Herculodge

The Day My Inner Carrot Demon Almost Killed My Wife and Me in a Car Crash

My wife Carrie and I had been married barely two years around June of 2004 as we drove from Los Angeles to visit my family in the San Francisco Bay Area. We’d been in the Volvo for about five hours or so and we were heading north on the 101, passing the pungent garlic fields of Gilroy on a hot afternoon when I asked Carrie to put the bag of carrots on the center arm rest. I had been gorging on carrots for the last several months, a piece of dietary advice I had read in Richard A. Watson’s The Philosopher’s Diet. Apparently, consuming huge buckets of carrots a day worked. I had lost over 40 pounds over the last several months.

I ate the carrots ravenously, cramming more and more in my mouth before I had fully chewed up the ones I had already put in my mouth. Carrie was aware that I was stuffing my face and she told me to stop, but I ignored her.

Shortly after she admonished me for eating like a pig, I felt the insane tickle of a carrot piece in my nose. I sneezed and several pounds of carrots flecks and chunks sprayed all over the windshield, my clothes, Carrie’s clothes, the air vents, the radio controls. One sneeze wasn’t enough apparently. I sneezed several more times and each time it looked like orange carrot spray coming out of a lawn mower. It was disgusting.

But also funny because I found myself laughing in a way I had never laughed before—and never since. I can only describe my laughter as both protracted and demonic, a high-pitched shriek reminiscent of that diabolical Batman villain, the Joker.

I was no longer simply laughing at the jettisoned carrots; I was now laughing at how surprised I was at the sound of my own laughter.

As my high-pitched laughter grew louder and louder, my body was convulsing and I began to swerve on the road. Carrie started saying over and over, “You’re scaring me!”

Finally, she insisted that I pull the car over and wait until I regain my composure.  There was an exit sign for a place called Garlic World. We parked, walked inside, and, apparently energized by my sneezing spree, I began to buy just about everything in the store: garlic chips, garlic jelly, garlic relish, garlic salsa, garlic ice cream. Carrie watched in disbelief as I spent over $100 on garlic products. It was as if my frenzied garlic purchases were an extension of the carrot mania.

Ten years later, I’m on another weight loss mission. My weight is down to what it was in 2002, I’m eating carrots again, and we’re planning another trip up to the Bay Area—this time with our 27-month twin daughters.

Carrie has laid down a very strict rule for this trip: Absolutely no carrots will be allowed in the car. And if I had to guess, I’d say she won’t want me to be exposed to any stimulation that might prompt me to laugh like a deranged Batman villain. 

 

 

Have You Cleaned Your Iced Tea Dispenser Lately?

 

 

Commenting on the security guard who told me and my daughter about dubious disease that can be found in a shopping mall fountain, Bill Bush writes:

Legionnaires' disease, too! If it is highly chlorinated, it is probably about equivalent to a kidie pool, which is full of kiddie poo! And meningitis! Typhus! Cholera!

Here in the South, a few years ago a TV station did an expose on iced tea dispensers, some of which had not been cleaned since marching off the ark, and a variety of serious diseases were cultured from the dispinser nozzles. It was treated as a serious issue by health departments and inspectors. I am personally concerned about salad bars and self-serve buffets. I eat at them only when they first open, before the ravaging hordes have handled everything their children have not already coughed on, tasted and put back, or blended with the three neighboring dishes.

 

Are the Del Amo Mall's Fountains a Cauldron of Deadly Avian Flu?

My daughter Natalie ran to the Del Amo Mall’s fountains, leaned on the marble partition and dipped her hands into the water when a stout security guard, a woman, kindly approached me and whispered into my ear: “Don’t let her touch the water. Birds bathe in it and produce deadly bacteria.”

I get it. If Natalie paddles the water one more second she’ll catch avian bird flu and die in my arms while pedestrians eat their Wetzel pretzels. The stout guard’s shift ended and she was replaced by another guard, a man. He did not enforce the no-touch-water policy evidenced by dozens of kids splashing the fountain water. I guess he didn’t get the memo.

Le'ts get real: There was no memo. The first security guard got bored and what does she do when she gets bored, standing around looking at mall rats? She devises crazy stories to scare the crap out of people. On her next shift she'll warn people about radiation levels in the water. Arsenic. Piranhas. Half-decayed corpses underneath the tossed pennies. 

 

 

Empathy Levels Are Drastically Different in My Twin Daughters

 

Recently I was giving my 27-month-old daughter Natalie a diaper change when without any warning she jabbed me in the eye. The girl is so strong and so aggressive that when she jabbed me, my eyeball moved forcibly into my brain. I could actually feel my eyeball, this orb of semi-soft jelly, hitting brain tissue. I screamed and immediately felt a penetrating headache. Tears gushed out of both eyes. When I looked down at Natalie, she was cackling spittle in my face.  Her gray-blue eyes were flickering with diabolical joy.

“She doesn’t know better,” is the refrain I keep hearing from her mother. But Natalie’s twin sister, Julia, knows better. She exhibits more compassion and empathy and is disinclined to commit physical acts of aggression against her sister, her mother, and me. Natalie on the other hand wallows in the joys of physical assault, biting us, pinching us, jabbing us, kicking us. She responds to our reprimands with laughter.

I’ll give you an example of their different empathy levels. When I’m exhausted, collapse onto the living room rug, and roll up into the fetal position, Julia will walk toward me, throw a blanket over me, and say, “Sleepy.” Natalie on the other hand will pinch and poke my face so that I’ll get up and play with her. Natalie is a charismatic and adorable girl. More often than not, I do as she commands. 

But it's important that Natalie's magnetic personality doesn't obscure our concern over her lack of empathy. Our strategy is to give Natalie the ubiquitous time-out when she commits aggressive acts, but sometimes her mother and I laugh at Natalie’s goofy, comical aggression, such as her tendency to smile at us while pressing her face against ours, often with painful force, and our laughter doesn’t set the tone of a real punishment. Therefore, it’s difficult to be consistent and consistency would help get the message into Natalie’s head that she shouldn’t blind her father.

I notice Natalie is about two months behind Julia in language acquisition. I’m hoping she is only two months behind in empathy acquisition as well.

Thus far I have taught my college class with bite marks, scratches, and a swollen eye during which time I had a splitting headache. I am not an MMA fighter. I’m a college teacher and a father.

The best strategy, according to my wife Carrie, is for me to be stoical or as Carrie puts it: "Don't be so drama." Natalie feeds off drama. If I scream after being poked, the screaming eggs her on. 

Stoicism is the key. My safety depends on it. 

 

 

 

I Want My Daughters to Grow Up and Become Independent But This Is Ridiculous

I want my twin 27-month daughters to grow up quickly and establish some indpendence so I can get some more down time, but maybe Natalie is rushing things. 

No Smart Phone Problems in Class Yesterday

We had our come to Jesus talk in class in which I made it clear I'd kick out students who used their smart phones. I mentioned my daughter's speech class in which the instructors warn parents they will be escorted out of the classroom if they're cell phones are used in any way because the toddlers can't be distracted. 

I should have had this talk Week 1, not Week 13 of a 16-week semester. It's always easier to be strict first, then relax instead of vice versa. 

The Joys and Agonies of the Smart Phone: A Lecture to My Students

 

By many accounts, the smart phone is one of the greatest inventions of the last one hundred years. It’s a portable “my world” in which you can connect to the things that matter in your life: people, maps, information. The smart phone is your parallel universe you can access whenever you’re bored with the banalities of your existence. In this sense it’s a remedy to the ailment of being stuck in a place you don’t want to be, like a college classroom for instance.

This need and compulsion to access your smart phone because you’re bored with your immediate surroundings points to the dark side of the smart phone: It’s an addiction, a compulsion, a behavior that you may or may not know is a form of disrespect to your instructor and the other students.

Part of the addiction arises from your monthly payment, which you believes entitles you to access your phone whenever you want: “I pay a thousand dollars a year for my phone subscription and I’ll be damned if a professor or anyone else is going to tell me when I use or don’t use my phone.”

You believe you have the right to text, check emails, web-surf, even take calls, running out of the classroom when you deem you have an important conversation. You disappear for twenty minutes, return to the class, then start talking to your neighbor, trying to get caught up in the material. Sometimes you get out your homework from another class and conspicuously work on your problems until you get another call, prompting you to leave the classroom again. All of this obnoxious behavior stems from your delusion of unlimited entitlement.

The truth is I don’t give a rat’s adenoidal gland about your sense of entitlement. Disrespecting others by using your smart phone at inappropriate times is your narcissism, which you’re imposing on the rest of us.

To be blunt, you’ve become a malignancy to the classroom. You’ve warred against me, engaging in a battle: You want to bring your portable “my world” into my environment and I want to bring my instruction into yours.

I don’t know how much recourse I have, but for now if you access your portable “my world” during class time, I will insist that you leave. If you continue to assert your sense of entitlement and addiction to your smart phone, I will pursue a reduction of grade points and dropping you from the class.

I’m sad to say this is a rather hostile, bellicose talk about the smart phone. It’s not a talk I wanted to have, but the problem is severe and requires a severe response.

 

 

 

In My Twenty-Five Years of College Teaching, an Enemy Has Emerged: The Smart Phone

 

 

Many of my students are smart phone addicts and repeated admonishments do nothing to take them away from texting, net surfing, or leaving the classroom to take calls. Sometimes when I take attendance, I see students with a smart phone in one hand, an iPod in the other, with headphones in both contraptions. They are insulated from the rest of us. 

I think I have finally found a formidable enemy. Extreme measures will have to be taken. 

To be continued. 

Ten Signs You’d Make a Good 85-Year Old

 

 

You maintain a healthy lifestyle that keeps you looking young so that by all accounts you appear to be in your 30s even though you’re 50. But the irony is that your salubrious lifestyle has a geriatric quality to it, so that people say you’d make a great 85-year old. Here are the signs:

 

1. You dine at restaurants at 5 P.M, mostly to avoid the crowds.
2. You never answer the phone after 7 P.M. because “it’s too late to talk.”
3. Rather than imbibe in alcohol, your allay your anxieties by reading Consumer Reports’ vacuum cleaner comparisons while eating Grape Nuts.
4. You look for pie recipes in which the crust’s main ingredient is All-Bran.
5. To bring excitement back into the marriage, you and your wife conduct blindfolded prune juice tastings and engage in alacritous arguments over the winning picks.
6. You only buy pants with elastic waistbands because you read somewhere that "comfort waistbands improve digestive health."
7. While others listen to the radio on their smart phones, you listen to the radio on an actual radio.
8. You don’t go to festivals, concerts or any events that provide port-o-potties at the exclusion of clean toilets.
9. You achieve mental health and general wellbeing by keeping your DVR under 35% full.
10. You don’t drive after using mouthwash because you’re afraid the elevated blood alcohol level will make you sleepy and susceptible to a DUI. As a result, you go to bed before 8:30 P.M. 

 

There's Got to be a Scary Metaphor in There Somewhere

 

Walking the toddlers in their wagon yesterday, I passed two houses going through a termite fumigation. I've always had a strange cognitive dissonance looking at these houses, knowing there is deadly poison roiling underneath while outside there are these billowing multi-colored circus tents. You think evil clowns might be living inside. 

I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere, something for a sequeal to John Updike's Rabbit Run novels.