Christmas Letter, 2010

Due to the recession, none of you will receive a Christmas letter from my wife and me this year. Most of you have never received a Christmas letter from us, and therefore this is not that big a deal. Those of you, however, who were anxiously awaiting the annual, irony-soaked summary of our lives, I’m sorry. Stamps cost money, address labels are a pain, and time is a luxury we just don’t have. It’s not that we don’t like you; it’s just that we don’t like you well enough to send you mail.

Not all is lost, however. As anyone who has ever read this online column is well aware, I’m OK with talking about me. I won’t have any problem at all using this very forum as a Christmas letter substitute. Without further ado, then, as per the standards of the contemporary American Christmas letter, I will begin by telling you how great things went this year without ever coming close to mentioning anything that wasn't fun or personally fulfilling.

Again, I’m sorry. I know there’s nothing funny about domestic contentment, but you need to understand, I live in a house now. It has a yard, and a basement, and neighbors that never tell each other to go to hell. This time last year we were raising our infant daughter in a cramped apartment next to a graveyard. To get fresh air and exercise, sometimes we’d stroll around that graveyard. Morbid, yes, but also a real pick-me-up, as it served as a perpetual reminder that regardless of how challenging our day had been, at least we weren’t dead. This worked all right until the afternoon we saw two naked people doing what naked people often do, except usually not in day lit cemeteries. Thus ended our graveyard walks, along with what remained of some societal assumptions.

Christmas letters also serve as a sly way to brag about all the interesting places one’s visited over the course of the last year. Well, this year, we went to Wisconsin Dells. With my parents. And despite those two facts, we had a really good time. The Wisconsin Dells is actually a beautiful place once you get away from the city of Wisconsin Dells. About five months ago I could have explained to you, with only minor inaccuracies, what geological phenomena created these dells so many years ago, but today it is best that I simply tell you that it is a very pretty river with pretty cliffs next to it. We went zip lining with my mother and shared a water slide raft with my father, who will probably never share a water slide raft with anyone ever again.

Continuing, no Christmas letter would be complete without some fairly self-absorbed commentary on a child and/or pet. For starters, the one pet we have, Banshee the Cat, is living out her retirement years at my parent’s house where she still clings to the notion that she is not really a cat. She carries herself with the demeanor of an expatriate aristocrat, probably Russian. She hates all the other cats, the two dogs, and anyone not feeding her at that exact moment. Occasionally my parents will hint that since now I have a house, perhaps I’d like to reclaim full ownership rights and responsibilities of Banshee. I usually ignore these hints.

We also have a child, as you know. She’s wonderful. I’d tell you her name but since nearly anyone on the planet could, feasibly, read this, I won’t. Her first and middle names basically mean “Light from Heaven,” and that is absolutely what she has meant to us and nearly everyone else, minus the photographers at Sears who were forced to listen to her sob uncontrollably on more than one occasion. As her father, I am inclined to write for pages about the joy she carries with her into each room, but I will deny that impulse and instead offer this anecdote:

One early morning I was talking to God, as is my habit, and I was wondering aloud if I should go back to school to finish a Master’s Degree in History. It would be terribly time consuming, but would also provide additional employment opportunities down the road, if ever such opportunities were needed. I asked God this question, and a few seconds later, she and her mother entered the room.

“Hi, Daddy!” came her greeting. And that pretty well answered my question. A few weeks later, we found out we were expecting. History, I have decided, can wait. It is the now that needs my attention. And with that in mind, now it is time to end yet another great American Christmas letter.

So, in summary, 2010 was just great. It was much better than 1978, the year I got a bunch of stitches in my head, and certainly better than stupid 1991, when my show hog escaped her pin at the Fayette County Fair and I had to chase it until we both almost passed out. Clearly, things have improved. Until next year, have a Merry Christmas, and thanks for reading. Eventually I am going to try and sell you a book.

Or My Name Isn't What?

My wife is once again with child. As her husband and co-parent, that’s a pretty big deal to me for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I am no longer permitted to eat microwave popcorn. Apparently, microwave popcorn smells bad. This smell, combined with the hormonal break-dancing going on inside her body, makes her want to throw up.

Thus, I’ve done what most decent men would do in such a situation, which is to wait until she’s gone to bed before I eat this delicious snack. You would assume this would solve what had been a pretty tricky dilemma. The problem is that many pregnant women develop hypersensitive olfactory skills. They smell things that aren’t really there, or, at least things that don’t seem to be there to the average unpregnant person.

There’s an obvious biological rationale to this, of course. Often in human history, bad smells came from potentially harmful—even toxic—substances. But up until a few days ago, I did not know that microwave popcorn happens to fall into that very category: toxic!

“Why do you have to make that microwave popcorn?” She said to me the other night upon my retiring to bed. “It makes me sick.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I wait until you’re asleep before I eat it.”

“But I’m not asleep.”

“But you’re in bed. I assumed you were asleep.”

“How can I sleep with that smell?”

“I think you’re exaggerating.” (Editors note: Never say this to a pregnant woman.)

“Mild explicative. I am not exaggerating! I’ll throw up on you right now, if you don’t believe me. Besides, that stuff is bad for your lungs.”

“You’re being crazy again. How is microwave popcorn bad for your lungs? I’m not smoking it.”

“It just is. There’s a chemical in it that gets in your lungs when you pop it. I told you that already.”

“Well, what am I supposed to eat for a bedtime snack, then?”

“Not popcorn!”

And thus the conversation ended. At the time I chalked up the toxicity talk to semi-conscious babbledly bok, but, unfortunately, as it turns out, she is right. Left to its own devices, microwave popcorn will kill you.

I looked it up online, and, according to a report by the Food and Drug Administration, microwave popcorn bags are coated with a chemical. When heated, this coating breaks down into a substance known as perfluorooctanoic (PFOA). Like most unpronounceable terms with rather benign looking acronyms, perfluorooctanoic is a “likely carcinogen.” What is worse, an acid derived from this substance, when injected into volunteer laboratory animals, has caused cancer and thus would mostly likely cause cancer in any human willing to be injected with a proportionate amount. (No thanks.)

As if that wasn’t horrifying enough, most microwave popcorn is also coated with another substance known as diacytel, which almost sounds like something you would ingest voluntarily to lose weight. Diacytel is fake butter flavoring and also one of the leading causes of bronchiolitis obliterans, a respiratory illness suffered by popcorn factory workers who’ve inhaled the chemical’s fumes over an extended amount of time.

What I’ve always liked about microwave popcorn, at least up to this point, was its reputation as a fairly healthy snack. It has fewer calories, fat and cholesterol than many of my former bedtime snacks, such as cheese and crackers, milk and cookies, or, for a brief stint in college, Jack and Coke. After years of trial and mostly error, I really thought I’d found a reasonable mesh of nutrition and taste. However, substances which inspire scientists to break out their Latin in order to avoid names like Popcorn Lung Rot cannot be considered healthy.

Granted, I am not a popcorn factory worker who has been breathing diacytel for years and years, nor am I a laboratory mouse who has been injected with toxic levels of the substance to find out if the substance is toxic. However, I am a happily married man who would like to remain so, and therefore it seems my microwave popcorn days have come to an end. At least until the baby is born and she cannot smell so well, or until they come out with a new report that says perfluorooctanoic actually lowers cholesterol and gets rid of unwanted nose hair.

In the mean time, I’ll have to do my best to eat things that have no smell. Sounds delicious.

Germans have a pretty long history of combining firearms and beer. I know this because a few years ago my wife and I went over to Germany and spent a couple days with some German cousins of American friends of ours. The better part of one afternoon was spent taking turns shooting a giant zucchini dressed up like a bird off the top of a thirty foot pole while drinking, unsurprisingly, some beer.

It was probably one of the best days of my life.

Another reason I know this is that I’ve lived in Effingham County for over a decade. Effingham County is, historically and contemporarily, something of an enclave of German-Americans. I am half German-American myself, and while I’m not a big proponent of spending weird amounts of time dwelling on ancestry, there is one moment during the year when I am quite willing to embrace my old country heritage.

And that time is known as the Altamont Schutzenfest.

Altamont, as many readers are aware, is a small town on the western edge of Effingham County. Its name basically means “high mound,” and if you know anything about south-central Illinois topography, you also know it doesn’t take much around here to make a mound “high.” The town is predominantly made up of the descendants of German immigrants who moved there in the 19th and early 20th century, some of them straight from Europe, many of them from the Dakotas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Many moved there for the same reason numerous people moved to this part of Illinois: dirt.

Schutzenfest is a German word that means “marksman festival;” a celebration designed to show off a person’s sharp-shooting prowess. The Altamont Schutzenfest was once a tremendous event where hundreds of people, including busloads of out-of-town college students, gathered to show off their trap-shooting skills, listen to ethnic music, eat German cuisine and imbibe on their historically appropriate beverage of choice. People even vote on a Schutzenfest King and Queen; teenagers from the community who brave the potential taunts hurled at them by their more Yankeefied peers by dressing up in traditional German garb.

My daughter, of course, is at least a quarter German-American, and so I saw fit to bring her to the most recent Schutzenfest about a month ago. It was a pleasant early autumn evening, we had nothing else to do, and we’re still so relatively inexperienced at this parenting gig that such an outing seemed perfectly reasonable. At the time.

There is an old maxim about life that basically states, “You will be taught a lesson until you learn it.” The lesson we had already been taught many months ago and yet still, apparently, had yet to comprehend, was this fairly simple scheduling tidbit: Don’t have her out of the house after 7 P.M. unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

My daughter, therefore, is quite like a gremlin in this respect. After seven, she is too tired to function decently in public and she will almost always punish us for keeping her out past this cosmically significant time.

On this particular Friday, once we had parked our car and entered into the Schutzenfest grounds, she wanted to play the “Swing, Please” game. This game is comprised of her mother and I each taking a tiny hand, then, on the count of three, we swing her a few feet toward our destination. This is actually pretty enjoyable for everyone involved for the first dozen swings or so, and I think many of the less-serious psychological issues our society deals with could be at least partially alleviated if we all could be swung in this fashion a few times a week. Granted, it would look silly and we’d have to build rather tall robots, but it would at least be more enjoyable than taking antidepressants.

Regardless, after the twentieth or so swing, the overall inefficiency gets kind of old, and thus the first round of Transportation Negotiations begins. After seven O‘clock, these talks rarely go well.

“You need to walk like a big girl, now.”

“Noooo!”

“Then mommy’s going to carry you.”

“Swing!”

“Do you want Daddy to carry you?”

“NOOO!”

“We need to get some food, sweetie. Aren’t you hungry?”

“SWING!!!”

Sometimes we swing her some more, sometimes one of us just snatches her up like a football, depending on how eager we are to make it to our destination. On this particular evening, with the smells from the nearby grill mocking our empty guts, we rushed the toddler.

We ordered our meal—bratwurst, potato salad, sauerkraut soup—and found a table. She insisted on trying each food but quickly conveyed to us she found it all rather gross and then returned to her crying.

So, we wolfed down food in a few painful moments that was, based on the money and energy spent securing it, meant to be savored over the course of a leisurely enjoyed draft beer. We hurried our protesting darling out of the Schutzenfest grounds, carrying, swinging, whatever, urgently moving toward the car that would take us where we should have been the entire time: home.

At this time of night, we assumed the car ride back to Effingham would surely lull her to sleep for the evening. No good. Remember what happens to those cute little Mogwi creatures when they eat after midnight? It’s not cool. Do you know what happens to a toddler when you keep her up past her bedtime? It’s much worse.

Now, logic suggests that a tired little girl, once given the appropriate environment in which to do so, would merely fall asleep. Unfortunately, logic and toddlers don’t mesh. Now she’s in a state called “over-tired“. That’s not even a real word, but that’s what she is: she’s too tired to go to sleep.

We lie in bed with her, hoping the double security of our parallel presence will be enough to knock her out. No dice. Now she’s rolling all over the bed, slapping our faces, kicking our throats, mocking gravity with weird little yoga moves I’ve yet to see even in a book. We all end up watching a feature-length Strawberry Shortcake movie until almost midnight. You think gremlins are bad? Gremlins don’t insist on watching feature-length Strawberry Shortcake movies until almost midnight.

In retrospect, I think she would have appreciated the actual German version of the Schutzenfest much more. As mentioned, in the Old Country, they make a pretend bird out of something available--in our case a zucchini--secure this fake bird to a thirty-foot pole, and then hoist it above everyone. Participants shoot at the doomed creature with an air rifle until someone finally “kills” it and it plummets to earth.

That great marksman is now the Schutzenfest King, making the German version of coronation much more “Old World” than the American. In Germany, the guy who kills the bird—the best warrior—is King and picks his own Queen. In America, the community votes on their pretend rulers in authentic democratic fashion. In Germany, we all danced around the impromptu royalty while “singing” some undecipherable folk song. In America people take pictures of their new leaders to be used as blackmail at a much later date.

Sounds ridiculous? Absolutely, which means it would have been perfect for a two-year-old.

Thus, my daughter’s first introduction to her Germanic heritage was less than impressive. Maybe it was the sauerkraut soup. Maybe it was the polka music. Regardless, she and I will not be attending the Schutzenfest together again anytime soon. At least not until she’s old enough to kill her own zucchini.

Two for One

The Styrofoam cup does not, as a product, have much going for it. Demonized for depleting the ozone, often used for tasks unrelated to drinking-think preschool paintbrush water holder-the Styrofoam cup is a product often taken for granted. For example, when was the last time you read an online column about Styrofoam cups?

Exactly.

With this in mind, then, I can almost forgive what I saw the other day at Wal-Mart.

Almost.

So, there I was, shopping at Wal-Mart for the fourth time in five days, as usual, when I came upon the product. My wife was doing a science experiment for her classroom and needed, unsurprisingly, many, many Styrofoam cups. As a card-carrying member of EOC, (Environmentalists of Convenience) it had been awhile since I’d purchased such an item and was a bit taken aback by what I saw on the packaging.

“Keeps hot drinks hot; keeps cold drink cold; two cups in one!”

Interesting, I thought. This product must think I am a total idiot.

You are many things, Mr. Styrofoam Cup, to many people: bean seed planter, action figure pedestal, sand castle mold for poor children. You are not, however, “two cups in one.”

You are one cup.

One. Cup.

Yes, I understand, due to your harsh molecular configuration you have the ability to keep warm drinks warms and cold drinks cool for an undetermined amount of time based on room temperature.

But two cups in one?

Are you serious?

This is like saying a zygote is two children in one because it can become either a sweet little girl or a loud boy over the next few months. No, sir. A zygote is one eventual human that can become one of two possible genders, just as a Styrofoam cup is one drink receptacle that can either hold hot coffee, cold beer, or, if you’re seven, dead crickets.

Now, the scientific amongst you might be prepared to remark, "Yeah, but a zygote can actually split and become two humans, thus your analogy is kind of dumb." Very true, but keep in mind that the word zygote is much funnier than the more biologically appropriate term, embryo. Regardless, two cups in one? Give me a break.

But, perhaps I’m being an ass. Again. We are, after all, in the midst of pretty bad recession. The Styrofoam people have to pay their mortgages the same way everybody else does, and, as it turns out, they are not the only ones trying to peddle one product by pretending it is two.

The folks over at Doritos, for example, are selling a bag of chips with two different flavors. I’ve never purchased these chips, mostly because the names of some of the flavors confuse me.

After Hours Cheeseburger? That’s your flavor? That sounds like something a fat hooker eats between clients. Stadium Nachos? What, you pour warm beer on them and charge me five times what they’re worth? I don’t get it.

Anyway, I don’t know if the co-flavored chip bag has two separate chip compartments, like an Illinois dormitory, or if the chips are all thrown in together like one of those pagan colleges on the coast. Regardless, I will not buy a bag of chips that cannot make up its mind. Considering how many head cases I deal with during the week, the last things I need to add to my diet is schizophrenia.

A third multitasking product that I actually do use, however, and have found to be of quality is the body wash that can also shampoo and condition your hair. Now, I know as well as you do that this product is no more conditioning my hair as it is mowing my lawn. This product is living a lie the same way as the cups. This is simply shampoo that says it is also a conditioner and, as if that isn’t hard enough to believe, then claims to be a body wash.

This product, then, is the nine-year-old jerk on the playground who begins to tell a lie, realizes he’s caught, and just keeps on going in a hopeless effort to bewilder his listeners.

“So, little Jojo, what did you do this weekend?”

“Well, I went camping. With my dad.”

“Oh? That sounds like fun. What all did you do?”

“Well, uh, we went fishing. And I . . . caught a turtle A pretty big one.”

“Wow. A turtle, huh? A snapper?”

“Oh yeah, a snapper! It bit my dad's whole toe off!”

“What?!”

“Yeah, it was a huge snapping turtle! The bite got infected and dad had to get his foot amputated!”

“Yeah, I just saw your dad this morning. I‘m pretty sure he had both his feet.”

“You suck.”

And that’s that. So, why do I buy a product that lies to me and pretends to be able to both shampoo and condition my hair and, then, as if I’m still paying attention, goes ahead and tells me it’s a body wash, too? That’s easy.

Do you have any idea how much time it saves to just use shampoo to wash your whole body? Do you know how many gallons of water I’ve saved? (As an EOC, that’s pretty important.)

Now, thanks to this lie of a product, I no longer have to feel bad about it. Thanks, Old Spice Shampoo Conditioner Bodywash in One! You are saving our planet’s precious water supplies one disgusting man at a time!

Well, that’s all the time we have for now, folks. Check back in a couple weeks when I’ll probably be offering more unasked for advice. Now that you know how much water I save, I assume you'll be even more apt to listen.