New Dealer Coming In

   As I was leaving work last Friday, I got a text message that my cousin Jim had passed away. We all knew it was coming–he had stage IV lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking unfiltered cigarettes–but that the end came as fast as it did was still a shock.

   Facebook messaging got a real workout that night as cousins far and wide remembered him fondly, especially for his jokes. He had a joke for every situation and if he didn’t, he told one from his vast repertoire anyway. Every one of his jokes began the same way, “That’s just like...” even if it was nothing remotely like what you were just talking about.

   But there was something else in those messages that led me to an epiphany about my relatives.

   Any occasion for this family can involve a poker game. Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, Christenings, Communions, Confirmations, even weddings and wakes, it doesn’t matter, somehow a poker game will break out as long as they find a flat surface and a few empty chairs. It’s just a friendly game, nickel and dime mostly, with plenty of good-natured conversation mixed in.

   That’s the way it is now. When my Dad was alive, poker, even penny-ante, was serious stuff. Before dessert was served, he’d start getting antsy. If people weren’t eating fast enough he’d start clearing the table himself. Those who weren’t playing cards were summarily banished to other rooms to finish their pumpkin pie and coffee. 

   Before each hand he’d survey the table and yell, “Who’s light?” That had nothing to do with the weight of the players after the sumptuous meal they’d just enjoyed. It meant that the pot was a nickel short and the dealing wouldn’t start until everyone had fed the kitty. When his mind went bad and he had no clue who was at the table, he still knew instantly if the pot was short.

   Despite the old man’s autocratic rule, there was always a demand for the seven seats available. They usually went to the older generation first, then down to my older cousins, and eventually to me and beyond. Many of us kids and now our grandchildren have been taught the finer points of five-card stud and seven-card merry widow at the hands of their elders while having their piggy banks and pockets quickly drained at the same time.

   So how does all this talk of playing with the Devil’s pasteboards lead to an epiphany? In addition to Jim’s jokes, mention was made of his legendary prowess at the poker table. That’s when it hit me.

   It’s often said that a person near death hears the flapping of angels’ wings. Not so in my family. What they hear is the shuffling of cards as room for one more is made at the celestial table. Jesus compared heaven to an eternal banquet. To my ancestors it’s an on-going game of no-peek baseball in a quiet corner of heaven’s basement.

   Farewell, Jim, and don’t forget to feed that kitty.

   

Lessons Learned

   It’s been a year since Jim married Bridget. In a very short time, my son who I thought would never make the transition from bachelor to husband, found a nice girl and became a step-father to her two children, Tyler and Samantha. Tyler, age twelve, has a mind like a computer. He plans everything he says and does with NASA-like precision. This quality may make him seem like a nerd at his tender age but it will take him far when he decides to marry.

   Shortly after their wedding, Jim and Bridget were invited to a party close to where they live. It was adults only and my daughter who lives a few miles away offered to take the kids for the night. As they were getting into the car, Jim observed, “You know, if we didn’t have to drop off the kids, we could just walk to the party.” To any man, this is a harmless logistical statement of fact. If he’d said it to another man, the response would be, “Duh.” What Jim didn’t realize was that he’d just verbally left solid ground and stepped onto a metaphorical straw mat covering a hole filled with sharpened punji sticks.  

   Bridget exploded. “Maybe we should just get rid of the kids,” she screamed.

   They never went to the party.

   My son, who’d lived alone or with male roommates for most of the prior ten years, and could fearlessly say anything he wanted without thought of contradiction or retribution, was unschooled in the nuances of talking to women—especially one he was married to. The lessons began that night.

   It’s been my personal observation and that of my married friends, when our wives aren’t around, that something changes when a woman marries. That sweet fun-loving girl becomes a ruthless, calculating, cold-hearted linguistic sentinel on the lookout for something sinister in anything her husband might have the temerity to utter. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, but a woman parses everything her man says seeking any subtlety in tone or phrase that might be a knock against her.

   For example, he says, “You look nice today.”

   Instantly she thinks, “Is he saying I looked bad yesterday?” Then she lets him have it.

   He learns to drop any qualifying words that might be taken the wrong way. “Safety First” becomes the rule for saying anything to her.

   I learned a different lesson early on. The wife asked one day if I would like steak or chicken for supper. When I responded in favor of steak, she asked why I didn’t like her chicken. I tried to explain that there was nothing wrong with her chicken, I just preferred steak on that particular night. She countered by telling me she’d already made chicken anyway. Things escalated when I asked her why she’d given me a choice when she’d made my decision for me. After a brief discussion that brought the neighbors to their windows, we ate our chicken in icy stillness. That was the night I learned to embrace the silent treatment.

   Since my son and I work together, we discuss these issues a lot. I’ve explained to him that he must think before he speaks. He must look for anything in his upcoming utterance that could be used against him in the court of marital bliss where he stands accused and she is judge, jury, and executioner. When in doubt, I say, grunts and monosyllables are as safe as can be. However, there are times when questions must be answered and he must be cautious to a fault to avoid saying something that might be turned around to bite him in the ass.

    That being said, there is a question that every married man should never, ever, answer. No, it’s not the “do I look fat in this?” query. My thinking is that if she thinks she looks fat in something, she probably does. “Uh-uh” is always a safe bet here. The unanswerable question is, “If I died, would you remarry?” These six simple words are a trap. There is no correct answer.

    If you answer in the negative, she’ll get all upset and claim you hated being married to her. If you say you would get married again, she’ll ask, “Who is she?”

   I took a solemn oath from my father that he took from his father and so on back into the antiquity of husbanddom. I swore that I would avoid that question at all costs. I have passed the oath on to my son but it will probably end with him. Tyler, I’m sure, is already working on the answer. 

The Ugly Fork

    I was making room in the basement for some work to be done and came across several boxes long forgotten in a remote abscess under the stairs by the furnace. There was no time to check their contents. The mission was to get them out of the way as quickly as possible since the workers were coming early the next morning. As I took one box from the shadowy corner, the top flipped open to reveal a mismatched collection of flatware that I hadn’t thought about in years. Right on top was The Ugly Fork. As I stopped my labors momentarily to behold this family relic, a flood of mealtime memories came back.
   We didn’t have much when we started out, my wife and I. Except for a brand new bedroom set purchased from our wedding cash and checks, most of our furniture was scrounged from garage sales and my college dorm room. I got the stuff even my roommate didn’t want, including a pole lamp and a beer-stained swivel chair. Our TV was a 21-inch black and white Admiral with a tilted picture tube that we bought for twenty-five bucks from a friend of a friend. Meals were served on a hodge-podge of plates, glasses, and the aforesaid flatware.
   Shortly after we bought our first house, the local Mobil station at 159th and Pulaski began offering free flatware with a fill-up. To fill my ‘69 Camaro back then cost a whole four bucks and those twelve gallons of gas came with my choice of a knife, fork, or spoon. With enough gas purchases, we’d eventually have a set of matching flatware. Even though I’d built a rapport with the attendant and he’d throw me an extra piece every now and then, getting the complete set was going to take a while.
   It really wasn’t all that ugly. It just was not your high-quality flatware. The business ends were some kind of shiny metal shoved into handles made from wood or a wood substitute. Still, they worked and somewhere in the hopefully not-to-distant future we’d be able to lay our table with a matching set. Until that day we’d have to contend with daily dinnertime discord between our children.
   Even at a young age our daughters, born twenty-seven months apart, were very competitive. The older one was upset that her reign as the firstborn of a new generation had been infringed upon by this interloper with whom she had to share a bedroom. The younger one was born with an innate ability to push people’s buttons that she’s kept to adulthood.
   At every meal the first thing they would do was check their utensils. The younger one, if she happened to be dealt one of the good forks in shiny solid metal with a fancy filagree and her sister didn’t, would exclaim, “I got a pretty fork.”
   Of course, this caused an outburst from the older one. She cried that she wouldn’t eat a bite from an ugly fork and pouted until she got a pretty one. This went on despite my insistence that the food on the utensil was more important than the utensil itself. This argument had no effect on a four-year-old. We had to get her a “pretty” fork or else she wouldn’t eat.
   Our sons who came later, on the other hand, would use any means to get food to their faces no matter how pretty or ugly it was.
   Since parenting is a learn as you go activity I eventually figured out that the way to put an end to the fork conflict, as it came to be known, was to replace my younger girl’s pretty fork with an ugly one. They both used their ugly forks in sullen silence but at least no one was crying–not about a stupid fork anyway.
   Eventually we got a good set of matching flatware but the freebies from Mobil still had a spot in one of our kitchen drawers. As time went by they fell apart as whatever force that was holding them together gave out, or the faux wood handles cracked and broke. Still, that one ugly fork remains.
   Next time we’re all together for a meal I’ll see that one or the other daughter gets it and see what happens. The ability to push people’s buttons is one trait my younger daughter inherited from me.
 
 

A Leap Year Geo Quest

   Note to my non-geocaching friends:  for an explanation of geocaching, click here .  

   Glancing at my geocaching.com statistics page late last year I saw above my twelve-month grid that I had logged caches on 244 days of the year. I thought that was pretty good until I realized that I’d not logged anything on 122 days. That’s exactly one third of the year. Since this is a leap year, only the second in the eight years I’ve been caching, I figured this was a perfect time to get rid of all those zeroes and show at least one cache logged for each day of the year.

   It’s September now and I’m three-quarters through the quest. I needed only one for this month and that was on the 9^th so I thought I’d sit down and write about how it’s going before next month’s quest days roll around.

   It didn’t start out well. New Year’s Day was a Sunday and I’d slated my first quest find for the trip home from church. Maybe it was the fact that I was in my church duds and didn’t want to get dirty or that the wife was waiting in the car, my first quest cache was logged as a DNF (did not find). Fortunately, I’d programmed a backup hide and got it on the way to my daughter’s New Year’s Day gathering. The quest had officially begun--1 down, 121 to go.

   My dictionary defines a quest as an adventurous journey in search of some thing or goal. My goal is to remove a bunch of zeroes from a grid on the Internet. In that regard, it’s definitely a quest. The jury’s still out on the “adventurous” part. While I tried to seek caches hidden in the woods such as my eight-find hike through the Milestone Cache Corner in the Cook County Forest Preserves on Leap Year Day, many finds were PNG’s (Park n' Grab, easy hides in parking lots). It was brutally hot this summer and the thought of traipsing through the woods soaked in sweat and DEET didn’t appeal to me. Now that autumn is here in northeastern Illinois and the weather’s cooled, I’ll head back into the woods for more adventure.

   How’s it going? So far, so good. I’ve logged finds on the first 84 of the quest days with 38 left to go. Now it gets interesting. The months of October and December are very busy for me. Most days I leave for work just after sunrise and head back way after dark. There are no days off, either. I’ve set aside a good number of PNG’s for those days. Will they be enough? I’ll let you know in January.

  

  

Ask A Stupid Question, Get A Smart-Ass Answer

  You’ve seen them at parades, fairs, and other civic events but you don’t really pay attention. They normally handle traffic and make sure pedestrians are safe. Some wear badges and uniforms. Others wear safety vests. You think they’re police and that’s just fine with them. It helps avoid trouble. They even drive police cars, albeit olds ones the police departments don’t want any more. The cars have lights and sirens but, instead of “police” they read:  Emergency Services or ESDA.
   They are EMA’s, members of your local Emergency Management Agency. Some are volunteers and some are paid on call but they’re always there when you need them. When severe weather threatens they’re out spotting storms. If a storm does occur, they help with the clean up and recovery. They also aid police and fire personnel, directing traffic away from incidents.
   The only time you notice them is when they have a street or road blocked between where you are and where you need to be. Most people will see the roadblock and find another way to their destination. Others will drive right up to the emergency vehicle and start asking questions. This blocks traffic and makes the EMA’s job more difficult.
  EMA’s are trained to be helpful and courteous when dealing with the public but that training is severely tested when their directions aren’t followed. To help you understand that conflict, here is a sample confrontation between motorist and EMA. The motorist’s questions will be in italics, the EMA’s responses in regular type, and what he really means in bold.

   Scene: a semi-rural intersection near your home. One or more emergency vehicles with all their lights flashing have blocked the westbound lane of a two-lane road. In front of them are barricades, traffic cones, or flares, or any combination of all three. An approaching driver who has the option of turning north, south, or going back east drives right up to the roadblock and tries to go around. He looks surprised and incredulous when the EMA has the temerity to yell at him to stop.

  I’m sorry, officer, is the road closed?
  Yes, sir.
  Or course it is, you idiot. Did you think I had nothing better do to on this blisteringly hot/brutally cold/torrentially rainy/incredibly windy night than to get out of my nice, warm bed at this ungodly hour and come out here to set up all this stuff?

  Why is the road closed?
  There’s a (insert your choice of disaster here: rolled-over truck, downed tree, downed power lines, washed-out culvert, fire, tornado damage, flood, plague of locusts, zombie apocalypse) just around the bend.
  Well, if you must know, I heard you’d be coming this way and did all this just to piss you off.

   So why can’t I go down there?
  I just explained that to you, sir.
  Get the shit out of your ears, assface.

  I know the mayor.
  Is that a fact.
  So does every other mope who stops here.

   You don’t believe me. I’ll call him right now.
   I can’t stop you, sir.
   Go ahead, smart ass. I’m sure he’d love to hear from you at this hour of the morning.
 
  C’mon, I just need to go a couple of blocks. 
  I’m sorry, sir. That’s beyond the incident.
  Unless that piece of shit you call a car can fly, you’re not getting past me.

  But I don’t know any other way.
  There are several other ways.
  Ever heard of a map, Magellan? Either get one or figure it out for yourself. I’ve got better things to do than try to explain to a dimwit like you how get your stupid, sorry ass from here to there.

  So how else can I get there?
  I’d be happy to give you an alternate route, sir. Go south from here, take the first right, the next right after that, then the first left. That’ll put you on this same road but past the obstruction.
  Do I look like Rand-fuckin’-McNally to you?

   That sounds complicated.
   It’s the easiest way, sir.
   You’re shitting me, right? Two rights and a left complicated?? Nobody’s that stupid.

   OK, I’ll give it a try.
   You’ll be fine, sir.
   A geographically challenged fuckwad like you’ll be back here in twenty minutes if you don’t wind up in bufu nowhere first.

   Thank you, officer.
   Have a nice night, sir.
   Go fuck yourself. 

   So the next time you approach a road blocked by your local EMA you’ll follow their directions and go the way they send you--if you know what’s good for you.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 

Number Two On The Job

   Welcome to Number Two On the Job where your Number Two stories are Number One with us.
   My son-in-law, Al, an electrician, loves to regale anyone who’ll listen with stories of his prowess at clogging toilets while on the job. It’s a great source of entertainment at family gatherings, weddings, baptisms, and funerals as he talks of McGuyvering ways to clear the clog with items on hand, usually 8-gauge wire and a long screwdriver. 
   On the way home from a Bulls game last year with my sons Jim and Ed he was talking about his latest adventures when Ed, a carpenter, chimed in with some shit stories of his own. This went on all the way home and I said I oughta put these gems together in a book.
   The book idea sat like water in a toilet tank until a family Christmas vacation to Wisconsin Dells helped flush it out. While the women went shopping and the kids played in another room, the four of us sat in Al’s bedroom smoking cigars and drinking Maker’s Mark as the stories started to ooze out again. This time we said we were gonna do it, but what to call it? We pinched out several ideas but “Number Two On The Job” is what stuck to the wall.
   Now we have a title and a few stories but not enough to fill a book to the rim. Even Jim, Ed, and Al together can’t do that. This is where you come in.
   If you have a story about a time at work when nature called at a most inconvenient moment, we want to hear about it. Did you make it? Did you come up short? What obstacles did you have to overcome? How did you hide it? Don’t spare any details.
   Not a writer? Not to worry. Just send us your story in your own words and be as descriptive as possible. We’ll take care of the rest. To give you an idea of what we’re looking for, here’s my story.

 Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?

   It was the spring of 1970. I was a senior in college looking for work in the real world. On many a morning I drove into downtown Chicago, parked, and hoofed it through the Loop to meet with some recruiter. This was such a morning.
   It was a warm for the time of year because I remember not wearing a coat. I was looking good in my gray double-breasted Edwardian suit jacket. The matching pants flared over my black wingtips secured not with laces but silver buckles. My silver shirt was outsilvered by my wide shiny silver tie with the huge knot. I was stylin’ big time.
   I was headed north on the east side of State Street to some office building when the rumbling started. It quickly turned into the gurgling and churning that makes you afraid to laugh, cough, or sneeze. The thought of farting is terrifying. It meant I had to go NOW, sooner if possible.
   Looking around, I didn’t see too many options but I knew the Palmer House was right around the corner on Monroe. I walked through the ornate lobby quickly but not so quickly as to attract attention, up the ornate stairs, step by agonizing step, and into the ornate, marble-lined men’s room. There was no one by the sinks or urinals and it appeared no one was using the stalls. This was going to be loud and messy. I sure didn’t want to share it with anyone. Being inches away from safety I started to relax, then–Oh Shit!  Pay toilets.
   It was ten cents but could have been a million dollars. I had no change. There was no attendant and no time to go back to the lobby. I couldn’t be sure if they’d even make change for some mope with a red face contorted in agony.
   There was no time left. I hung my suit jacket over the door and crawled under, hoping the floor was dry. It was, and clean, too. I had made it. What came out of me was a torrent of brown liquid that caused enough splashback to make that toilet seem like a bidet. After several attempts to leave the stall only to be forced back for another round of gut-wrenching bowel evacuation, I finally opened the door and headed out. The attendant had returned but I didn’t tip him. Thanks for nothing, pal.
   I went to my interview like nothing had happened. I didn’t get the job but I didn’t have to clean my suit either. 

That’s my story. Surely yours is better. If it is, we’ll stop calling you Shirley. 

Send it to nbr2otj@gmail.com.  Your highly-trained editorial staff is waiting to hear from you.

Jim Riley         Al Gioia         James Riley          Ed Riley

Here’s the fine print and other semi-legal crap:

   Before you start, here are a few ground rules. Once the publisher’s asshole lawyers get ahold of this there’ll be a whole lot more, but this is good enough for now.

1. Stories should be first-person accounts. Either it happened to you or you witnessed it happening to someone else.
2. If other people are involved, we’ll need signed authorization to use their names. Better yet, refer to them as “some guy,” “my co-worker,” “or “the douchebag in the next cubicle.”
3.  Please include your name and address. Got some balls? Tell us who you work for. If we use your story we’ll try to get you (and your boss) a free copy of the book.
4.  Don’t hold your breath. Publishers are notorious for being miserly bastards who hate to give anything away–like royalties to deserving writers.
5.  We’d like to use your real name but will withhold it on request. We don’t blame you for not wanting the world to know what happened.
6.  There is no rule six.
7.  Lots of jobs have a lingo all their own. Use it to make the story authentic. Be sure to include an explanation of any terms that might not be well-known to the general public. We’ll be contacting you if necessary.
8.  There is no minimum or maximum number of words per story but 200-300 words will fit perfectly on one page. We’re trying to keep the stories short for reading in the can. Don’t limit yourself,though. If your story needs more space to be told, let your creativity run wild. BTW, my story is 421 words.
9.  Have fun and send your story to nbr2otj@gmail.com today.

Thanks,

Jim Riley, author of "O Really, Riley?"
  


  
  
  

  

A New Voice In Rock n' Roll Heaven

   The local news tease blared: “the latest on Whitney Houston tonight at ten.” I turned to the wife and said, “The latest? She’s still dead, that’s the latest.”
   Once again, the media has provided us with ‘round the clock  “team coverage” of something we knew was going to happen anyway–the untimely death of another superstar gone bad. Meanwhile, some of the not-so-famous met their fate last week actually doing something for the betterment of us all. American soldiers, firefighters, police, their passing may have been noted in a few lines of their local paper, if at all.
   So a celebrity train wreck has booked an early departure for rock ‘n roll heaven, paid for by drugs, alcohol, paranoia, or the pressures of superstardom. Each pays a different fare but the one-way passage gets them to the same destination–the end of the line. The passenger manifest is a long one: Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Elvis, Janis Joplin and others too numerous to list, each talented in his or her own way, each tossing that talent to the wayside like so many empty bottles and syringes.
   Whitney Houston’s talent was amazing. Even though I’m sick of hearing “I Will Always Love You” after the constant repetition this week I’m still awestruck by her power and range. From the throaty whisper of the opening lines to the soaring final chorus, she covered that song and made it her own. Anyone who’s thinking of singing The Star Spangled Banner at any event from a high school basketball game to the World Series should take a lesson from her stirring performance at Super Bowl XXV. Those who butcher our national anthem by adding notes and words that don’t belong should watch the video over and over until they realize Whitney wrote the book how it should be done.
   Talent like that should live forever. It will in audio and video but we’ll never know where it could have taken us if she hadn’t thrown it away to the lure of chemical highs and lows. 
   Maybe if she hadn’t been discovered  in her local church and thrust on the national stage, she’d still be singing praise to God instead of explaining to Him.