help me unravel the mystery of the double Windsor knot.  I’m still not convinced that we got it right, but the pressure in on my Adam’s apple and the slight light headedness suggested we were in the neighborhood. All dressed up, I examined the result in the bathroom mirror.  I moved in for a closer look at a pimple (I was fifteen, what did you expect) and noticed to my horror; I had whiskers! Well, it was truthfully more like fuzz, but this would not do.  As a duly appointed member of the delegation representing Mrs. Sandra Coler’s third period English class, it was my solemn duty to be clean shaven.

I proceeded to my parents’ bathroom to retrieve my dad’s Schick electric shaver.  Oh, oh!  Dad had taken the Schick to Boston.  What to do?  There was only one path.  Fortunately, my father’s abandoned Gillette safety razor with disposable injection blades was still in the drawer. Today I would learn the manly art of razor blade combat.  Over my mothers’ admonishment, I lathered up and set out to become a man.

Up one cheek and then the other; across the chin, “Ouch!” rule number one, there is no “across” in safety razor shaving.  Immediately, a thin red line began to grow into a gusher-like flow. I wiped the foamy cream from my face.  The offended nerves were punishing me with an excruciating sting.  I recalled my Boy Scout first-aid training; direct pressure.  I held it for thirty seconds.  Lifting my finger from the wound, I learned half a minute was not sufficient.  Pressure applied again, this time for sixty seconds; no good!

The appointed hour for the opening gavel was fast approaching.  My mother, having had the benefit of growing up with eight brothers, recalled a memory from her youth.  She grabbed a scrap of toilet paper and held it to the Grand Canyon sized gash. After a moment she took her finger away and the patch stayed in place.  It seemed as this application of the ancient and mystic Tee Pee would keep me from bleeding out.  “By the time you walk to school” my mother did not drive but it was only a quarter-mile hike, “you should be able to take that off.”

I arrived at the gym and was standing around in the lobby waiting for the days’ proceedings to begin.  Unexpectedly, I was joined by Sis and Ronnie (their real names were Mary and Sharon but everybody knew them by their popular monikers) who struck up a conversation. Ronnie was a member of my delegation, but I didn’t really know Sis except by her association with Ronnie.  They were inseparable; outside of class, where you saw one you saw the other. Ronnie was cute but Sis was the kind of girl that looked just a bit more mature than the typical fifteen-year old.  Her hair was dark blond with sun bleached highlights.  She was tanned winter and summer.  She was generally made up as if she were in for a night out on the town. It was rumored she was dating a college sophomore. Every school has one.  All the boys know her by name.  I was shocked she knew mine; not to mention the confusion I was sensing about her choice to talk to me in the midst of schools crème-de-la-crème.

While I was lost in the sparkle of her deep blue eyes, she asked, “What’s that on your chin?” Involuntarily, my hand rose to the scrap of paper.  It fell to the ground and without thought I bent to pick it up.  This was more pressure than the gray dress slacks could contain; RIIIIP!

In retrospect, I should have seen this as an omen regarding the rest of my life.

 

 

The Match Game

Last year I was catching up with an old friend (and at our age, that means both a friend of many years and advanced age) who had unexpectedly found himself single.  I commiserated (there’s a six-bit word for you, Tink) with him and sensitively listened to the narrative of his recent experiences.  One tidbit shared that I found quite interesting was that he had done some exploratory research on Match.com, the internet dating service.

We have all, as of late, been bombarded by both TV and internet advertising for this and similar product offerings.  As I too had recently unexpectedly found myself single, I determined to explore the phenomenon to see what I could see.

At this point in the story, let me offer to you women out there, a bit of advice borrowed from one of my favorite authors, Douglas Adams (try him, you’ll like him):

Don’t Panic!

You needn’t cancel your phone service, leave the state, dust off old restraining orders or change your e-mail address.  I have no plans to start dating so you are all safe.

But as a sociological experiment I think you might find my impressions of the modern meat market, or temple of eternal love if you prefer, interesting.

Signing Up

It is a simple process to put one’s self “Out There”. You select an account name and password; provide Match.com with a valid e-mail address and some identity verifiers then wait for an authorization.  They must do some kind of cursory background check to filter out convicted serial rapists, domestic abusers or social outcasts because they admonish you that this process could take some small amount of time.  I’m pretty sure I was up and running in less than an hour, guess their list of social outcasts is not very complete.  Account validated, you are prompted through profile building.  There are two features to this: the open narrative, where you describe yourself (“In Your Own Words”) and a radio button process by which you identify your personal information (height, weight, hair-color etc.), your personal interests (hiking, wine, naked parasailing, et al) and the characteristics you desire in a mate both physical and metaphysical.  To sum it up, this is where you lie.

The Matches

Within twenty-four hours you get an e-mail containing matches.  Each match contains the information garnered during the sign-up process and a gallery of photographs. Each profile has a feature that allows you to rate the possible new love of your life as: YES, NO or MAYBE.  To keep the process rolling along but not commit myself, I rated all of the matches as either MAYBE or NO.  What criteria did I use for my assessment?  The photo gallery of course!

If you desire to make contact, Match.com offers e-mail, on-line chat or free wink (I’m not sure what that is but eager to avoid tort action, I avoided it). To contact a match you must subscribe and that costs money.  They have different plans with various features and durations but they all seem to distill down to a bit less than twenty bucks per month.  In answer to your obvious question: HELL NO, that’s like four gallons of gas, man!

In Her Own Words

After several days I had identified thirty-some profiles as “maybe”.  That’s when the idea to make this the subject a blog entry started to percolate in my sieve like brain.  I began a review of the profiles to confirm my initial impression; most of these freestyle self-descriptions could be written by one person.  I offer you a few examples in the hopes I am not setting myself up for civil action as regards copyright law.  If I am, you may have to look for future blog offerings spray painted on the sides of rail cars because this computer is about all I own of value (not buried in a secret vault in anticipation of the coming revolution… and no, I haven’t decided which side I will join…), but I digress.”

I am a happy, hopeful person, sometimes silly and can always laugh at myself. I would love to find a partner and best friend who knows that extraordinary things are possible between people who share commitment, honesty, and affection for each other. I believe chemistry is # 1, while trying to find the perfect man for me.

-or-

I am easygoing, loving, romantic and honest. I work hard and play hard because life is short. I have learned through my life to maintain the innocence, splendor and vigor of a child in order to succeed as adult. Each new day brings me new things and with that comes new color in life and that's what makes life worth living. I love to be spontaneous and welcome new opportunities to try new things. I like to live life to the fullest and appreciate the simple things in life that cannot be bought, but felt. Laughter and good company are priceless!

-or-

I consider myself a bit of a chameleon, comfortable in most environments. Quiet and confident, I probably feel most relaxed one on one, but can equally hold my own in a crowd. A quiet drink and barbecue with good friends or family wins out over nights in a loud nightclub... That's not to say I don't enjoy dressing up and letting my hair down every once and a while! I am content being alone but I am the most comfortable and happy being in a committed relationship.

-or-

I would be described as the complete package. I'm intelligent, outgoing, fun loving, confident, secure with myself, have a great sense of humor, friendly, quick wit, affectionate, down to earth, warm, very genuine (guys have told me I'm "the real deal"), nice body (all natural), romantic, positive, classy but outdoorsy type (enjoy boating, riding bikes, etc… i.e. not afraid to get my hair wet!), adventurous, self motivated, driven, athletic, grounded, generous and very loving of friends and family, a real sweetheart!

-or-

My friends would describe me as friendly, easygoing, spontaneous and witty. Though, at times I can be a little feisty and competitive, but try not to take things too seriously. I'm a "blue jeans, black tie" kind of gal. Like being feminine, but not high maintenance. I can hold my own…

They all seem to be the every-woman for the every-man.  By contrast I did find one narrative that was unlike any other:

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

And she goes on like that for about five hundred words!  This is a woman I’d like to meet because she’s going to be freaky! Not that I’m into depression or anything but who could pass up a side show like this? Wouldn’t you expect that this woman’s “what I like to do” submission would include training pet cockroaches, biting the heads off bats and locking up neighborhood children in the basement? Her entry:

What I like to do: I enjoy traveling, wine tasting, concerts, tennis, music, horseback riding, gardening, beach, dancing, listening to house music, weekend getaways, waterfalls, live bands, hiking, BBQ's/Dinner Parties, and spending time with friends and family...

Alas, suburban mediocrity strikes again… or just maybe BBQ is code for sacrificing small animals while dressed in Druid garb.

What They Like to Do

 I am not going to insult you with examples here.  Mostly because I believe you’d look at the submissions and say, “What’s wrong with that?” But let me give you a man’s perspective.

What is it with “long walks on the beach”?  I hate long walks on the beach or anywhere else.  The only reason to take a long walk is to get to something worth seeing that you can’t get to by motor vehicle because the trail is not wide enough for a jeep.  And we call that hiking.  When you walk on the beach you get sand in your shoes. In the afternoon, you squint into the sun.  At some point you have to turn around and walk back, unless you can tolerate a 25,000 mile stroll. And woe to the man that gets caught looking in the direction of some bikini clad sunbather.

Why do women value wine so highly?  Did you know that wine is just grape juice that hasn’t distilled itself into vinegar yet?  What is a bottle of good wine?  By my definition, it is a bottle that you can trade for premium tequila without adding some cash to the transaction. Wine tasting is an excuse to get drunk in the afternoon; and then you have to tip the limo driver.  I’ll tell you what: if you want to get drunk in the afternoon, come on over to my house.  I’ll buy a bag of ice, scrounge up a blender and make margaritas… bring chips and salsa.  Tipping is not allowed!

Who in the hell would list “business networking” as a social interest?  I don’t get it, but probably two-thirds of the profiles had it right there in black and white.  “Yeah, babe, this is Dale.  Why don’t we get together tonight?  I’ll pick you up and we’ll go to Ruth’s Chris for dinner. Then there’s a little jazz club I know on the coast where we can get mellow and compare professional resource lists.”  Is that a sexy date or what?

The Punch Line 

I have not exhausted my thoughts on Match.com (and their ilk) but I want to keep this under 2,000 words.  If you found this amusing or informative, let me know and I’ll write more… there is plenty of material. I have four pages of notes! Would you like to know what these women are looking for in man?  It’s a hoot!

Now I realize there are some in my audience who may think me insensitive for picking on the vulnerable engaged in a sincere search for happiness.  It is certainly a change in tone from my previous offerings.  But I have a bit of wisdom taken from my own personal experience: If you can’t laugh at yourself, you have to make fun of other people!

ACME Keyless Entry

It is 2013 and my principle automobile is a 1975 Toyota Land Cruiser. I’m sure that says loads about me, but I’ll leave you to your own interpretation. Whatever you think, and feel free to comment, it is the most interesting vehicle I have ever owned; no, not to me… to everyone else. I owned two Corvettes over a span of more than twenty years and as much attention as they got it didn’t come close the Land Cruiser. It is a rare day out that I don’t get at least one comment from a stranger and very often a bunch of questions.  People love to talk about my Land Cruiser.

I find this interesting because it is such a basic vehicle.  It is just a body bucket set on frame rails with a motor and drive train.  It might as well not have a radio, because it can’t be heard over the rattles and squeaks even at low speeds.  The people who designed it had no concept of air-conditioning.  The windshield is flat and man’s best attempt so far at eliminating the flying insect population. You have to use a key to unlock the doors for cryin’ out loud.

In 1994 I bought a brand spanking new Chevrolet Corvette; Admiral Blue (it was not purple) with a camel interior. It was fast! And it was well appointed with interesting creature comfort features.  I traded in my 1981 ’vette and by comparison it was like moving from a double-wide trailer in Lakeside into a luxury condo at the beach.

One of the most interesting toys was an automatic keyless entry system. This system was comprised of a motion activated mini-radio transmitter housed in a key fob and a receiver in the car. When the receiver sensed the radio signal emitted by the key fob, it would automatically unlock the door and disarm the security system. In the obverse, when the receiver no longer sensed the signal from the fob, say when the driver had exited the car and moved beyond the radio signal range (about seven feet), the system locked the doors and armed the security system automatically.

There were two fundamental flaws with this convenience. The first; you didn’t need the key fob in your hand to open the door and enter the car.  Until I learned to take my keys out of my pocket before entering the car, there was a lot of struggling to get my chubby hands in my pockets to extract my keys.  It was especially tiresome on weekends when I customarily wore Levis. The other pitfall was leaving the key fob in the car.  With no motion, the system assumed the driver, with key fob in hand, had moved beyond the transmit range and locked the car. About one week after taking the delivery, I had some minor warranty work done on the car.  When the lot boy brought the car out to the delivery area he left the keys on the seat, which was his regular procedure. Unfortunately, the doors locked with the keys inside. I called this to his attention and he assured me he could solve the problem.  He disappeared into the shop area returning shortly with a slimjim; a long thin flat piece of metal specifically designed for opening locked car doors. Said slimjim has a hook cut into the business end so it can be inserted into the door by sliding it between the window and the weather stripping. The operator then fishes around blindly until the hook engages the locking bar inside the door and with a quick jerk upward, the door lock is disengaged. “Stop!” was what I said, followed inside my head by, “or I will kill you if you damage my brand new weather stripping.”  The startled lot boy took a step back.  With imminent danger averted, I began to rock the car to and fro.  The motion activated the tiny transmitter sitting on the seat and, voila, the lock popped open.  “Well, I’ll be,” the lot boy uttered in amazement.  I added aloud, “No harm, no foul.” Followed silently in my head by, “Kiss your mother when you get home because she has no idea how close she came to losing a son today!”

Now I have shared this little story to set the stage for the first time I used a keyless entry system.

You may recall from a previous posting that in my youth I spent some time in the employ of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department as a Sheriff’s Cadet (if not, see A Rip in the Fabric of Time, posted February  14, 2013). Among my many duties in this position of high responsibility were running routine office errands. “Ho hum,” you say.  But I got to run them driving a real-life police car; when you’re nineteen years old stuff like that is a big deal.

As I recall it was a Friday afternoon; summertime. I noted that the station refrigerator was running low on canned soda pop. In Poway, the summer temperatures often get in the three digit range and the Deputies got surly if they could not quench their thirst with Shasta.  There was no air conditioning in the patrol cars in 1974.  The California Highway Patrol put air conditioning in their cars.  But the County of San Diego opted to spend its climate control budget elsewhere.

Granted this golden opportunity to get away from the hum drum of the office and out “in the field” for a bit, I collected the dimes from the soda replenishment kitty and grabbed a set of keys.  Of to the Alpha Beta I went. I picked out a nice selection of cut-rate sodas, chatted up the checker and deposited the cases of pop in the back seat of my “unit”.  So far my assignment had taken about fifteen minutes.

That afternoon, as with all afternoons, there were two Deputies on patrol duty in Poway. Trying to avoid a cumbersome technological treatise on law enforcement radio communications of the day, let me say it was very rare for the patrol deputies to communicate directly car-to-car rather than pass information through the central dispatcher.  So I was surprised to hear 42-1 (Poway unit, beat one) transmit over the “PL” frequency (no, I never did learn what “PL” stood for, but it let a guy in one car broadcast to all the other cars on that frequency) to 42-2 (yes, you guessed right, Poway unit, beat two), “Jack, there is something you will find interesting at the side of the road; Poway Road east just after the curve at Garden Road.”

As I was already outside, and no one had seemed to miss my presence in the office yet, I decided to mosey on over and see what there was to see.  En route, this was about a five minute drive, I noticed a classic 1960s Mercedes Benz 190 roadster ahead.  This was somewhat rare for Poway so I accelerated just a bit to get a better glimpse.  Pulling along side, I was greeted by brown hair flowing in the breeze, sparkling green eyes and a bright, inviting smile. We spent the next few hundred yards of Poway Road playing the speed-up, slow-down flirtation dance.

Approaching the curve at Garden Road, I sped up to change into the right lane ahead of her so I could pull to the side of the road in time to see whatever Jack was supposed find “interesting” and exit the car with an air of important attention to duty as she passed.

I came to a stop, turned on the rear amber flashing light (I’m important… I’m important…I’m important the blinker tick said) to warn approaching traffic that there was official business being conducted here; caution! I exited the unit and closed the door just in time to nod as she passed by, smiling.

I walked to the front of the car to see what all of the hubbub was.  And lying at the side of the road, not quite on the shoulder, lay a dead coyote that had obviously been struck by a car, a dead white rooster still clenched in its jaws.  Wyle E. Coyote had run off with Foghorn Leghorn and gotten run over by a truck. Now who says life does not imitate art?

Only a few seconds were needed to take in the rich tapestry of humor laid before me by Mother Nature. It was time to head back to the station before the Sergeant started wondering where I had gotten too. I reached for the door handle; locked! The motor was still running so there was no need to look, but I did. The keys were dangling from the ignition switch. Sweat began to bead up on my forehead. My stomach started churning. I was screwed!

“Stop! Breathe”, I told myself; “think, think… think.” Unproductive thoughts began to race through my mind, “Had Jack been by to see this yet or was he going to arrive any second and catch me stranded out her in sight of God and everybody? Had they missed me at the station?  Were they forming a dragnet to search for the absent Cadet?”

 I assessed my surroundings for opportunity.  Across the road was an old farm house (if you are familiar with modern Poway, this house has long since been removed); maybe, if someone was home, I could use the phone and call the station.  Then what? I would be the laughing stock of the entire Poway team.  There had to be another way. Yes, if someone was home, I could ask for a wire clothes hanger and pop the car door open.  I’d seen it done on TV!

I crossed the road and approached the front door. Oh, joyful sound, the door was open and through the screen door I could hear the television.  Someone inside was watching cartoons.  I knocked on the screen door frame; no answer.  I tried again, still nothing.  I peered through the screen but could see nothing in the shaded interior save the back of a couch and the top of the television. Something was amiss.

I pulled the screen door handle and found it unlocked.  I entered the house and approached the couch.  Seated there looking up at me were two tykes, a boy and girl, probably five and three years old respectively.

“Where’s your mom?” I queried.

“She’s at work,” the boy answered.

“Are you and your sister all alone here?”

“Yeah,” his innocent little face betrayed that this was normal.

I had to think about this for a minute. I had stumbled into what could be considered a child neglect situation.  On the other hand, I had severely overstepped the bounds of my authority as soda fetcher. This could be hard to explain in the hallowed halls of officialdom. “Is it okay if I take a wire hanger out of your closet?”

“I guess so,” he turned his attention back to Casper, the Friendly Ghost.  The little girl was now standing on the couch staring at me while vigorously chasing a booger around her nose with a slimy finger. I tried to imagine the conversation over dinner later that night, “Mommy, a Sheriff came in the house and took a hanger today.”

“You know kids; maybe you shouldn’t watch Deputy Dawg anymore.”

I went to the bedroom and ferreted out a hanger.  “Halfway home,” I thought.

I returned to the unit, with the amber flasher still ticking away but now saying, “I’m stupid… I’m stupid… I’m stupid.” I straightened the hanger, inserted it between the door and weather stripping, and began fishing for that little knob.  I fished, and I fished, and I fished… you know what; this is not as easy as it looks on TV.

With each failed attempt, my focus began to wander again and I realized that every motorist who passed recognized what I was doing.  I saw people laughing; some honked their horns playing a tune, “Look at the stupid cop, locked himself out his car. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

After several minutes, I was drenched in sweat.  I had given up hope that I could solve this problem without assistance.  I was hoping Jack would show up.  Then the situation grew even more desperate.  A motorist pulled to the side of the road behind me. He exited his car and approached.  He was dressed in chinos and a tank-type undershirt and had hair sprouting out of his shoulders and chest that would make a gorilla blanch with shame by comparison.  His skin was swarthy in the way of Sicilians. I was going to be killed by a Goombah from the Mafia… I didn’t even know we had Goombahs in San Diego.  And remember, as a Cadet, I was unarmed; a locked door between me and the shotgun dutifully affixed in its rack. I imagined my mother would miss me in spite the ignominious nature of my demise.

“Hey there, Deputy; it looks like you locked yourself outta your cah,” he said a with clichéd Brooklyn accent (or maybe it was the Bronx, how would I know). “When I lived in New Yawk, my family owned a pawking lot.  I’m an expert at dis.”

He held out his hand, and I was relieved to see no weapon of any kind.  I handed him the hanger. He deftly began to manipulate wire into a tool of some usefulness. “You see, what youse gotta do is measure the distance from the top of the window here, to the knob inside the door there.  Then youse make a little hook in the end, slide the hanger between the window and the door frame, turn the hook down, catch the top of the knob, pull up and,” plink “the door is unlocked!”

“Thanks,” I said, hoping he could not tell there were tears of relief mixed with the sweat running down my face.  He jogged back to his car, got in and with a wave was off. I just stood there for a moment wondering to which charity I should donate this week’s paycheck. I threw the newly formed auto theft tool into to the weeds and headed back to the station.

Once there I was greeted by the Sergeant whose expert set of police skills made it obvious to him that I had been to the store and returned with soda.  In deference to my sweat soaked uniform shirt he intoned, “It’s a hot one out there today, isn’t it Cadet?”

As for the fate of the cartoon watching waifs, there was only one murder in Poway while I was assigned there and it wasn’t them, so eventually my conscience reconciled with my career survival instinct and I was able to sleep well again.  To my knowledge, nobody ever suspected I had come so close being the laughing stock of the office.

In retrospect, there is one truth I learned from this adventure.  We all want to think we’re Bugs Bunny, but in our hearts we know we’re really Daffy Duck.

 

 

A Rip in the Fabric of Society

As a young man, I aspired to a life of public service and set my sights on a career in law enforcement.  My high school district offered seniors a vocational program in Police Science (thankfully, no math skills necessary) for which I eagerly signed up.  The daily curriculum included one hour of English, focusing on objective writing skills; one hour of Social Science, focusing on Law and Government; and two hours of Law Enforcement war stories provided by the program director, retired California Highway Patrol Sergeant George Dowdy.

Mr. Dowdy was brilliant at capturing our young, malleable minds with tales of his thirty plus year career riding motorcycles, chasing offenders, and negotiating pension benefits (as President of the California Highway Patrolman’s Association).  At least one day per week, or more depending on Mr. Dowdy’s level of enthusiasm for teaching, we would take a field trip to one of the county’s local Police Departments or other government operations facility.  Or, we would go to the local courthouse and sit in on criminal trials.  This was an academic breeze resulting in a straight-A performance for my senior year; boosting my full four-year GPA to a respectable 3.0.  Yeah, you math geniuses out there have already figured out that my first three years were pretty mediocre. Mr. Dowdy was so impressed he recommended me for the San Diego California Highway Patrolman’s Association Wives Club Academic Scholarship for college students aspiring to a career in law enforcement.  I was awarded the sum of $50.  Back in the day, a Highway Patrolman did not earn a huge salary. It was enough to pay for a couple of text books and I was grateful.

 Upon graduation from high school I enrolled in the Criminology program at Grossmont Community College. As most college students of my era, I had to work to pay for school, my car and any spending cash I needed.  I worked as a hamburger flipper, dishwasher, janitor and freight handler.  Then, in 1973, the County of San Diego announced it was conducting a test for the position of Sheriff’s Cadet.  This position was the golden fleece of every law enforcement career aspirant attending college.  The requirements were simple.  The applicants had to have reached the age of seventeen and one-half but could not have turned twenty before the day of appointment. They must be enrolled as a full-time college student. They must meet in every way, except for age, the requirements for the position of Deputy Sheriff. They must be able to type twenty-five words per minute. Thank God they never tested me for that skill.

 It was reported that 2,500 applicants sat for the written test with those passing moving on to the oral interview stage. As a result of my interview score, I was number thirty-three on the list and the personnel department anticipated hiring ten Cadets during the year.  My chances did not look good as experience showed by the time the selection process was complete, one out of three candidates were hired for each opening.  I was just outside the probability bubble. Fortunately, the County decided to extend the list a second year to avoid the cost of performing the entire testing procedure and in April of 1974 I was hired as the last San Diego County Sheriff’s Department Sheriff’s Cadet ever.

The position of Sheriff’s Cadet was a half-time (twenty hours per week, remember the school attendance requirement) billet.  Job responsibilities were mostly clerical.  The best civilian parallel would be that of a paid internship.  We wore the same uniform as the deputies, save for a small banner affixed to our badges reading “CADET” above the Deputy Sheriff title.  Have you ever looked closely at a peace officer’s badge? Yeah, neither has anybody else; except the drunk, “I want your badge number, othifer!” Oh yeah, we didn’t carry guns. The job paid four dollars per hour (not bad for part time college work in 1974… beat the hell out of the two seventy-five I was making handling freight for May Company). The uniforms were a bit expensive.  I believe the shirts were about twenty dollars for the short-sleeve and twenty-five dollars for the long-sleeve (regulations require you own two of each); the retailer provided the shoulder patches gratis and sewed them on.  The working uniform pants were wool and cost seventy-five dollars per pair! No, no; let me do the math for you.  I had to work three weeks just to pay for the clothes I needed to show up for work, and that didn’t include uniform belt, gun-belt and boots.  Thank God I was appointed in April and my parents were kind enough to buy me a uniform jacket for my birthday in August, before fall weather set in.  Yeah, the retailer included the shoulder patches for free. The importance of this minutia will become apparent as the story unfolds.

I was assigned to the Poway Team Policing office.  It was an experimental station; the deputies assigned there were required to live in the community.  This was unique, as most Sheriff’s Stations were responsible for covering several communities.  A typical patrol station (referred to in that era as a sub-station) required about sixty to one hundred sworn (peace officers) and non-sworn (clerical support) employees and was commanded by a Captain.  Our little Poway office was staffed by fourteen deputies, one clerk-typist and two Cadets.  It was commanded by a Sergeant. This staffing fostered a very informal atmosphere; an experience that bit me in the butt later in my career.

While the job of Cadet was by its nature rather mundane, we were young men wearing uniforms who routinely got to run errands driving real-live police cars. The best perk of the job was that we could, on our own time, ride with deputies on patrol if they were so inclined.  Since there were only two of us in the Poway office, the deputies rarely reached a saturation point where they refused to let us play when we asked. And no matter how much they harassed us for the sake of humor while in the office, they always extended professional respect to us in the field so as to uphold the image of the corps.

It was best to ride with a deputy that was chatty.  They were more fun and generally considered it their obligation to school us in the finer points of “on-the-street” police work. I avoided the taciturn guys as they could make an eight-hour shift seem like a day and a half.

I recall one occasion when I was riding with my favorite deputy in the office, we’ll name him Bob.  It was a Friday on the PM shift (2:00 PM to 10:00 PM); a good time to ride as there was no school on Saturday.  In a small suburban community all of the action is going to occur on the PM or “B” shift. That being the rule of thumb, I don’t believe we received one radio call the entire afternoon.  Some days were just like that.  We were driving up Pomerado Road northbound from Poway Road.  If you are familiar with this area today, forget what you know.  Poway was considerably more rural in those days.

We both noticed that ahead, on the other side of the road, was a seemingly attractive young woman, dressed in Daisy Dukes and a tank top, standing beside a Fiat parked on the shoulder (there were no curbs) waving us down; heartbeats quickened.

Bob crossed the opposite traffic lane and pulled to a stop about fifteen yards beyond the damsel in distress.  I figured that since he was married, it was my duty to protect him from temptation.  As the patrol car was slowing to a stop, I popped out of the passenger side and quick timed it back to the needy citizen.

Our initial assessment was accurate; she was attractive; about five-five, one-twenty, mid-back length, sun-highlighted straight brown hair, beach tan. I covered the fifteen years before Bob could get the unit (patrol car) in park and the engine shut off.

After a short exchange of pleasantries, I asked how we could be of assistance.  From her hip pocket (I still don’t know to this day how she had gotten it in there, someday I’ll have to take a class in physics) she produced a piece of paper and handed it to me.  It seems some overbearing, officious California Highway Patrolman had issued her an equipment violation notice (fix-it ticket; Highway Patrolmen have such little imagination) because age had fogged the plastic back window of her convertible making it impossible for a driver to use the rear-view mirror effectively, thus rendering operation of the vehicle unsafe.  She needed someone of authority to certify that she had corrected the problem by affixing a signature thereto so she could mail said notice to the court and avoid the fine. There were very few official acts that could be performed by a Cadet but this was one of them and I was bound to do my duty to keep the wheels of justice turning.

Just to ensure I acted in a manner consistent with the intent of the law, I thought it would be prudent to check the condition of the window in question.  I climbed, or rather fell, into the small roadster (top up, of course). Now I am a bit larger than the average male being six feet tall and weighing (around that time) in at two hundred fifteen pounds (weight training being a hobby of mine). As it was, I had my right foot in the car, my left foot outside the car and my right thigh jammed in between the steering wheel and the console. I took a quick peek at the mirror and learned that the Highway Patrolman had been on his game. Nothing but afternoon mood lighting could penetrate that opaque window.

As I started the process of extricating myself from the Italian torture chamber, my shoulders (remember, weight training) became jammed against the door opening support of the convertible top. The harder I pushed to get out the more my left foot, the one supporting my weight, started sliding from underneath me facilitated by the pea gravel of the road shoulder.  At the same time, the weight of my gun belt (no gun, but handcuffs and a baton ring… one must be prepared) was pulling my uniform pants down my hips. With one mighty effort to save myself from looking foolish, I spread my legs a bit wider to gain better balance and R-R-R-I-I-P; there went the seam in the crotch of my pants.

Placing embarrassment on the back burner, I retrieved the pen from my shirt pocket and made an ineligible scrawl on the line reserved for the officer noting that the proper corrective action had been taken.  They never verified these notices anyway.

I handed the notice back to the young lady and advised her to drive safely and have a nice day.  As I was walking back to the unit, Bob grabbed me by the triceps of my left arm (no small feat as he was about five-nine, one-fifty… remember, weight training) and brought me to a complete halt.  He looked me directly in the eye and said, “From now on, if we have any contact with attractive women, let me do the talking.  Understand, Cadet?”

Suitably admonished, I sulked back to the unit and we drove off.  After a couple of minutes, I shared with Bob that I had torn the crotch out of my uniform pants.  When he regained his composure, he offered a suggestion.  All of the deputies’ wives were meeting for a social gathering at his house that evening.  During our dinner break we could swing by his house and let the sergeant’s wife take a look at my pants as she was quite talented at doing alterations and clothing repair. Maybe she could save the pants.

He offered to drive back to the station so I could change. Unfortunately, my second pair was at the dry cleaners. There was only one alternative.  Later that night, at Bob’s house, I had to endure the ignominy of Mrs. Sergeant poking around my crotch, witnessed by the wives of all the deputies assigned to the Poway Team Policing station;  and there were no single men among the corps.  By Monday my experience was part of station lore.  The bright side; Mrs. Sergeant was able to repair my uniform pants for a mere five dollars.

Before end of shift Bob shared another piece of wisdom with his young charge.  When entering a sports car sit into the seat first, and then swing your legs in like a girl.  To this day, that little piece of advice has served me better than anything else I ever learned on the “B” shift.