I would like to discuss a serious medical problem rampant in American society today.  A problem which threatens personal injury and property damage nation wide…a problem which afflict otherwise normal, selfish individuals.  I’m talking about the previously undiagnosed disease I call “line blindness.”

          What is this disease?, you ask.  Is it contagious?  Is it deadly?  Are there medical specialists available to treat it at ridiculously high, BMW  lease rate fees?  What, you also ask, are the credentials which allow me to make such an observation?

          In answer to your question, this illness causes the inability to visually distinguish a straight line…particularly in yellow or white.  It is manifested in its primary symptom as an inability to park within the lines painted on the asphalt of any given parking lot or street.  It’s my medical theory that these people are unable to even see these lines.

          Oh, the answers to your other questions are:  No, possibly, you can rest assured there will be after publication of this article and haven’t you asked enough questions?

          You will find the vehicles driven by those stricken with line blindness parked in variations of three different ways, beginning with the “centered” stop.  In this early stage of the disease the person will park in the same orientation as that of the line, but usually placing the line somewhere between the wheels of the vehicle, thereby negating two of the boundaried parking spaces.  This type of “parker” will allow others to park in series with them, provided the others don’t mind humoring the auto-placement disabled person and themselves park over the line.  Those of us who are determined to remain orderly in the face of deviance are required to park across the street at the Piggly-Wiggly lot and walk.

          The next driver exhibits diagonally skewed traits consistent with more advanced cases of the ailment.  In a diagonal parking environment, these people will park diagonally…but from the other direction at a 90 degree angle to the painted line.  This does away with at least two spaces, possible more since you should still leave them room to back out without pushing your vehicle into the middle of the lot.  Of course, if you drive an old beater, as I do, by all means, leave them hemmed in.  This may give them pause to consider their situation and seek professional help.  It is, however, a good idea to take down their license number before you leave your vehicle.

          The third picture of paltry parking is the parallel person.  The driver who exhibits this trait usually does so in a long vehicle, or with a trailer in tow, by parallel parking in an open bank of perpendicular or diagonal spaces.  This eliminates parking spots at a rate directly proportional to the size of the vehicle in question.  In defense of this person, I should point out that there is often no other parking space available for extended length vehicles at, say, McDonald’s, and it’s necessary for these people to park over the lines even if the driver does see them.  The downside is, this forces you to drive all over the neighborhood looking for a place to park while the kids get more and more restless waiting for this one guy to finish his Big Mac and free up the eight parking spots he’s taken and while you’re in a hurry, he’s having a second cup of coffee and you could have just gone to an actual restaurant in the first place.  So while this driver probably isn’t suffering from line blindness, he should get some kind of consideration training or something.  Now, the person who parks in this fashion in, say, a 1972 Pinto is, no doubt, quite spatially challenged…although this particular car can be easily removed by a well placed tap on the rear bumper.

          It has been suggested by other observant scientific types, one being my friend Mike who generated a B minus in his college introduction to science class, that these people are merely lazy.

          “What!?”, I said. This was my exact word, question mark, exclamation point and all.

          Well, Mike hypothesized (scientific word for “guessed”) that these folks, too lazy to walk from the end of the parking lot, yet not wishing their vehicles to become dinged by the doors of an adjacently parked automobile, are parking in odd configurations to keep people from parking next to them.

          “Nay!”, said I, aghast at the prospect…you’ll note that I speak in a colonial American manner when I am aghast.

          Another reason, interjected by our friend Dan, supports the theory that people are parking in this fashion because they simply don’t care about anyone else (Dan is not so much a scientist as he is a pragmatist)…and they’re lazy.

          After serious consideration of the available facts, I have come to the conclusion that while some people are inconsiderate slobs, some are actually suffering from this little known disease.  In order to assist us in identifying these individuals who need help, we would ask those of you who are lazy reprobates…I mean, you who are in a hurry and do not wish to walk great distances, to help us by parking away from other vehicles.  This approach would leave only those afflicted by line blindness parking in these unorthodox manners and would make it simple to whisk them away to institutionalization.

          So please help us deal with this disease before the government becomes involved and mandates all lots of over 50 parking spots to staff line psychologists during normal business hours.  This will do nothing but raise the cost of business and increase the price of coffee faster than a Colombian blizzard.

          Thank you for your attention and support in dealing with line-blindness…and stay in touch for our next medical manifesto when we will address another serious line disease:

          Line dancing. 

This day is a dark, depressing Roman numeral in the outline of my life.  Today, after blood tests, x-rays, cat scans, MRI’s and stress tests – particularly stress tests – I have been diagnosed as the parent of a sixteen-year-old!

Now don’t get me wrong, I knew from the start that he was my son and we’ve been raising him all these years, so that part was no surprise.  The problem stems from the fact that, up to this point, I dealt with the parental issue fairly well because I could recall, vaguely, that I was, at one time, a child.  I could work with the child management issues easily because, after all, I was once a kid and I made it through.  Plainly, it couldn’t be too difficult.  There are, of course, some easy rules that apply – children should go to school, they should be quiet and if there is a chance they are doing something wrong, they probably are.  At least that’s the obscure recollection I seem to have about early youth.  I was comfortable with that.

Now, my son still goes to school and he does quite well.  I assume there are really cute girls in the college prep courses.  He’s hardly ever quiet, however.  Even when he does the teenaged-moody-introspective thing he’s noisy.  The times he is quiet is when the probability of his misbehaving increases – after all, it’s difficult to brew your own whisky or build self-attaching automotive nuclear pipe bombs when the stereo is blasting the current top 40 social degenerate anthems… although, at least it’s not Lawrence Welk.

At first I thought my problems in dealing with his sixteenth birthday had to do with my own aging, but that isn’t really what bothers me.  I already passed the 40 mark and I got up and went to work that day just like any other…at least that’s what people tell me because the memory isn’t as good as it was when I was, say, 39.

All right, so maybe having a 16-year-old is no big deal to you…  Clearly, you have never been the parent of a 16-year-old.  Think back.  Do you remember being 16?  I do.  I remember 16 as a milestone in my life.  I remember the things I did.  I remember the way I saw the world, my life, my family.  I remember what I thought and what I felt.  And that’s where the whole problem lies… I remember!

The deviousness of the youthful mind trying to exert its independence comes first to mind.  Basically, that means I recall periods of being a self-centered little creep.  Not everyone goes through this.  For instance, some of the kids I went to school with were self-centered big jerks.  The primary determination has to do with how popular you are.

Many youth in this age group will use the trust parents have in them as a tool.  They can scheme within this trust to say they are camping out at the lake with the guys when, in fact, they are trying to get by with spending the night at a party with a co-ed group where they do absolutely nothing wrong, not because they don’t want to but because they don’t know how.  This is a common type of deceit among youth moving into young adulthood and is the primary source of the personal belief that they are smarter than their parents are.  Again, this is a self-centered point of view based on the fact that parents have other children and other life issues to deal with in addition to one teenager.  Most kids find this out in adulthood when they become parents and realize that their folks didn’t actually believe they were going to a church youth group meeting at 9:00 PM, but they were much too happy to have the couch and the television set to themselves in peace and quiet to ask any questions.

I also recalled the temptations and difficulties involved with growing into your own person.  The WIWAK Syndrome* notwithstanding, youth still have severe problems to deal with – some new ones and many of the same ones we had as kids: career choices, the opposite sex, drugs, alcohol, smoking and, worst of all, adults who seem to have forgotten their part in the placement of Mr. Schaefbauer’s Volkswagen on top of the retaining wall at the school after wrestling practice… though I should point out that it wasn’t my idea.  At least, not entirely.

Finally, as if recollection of the world at 16 wasn’t bad enough, it didn’t stop there.  Just like an amnesiac in a bad suspense movie like those black and white ones that you see late at night when you’re sick and you slept all day and then you can’t sleep at night so you watch whatever is on because you’re still miserable but wide awake and…  Well, just like that, you remember everything about your childhood.  So not only did I run through all the memories from my teenaged years, I was stampeded by other thoughts.  Such as accidentally burning down the neighbor’s junk pile, which was hollowed out to form a secret fort that no one knew about except the people on the northwest side of town.  Or the one girl I invited to my eighth birthday party thinking none of the other 3^rd grade boys would notice.  Or the times I got in trouble for all those things my brother did.  (I do seem to remember my brother getting in trouble for things I did, but I won’t bring up anything in particular.  His son will turn 16 next year so I’ll let him think of that on his own.)

This last memory engram easily does the most damage to a person’s approach to youth guidance.  It moves the parenting picture from black and white into shades of gray, or maybe pastels, in which everything varies according to the severity of the transgression and the intent behind the action.  It was much easier when each offense resulted in a standard 9 months of being grounded with time off for really good behavior like saintly acts or the drafting of ground-breaking legislation.

After all, when we remember that there are actual reasons for the deeds of children and you once again understand their viewpoint, you realize that the problem is not so much spite or stupidity as it is genetics and upbringing.

NOW do you understand my anxiety?

* The WIWAK Syndrome is a seemingly natural phase in the human condition, which is believed to date back to a prehistoric era of early man.  Cave drawings have been found in north-central Africa which, when finally translated, read, “When I was a kid, we had to skin our own mastodons!… And we were happy to be able to do it, too!”

The sun was out and the skies were clear…somewhere.  Here, however, it was grey as a dirty Goodyear radial without a whitewall.  Everything was wet – it wasn’t raining but there was a dampness like the earth was in a cold sweat because she knew what the day held.

And the sounds were gone.  The moisture soaked up the vibration and everything was dull and muffled.  There was action. But it was a television with the volume turned down… or seen from another room…or maybe broken altogether.

Don stood on the corner at the park watching the traffic light change; not seeing the colors.  He unconsciously shrugged deeper into his wind breaker.  He should have worn something heavier but hadn’t thought about it, wasn’t thinking about it now.  He was lost elsewhere…supposition…maybe suspicion…no, thought, yes it was thought.

Ann was upset.  They had been seeing each other exclusively for eight months.  Well, they saw other things like traffic lights and ice cream trucks, but not other people.  Actually, they saw other people, they just didn’t see people of the opposite sex.  Naturally, they saw them, but…well, you know.  Things had been going great and Don was beginning to think she was the one.  She was perfect.  She was pretty, thoughtful and caring.  Ann made the best strawberry preserves in the state and in the bedroom she was, well, a little messy, what with the strawberry preserves but…  She could bake a mean lasagna, fix a crumpled pick up fender and her theories on astrophysics were well known.  They had so much in common – he liked lasagna, too.

So why was she mad…angry…maybe upset?  Was it infidelity?  Inconsideration?  Some other “in” word?

Don couldn’t figure it.

She was fine when they met for lunch a couple days ago.  She had rambled on about the new spring fashions and their application as casual handball wear.  He was positive he hadn’t snored but couldn’t be sure his eyes hadn’t glazed over.  He hadn’t said anything and he didn’t forget to leave a tip or pay the bill.  No, that wasn’t it.

It began to drizzle and Don lifted his hood.  A cop watching him for signs of vagrancy frowned and drove off.  Apparently standing catatonic in the rain with your hood up is not a vagrant activity, even if you do have one foot in a puddle.  Don didn’t notice.  He was still lost.

Things seemed alright when they went to dinner and the monster truck opera on Friday.  They talked about crocheting and the new automobile models, quantum physics and the existence of invisible matter in the universe.  He loved conversing with Ann.  After all, he liked crocheting, too.

Everything had been fine…good…even okay, but…  She was cool when he took her home.  She didn’t kiss him goodnight.  She slammed the door in his face and he heard the bolts “click” into place.  That was unusual – she usually didn’t use all the locks.

So whatever it was, it had happened that night.  She didn’t eat her pie at coffee before they went home and didn’t say much after…  Wait!  He had commented on her hair.  It was odd, he had thought, but he didn’t actually say how he felt about it.  What did he say…?  “Unusual”, he had called it.  That was actually a euphemism…an understatement…a lie.  No, it was a euphemism.

He wanted to tell her that it looked like a half of a Princess Leia, like a bun on an old lady with no sense of balance.  She looked like she should lean to one side so she didn’t fall over.  But he didn’t say these things.  She was still beautiful, after all.  It was a temporary thing, a surface affect and it wasn’t important.

Besides, he should have known better than to make a non-positive comment about the way she looked.  There were, after all, rules which applied to these things:  you don’t ask a woman how old she is, you don’t degrade her clothing or her hair and you never say anything about weight.

Somewhere in the distance a church bell was ringing.  The sound filtered its way past Don’s reverie…remembrance…reflection.  He looked up in time to see Ann walking toward him, a thin fence of water dripping off her umbrella , separating her from the light rain.  It was like a welded wire fence…actually, it was more like a picket fence – with some boards missing.  Of course, there were no cross-support rails or…  Aw, jeez, it was just water!

Don looked into her eyes.  “Hi” was all he said.

“Hello, Don”, she said, more in reply than in greeting, her eyes focused on the ground in front of her.  He stood outside the umbrella, outside her space, and looked in at her.

“Ann, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to hurt you.  I certainly didn’t want you to take it that way.  I…I was outta line and I apologize.”

“It’s alright,” she said, her eyes lifting, her face softening.  “I shouldn’t have been so sensitive.  I just thought you didn’t like the way I looked.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” he said, honestly taken aback by the idea.  “I love the way you look.  It’s just that it was…different, is all.”

She lifted the front of her umbrella and he stepped inside her personal shelter.  They shared a smile as the relief rushed through each of them and their eyes locked as the tension subsided.

Don stepped close to her.  He lowered his hood and reached around her.  Ann looked into his face.  Her eyes widened and her eyebrows arched as she leaned back to broaden her view.

“That looks like a crew-cut!  Did you get a haircut or join the Marines!”

It’s time for celebration!  Time for looking back at the old year and searching ahead to the new one.  Time for planning and hoping and remembering and forgetting.  And if you’re lucky, most of the forgetting you do will be about what you did at the party on New Years Eve.  Why did you do that?  You’re old enough to know better by now!

Yes, celebrate the fact that another cycle in the life of this planet, in which you have a tiny, miniscule, almost worthless, dust-speck sized part, is gone.  So far, 17% of this century is gone (you have to count the zero, 2000, too, ya’know) and you know hardly anything about it.  For instance, do you know what happened on September 31, 2007?  Of course you don’t, because there aren’t 31 days in September.  And even if there were, you wouldn’t know anyway!  And why not!?  Because the people who were involved, no matter what their names were or how much money they pilfered, still had tiny, miniscule, almost worthless, dust-speck sized parts in the overall picture of the planet…and some of them are probably dead, anyway.

To further press my point, let’s take one of those really big group pictures – say,    a satellite photo of North America.  Can you find your Uncle Bob in this picture?  I thought not.  Very little importance there, is there?

On the other hand, perhaps it’s a good indication that the importance you have – and yes, your Uncle Bob, too – is due to the part you have as a portion of the WHOLE.  As a part of your neighborhood, your community, your state, your country and even the world… Even though we couldn’t get everyone into the one satellite photo.  Because of the round planet thing, I mean – not because they were out of town or sick on picture day.

“Sure,” you say, “but what about those famous people in the movies and magazines and the ones who cook on those TV shows?  They’re important, right?”

Well, you’re right in a way.  But we make these people important.  And mostly, we do so because we, too, are tiny, miniscule, almost worthless, dust-speck sized parts of the planet who have no sense whatsoever!  What are these folks going to do for us after a cataclysmic event?  The kind of inevitable thing made obvious in all those overly serious ‘60s apocalyptic thriller movies… you know, Oliver Stone training films.  They could organize roving cooking shows to teach what’s left of humanity how to make easy roast duck with a delectable crispy orange skin.  These would be the traveling minstrels of the day, going from town to town putting on shows for food, much like the guy playing saxophone on the street corner for tips.

“Okay,” inquirest thou.  (Sorry, I needed filler)  “How about the important people we were taught about in those really boring history classes in school?”

Excellent question, though I noticed you didn’t mention any specific examples because you were mostly dozing during history class.  These people were and are actually important in their society, which, as it turns out by extension, is our society.  You will notice, however, as our current society changes, our view of these people changes in turn.  Take Thomas Jefferson, for illustration.  He was one of the founders of the United States of America, author of the Declaration of Independence and a member of Congress, though the latter shouldn’t be held against him.  A great thinker in the betterment of the common man or, more precisely, of man in common.  Today we have heard argument that he deserves no notoriety because he owned slaves.  Granted, now days we understand slavery, by its very nature, to be an evil construct against the liberty of man and mankind itself.  At the time, however, it was a widely held and accepted belief and his work with, and treatment of slaves and slavery was quite progressive within that society.  Still, a portion of current society would have us delete Jefferson’s importance.  Well, if it weren’t for that big rock face thing.

Or what about Vladimir Lenin?  His theory was for ALL people to be equal.  The idea was noble, though the execution (poor choice of words, considering his successor) was poorly done.

We can see by these examples that society can change and cause even truly important people to lose importance.

That’s because we gave them the importance, just the same as we gave importance to Paris Hilton, or any one of the Kardashians or Justin Beiber, for God’s sake!  These are important like a car wreck…  It really has nothing to do with us, but we can’t help staring when we go past.

Truly important people in the world, while also essential in a societal way, are regular people of history and pre-history.  Average Joe and Jane Cro-Magnon or even those poor neighbors from the wrong (as it turns out) side of the tracks, the Neanderthal family, all going about their day to day business of gathering food by farming, hunting or scavenging.  The people who made tools like stone arrowheads, bronze axes or cotton gins – though I, personally, prefer the flavor of gin made with juniper berries.  These people, Eli Whitney notwithstanding, may not have been important by the current definition of the word but they have given us knowledge and understanding.  By going about their daily chores of survival they have left us evidence, usually in some type of container made of some type of clay pottery, I think, of how we have gotten to this really screwed up place where we have nothing to worry about but really unimportant, important people.  These early peoples have given us insight into the former use, or what some in today’s society would call misuse, of this planet of which we are celebrating another cycle.

All in all, it should help you feel much more important.  Even if you were in the wrong hemisphere for the group photo.

Oh, and about those currently important people who have names (not a big deal) or money (nice to have, to be sure), keep in mind that their importance is STILL a tiny, miniscule, almost worthless, dust-speck sized blip in the course of a year on the planet.

And if that doesn’t help, bury a pottery-shielded time capsule that describes their Butt-headedness in great detail!

And have a Happy New Year!

I have discovered the secret to an organized mind: LISTS.

Organized people make lists.  Lists of everything they deem important: grocery lists, chore lists, packing lists, to-do lists, invitation lists.  These people are meticu-list.  Ha!  (Sorry)

          And this is not a modern innovation.  Many important, influential people throughout history have used lists.  Archaeologists have found numerous examples, including:

                     Strudel for breakfast

                     Idea: have troops march with legs straight out

                     Birthday present for Ava

                     Invade Poland

          or:

                     Tax Jews

                     10:00am Yiddish lesson

                     Judge thieves

                     Judge Jesus

                     Wash hands

          or:

                     Thou shalt not steal.

                     Thou shalt not kill…etc.

          I have a friend who is a firm believer in the making of lists.  Curt makes lists for everything that comes to his mind that may, possibly, need to be done.  In this way he always knows what has already been done, what needs to be done now and what should be done in the future.  He has these bases covered…but then, my friend Curt is kind of spastic.  He’s always running in a minimum of three different directions at once and because of this he’s developed some nervous habits like always brushing the hair off of his forehead, constantly cleaning everything in sight and, on occasion, randomly shooting passers-by from the roofs of tall buildings.  Curt would have heart disease if not for the fact that it would interfere with his developing ulcer.  An “A” for personality type, I think.

          It’s not necessary, of course, for you to have this type of lifestyle in order to become a list-maker.  O, contraire, mon ami (literally: “I don’t think so, Tim!”).  As a matter of fact, if you are a laid-back, relaxed individual, you are probably more likely to benefit from the notation of necessities – something to help you recall that you should pick up your daughter from basketball rather than some beer from the liquor store.  As a responsible parent, your children should always come first on your list…unless you have time to pick up the beer without being late.

          Often, the simple act of making a list will help you recall what it is you wanted to remember.  This may have something to do with the fact that once you bring the idea to the forefront of your conscious thought, the tendency to recall the information is much greater.  For this reason, I will sometimes make a list and then throw it away, since the act of writing it out helps ensure that I will remember.  Also, in some instances, this can keep any embarrassing hard copies from being found.

Attorney for the plaintiff: “Mr. Simpson, this note, in your handwriting, was found under a magnet on your refrigerator several days after the murder in question.”

          Pick up knives from sharpeners’

          Tickets to Chicago

          Remember gloves in hall closet

“What do you have to say to that?”

          Attorney for the defense: “I OBJECT!”

          If you have no critical reason to throw your lists away, I would suggest you date them in some way.  This will keep you from using an old list, which you confused with the one you wrote yesterday.  I have, for example, found perfectly fresh looking lists in jacket pockets, which reminded me to stop for things no longer necessary.  In this way I have accumulated extra items such as several gallons of spoiling milk, a stockpile of toilet paper, a third car and an extra knee surgery, among other things.

          Some of these “found” lists are sure to be lists you made up and subsequently lost, which can happen if you become too prolific in the making of lists.  When this happens, you can grow dependent, needing to make a list or write down every little thing you wish to remember.  Eventually you’ll feel the need to begin new lists, even though you have one started at home…and at the office, and in the car.  Soon you’ll be spending all your time running, chasing, searching for lists you may have written; totally helpless to recall the reason for your hunt.  Your short term memory will fail to gel; you will be firmly hooked on the use of lists the same way you became hooked on the pocket calculator.  – Quick what’s 7 plus 9?  No!  Don’t reach for you calculator!  Just tell me the answer!  It’s second grade math, for goodness sake…you’re an educated person.  HA!  I see you using your fingers!  Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?  THINK!

          See what I mean?  The list is a tool, but one you cannot afford to become too dependent on.  Is it any wonder that the truly organized people in the world are, well, kind of odd?  I believe, if you went through the little personal day planners they all carry, you’d find, next to their antacid prescriptions, a map of all the taller buildings in town…preferably ones with flat roofs.

          So it comes down to a decision you have to make for yourself: Do you want to be an organized, successful, neurotic individual or do you want to remain a forgetful, semi-normal, neurotic schmuck like the rest of us?

          It is possible for you to find a middle ground – an area in which you can operate without becoming excessively paper bound.  For example, my ability to organize a day is exemplary and it’s not something I was born with or learned in a well-organized upbringing.  This is a skill I have developed with determination, tenaciousness and repeated practice…not to mention a certain amount of apathy.  What you need to do is first organize your day for tomorrow.  This can be done either mentally or on paper.  Then tomorrow, if you haven’t quite completed everything you had slated for the day, simply chronicle it as an aspect of the next day’s list.  After several years of this type of personal training you can index and organize a day without a second thought:

“Lunch?  Sure.  I can fit it in between my 11:45 aerobics class and my 1:30 meeting with the board…in Minneapolis.  No problem.”

          Of course, some of my scheduled activities have to wait.  I still have to get to a basketball game last Thursday night and I keep rescheduling the filing of my 1992 tax return, but my blood pressure is normal, I have very little stress and my dependence on lists is very low.

          By the way, if you’re interested in a copy of my organizational training plan, just send me a stamped, self-addressed envelope – I’ll put you on my list.

          Hey, look!  There goes a superbly organized person.  Over there, see?  That one.  The one with the day planner and the assault rifle.