Scattershot

Even in Peru...

My stepson and his girlfriend are visiting for the holidays and entertained us the other night with stories and photos from their recent trip to Peru.

At one point on their trip, they followed their guide, a woman about 48, along a steep mountain path in a remote mountain area over 12,000 feet above sea level. Peter decided to try to match the woman's pace.

Now let me interject a bit here about Peter. "Physically fit" doesn't even begin to describe this young man. He participates regularly in triathlons, and last year his bike broke during one of them. He carried the bike the remaining three miles of the race and still won it. He is a skier, swimmer, runner, and competitive bicyclist, and he takes his training very seriously.

He kept up with the Peruvian woman, he said, but he couldn't have pushed much harder. The woman was tough. Very tough.

As they followed her and her horse along the narrow path on the edge of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, suddenly they heard a ring.

The woman reached into a pocket and pulled out a cell phone. "Hola!" she said.

Peter and Melissa looked at each other and laughed. "Cell phones are officially everywhere," they said. "Everywhere."

   

Jawing around

I've been looking at young women's jaws lately.

No, I'm not a pervert. Something set me off as I rode in a shuttle bus to the Denver airport at 7:00 a.m. a couple of weeks ago. Three young women on their way to Mexico were sitting across from me, and all were chewing gum quite vigorously. For some reason, I found myself screening out the sound of their voices and just looking at them and the movement of their jaws. Although they were attractive women, they suddenly looked ludicrous to me. Gum chewing is not really an attractive action when you really pay attention to it.

Okay, it was 7:00 a.m. Maybe I needed more coffee. It was a weird thing to start thinking about, I admit. (But wasn't it also a little weird to be chewing gum at 7:00 a.m.?)

But then, during my entire trip, gum-chewing women started popping up all over the place. They chomped enthusiastically walking down city streets, sitting in restaurants, waiting in airport lounges. Again, I found myself filtering out their voices. I started watching them as if I were an alien being dropped onto earth to observe.

How strange it seemed then. And how strange that I never once saw men chewing—only women and only young women. Is this a new "must" for the cool set and, in typically un-cool fashion, I'm just now getting wind of it?

I think there's a reason actresses playing not-so-bright or not-so-classy women often grab a hunk of gum. There is a certain trashiness to the look.

But, come to think of it, "trashy" is kind of in as a look. Maybe gum is a perfect accessory.

Fake mailman?

Our mail hadn't arrived by almost 5:00 p.m. last week, so one of my employees, Mary, called to see what was going on.

"Oh, things will be late because the mail routes have all being reassigned," said the post office representative. "You will no longer have Nancy as your mail carrier."

"We've never had Nancy as our mail carrier," Mary replied. "Our carrier is Dean."

"But we have no letter carriers named Dean," she said.

Has an impostor posing as a postal worker somehow hijacked a mail truck and been delivering our mail for three years? If not, why on earth would a mailman let us call him Dean for three years if that wasn't his name? Couldn't he have find a moment to correct us in all that time?

Maybe he just liked the name Dean and decided to try it out.

We're taking no chances with Greg, the UPS man who picks up packages every day. Tomorrow we're asking to see his ID.

I'm vindicated!

When people ask me how I am, "Good!" almost always slips out. My friend Elaine always corrects me, saying something subtle like, "You mean well?" or "And you're a writer?" or "How could you have been an English teacher all those years?"

I always murmur something about how "I am well" just sounds so formal, and I just can't say it.

Yesterday, my employee Samantha was reading the book Grammar Girl, which I recommend highly and now will recommend even more highly. I heard a whoop from her office, and she rushed into mine, holding the book up triumphantly and announcing, "Good is not wrong!"

She proceeded to read the explanation, which actually makes such sense that I don't know why I've let the "wellers" make me feel inferior all these years. (Briefly, in the sentence "I am good," good is a predicate adjective. Just as you might describe a book as good or a meal as good, you can also describe yourself as good because good is being used as an adjective. You shouldn't say, "I swim good," because in that case good is being used as an adverb, not an adjective. Confused? Grammar Girl explains it better.)

Another reason to say good instead of well: Well usually means "healthy," so when you say, "I am well," you are saying you are healthy. Maybe my friend Elaine means she is healthy when she says that, but I mean that I am good, thank you very much, not healthy.

I know, I know. While well indicates health, good has implications of goodness, as in kind, moral, generous, etc. That's okay. I'll take that over well, and I am now unapologetically going to be good.

This whole argument reminds me of the whole bad/badly confusion. Whenever I say, "I feel bad," I always want to add a little explanation like, "You may think I should have said, 'I feel badly,' which so many believe is correct. However, it is not correct, unless I mean that something is wrong with my fingertips and I actually feel badly, as I might ski badly or sing badly. But in this case bad is a predicate adjective describing me, not an adverb describing the verb feel, and therefore I am correct, even though you may be looking down your nose at me for not adding that 'ly.'"

But I don't say that. I just say, "I feel bad."

All this is so confusing. From now on, maybe I should just follow my husband's lead. When someone asks him how he is, he often just says, "old and ornery."

Guessing his way through Christmas

When I was a kid, my dad tormented us all each year by sitting on the floor by the Christmas tree, picking up his wrapped packages one by one, and guessing—correctly—what was inside each one long before Christmas actually arrived. It drove us all crazy, and it became quite a Christmas goal every year to fool him. This was no easy task, since figuring out anything to get him was hard enough, let alone something that would fool him.

One year, however, Mom picked up a present for him that she knew, knew, knew he would never guess: a set of shot glasses. There were reasons he was unlikely to guess this: He had never indicated in any way that he wanted shot glasses and, in fact, he rarely drank. I'm not sure why she picked this gift, but she did, and she was so pleased about it. She even bragged about her unguessable gift and was oh-so-smug about putting it under the tree.

And then one evening as she sat sipping a cup of coffee, Daddy stretched out on the floor by the tree. He casually picked up Mom's package, gave it a brief shake, and—just as Mom took a sip—said, "Shot glasses." Mom spewed coffee halfway across the room, ruining any chance of trying to bluff her way through the situation.

She never got over it. For the rest of her life, she shook her head over those shot glasses, mystified about how he had done it. And after that, Daddy always asked if she wanted a cup of coffee before he sat down to guess what was in his packages.

She was not amused.

The joys of online "help"

I have a system that backs up both my home and work computers and lets me access files from both at either place. Yesterday, however, I found that files were not being uploaded from my home computer.

I logged onto the company's support site, found nothing in the "frequently asked questions" that helped, and finally took a deep breath and used their online live "chat" feature.

"Buhujang" wrote back, thanking me for contacting technical support and asking how he (she?) could help. I explained that the files from my home computer were not being uploaded. Then he led me through many steps. In fact, the file for the conversation, printed out, is two and a half pages long, single-spaced in small type.

Midway through page two, Buhujang came to this conclusion: "The files might not have uploaded from your home computer."

Sigh. I have to admit that I replied with a not so nice, "Well, duh! That's what I'm writing about!"

To Buhujang's credit, he/she did stick with me, and eventually I received instructions that helped me sort it all out. All is well.

Except that I came into work today and found that one employee's computer is covered with quite graphic icons for porn sites. She closed it down immediately, and we are now awaiting Fred, our flesh and blood computer problem solver.

We've already told Fred we have a porn problem. I am 99.9% certain that he will not come in and say, "Gee, it appears you have a porn problem on this computer."

  

Little writing gems

Last night I was reading a new article by David Sedaris, "Loggerheads—Sea Turtles and Me," and I found myself noting phrases that I love, love, love. He just kills me sometimes with his ability to turn a phrase.

For example, he describes the home of a childhood friend like this: "Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read." Warm from being read...That is just so darned wonderful that it warms me just to read it.

Then he describes some baby sea turtles he took inside as a child, and he wonders, now, why someone didn't stop him. "Animal cruelty hadn't been invented yet," he writes. "The thought that a non-human being had physical feelings, let alone the wherewithal to lose hope, was outlandish and alien, like thinking paper had relatives." Like thinking paper had relatives...What kind of person comes up with wonderful similes like this?

I love this man, at least on paper—paper filled with warm words.

Weaving down the highway

A few months ago, I started an informal driving-to-work survey. When someone veers into my lane or weaves while driving, I make a prediction that they will turn out to be on a cell phone. I will peek at the driver as I either get the courage to pass them or pull up next to them at a light (if they are alert enough to actually stop at the light). I am right about 98% of the time. The driver will be either talking on a cell phone or texting.

I realized I'd taken things too far the other day, though. As I passed a pokey left-lane driver, I found myself taking my eyes off the road, not once but several times, to see if the person really was texting with a cell phone held at the bottom of the steering wheel. And then I realized I had created a new hazard: driving unsafely while trying to determine if someone else is driving unsafely. Sigh. Obviously, I need to cut it out.

One thing fascinates me about cell phone use. People uniformly seem to think that they are safe when using a cell phone when driving because they are careful. I wonder if all the lane drifters I encounter each morning also think they are perfectly safe.

Speaking of cell phones, I realized a couple of weeks ago that I've been missing out on a whole new text messaging hazard. I hadn't had occasion to walk around in a crowded city lately, until I went to Philadelphia. There I found I had to be careful because of texting walkers. People were totally absorbed in writing messages as they walked, and it was up to me to look out for them so as not to collide. I did, but I wonder what happens when two oblivious texters are in line for a head-on collision? Since the rule seems to be "texters have the right-of-way," what happens?

For an interesting article about text messaging injuries, check out ER docs warn of serious injuries, deaths from text-message mishaps.

A midnight scare

Last weekend in a hotel in downtown Philadelphia, I was sleeping soundly after an exhausting day selling books at the Cottonwood Press booth. Suddenly, a fire alarm sounded, and a recording of a man's voice boomed into the room. "A fire has been reported in the building," the voice repeated, over and over again. "Please proceed directly to the staircase. Do not use the elevator."

I was fuzzy-brained and confused and ready to charge out the door. Luckily, my roommate Elaine had not been sleeping and had her wits about her. "Get your coat," she said calmly. "Put on some shoes. Grab your purse." I obeyed.

We went into the hall and started trudging down eleven flights of stairs, along with hundreds of other people. What I'd never thought about before is how, as people exit, more and more people pour into the stairwell from lower floors, slowing things to almost a stop for those on the higher floors. Thoughts of 9-11 entered the minds, I'm sure, of everyone in that sluggish line of people trying to leave.

Finally, we were all out in the chilly street in our pajamas, thinking about what we probably should have grabbed on our way out. "I just grabbed the thumb drive for my computer," one lady said. I was glad Elaine had told me to grab the money bag with conference sales.

Supposedly, the fire was due to over-zealous cookie baking in a microwave on the seventh floor. Since no one I talked to had heard of rooms with microwaves in the hotel, that explanation seemed lame. Besides, who bakes cookies in a microwave? We were all skeptical, though we couldn't discount the distinct odor of fire on the seventh floor.

Though we never saw any evidence of the fire department checking things out, we were finally told to go back inside by someone who could have been the concierge, a front desk clerk, or a random person passing by, for all we knew. Without the assurance of safety from someone with clear authority, I can't say that we all slept very soundly when we finally got back to our rooms.

The incident made me recognize the importance of having someone in an official capacity do something reassuring when dealing with large crowds in potentially dangerous circumstances. Though we might not have been any safer having heard from a fire official, we would definitely have felt safer. 

Unfriending

It's fascinating to watch how our language evolves. The New Oxford American Dictionary just announced that its Word of the Year for 2009 is unfriend. The common noun friend has thus morphed into a verb and then into a negative form of the same verb.

I'm wondering what might happen next. Maybe, instead of proposing, a man will soon ask a woman to wife him. And when they later divorce, he may unwife.Before that unwifing, the couple may decide to dog. If the dog proves not to be good with their children, they may undog and hamster. And if the kids prove to be allergic, the family may have to unhamster.

Text is another word that has gone through the verbing process. This former noun now gets a lot of action as a verb, as in "I texted him." Soon we may be hearing our children say things that would baffle our grandparents, as in "Will you car me to the mall? And I'm so hungry. Could we McDonalds on the way?"

I must stop this rambling, as I have a lot of bills on my desk to pay. I think I'll coffee and then check, maybe with a tiny break to letter one of my friends.