Vanity Press

Creeping Up to the Green Light

modestypress — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:54:38 +0000

I spent the last few days at a seminar for instructor candidates for AARP driver safety classes.

The seminar was led by two retired public high school principals, a handsome, intelligent, and competent married couple. Generally, they don’t tell their regular Driver Safety classes they were school principals, as it intimidates the students too much.

I sprayed my hands with sanitizer throughout the session and did not come down with my wife’s flu, (though I think I have it now.) I told everyone not to touch me. I have no way of knowing if anyone is now sick from being around me.

The other four candidates were very interesting and competent. One was a retired army sergeant. At dinner he told us about his military service in Vietnam. He flew as a passenger in small reconnaissance planes a few hundred feet above the ground to map the landscape, as there were no photos from satellites or from unmanned drones in those days. “When the planes returned, they were full of bullet holes, but I never was,” he told us. Though when he got home from Vietnam he got beat up in a bar by people angry about the war.

Another candidate is a police officer from a small town. When he talked about unsafe driving and about often happens when people drive unsafely, he brought a lot of credibility to the discussion. He was very friendly and unassuming, and we all liked him, but we agreed he should not tell his students he is a cop until well into the class.

The third candidate teaches driver training to high school students. I think he is looking forward to working with grown ups.

The fourth candidate teaches employee training sessions for a large supermarket chain. She is very competent and personable and very sharp on her timing.

The instructors directed each of us to make a six-minute presentation on the second day of the class. The warned us, “Everyone talks longer than they think they do.”

Each instructor candidate displayed a unique personality and style, while making a competent, articulate, well-organized presentation. Each ran over his allotted time, except for the supermarket trainer, who was spot on to about five seconds.

At the start of my presentation, I said, “I will cheat,” and put my timer on the podium. However, at dinner the night before, I asked to one of the instructors the answer to a question I could not locate, and said, “With your permission I will cheat.”

He said, “That is the first time one of my candidates has asked me if it is OK for him to cheat. I will say, ‘That is fine.’” Then the cop helped me cheat, also.

So at the start of my presentation, I said, “If the principal of a school and a traffic policeman helps me to cheat, I will call you both as witnesses when I get hauled into court.”

The other presentations were better than mine, although mine was OK. At the end, we (politely) gave each other feedback and criticism. To me, they said, “We wore really worried at the beginning of your presentation, but you got there quite well at the end.” I interpreted that as, “For a crazy person, you do quite well.”

Perhaps You Can Just Let Me Live My Life

modestypress — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:09:37 +0000

RG again. Grandpa is collecting on a flash drive all the “RG stories” he wrote about me. (Don’t believe half the stuff he writes about me, either.) He plans to put them on a flash drive and attach a note that say, “Give to RG when she turns 15.”

As he reasonably accurately noted (for once), when I was three I said to Mommy, “You are deciding too many things for me. I am almost grown up. I should get to decide more things for myself.”

Anyway, I’ve read all his stories already. He thinks I will want to know about what I did when I was young when I get older because his parents and grandparents didn’t write down their stories for him to read. (That’s why he made up a bunch of stupid stories about his relatives.)

Here’s the thing Grandpa doesn’t understand. My mommies already have sixty-eleven million digital photographs of me. They have documented every inch I’ve grown and every cute word I’ve ever said. They have measured every pound I’ve gained (though I am still very slim, thank you very much), kept track of every shot the mean doctors poked into my arm or my butt.

I have to be the most documented child in the history of children. (Except for all the other kids in my kindergarten, of course.)

Suppose I decided to run for President some day. (Don’t worry; I’m moving into a new dimension instead.) But if I did all my political enemies would be poring over all the documentation collected on me. I can just see the headlines: RG Pooped her diaper on the way to the park at the age of three! Do you want to elect this woman President?

Look, Grandpa, I appreciate how you are collecting all your stories to have the mommies hand to me when I turn 15. But how about you just let me live my life?

I Want to See 96. Not a Drop Less

modestypress — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:49:05 +0000

This is Random Granddaughter grokking Grandpa’s password and taking over his computer by using my now awesome mental powers developed at the School for Very Bright Children.

Many people here are much taken with something called twitter and tweeting each other. We very bright children have moved so far beyond tweeting, not to mention, blogging, you obsolete adults can not even imagine it.

My friends and I have created an entirely new telepathic Internet. Even as we are indulging you artifacted parents and grandparents by saying “Please” and “Thank you” at the dinner table, we are communicating entire new works of literature and art and music you can’t even imagine, and sharing them by telepathy with your dogs and cats.

We are going to bring your dogs and cats with us as we transport ourselves into an an awesome new dimension and leave you behind. Then you will really be sorry you didn’t increase our allowances and let us stay up later when you had the chance.

Too late. Start crying. I want to see 96 teardrops. I am going to count every one. Not just 95, either.

Too many teardrops for one heart to be cryin’
Too many teardrops for one heart to carry on
Youre way on top now since you left me
Youre always laughin way down at me
But watch out now, I’m gonna get there
W’ell be together for just a little while
And then I’m gonna put you way down here
And you’ll start cryin ninety-six tears
Cry, cry

And when the sun comes up, I’ll be on top
You’ll be right down there, lookin up
And I might wave, come up here
But I don’t see you wavin now
I’m way down here, wonderin how
I’m gonna get you but I know now
I’ll just cry, cry, Ill just cry

Too many teardrops for one heart to be cryin’
Too many teardrops for one heart to carry on
Youre gonna cry ninety-six tears
Youre gonna cry ninety-six tears
Youre gonna cry, cry cry cry now
Youre gonna cry, cry, cry, cry
Ninety-six tears

Country Dentist

modestypress — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:33:19 +0000

When we were preparing to move to our Puget Sound island, a filling broke and I needed a dentist in a hurry. I decided to bite the bullet, so to speak, and go to a dentist on the island. The phone book listed two dentists in the nearest small town to where our home was being built. I called one. The receptionist I talked to presented her boss and office very well, but the best day for me at that time was Friday, and that dentist closed his office on Fridays.

So I was left with Frank. I did a search for information about Frank on the web. I found one odd but promising comment on the web site of Powell’s books (the leading bookstore in Portland, Oregon.). I came across an interview with a moderately successful writer who told a charming and admiring anecdote about Frank the dentist. I won’t put it here because it has too much distinguishing detail, but if you really want to read it, email me and I will link you to it if I trust you. If a fairly successful author plugs a dentist on Powell’s Books, that’s good enough for me to give him a try, so I made an appointment. Apparently all of Frank’s patients have used him for many years, so his receptionist must have been a bit surprised to have a new patient call her out of the blue, but she handled the surprise with aplomb.

When I went in to see Frank and to get my painful tooth attended to, I met a tall, laconic man about a year younger than myself. His pleasant, competent, attractive receptionist is also a dental assistant, but I was a bit surprised to discover that Frank almost never called her in to assist him.

Unlike every other dentist I ever had, Frank did about 95% of his work by himself. He grabbed all his tools of torture by himself. When it came time for my six-month cleaning, Frank did the cleaning himself instead of using a hygienist.

“Do you ever use hygienists?” I asked him.

“Oh, yes, I have a few times, but they always have babies and move on, so finally I decided it was easier to do it myself,” he replied.

I figured if my dentist does the cleaning himself instead of handing it down to a hygienist, I am either getting the best dental service in the world, or I am living in a world of delusion.

“Did you ever work with another dentist, or have you always been a sole practitioner?” I asked him.

“Yes, I tried working with other dentists,, but it just never works out,” he told me.

He always has jazz and blues playing on a stereo in his office, and he had a large painting of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans (with Roy holding a guitar) on his dental chair room, as well as an actual guitar hanging in the same room.

“Do you play the guitar?” I asked.

“Yes, but as my arthritis has gotten worse, I can’t play much any more.” I wondered a bit as his handling of dental tools seems deft enough, but I decided not to worry about it until a drill slips enough to make me scream.

“Did you ever consider music as a career?” I asked him. He said he enjoyed playing music, but the dedication necessary to be professionally successful took all the enjoyment out of it. (This is a bit similar about RG’s Mommy’s comment about her reasons for abandoning her one-time goal of being a concert violinist.)

One time he told me, “The first year I worked as a dentist, I joined another dentist in Alaska. The oil drilling and pipeline construction was at its peak. We worked 12 hours a day and charged whatever we wanted. Boy, I made a lot of money. However, when winter came I had never been so cold in my life, so I left Alaska at the end of that winter. There was no way any amount of money would compensate for being that cold.”

I could identify. One of the six high schools I attended was in Wisconsin, and I still remember waiting for the school bus when the temperature was -38 degrees. I swore once I became an adult, I would not live some place that got that cold.

“How did you decide to become a dentist?” I once asked him.

“When I was in college, I couldn’t get the classes I wanted. I noticed if you were in pre-med or pre-dental, you got to the top of the list when it came to getting classes, so I told the university I was planning to become a dentist. After a while, I actually applied for the dental school, and, to my surprise, they accepted me.”

I told Frank how a friend of mine once related the following anecdote to me.

My friend said, “My dentist was working on me and suddenly exclaimed, ‘When I think about the 18-year-old kid who made this career choice, I could kill that kid now.’”

Frank chuckled but indicated that dentistry wasn’t that painful for him.

He mentioned a wife once, so I asked, “Do you have any children?” He immediately answer in a manner that mixed a charming combination of determination, strong opinion, self-awareness, and cheerful geniality, “God No! I hate kids!”

I said his exclamation reminded me of comments by W. C. Fields such as:

Children should neither be seen or heard from – ever again.

I never met a kid I liked.

I like children – fried.

I began to put together a portrait of a person who had arranged his life fairly quite well to suit himself but cheerfully makes adjustments as he has to.

His final comment to me was, “Pretty soon every doctor and every dentist will be working for the government; it’s inevitable. Fortunately, it will be too late to get me.”

City Dentist, Country Dentist

modestypress — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:19:01 +0000

I went to my dentist a few weeks ago, reminding myself I have been meaning to write a few blog posts about dentists I have known.

At one time, my wife and I used a dentist named “Dr. Nixon.” Actually, President Richard Nixon had a brother who was a dentist, but I am pretty sure our dentist was not that Nixon. After we moved to Oregon for a while, we ended up with a dentist in Beaverton, Oregon who told us that Dr. Nixon did terrible work.

When we moved to the Hawthorne Blvd area of Portland, east of the Willamette River (which divides the city in two), our Beaverton dentist referred me to a female dentist a few blocks from our new home. It was the first female dentist I ever had, and I loved the experience. I don’t like going to the dentist any more than anyone else, but having a woman as my dentist gave me a comforting feeling of Mother, take care of me as I leaned back in the chair and submitted to the drill.

When we moved back to Washington, my daughter recommended a dentist she and Mommy (her partner) used in downtown Seattle. “Oh, I should mention, he’s gay,” she mentioned, though that was not a concern to me one way or another. Our Seattle dentist operated a large busy office with another [gay] dentist high up in a medical office building.

These dentists were very high-tech and attentive to detail in regard to patient comfort and safety. I was given my own personal mask to bring in for nitrous oxide (“laughing gas”) so my mask would never be contaminated by contact with another face. In the waiting area, a rack held several hundred music CDs. Patients chose a disk to provide music piped into earphones while the dentist worked.

I am fairly certain that every hygienist , assistant, and receptionist was also gay. I will indulge in the stereotype of saying this office has a certain atmosphere and elegance one is unlikely to find in the average dental office.

That was my “city” dentist. In my next post, I will describe the “country” dentist I now have on the island.

V3 Rides into the Sunset

modestypress — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:27:20 +0000

As I’ve mentioned, V2, who reads only memoirs is pretty in a wan, ethereal way. Her younger sister, V3, is attractive and vigorous, and always strikes me as very presentable and conscientious about making a good impression on customers and fellow workers. (This description fits my wife as well.)

However, I was a bit surprised the last time I encountered V3. I was parking my little car in the main library’s underground parking garage. I looked up and saw her roll into the garage on a large, impressive motorcycle.

When I was in my twenties, I thought it would be cool to own a motorcycle, and I rode on the back of a couple of friends’ motorcycles a few times.. However, I was quite aware that if I tried to ride one myself I would kill myself in very short order. My brother, more adventurous than I am, owned a large BMW for a while. However, one day he took a jolly spill. Aside from a few scrapes, he was not injured, but he said to himself, A fellow could kill himself this way and sold the bike a few weeks later.

I am not really surprised at women riding motorcycles, either. When my wife and I owned a pre-press business, two female employees owned and rode motorcycles.

However, I had never thought of V3 as a biker sort of gal. I walked over as she parked and said hello. I noticed that she owned an unusual brand of bike (which I don’t remember) and that it looked exceptionally spiffy and well appointed. I asked her about it.

“I think most motorcycles are kind of ugly and offensive,” she said. “I spent a lot of time choosing one that not only runs well, but also looks very tasteful and attractive.”

Which struck me as fine, but also very feminine. If my wife were into motorcycles, that is exactly how she would approach choosing her steed.

I am all for equal rights for men and women, and to the extent that a man can be a “feminist” I think I qualify. However, there is no doubt in my mind that there are innate differences between men and women that pop up in all sorts of odd ways.

V3 Hits a Do Not Pass Go; Do Not Collect $200 Bump in the Road

modestypress — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:39:31 +0000

Usually, V3 is chipper and upbeat (without being so positive and idealistic as to ruin my usual grimly cheerful cynicism. However, one day I found her is a very discouraged, melancholy state of mind.

I inquired about the cause of her distress.

She told me she was in her first semester of graduate school and having a terrible time in one of her classes. She felt like she wasn’t understanding any of her assignments; the professor was constantly criticizing and demeaning her work; in general, she wasn’t sure she was going to “make it” in terms of her dream of becoming a librarian.

I gave her a little pep talk, telling her that I had a similar experience when I started graduate school I also told her that quite a few professors get their main pleasure in life by destroying vulnerable and insecure students.

“Every truckload of apples is bound to encounter a rotten barrel now and then,” I told her. “Also, it takes a while to learn how to spin whatever style of bullshit is in vogue at the present time. Not everybody learns to wade through the muck successfully right away. And though they try to keep it a secret, there are a few decent professors as well. My suggestion is to just do your best this semester and give yourself a chance. If the next semester is as bad, maybe it is time to drop out or commit suicide or some such radical action. However, I suggest you keep plugging ahead for at least your fist year and see if things get better. You strike me as an intelligent and competent person; you’re obviously doing well here at the library; don’t give up on yourself yet.”

Apparently, I bucked her up enough with my pep talk; she promised not to give up until she was into her second semester.

I didn’t see her again until she had completed her first year. She was ebullient and cheerful again and told me she was doing fine in school. She also indicated my pep talk had helped her get through her difficult first sememster.

She graduated, was promoted to a good position, and worked at a distant branch in the mountains for a year or two. Every report I had indicated she was doing fine. The library system (like community colleges) employs a lot of half time people.

For some people, who need a full time income, the library system’s penchant for using part time workers is very exploitative and stressful. For others, with enough income from a spouse to not need a full time job, or desperately trying to lose weight (so they can benefit from starving for a while), they are able to survive a job and a work environment that might be toxic if full time. V3 fell into this fortunate group. However, the last time I saw her provided a piquant twist that lives fondly in my memory, as I will relate in the final episode of this series.

Introducing the Third Va-Va-Voom Sister

modestypress — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:12:55 +0000

Random Granddaughter is back on her own again, by now probably running marathons, playing Rachmaninoff piano concertos, and organizing her kindergarten class to overthrow the government. While she occupies herself with these trivial pursuits, I will return to my tale of the Va-Va-Voom sisters.

Before I proceed on to talking about V2’s younger sister, V3, I have to add one footnote, related to my example of memoirs having to do with breast cancer..

Shortly before I retired, I learned from V3 that her sister had come down with breast cancer. The last report I received, from V2 herself, was that her mastectomy had gone well and that she was doing fine. I have not been in touch with either sister since I retired. I should check on her. Also, I am reading a memoir by an undercover cop in Arizona who pretended to be a contract killer so he could forestall people with murder on their minds. It’s a pretty good book, and it should be right down V2’s alley.

While I was working with V2 and helping her find memoirs, she mentioned that her younger sister loved libraries and dreamed of being a librarian.

One day, as I was working at the largest library in the system, V3 introduced herself to me. Unlike her rather wan, waif-like sister, V3 is an attractive, vigorous woman with a positive upbeat manner. Although by the time I met her, I had become rather disillusioned with the library system, V3 took to it like a duck to water.

One of the problems I had with the system was that internally it operates rather like the British class system, or like a military organization. At the bottom, you have pages/privates, who shelve materials and are not allowed to talk with customers [patrons]. Next, you have assistants/non-commissioned officers, who check material in and out and wait on the public. Then you move up to the librarians, who are like the minor aristocracy/officers. The librarians have Masters degrees in Library Science. At the top of the organization, you find the dukes/duchesses, counts, earls/generals/admirals. The Director of the Library is equivalent to a King/Queen/Commander in Chief.

As most people who work in libraries are very liberal and politically correct, and are for the most part female, my analogies offend them quite a bit, though a few rogues and rascals would admit to me off the record, “Of course; that’s exactly the way we function internally.”

However, V3 moved quickly up the ladder without losing her pleasant demeanor and lively sense of humor.

I gradually learned: she is married to a man who works in something to do with intellectual properlty rights to cartoons. I never met her husband, but my impression is that it is a very happy marriage. She told me that they have no intention of having children.

As she already had an undergraduate degree, she entered the librarianship program as a graduate student at the university. Occasionally in my life I am by chance able to do someone a good deed at just the right moment; perhaps there is a minor gene for fairy godmother in my genetic makeup. Happily, the wand worked once again in the case of V3, as I shall describe in the next episode.

RG Studies Mathematical Ethics

modestypress — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 04:35:40 +0000

The private school for very bright children presented a program to parents about their mathematics education. Random Granddaughter was supposed to demonstrate kindergarten math skills involving fractions. The sound system was faulty and produced loud feedback. Sensitive RG could not deal with the amplifier noise and fled to another room and started crying.

At the mommies house a few days after this unhappy experience, we talked about mathematics. Soon RG’s skills will outstrip mine, but I thought I might still have a useful tidbit to offer her.

I said, “Let me tell you how to divide a cookie fairly. One person divides the cookie. The other person gets to choose the half they want.”

RG understood the principle immediately. As she is a writer as well as a mathematician, she composed a parable about Mia and Alee. [Mia is her best friend who lives across the street; Alee is her younger sister.]

“Mia gets a cookie. She breaks it in half. She says to Alee, ‘You get to decide which piece you want.’”

“Exactly!” I said enthusiastically. “You can be sure that Mia will break the cookie very carefully, so both halves are very equal in size.”

Next week, RG goes on tour, lecturing to kindergarten classes across the country on the new field of mathematical ethics.

If RG Will Be Your Grandchild’s Boss Someday, Tell Them to Start Training Now…

modestypress — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:12:02 +0000

“If Random Granddaughter some day supervises other employees some day when she has a career, she will not be a very patient boss,” I said to my wife. RG had been supervising my wife and me when we were taking care of her, and she was not very patient with us.

“RG was not very patient from the day she was born,” replied my wife.

From the age of zero to the age of four, RG was not allowed to watch videos on the theory that videos are harmful to developing little minds. Once she reached the age of four, her mommies decided she can watch one or two carefully chosen videos in a week, usually for not more than about twenty minutes of viewing time in a session.

One of the issues here is Can some of the most brilliant parenting of the century turn a brilliant young drama princess child into a wholesome human being? David Rochester is watching with interest from a safe distance as he works on reintegrating his fragmented personality into a wholesome human being.

May you live in interesting times is not a Chinese curse, but we certainly live in such times, do we not?

Anyway, the mommies asked the grandparents to babysit, perhaps because we work for free, while they took advantage of tickets to a concert that they also got for free. Free can be a very good price.

“Here is a DVD with wholesome videos for children,” Mommy (RG’s birth mother) said. She asked RG what videos she wanted to watch.

Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type, was choice #1. This is a recent but already classic book for children, a book now animated movie about cows that type messages to the farmer on a typewriter. Unless he provides them with electric blankets, they will stop supplying him with milk. The plot thickens from there.

As a child of modern times, however, I doubt that RG knows what a typewriter is. When I was a high school student, I actually used a slide rule because calculators had not been invented yet. I used a buggy whip to make my slide rule go faster.

Courderoy was RG’s second choice. This is a book (now video) about a lonely little black girl who falls in love with a lonely teddy bear in a department store. RG lives in a world of multi-cultural influences. She has two mommies and two daddies. She has an adopted aunt from Singapore. And so on.

The mommies left for their concert. Grandma and Grandpa and Random Granddaughter settled on the couch in front of the combination television monitor/DVD player. Grandma held the remote. Grandma tried to start the DVD going. Mr. and Mrs. Random have a couple of television monitors, DVD players, and remotes at home. It’s not like we are video virgins.

Grandma could not get the video to start. RG expressed impatience. Grandma has a tendency to use bad words when she is frustrated, but she is very careful around RG. The mommies are prissy, goody-goody lesbians who do not much like to be described as “lesbians” and who certainly do not want a five-year-old daughter to hear bad words from Grandma and Grandpa. As RG is now attending kindergarten, however; it is only a matter of time before the first f-bomb comes home with her like a puppy following her home. [The mommies like cats better than dogs, also, and resist getting RG a dog.]

Eventually, after several tries, Grandma brought up a menu of the videos. She selected the typing cows video and pushed “Play” on the remote. The story began. The cows typed messages and went on strike. RG watched with interest. I haven’t heard about her going on strike yet, but it is surely only a matter of time. She didn’t ask about typewriters. I guess she figured a typewriter is something like a computer.

At the end of the story, Grandma tried to get back to the main menu. Instead of bringing up the menu, the entire rebooted and loaded slowly. RG expressed irritation. Eventually the list of videos appeared. Grandma tried to choose and start Courderoy. Each time she did so, the entire DVD rebooted. It took a long time for the list of videos to appear on the screen. About the third time this occurred. RG expressed her impatience and irritation quite strongly. “Perhaps Grandpa knows how to use the remote better than you do,” she told Grandma.

Grandma pretended she did not hear that remark. I kept my mouth shut.

Grandma said, “This remote does not work like the remote we have at home.”

RG said, “My mommies get it to work” in a very condescending and exasperated tone. I kept my mouth shut.

Grandma kept trying. On the fifth try, Courderoy began to play. Grandma said, “I did exactly the same thing I did on the other four tries, but this time it worked.”

RG did not say anything, but her face displayed an expression that eloquently communicated, Sure it did, Grandma.

She watched half the video. Suddenly, she said, “Let’s stop the video. I am ready to go to bed.” She has apparently internalize the time limit for watching videos.

RG went upstairs, flossed and brushed her teeth, picked out a book about church mice and a friendly cat and a party for me to read, and went to bed very peacefully and amiably without any drama queen theatrics.

The next day I tried to use my laptop. The mommies have changed their ISP/wireless Internet connection again. I could not get my laptop to connect to the Internet.

Mommy said, “Mama set this up. I don’t know how to connect your laptop. [Mama was at the university studying calculus.] Perhaps you can go to the library (which is only a few blocks away). Perhaps you can take RG with you to the library.”

RG and I walked to the library. I sat on a couch in the children’s section while RG browsed for books.

In the past, RG picked out books at random. Now she is learning to read, and her kindergarten teacher gave her some guidelines for picking out books. I don’t remember the exact directions, but the run something like this.

Look at a book. Try to read a little bit. If maybe two words are new, then choose the book. If five or more words are new, don’t choose that book.

RG chose several books. I looked them over. They seemed like excellent choices. One of the books struck me as an excellent choice for David Rochester as well, so I have ordered the book on the Internet and it is supposedly on the way to David and his Amazon. I hope they like it. If they do, RG gets all the credit. If they don’t, it is my fault.

We went to the self-checkout. I tried to check out all four of the books at once. The self-checkout only checked out one. I had to reboot the self-checkout. This was exactly like the experience Grandma had the night before with remote and the video player. As I kept slowly rebooting the self-checkout, RG twisted restlessly and said, “Grandpa, aren’t you done checking out the books? I am ready to go home.”

Eventually we went home, had something to eat, and went to RG’s cross-country race where she sobbed, ran 1/2 mile, and smiled when she received a blue ribbon. If your grandchild is thinking about working for RG some day or marrying RG some day, tell him or her to start training right now, because she will be a bossy boss and a severe spouse.