Behind the Mike

When my beautiful grandbabies, Ashley (5) and Ava (3) dropped by to visit me at my office recently, they do what they always do… they took over!

For pre-school children, they look at your junk as their junk. “Your stuff is my stuff,” is what their mind’s eye is saying. So they proceeded to examine all the equipment, from the copy machines to the laminating machine to an ancient typewriter that I have behind my desk, which Ashley decided to investigate further.

“What’s this one Jiddo (the Arabic word for grandfather)?” I explained that it was a machine we used in the pre-computer days to type correspondence. I keep one handy to complete the myriad of government forms and company memos that require us to “fill in the blanks.”

She proceeded with her questioning. “What does it do?” I turned it on (it’s not that ancient; it’s electric). “I occasionally have to type something on a form,” I explained.

Satisfied with that, she pushed further with her investigation. “May I try it out, Jiddo?” We proceeded to put in a piece of paper in the carriage and aligned the machine. Ashley is five but spells at a third grade level and knows her way around the keyboard from playing with her dad’s laptop. She decided to type her name. Next, she typed her sister’s name, Ava Aun.

She worked her way through the whole family and then began to play, rapping away at the keys at the speed of 100 words per minute, laughing louder with each strike of a key. I’m thinking to myself that she’s going to use up all my ribbon. Finally, she concluded the process and we took the paper out of the carriage.

This amazed her as well. “Jiddo, this is neat! The printer is built in. Why don’t they make computers that way? I’ve never seen that.”

It’s amazing watching a child’s world unfold. To begin with, they are alarmingly honest, telling me that I have big ears and that my nose is “rather large.” Children’s humor is all around us.

A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin, 5, and Ryan, 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. “If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.’” Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, “Ryan…you be Jesus.”

TEACHER: “George Washington not only chopped down his father’s cherry tree, but also admitted it. Now, Louis, do you know why his father didn’t punish him?” LOUIS: “Because George still had the axe in his hand.”

TEACHER: “Clyde, your composition on ‘My Dog’ is exactly the same as your brother’s. Did you copy his?” CLYDE: “No, teacher, it’s the same dog.”

TEACHER: “Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking when people are no longer interested?” HAROLD: “A teacher?”

TEACHER: “Cindy, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor?” CINDY: “You told me to do it without using tables!”

SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER: “Now, Sam, tell me frankly, do you say prayers before eating?” SAM: “No sir, I don’t have to, my mom is a good cook.”

A Sunday school teacher asked her little children, as they were on the way to church service, “And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?” One bright little girl replied, “Because people are sleeping.”

A mother was away one weekend at a business conference. During a break, she decided to call home collect. Her six-year-old son picked up the phone and heard a stranger’s voice say “We have a Marcia on the line. Will you accept the charges?” Frantic, he dropped the phone and ran outside screaming, “Dad! Dad! They’ve got mom!! And they want money!!!”

A Kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She would occasionally walk around to see each child’s work. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was. The girl replied, “I’m drawing God.” The teacher paused and said, “But no one knows what God looks like.” Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, “They will in a minute.”

I’m a lot like my Aunt Olga, who is comfortably chugging along in her eighties.  Neither of us is very literate when it comes to a computer.

Every family member from her kids to me had offered to give her a computer.  I told her she could look at pictures of my precious grandchildren, but Mizzz Olga, as I prefer to call her, would have no part of it.

I asked her on a visit sometime ago about how she does her taxes.  She said, “I have them in my computer,” and proceeded to whip out a Tampa Nugget cigar box with all her receipts in proper order.  “What about your backup?” I asked referring to the information contained therein.  “I also have a Cohiba box if that one fills up,” she promptly responded.  “Now, mind your own business.  I don’t want a computer.”

On the technology expertise scale, if Mizzz Olga is a one on a scale of one to ten, then I’m about a two.  Thank goodness my grandbabies are smarter than I am.  Now that Ava is three, I’m looking forward to learning Excel from her and getting her help with my promotion of my new book, “It’s the Customer, Stupid!” on my website www.aunline.com.

I don’t do “Spacebook or My Face” as New England Patriot Football Coach Bill Belichick calls them.  I don’t do Twitter either, though I’m moving in that direction.

The fact is it took 38 years for the radio to reach 50 million people.  Television did it in 14 years.  The internet did it in four years.  It only took IPod three years. Facebook did it in less than two years and Twitter arrived in six months.

The first text message was sent in 1992.  Before you’re done reading this article, the total number of text messages sent will exceed the population of the entire planet.  As the great Italian philosopher Berra (Yogi Berra) once said:  “The trouble with the future is it ain’t what it used to be!”

In the old days, I would show up at a speech and the meeting planners would have signs posted everywhere “If you have a cell phone, please turn it off.” Imagine how freaked out they get when the first slide that appears on the screen is “IF YOU HAVE A CELL PHONE, TURN IT ON NOW!!!” to encourage audience participation via Twitter.  I get that; I just don’t get Facebook and many of the other social media links.  Do you really give a rip where I had lunch or what I did today?

I can see the benefit of staying in touch with people you’d rather not talk to but would still like to know about.  It’s sort of like taking a peak at their private journal.  We all have family members like that.    You’re afraid to phone them because you might get hit up for a loan.  Still, you love them and want to know what’s going on in their lives and yet some folks like to spill their guts.  I guess I just don’t care that much to know that much.

So like my Aunt Olga, whose old fashion name is a metaphor of her old fashion philosophy, she and I go galloping into the technological era at the speed of a glacier, which is just about as fast as either of us move on a sunny day.  She still has an old dial phone that weighs about five pounds (made of steel) in one part of the house; I still have a flip-phone that does one thing- it makes and receives phone calls.  Now both of us have upgraded.

Mizzz Olga has installed touch tone phone and an answering machine, but still no cell phone, no caller identification, no call waiting and only land lines.  Like Gene Hackman once said in the movie Crimson Tide, “I don’t trust air I can’t see.”  Mizzz Olga doesn’t trust a phone that doesn’t have a cord going into a wall.

I love calling and singing to her machine, which drives her nuts.  Now, like Mizzz Olga, I’m about to upgrade to one of those phones that can do everything from ordering pizza to serving one.  We’re both moving at the speed of a glacier….reluctantly, but moving.

Okay sports fans, time for a little summer time football humor now that there’s officially a battle going on around the world as to exactly how to define football.

In every other nation but the United States, soccer (as we know it) is known as “football.” If you say “football” on this side of the pond, we’re asking “Do you mean professional, college, high school or Pop Warner?”

Be that as it may. Q: Why do Wimbledon fans carry lighters round with them? A: Because they lose all their matches! Bah-da-boop!

Q: If you see a Liverpool fan on a bike, why should you never swerve to hit him? It might be your bike…

Two guys are talking about their boss’s upcoming wedding. One bloke says, “It’s ridiculous, he’s rich, but he’s 95 years old, and she’s just 24! What kind of a wedding is that?”

The other says, “Well, we have a name for it in my family. We call it a football wedding.” The first asks, “What’s a football wedding?” Answer: “She’s waiting for him to kick off!”

And let’s not forget the college football humor. Q: How do you get a Tennessee graduate off your porch? A: Pay him for the pizza. Or this zinger…Q: What do you get when you put 28 Clemson cheerleaders in one room? A: A full set of teeth.

And let’s not forget America’s team, the Dallas Cowboys. Q: How do the Cowboys spend the first week of training camp? A: Studying their Miranda Rights. The Cowboys had a 12-6 season last year, 12 arrests and 6 convictions.

Why does Denver rookie quarterback Tim Tebow keep his Wonderlic score on his dash board? So he can park in the handicap zone. And what do you call a Georgia Bulldog with half a brain? Gifted.

And stupidity isn’t limited to college or professional football. You haven’t lived yet until you’ve attended a Pop Warner game with 144 screaming parents who think their kid is the next Brett Farve. What do you call these 144 screaming parents? Gross stupidity.

I do play-by-play for Pop Warner football in Harmony, Florida. God help you if you mispronounce one of these kid’s names. Before you can blink, there’s a screaming parent banging on the press box door demanding a do-over.

And no matter how many times you beg teams to provide phonetic rosters in numeric order, it never happens. Try looking up a player’s number when you’re reading off an alpha-order roster. Such is life at the Pop Warner level.

Parents who vicariously replay their lives through their kids need to get a life. And it’s not limited to Pop Warner or high school football. In Florida, we have two unofficial sports- cheerleading and dance. Never has so much money been spent on so little return.

Don’t get me wrong, I love going to see my beautiful granddaughter Ashley at her dance recital. You pay $8.00 per person to get into the recital, and it lasts all of about three minutes, the length of a Disney song like “It’s a small world after all.”

I didn’t mind the $8.00 (times 10 family members= $80.00) because I realize they have you by the short hairs. What I did mind was the fact that you couldn’t collect your little munchkin after her performance and politely depart so she could get to her mid-day nap. That’s right. They hold the kid hostage until the entire 8 hour dance recital is complete. I guess they didn’t want to lose their audience.

Preschoolers who miss their naps are about as much fun as wrestling an alligator. They don’t want to be there to begin with, and now they are being forced to sit back stage while 100 other classes of kids do their performance.

I did some quick math on what my son Cory and his wife had invested in this gig. Start with weekly lessons at about $10 a crack for a year, in preparation for the big recital.

This is the smallest part of the investment. You could outfit an entire football team for the costs of one recital appearance. Shoes have to run you in the range of $25.00. Tights run at least $10.00 a pair. The helmet, pardon me, the tiara, runs the entire gamut, depending on whether you go for real rhinestones or the plastic Wal-mart version. And then there’s makeup, arm bands, hair “up-do”, eyelash mascara, nails (hands and toes), flowers for the little munchkin from every family member and the post-game meal. My guess is we’re in the low thousands at this point.

It reminds me of the old bumper sticker: “Why do we do the things that we do when we know the things that we know?”

A blonde woman was speeding down the road in her little red sports car and was pulled over by a woman police officer, who was also a blonde. The cop asked to see the blonde’s driver’s license.

She dug through her purse and was getting progressively more agitated. “What does it look like?” she finally asked. The policewoman replied, “It is square and it has your picture on it.”

The driver finally found a square mirror, looked at it and handed it to the policewoman. “Here it is,” she said.

The blonde officer looked at the mirror, then handed it back saying, “Okay, you can go. I didn’t realize you were a cop.”

Such is the humor that comes from our women and men in blue. They do hear some doozies when they pull over a speeder, so say my police officer buddies.

Buddy Sullivan who was an SC Highway Patrolman, once told me he pulled over an old-timer who was doing 35 miles per hour on I-20 near Lexington, SC. “I suppose you know why I pulled you over,” said Buddy to the geezer. “Yes I do. I am the only one you could catch. You need a faster car.”

A very pretty blonde woman was pulled over by a Washington State Patrol office for driving 75 mph in a 55-mph zone. When the officer walked to her car and asked her why she was speeding, she told the patrolman that she was married to a police officer who had told her that as long as she was traveling with the flow of traffic she would not be pulled over and would be okay.

The patrolman, having heard all the excuses, or so he thought, told the woman that there were no other cars within a quarter-mile of her when he clocked her on the radar. She looked at him and told him she knew that, but that the group of cars she had been traveling with got boring so she was trying to catch up with the group in front of her.

Apparently this was a new one to the patrolman, she said he giggled a little bit, told her to slow down, drive safely, and have a nice day. She says she could see him laughing and shaking his head as he walked back to his car.”

A vehicle packed with four ladies destined for a
daylong shopping trip was pulled over. She rolled down my window as he walked up
beside the car and asked the inevitable question. “Do you know how fast you were
going?” She responded, “No, officer, I don’t. But I’m sure I was moving right
along because I was just trying to keep up with my mouth.” He bent down and
looked at the car full of women, laughed, and just told me to slow down. No
ticket that day – which meant more money for shopping!

One Sunday, sitting on the side of the highway waiting to catch speeding drivers, a State Police Officer sees a car puttering along at 22 MPH. He thinks to himself, “This driver is just as dangerous as a speeder!” So he turns on his lights and pulls the driver over.

Approaching the car, he notices that there are five old ladies – two in the front seat and three in the back – wide eyed and white as ghosts. The driver, obviously confused, says to him, “Officer, I don’t understand, I was doing exactly the speed limit! I always go exactly the speed limit. What seems to be the problem?”

“Ma’am,” the officer replies, “You weren’t speeding, but you should know that driving slower than the speed limit can also be a danger to other drivers.”

“Slower than the speed limit? No sir, I was doing the speed limit exactly! Twenty-two miles an hour!” the old woman says a bit proudly. The State Police officer, trying to contain a chuckle explains to her that “22″ was the route number, not the speed limit.

A bit embarrassed, the woman grinned and thanked the officer for pointing out her error. “But before I let you go, Ma’am, I have to ask . . . Is everyone in this car OK? These women seem awfully shaken and they haven’t muttered a single peep this whole time.” She responded, “Oh, they’ll be all right in a minute officer. We just got off Route 119.”

Below are the ten worst excuses recorded by the cops for pulling someone:

1. I was going downhill.
2. I have oversized tires.
3. I was passing a truck.
4. I was late and my wife was waiting for me.
5. It was a rental car (or someone else’s car) and I wasn’t familiar with it.
6. My car can’t go that fast.
7. I was only going 78.
8. I was just keeping up with traffic.
9. He pulled me over because my plates are from out of state.
10. I wasn’t familiar with the road.

I have to start taking my own reading material to the gym in the morning. It is 5:30 in the morning and the Mike & Mike show does not start until 6:00 a.m. so I looking for some reading material. The rack is full of chick stuff… you know, Marie Claire, Redbook, Cosmo and Good Housekeeping. Serves me right for not hauling my own magazines along.

So here I am suffering through Redbook. I figured Redbook could not be all bad. After all, Matthew McConaughey, the hero Coach in the movie “We Are Marshall” bragged about the memory techniques he acquired from Redbook that helped him to remember the names of his football players at Marshall University. “Redbook! It works!”

So I open my Redbook searching for some inspiration. It was chocked full of such interesting articles as “The One Thing Happily Married Women Won’t Do” and “Slash Your Risk for Deadly Disease.” I suspect those two articles may have some overlap.

And of course there are the articles about your love life such as “Reconnect with Romance… Learn to Fall in Love Again.” The net result of that article is the thing that most men hate, sharing their inner feelings. “We Never Talk Heart To Heart” is more about getting us macho guys to open up.

I actually enjoyed the article about “Making Friends At 40… Finding New Pals When You’re Not a Kid Anymore.” Okay, my problem is I am 60 and grumpy. I am not interested in having friends or pals. “If you want a friend, buy a dog,” so said Harry Truman about being a politician in Washington.

I did not recognize most of the things being advertised in Redbook but I did spot one guy I knew — Tom Brady, the quarterback of the New England Patriots, who was advertising Stetson Cologne. I am not sure why they advertise men’s cologne in a woman’s magazine.

One thing you have to say about Redbook, it is chocked full of advertisements. Somebody must be buying something. Seems like over half the book is advertising. One article that caught my interest was “Oops! How to Own Up to Your Mess-ups,” i.e. coming clean with a pal who you have been scamming or coming clean with a boss. It occurred to me, if they were a friend, why did you scam them to begin with?

And then there was the article “Better Sex- By the Book.” Okay, I am always on the lookout for ways to improve my love life. The article asked 1,000 adults to describe their love life and it ranged from hot (23%) to orgasmic (22%) to steamy (17%) to Oscar-worthy (6%). My question, what’s the difference between hot and Oscar-worthy?

Unfortunately, there were some other categories like… predictable (19%), tolerable (10%), depressing (9%) and lukewarm (9%). Some interesting descriptors included ice cold (6%) and sleep-inducing (6%). I was more interested in those who answered explosive (13%) and wild (14%).

In reading the article about “The Secrets Behind Great Marriages,” nowhere did I see my most profound secret of all: “Be wrong so that she may be right.” No sense in losing the dividend and the investment. Notwithstanding the fact that my wife is generally right all the time anyway, it’s just simpler to own up to that fact on the front end.

And then there was the article “My Brother-In-Law Butts In.” I simply substituted the word mother for brother and the article made all the sense in the world to me.

The one article “Why I Am Having an Affair” occurred to me to be a bit suggestive but it was quickly followed on the next page by “How Far Would You Go to Save Your Marriage.” Try not having an affair. Duh!

Finally, I came across an ad that made more sense to me than all of the articles put together. It had a picture of a German shepherd on the ad and was titled “I Am a Dog and I’ll Chase Anything That Moves.” Now there is something I can relate to. Since I have been advised by many folks that all men are dogs, I guess I relate well to this ad. The ad goes on to say (presumably quoting the dog) “The toilet is my own personal water fountain. And though I have a keen sense of smell, I don’t always make good digestive decisions.” I can relate to all of that except drinking out of the toilet.

And don’t ever suggest that I am out of line for reading Playboy or Penthouse. I have news for you folks. There are just as many thinly clad women in Marie Claire, another chick magazine that was in the gym. That gal in the Lancôme Paris ad, which I presume is hustling some smell-good of some sort, only had on what she arrived into this world with.

I have to start taking my own reading material to the gym.