Of Earbugs, Treasures and Triumphs

Of Earbugs, Treasures and Triumphs

I made a mistake about a week ago. It wasn't a big mistake. In fact, it didn't even seem like a mistake at all at the time. But this error I made had some consequences that weren't particularly pleasant. It was sometime in the middle or late last week and I was at work. It was early evening (I work 2^nd shift) and things seemed just a bit too quiet around the empty office. As a rule I generally like things quiet. I read a lot in the evenings after performing some of my job duties and while I monitor a program that runs on the computer 24/7. I find music in the background, while I'm reading, distracting. But I had finished my reading for the night and had suddenly realized that I had some extra work to accomplish which I had forgotten. It was one of the mindless tasks I have to do occasionally. I thought that while I was doing it, a bit of music might make the boring task go by quicker. So I reached into my desk drawer, pulled out the CD's that were there and looked through the collection. Did I want to listen to some old Bob Dylan? No – he took some concentration and I'd have to pay attention, at least a little, on the upcoming task. How about some folk singing? Ian and Sylvia? Arlo Guthrie? Naw. Wasn't in the mood. OK, how about some Tommy, by the Who? Don't think so. Or some ol' Blue Eyes? Uh-huh. I ended up holding two CD's in my hands: Saturday Night Fever by the Bee Gee's and ABBA's Greatest Hits.

Looking back at my decision from this vantage point I suppose I should have gone with the Bee Gee's. But I didn't and went with ABBA.

Now if you're not familiar with ABBA (and what planet are you from if you're not), you know it's pretty mindless music – repetitive choruses, simple tunes, lots of repetition. Their songs are bouncy, catchy and easy to sing along with. So far, so good.

They're also very likely candidates for earbugs.

In case you've never heard the term, an earbug is a fragment or a line or a verse from a song that gets “stuck” in your head and you can't get rid of it. You find yourself humming it, whistling it, even singing it unconsciously. It can be funny if it lasts a day or two. It can be a bit annoying if it lasts three or four day.

I'm about ready to start my third week with this particular earbug. I hate to even type the name, as that'll probably sentence me to another week with this one swirling around in my brain. But I'll take a deep breath and do it anyway. It's their “Momma-mia” song.

“Momma-mia”, for Pete's sake.

Can't you just HEAR the doggone thing now! “Mamma mia, here I go again. My my, how can I resist you? Mamma mia, does it show again? My my, just how much I've missed you”. They say that ABBA, being Swedish, sang their English songs by syllable-sound, as they didn't know the language. So, not only was it semi-mindless music, it was just gobbley-gook to them even as they recorded it.

Trust me when I say it's been rattling around in my noggin for a LONG time. It's my alarm clock to get me up in the morning and my good-night anthem in the evening. I'm actually humming the damn thing as I type these words! I've even listened to lots of other music, trying to dislodge it. Hasn't happened yet. So... I'm stuck for the meantime with over-hyped Swedish voices in my brain perkily singing about their DAMN Momma mia!

Anyhow...

A few weeks back, before ABBA took over my brain, I was reading on the Internet about a new game that was being played all over the world. It sounded interesting, so I read some more about it. The game is called “geocaching”. The official description of the game goes like this:

“Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.”

When I read about it I was intrigued and that lead me to do some more reading. I found out there are over 800,000 geocaches hidden around the world. I found out there were 382 caches hidden within 20 miles of where I lived. I learned that all you needed to start playing the game was a GPS receiver. The more I read, the more it sounded like fun. I had a few dollars available for entertainment use tucked away, so I placed a bid for a GPS unit on eBay and won it. Within a week I was the proud owner of a Garmin eTrex H GPS receiver.

I went out caching the very day I received the unit. I'd looked out on the geocaching website and found that the closest cache to my home was less than a mile away in one of the parks. I jumped into the car and drove there in a couple of minutes. I entered the coordinates of the cache I was searching for, gave the GPS unit the “goto” command and saw I was about 250 feet away from the target. I followed the arrow on the unit until the distance to the target was about 5 feet. The new units can place you quite close to the target, but quite close still might be 20-30 feet away. I looked around when it said I was close. I was standing in a mowed area of the park with several large oak and maple trees not too far away, some smaller evergreens the other direction not too far away and not many other places where one could hide a cache. I wandered around, looked at the bigger trees and didn't see anyplace where something could be hidden. I examined a park bench nearby. Nada. I poked around in the smaller pine trees. Zip. I scratched my head. This might just be harder than it first appeared. I drove back home and re-checked that cache's website. I read a clue that the hider had left there and read some of the logs of the people who had found the cache before me. They gave me some ideas of the size of the cache's container and where it might be. I went back to the park and started looking around a bit closer. I finally crawled almost into one of the small pines and looked in the litter under the tree. There laid a vitamin bottle painted brown to blend in with the dropped pine needles. I hadn't seen it before.

I had found my first cache! I pulled out the container and opened it. There was the log, a pen and a couple small “trades”. A “trade” is usually a small inexpensive toy that will fit into the container. The procedure cachers generally use is to first take a prize, then leave a prize equal to or better than what you took. You trade goodies. Or you can just sign the log and forgo trading treasures. I signed the log on that first cache, replaced the container exactly where it was when I first found it and went back home. I pulled up that cache's website on the PC and logged my visit to it.

Number One was in the bag!

Over the next couple of days I found another 3 or 4 caches and had logged them. My wife was getting a bit curious about what I was doing, so I sat her down next to me by the PC and showed her what geocaching was all about. I also said that there was a cache just out of town near a small country bridge that I had not been able to find. Maybe she'd like to come out there with me and help me find it? She agreed and rode along.

We arrived at the lonely bridge and got out of the car. I showed her the GPS unit and how it indicated that the cache was near the east end of the bridge. The hint said the cache was magnetic, so I had been looking all over the bridge's steelwork and had not been able to spot the container. She helped me look and we spent the next 10 minutes or so examining the bridge. I finally found the little bugger. I showed it to her, showed the log inside and how I signed it with my geocaching “handle”.

She was intrigued.

The next weekend she tagged along while I searched for a few more caches. She even found a couple herself.

I think she got hooked around that time.

The last few weeks we've been going caching together every weekend. We've managed to bump up our found total to 70 caches. We've located them all over the place. Parks, cemeteries, empty fields, parking lots, private home's front yards, hiking/biking trails, along rivers and in deep woods. They've ranged in size from .50 caliber ammo boxes or largish Rubbermaid tubs to small metal tubes the size of your pinky finger plus every size in-between. And they've been hidden in the most ingenious and diabolical of places. You really have to be observant to find some of the more clever hides. The rules of the game stated that they should NOT be buried and should NOT be placed near locations or structures where someone might think a cache was a bomb. Also, no railroad tracks. No National Parks. No private land unless authorized.

My wife has purchased her own collection of “trades” now and thoroughly enjoys “taking and giving” from her goodie bag when we hit a new cache. I sign the log and she looks at the toys.

And do you know what's the nicest part of it all? We're doing it together. We've been married for almost 38 years now and have begun, over the years, to go our own way a lot. She had her own pastimes and interests and I had a lot of my own. We'd be together for family stuff, vacations and what not, but a lot of the time we'd be apart, doing our own thing.

Now it's quite different. We're talking about the hobby, planning where we're going next and traveling here and there hunting the caches. We're good-naturedly arguing about where a cache should be and where it might be. And it's lots more fun and easier to find the toughies when there's four eyeballs looking instead of just two. Sometimes a clue can be interpreted several different ways and one person might not see the true answer where another would. That's happened also.

She's still not ready to go for the tougher ones, the ones down steep hillsides in dense woods or a long ways down a trail. She started a diet with Weight Watchers earlier this year and has lost around 30 pounds. She's become much more able to move around physically than she did last year, but still has a way to go before she returns to a more comfortable weight and can attempt to find the more physical caches. But she's getting there, and the results, even now, are amazing. Losing the weight has made her more able to accomplish physical tasks that were difficult or impossible for her only just last year. She's more mentally alert and her attitude has improved dramatically. She's a much happier lady! And the enthusiasm she's showing for our new hobby also affirms her return to a more active lifestyle.

All in all, the past month or two has been an interesting period in our lives.

I just wish I could look at her without humming, “Mamma mia, here we go again!”

Friends and Other Strangers

Friends and Other Strangers

The phone rang around 11 o'clock on Sunday morning while I was getting dressed. I'd gotten up hours earlier, run some errands and had read the Sunday newspapers. Now I, along with my wife, were getting ready to head out for the day's festivities. On the phone was my good friend Chuck with some bad news to report. He wasn't going to be able to make it to the picnic that day. He was suffering from a bad cold or some kind of sinus problems and just didn't feel up to it. I told him I was sorry for his misery and to take care. I told him I'd call after the picnic and let him know how it went. I hung up, shook my head and quietly said, “Dammit!”

I then yelled downstairs to my wife. “Chuck isn't going to go today. Says he has a cold or sinus or something.”

She replied, “Oh well.”

Sunday was the Class of '65 Spring Fling at a local city park and Chuck and I were both supposed to be attending, along with our wives. I had been unable to go to this annual event the previous couple of years because of scheduling conflicts – vacations and reunions that were impossible to move. This year, at last, my schedule was clear and I'd been looking forward to this picnic for some months. I was also hoping that Chuck would be able to attend. We were good friends from way, way back, grade school, actually, and I considered him my “lifeline” for this picnic. If I went to the get together and didn't hardly know anyone, at least Chuck and I could chit-chat. Now that alternative was off the table and I was flying solo today.

I was on my own.

Of course my wife would be with me and of course we could talk if none of my other friends from school were there. But... Well, I guess we'd just see how things transpired.

We loaded up the car with the necessary things we had to take to the picnic and headed off on our journey. It took about 5 minutes. The park where the picnic was to be held was only a few blocks from my house in the smallish city where we live. The three or four people from my high school class who were taking care of things had reserved one of the smaller pavilions for this soirée as they had done in the previous three years. The usual attendance in years past had been in the 20-30 person range and they were expecting about the same this year. It was a small group, but that was nicer in a way. You could end up seeing and talking to most of the attendees.

We arrived and carried our stuff from the car to the pavilion. We had our table service in our handy-dandy picnic hamper, our small cooler with a couple cans of pop on ice, our contribution to the pot-luck food table – two Key Lime pies and a bag of baked potato chips - and a “White Elephant” gift for the after-dinner bingo game. I'd pondered what to bring for this part of the festivities for quite a while, never having been to this gathering before and not being aware of what was “appropriate”. I figured that it was probably going to be mostly joke gifts, so I packed an ugly vase I'd bought at a garage sale a few weeks earlier for just that purpose.

I found out I was pretty much on target with it.

After we'd set up our dinner service – a well-used plastic tablecloth, plastic plates and silverware, we chit-chatted a bit with Valerie, my friend Chuck's cousin, who'd graduated the same year we had. I told her that Chuck had called and begged off this morning. She asked what his excuse was this time. I told her cold or sinus problems. She snorted and gave me that “couldn't he come up with a better excuse than that” look. I nodded and said, “Maybe he really is down with some misery. He did sound a bit nasal.” Valerie gave him the benefit of doubt and we went on talking about the upcoming picnic.

I graduated from high school in 1965 with a class of about 318 kids. I suppose that there were a couple dozen kids in those days that I was pretty good friends with, perhaps 3 times that many who I was friendly with. Maybe another fifty or so I could come up with their names and would nod to when we'd pass each other in the halls or in class. The rest? Not so much. Most not at all. I suppose you could say I wasn't as social as I could have been. A bit shy, if you wanted to put a name on it and I'd admit to it now. But I did have close friends and I did date when I was in school. I wasn't quite the blithering wallflower, but I wasn't the big-man-on-campus, either. My senior year I was dating someone from outside my school, so that probably shot down some opportunities I would have had to get to know some more of the kids in the class better.

So let's move forward almost exactly 44 years from graduation day. Here's a couple dozen people milling around the pavilion – some of them are your classmates and some of them are your classmates spouses.

Pick 'em out. Go ahead, pick 'em and put a name to 'em. I dare ya!

I'm sure glad I wasn't getting graded on this assignment. And you feel, in situations like this, at least I did, that your not knowing those people is a failing on your part. That you should be able to recognize these people, even if you'd only seen them every 5 or 10 years at reunions, if then. Some probably not since graduation.

Sorry folks. Didn't happen.

I did end up seeing and talking to a few of my classmates that I'd grown to know over the years since graduation and a few I did happen to remember vividly from those years.

And those personal reunions made the trip totally worthwhile all by themselves.

First there was Toni. Toni and I had dated a bit back in high school and I'd really liked her. We'd gone to some of the school dances together in those days. They seemed to occur almost every weekend. While we talked at the picnic table she remembered a particular Christmas dance we'd attended. We'd stopped either before or after the dance at a fancy restaurant just outside of town with another four or six kids from school. We ate steak and maybe lobster at the time. This was a very big deal for us. I think one of the rich kids who we were friends with paid the bill. When we first met at the pavilion that day, Toni came up to me and asked if I was who she thought I was. I acknowledged that her guess was correct and then I looked at her, looked at her big, dark glasses, her hair, her face. And I knew who she was then. I said, “Toni.” She smiled and we hugged each other. We talked for a while and I introduced her to my wife, albeit not as quickly as I should have (gotta watch that). I was too busy assimilating the Toni of today and comparing her with the Toni of the past. All too soon she had to leave for an hour or two as her family was having a picnic at another pavilion in the park and she had to slip down there for a while.

Then there was Barbara. She and I had connected about 4 years ago after our last major class reunion, the 40^th. We hadn't been particularly close in school, but she'd found out that we had an odd connection. We were both born on the same day! Actually only hours apart and in the same building. She'd started to write me emails and we got friendly with each other by doing that. We called each other “my twin.” We shared some reminiscences in our emails and wrote about our lives since high school. She was, at that time, married, retired from being a schoolteacher teaching grade school, and living in New Hampshire. We made sure we sent each other birthday greetings and we never had ANY problem remembering what that day was! And we sure couldn't lie to each other about how old we were! Barbara could probably be voted as the most preserved of all of our class. I won't tell her age, but she looked almost 20 years younger than the rest of us. It was great to talk to her again, too.

I talked to Gary and Carol who were a major part of getting this Spring Fling organized and rolling. Gary is the sysop of the bulletin board that keeps the class together, www.woosterclassof65.com. The pavilion where we meet carries his last name, but I'm not sure if it's just a coincidence or if his family had some influence in erecting it. It was nice to see them again.

And I talked for a bit with a fellow named Steve. Steve was a guy whom I'm sure I hadn't spoken two words to since graduation. We'd been in Boy Scouts together for a couple years, but really didn't run in the same crowd in school. He'd gone on to a number of ventures over the years after school including owning his own automobile dealership. Steve had what could be charitably called an unfortunate face. Not classically handsome, I guess, could be another way of saying it, and he was always terribly thin. But the boy and man had a thousand-watt personality and, during his school years, NEVER went without a friend or a date. He was Mr. Popular, personified. I was happy to speak to him again, too.

I also spoke a bit to some of the other folks there. Some were familiar but I couldn't come up with a name. Others were friendly but whether they were classmates or spouses? Don't know.

But you know what? It really didn't matter! We were all of an age and of a certain generation. We'd experienced life in the same decades and we all connected, we clicked. It was doggone nice to see them, too.

Whoever they were!

Our lunch was quite tasty, starting with hot dogs freshly grilled by Gary and continuing through ham loaf, pizza, beans, spuds, deviled eggs, salads both vegetable and fruit, and various and sundry very tasty desserts. It would have been impossible to go home hungry.

After the meal we commenced with the White Elephant Bingo game. There were about 20 gifts sitting wrapped on the table as prizes. The first bingo got to pick one of them. The next ones also got their pick. We all kept our same bingo cards going, so the bingos got heavy and frequent quite soon. Everyone got multiples. After the table had been cleared of gifts, subsequent bingos got to steal gifts from previous winners. Some of the gifts passed through a dozen hands or more during the game. Some of the women thought this was hilarious and were laughing until tears were coming out of their eyes. When all the cards were filled and all the numbers had been called, the gifts in front of you were yours to keep. Everyone ended up with at least one gift and some of them were quite clever. One was a box of graham crackers, a bag of marshmallows, a chocolate bar and some firewood. Do-it-yourself s'mores! Another was a Garfield the Cat telephone which has been floating around these Flings since the start. I expect to see it wrapped up again next year. There were books and vases and candles and holiday plates. In my gift bag was a brick. A brick? I was mystified about it until the person who brought it explained that it came from the construction site of our old high school when it was being remodeled into a grade school a number of years ago. It was a piece of my old high school! I thought it was a perfect gift for a high school get together!

Soon after the bingo game finished and we'd all examined and exclaimed our satisfaction or mystification over the various gifts, the people began to pack up and head out. Some were heading back to hotels and then to various airports and flights to take them back to where their homes were. Some had long drives ahead of them to neighboring states or even further. A few of us stick-in-the-muds had only short miles or even short blocks to go before returning home.

I said farewell to the few classmates who meant the most to me with hugs and promises to write and to see each other again as soon as we could. I waved and nodded to the others, receiving the same in kind. I looked around, trying to fix faces, trying to remember, trying to place us all, at this place, at this time.

The dates have been fixed for next year's Fling. It'll be a bigger and better one than usual – it's our 45^th reunion time and they're planning three days of various get togethers. The whole class will be, again, invited to join us.

I wonder if what's-her-name will be there? Or if ol' who's-it will make it this time?

That'd be SO nice!

You Can't Get There From Here

You Can't Get There From Here

Along with the bluer skies, the warmer temperatures and the balmier atmosphere of early summer in this part of Ohio, you also start seeing the advent of the heaviest portion of construction season. I know, I know, it shouldn't come as a shock. It happens every year. But it always does. As soon as the weather starts getting nice and you start traveling more on the streets and roads, the orange cones start going up and your moving from hither and yon starts becoming difficult. Sometimes damn near impossible. This year is no exception. In fact, it might even qualify as high water mark in the annals of construction season. It seems that almost everywhere you turn in my town or on nearby highways you run into blocked streets, stripped roads, construction folks with their stop/slow signs on poles and the beep-beep-beep of heavy equipment backing up. Along with slow traffic, missed appointments, dust, noise and barely-contained road rage.

Did we receive a large chunk of Obama's largess recently to finance all this construction? Or is this mostly a scheduling problem and would have occurred without any federal money?

My town looks to be trying to fix or replace almost all of its underground infrastructure at one time. Stripping street surfaces, replacing or repairing sewer mains, water mains and storm mains and “street-scaping” in some areas. In other areas, just digging holes in the road and doing “who knows what”. It also seems that a lot of this work is being done in and near our downtown. Since I only live a small number of blocks from the downtown area, it's affecting us.

A lot.

I walked downtown today to meet my wife for lunch at a local restaurant. I do this most Fridays. I walk from our home to the restaurant and she drives in from her workplace and meets me there. We ride home afterwards together. During my walk, at one of the street corners, I saw the familiar yellowish-orange of a backhoe busy at work. I walked up to the excavation and peered downward into the bowels of the pit. I didn't have a hard-hat on so I wasn't officially part of the fraternity who were working around the area, but they tolerated the occasional rubbernecker who was interested in where his tax dollars were being spent. I was accepted for the moment. As I looked down into the deep excavation I saw a man in a big, vertically oriented pipe doing some task. His hard hat bobbled as he worked. I thought back to what I had observed seven days earlier at the same spot. I had walked past this same hole at this same time last Friday and, for all that I could remember, it was the same guy in the hole doing the same thing. It probably wasn't. But it could have been. Was the construction of whatever underground system they were installing getting any closer to completion? Far be it from me to say. I would venture to guess, though, that it should have been.

And it probably was.

I nodded to the gentleman in the hole, acknowledging his efforts and conveying my studied appreciation of his work and his expertise in whatever the hell he was doing. Who knows? Maybe he might have thought I actually even knew what was going on.

I doubt that also. I didn't have a clue.

I finished my walk and met my wife in the restaurant. We chit-chatted about inconsequential things and we discussed how we were going to drive home from our lunch – what route we would be taking due to the construction. Please be aware that we only lived 4-5 blocks from the restaurant. In a northerly direction. Also be aware that when we left there we went east, south and quite a ways west before finally heading north. Then a bit more east, then north again to get home.

We almost couldn't get there from there!

I just love construction season.

Don't get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoy the aftermath of the roadwork. The smooth road surfaces, the more efficient water flow and sewer flow. I also like the fact that the heavy downpours from rainstorms don't pool up at intersections like they used to. But to achieve these ends...? You gotta put up with the construction. A LOT of construction.

I often joke about how long a freshly-paved city street will stay unmolested by a hungry backhoe in my fair city. I think the longest record that I can remember is about 2-3 weeks. A few years ago they completely stripped one of our main streets all the way down to dirt – no paving materials at all. They then replaced everything that existed under that street – all the services. They then repaved the street with multiple layers of pavement until it was a beautiful stretch of asphalt. Smooth. Firm. Complete. Absolutely better than brand new.

They were digging holes in it almost immediately.

Did they forget something? Did one of the new thingies underground break? Or was it just Murphy, in his infinite wisdom, throwing a monkey-wrench into the works?

Who knows?

I just know that beautiful stretch of Quimby Avenue had a patch on it almost immediately after it reopened subsequent to its construction. What a doggone pity.

I suppose I should be more content. To be thankful for the work that's being done that I'll benefit from. To be more content that the experts are handling the work and they'll be done, more or less, before the snow flies this fall.

Contentment.

Which reminds me...

We're going on vacation next month, the wife and I, and, along with some other things, we're going to be visiting an friend of mine from the old days. I haven't physically seen Al since the fall of 1969 when we were both stationed in the Panama Canal Zone as Air Force weathermen. I was 22 years old then, 170 pounds and pretty fit.

Fast-forward 40 years.

Now, in 2009, you'd like to make a bit of an impression on an old friend when you meet him for the first time in four decades A big impression. You'd like to roll up in a stretch limo, greet him wearing a thousand-dollar suit and bequeath to him a half-dozen of your best selling novels. Hand him a fistful of hundred-dollar Havana cigars, introduce him to your 25-year-old trophy wife and invite him on your private jet for a quick trip to Monaco for a weekend of champagne, gambling and debauchery.

There's only one thing about that scenario.

It. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

What he is going to see is an 11-year-old Honda roll up in his driveway and an overweight, gray-haired, spectacled dude slide out with his wife of almost 38 years at his side. Shorts, tennis shoes, old golf shirt. And a goofy grin. No published novels. No thousand-dollar suit. No private jet. No cigars. No upcoming debauchery (dammit).

And that's OK.

I'm learning contentment, becoming a student of it. I'm learning to accept the life that I've lived and to see it as the marvelous gift that it is and was, instead of anything that it isn't and wasn't.

To let the not-so-good times go.

Have other people led better lives than I have? No. They've lived different lives, not necessarily better ones. Better is a word that denotes a comparison – better than what? Is a thousand-dollar suit better than my shorts and golf shirt? Is a stretch limo any better than my well-maintained old Honda? Is a smile from a 25-year-old trophy wife any better than a smile from my wife of beau-coup years? I'd say no. In fact, I'd say hell no!

I'm beginning to see what contentment might be all about. Beginning to get the drift of what a contented soul might feel like. Beginning to be comfortable, secure and content about what the past was, what the present is and what the future might be. Not just to rest on my laurels but to realize that what I've accomplished already is well and truly fine. And that what I have not accomplished is also fine. And to finally be content to continue to strive or not, to accept that striving is not a be-all and end-all in itself.

So I'll hoist a beer this weekend in honor of my old friend Al and in anticipation of our quickly approaching reunion. We're coming to see ya real soon, pal, with our lined faces, our crows-feet and our stories of lives well-lived.

Get a pad and pencil ready. There will be a test later!