Best tweets of October (rough)

I was railing against the world of woe to some friends who advised me to embrace the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer -- "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference." I considered it, but decided instead to pray that God grant me God-like powers for just 12 hours. Goodbye war in Ukraine! Goodbye climate change! Goodbye credit card debt! Hello my name on the best seller lists and the return of $4 beers at the baseball games!

•There ought to be a weather person museum with one wall dedicated to the memory of early meteorologists who used rudimentary science to explain to the primitives that lightning was the result of atmospheric conditions — and not the wrath of a vengeful God. Nearby there should be a scholarly presentation of the many times mobs of religious fanatics disagreed and tried to settle the dispute once and for all by burning the sassy heretic at the stake.

 

• Inhumanity results anytime man opts to wage war. "Wage" is too commanding a verb to cede exclusively to war. You never hear of anyone waging anything but war. Let the change begin with me. On this beautiful day, I shall wage golf. Our children will wage school. And Val will wage pickleball! And we can all hope someone, somewhere is trying to wage peace.

• I’d like to see what would happen if we really sealed the borders. Not with Mexico. I'm talking Burning Man. No one gets in or out. It would be fascinating to see what kind of society this group of nihilists would create, How would they worship? Care for their sick? How would their Olympic team perform? Then let's try the same experiment with people who really like cats.

• If your child is attending the Greater Latrobe Senior Sunrise ceremony, be sure to advise them to be looking East. Not West. Tell them to ignore any fellow students who tell them to look West. And don’t worry. I’m already reaching out to school administrators about contingency plans should  today be the day the sun chooses not to rise.

• People who say they’re flat broke as if it’s the very worst financial situation are wrong. Let me tell you: some of us aspire to being flat broke, which implies a certain leveling. We not only lack dough, but every where we look we see disheartening divots of debt. Flat broke? Try being concave broke.

• If I’ve ever even seen one then I did not know what I was looking at, but when a pigeon is in its pigeon hole is it facing forward or backward? I mean, are we seeing the pigeon’s face or the pigeon’s hole?

• Woke bolt upright in a cold sweat. dreamt I’d had an accident on a busy city intersection. No one was hurt, but my car burst into flames. I escaped in the nick of time. I was standing there grateful to be alive when I realized everyone was staring at me. I’d forgotten. It was “Don’t Wear Pants While You’re Driving Friday!” How embarrassing. Oh, well. Happy “Don’t Wear Pants While You’re Driving Friday!”

• Because I’m all for removing violence from the language I will henceforth no longer use the term “bullet points” to describe punchy ideas. I’ll instead call those breakout ideas “Levitating Conclusionary Punctuation.” I gotta tell you, something in my gut tells me this one won’t be catching on …

• It is estimated that 52 percent of Americans will die in hospital beds. I hope I die on a battlefield — not as a warrior, certainly, but as a guy who made a wrong turn and wound up in lethal crossfire while asking for directions to the nearest Appleby’s 

• Just dawned on me that I never heard the old man drop an f-bomb. He’d use profanity, say, on the golf course, but never the f-bomb. Now, I’m not willing to cede he was a better father. After all, the man raised me and I use two f-bombs when I ask someone at the supper table to pass the salt so he went wrong somewhere.

• Friend at the gym said she just made her goal weight. “And that was with my shoes on!” she said, alluding to a tactic with which many of us are aware: Do not step on the scale wearing shoes, heavy clothes, etc., lest the result be tainted by extraneous factors. I know some who won’t step on a scale until they’ve evacuated their bowels. To me, they’re all pikers. I don’t step on the scale until I’ve aggressively trimmed my nose hairs.

• I used to mock the excessively tattooed, but as I age and my appearance becomes less and less appealing, I see at vivid tattoo as a way of distracting observers from examining all the flaws. Or I could just save the dough and stop wearing pants in public. 

• Just read India, pop. 1.4 billion, may change its name to Bharat. I doubt anyone there would pay any mind to me, but I’d like them to instead consider changing it to the Republic of Fred. I’ve known a number of Freds in my life and not a one of them ever started any trouble. Just easy-going guys. Maybe if you named a nation Fred then Freds would follow. But what do I know? I’m the guy who whenever he sets foot in Murrysville, pop. 21,738, is always reminded I’ve never met a single Murry in Murrysville.

• He’s one of history’s most revered orators and his is one of mankind’s most monumental speeches, but if Abe Lincoln returned and began a live broadcast with the words, “Four score and 7 years ago …” every viewer would immediately tune him out and begin poking at their phones to figure out just what the hell he was talking about.’

LBGTQ & how we no longer lose our virginity

 

(590 words)

So I was sitting here in my shabby little office the other day thinking about sex. This is a not uncommon scenario. 

I think about sex a lot.I think about last time I had some. How good it was. And, good or bad (irrelevant) , how soon before I’ll be getting some more.

What am I supposed to think about? The Oxford comma?

I don’t think I think about sex in an unhealthy way. I mean sex isn’t all I think about.

Sometimes I think about pizza, too. Curiously, when I think about pizza, I think many of the same questions I think when I think about sex.

 When was the last time I had some? How good was it? And, good or bad (irrelevant), how soon before I’ll be getting some more.

But just the other day, a new thought broke through the mental clutter with a question that had nothing to do with either me getting my jollies or me indulging in nutritionally desolate artery cloggers.

The question is …

How are kids losing their virginity these days?

The answer is more complicated than you might think.

It has to do with the eagerness of today’s open-mined youth to align themselves with the LBGTQ movement — and one of these days I’m going to see how Wordle responds if I type LBGTQ in for my first guess.

In fact, the most up-to-the-moment designation is LGBTQQIP2SA, which represents Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Pansexual, Two-Spirited and Asexual.

LIST GLOBS, SALT PIQS and BAGI SAPS  are just some of the nonsense words you can spell using those letters.

But, to me, what I see it spelling is TROUBLE. Not for me.

For my penis!

I exaggerate for effect, but when you break it down, for many of these affiliates, a functioning penis is no longer necessary in losing one’s virginity.

There’s a certain fairness to this.

After all, if two enthusiastic and monogamous lesbians fall in love and spend their lives together, rich lives filled with physical romance, can you really call them virgins?

At what point is virginity lost? For dudes it would seem clear cut. Like when Adam and Eve were alone to frolic in paradise, interrupted only when they bickered over things like Trump. You just let nature take its course.

It’s been that way for heterosexuals ever since but as the number of sexual farm teams expanded it seems the idea is losing its quaintness.

Can a gay man lose his virginity, but not a lesbian? And how fair is this? It could be anatomically argued that same gay man could lose two virginities. On the same night!

What about an Intersexer or a Pansexer? And someone will have to explain both terms to me. For all I know, I might have been a lusty Pansexer right up until I became a father.

I asked a young hipster what she thought about it, all the confusion, all the blurred lines.

Her thoughtful answer struck me as the perfect mindset to keep the fraught topic from driving you nuts.

“Losing your virginity is just a concept.”

Far out

The whole topic convinces me that my clever Harry Houdini line shall remain relevant for years to come. It is …

“History books show it took Harry Houdini fewer than 4 minutes to escape from a straight jacket. 

“I have to imagine escaping from an LBGTQ jacket would be a whole lot more complicated.”

Well, that’s it for today. Almost time for lunch.

I’m all of a sudden thinking pizza.

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There are worse things than being flat broke

 

(717 words)

I’m aware of many unfortunates who lament being flat broke. They’re barely getting by,. They live lives of quiet desperation.

I envy them. I aspire to being flat broke.

I’m a whole different and exotic kind of broke. Mine is a life of shrill desperation.

I’ve maxed out my credit cards, bummed what I can from family and until, say, Oprah gives “Evan & Elle” a 5-star review there is no rational way out.

And the new lows continue their descent.

How low? I bummed $30 gas money off a passenger last week and have ever since been trying to avoid all the places she goes.

But that’s challenging because she’s my 23-year-old daughter and it’s impossible to avoid a person who says things like, “Please pass the salt” at the dinner table.

She’ll just have to wait.

Flat broke?

I’m concave broke.

Waking up every day and realizing you’re flat broke is beginning that day with your toes on the starting line. You’re in the race. When you hear the starter’s pistol go off, you can be reasonably sure the bullet isn’t heading towards you.

Being concave broke means you start out every day in the hole. 

Others may feel embarrassment at the realization, a soul-sucking shame that leads them to take prudent steps to alter the situation, maybe get a job. Or two.

I steadfastly refuse to do either.

To me, the only embarrassment isn't about the situation, which I believe is common, but the fact that I don't have a good story to tell about how I got here.

No hookers. No pharmaceuticals. No mistress. No lost month in Vegas. It's just the cost of me doing business.

And I still  believe I will prosper doing exactly what I’ve always done.

This is the very definition of insanity; doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. But I’ve drawn a line in the sand, an apt metaphor for a man who seems to have never matured beyond the proverbial sandbox.

I remain confident — resolutely confident — that one day soon my big break will arrive. Admittedly, I’ve been saying that exact same thing every day since 1992 and have been wrong every single day since,

If my idea of quitting traditional work 31 years ago was a get-rich-quick scheme  then it’s failed on both counts. The scheme hasn’t made me rich and it’s taken a lifetime.

I believe I’ve tried everything. I populate the social media. I’ve had books traditionally published and self-published. I’ve taken my titles to chains and independents. I’ve tended tables at book fairs and farmer’s markets.

Nothing’s worked.

Including me!

We live at a time when many of the brightest minds in the business can’t figure out how to break even selling stories. For God’s sake, The New York Times is closing its sports department to cut costs.

The New York Times!

You may have heard, I’m starting a “Use All The Crayons!” podcast (thanks to friends at Latrobe Bulletin for this Page 1 story). It’ll be a celebration of Latrobe and the very best of the 2,500 human interest stories I’ve covered for the last three decades.

So it’s the sum of my parts. Because, really that’s what I’m all about. My ambition is to talk to every single person on the planet and find out what makes them tick. What do they love? What do they hate? Is the struggle all worth it?

And in life is there such a thing as a truly happy ending?

So I’m putting on a big fundraising push which involves me writing letters to people who have a lot of money and asking them to give some of it to me. It’s that simple.

Honestly, I thought if I ever put the word out that I needed dough the result would be like the final scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life!” The telegrams would ring clear over in Europe — “Hee! Haw!” — and folks would show up at The Tin Lizzy with hampers full of cash to dump over my head while I was power napping facedown on the bar.

It didn’t happen like that at all. But that’s not to say it still might.

And wouldn’t that be glorious!

So you see, my finances may be concave but my spirit soars still.

I can’t help but wonder if sub-consciously, this was my plan all along.

Maybe I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied until I could claim I’d become what I’d so zealously pursued my entire life.

A great story with a really happy ending.

It'll always be Twitter to me

 Honestly, I don't even post on Twitter anymore. It's tainted. But what am I going to call these monthly round-ups? Xs of the Month? Best X ever? The options are fraught. You get the idea. So here are Tweets of the Month! 

• In the future, weaponry will become so abundant, so accurate and so lethal my fear is that in the future there will be no future.

• It’s like there's a global committee out there that meets with just one goal: How can we make soccer more boring? In soccer even one goal is purely aspirational On a day when the US Women's Soccer suffered (I'm sure viewers suffered, too) a 0-0 tie with Portugal, I read that people are now playing "walking soccer." I'm guessing it'll be the first sport where scores are measured in negative numbers. Can''t wait for the obvious next steps: Stationary soccer and the inevitable Rocker Soccer!

• I’m troubled lately by the growing conviction that our mortal Savior was highly unpopular. I mean, only 12 people showed up for his last supper. If I announced today on Facebook that in four days I was to be crucified and was throwing a Wing Nite last supper here at the Tin Lizzy, I’ll bet I could get three times that, not to mention plus more than 100 likes. I wonder if spousal attitudes came into play. Old Testament battle ax wife: “You’re not going anywhere with that troublemaker Jesus. Did you hear how he wrecked the temple because he didn’t think the money changers should be allowed in? All right, I give up. You can go to his ‘last supper’ but only if there’s at least one adult there. Someone honest. Someone trustworthy. Someone like Judas!”

• The ancient Romans use a Latin phrase "omne trium perfectum" to describe the superstition that good things come in threes. Or some of you may be more familiar with the French phrase used to describe the same thing, "menage a trois.”

• Yet another unforeseen consequence of climate change is animals that were once earthbound will suddenly become airborne. For instance, who isn't enchanted by the delightful humming bird? Wait until you get a load of the stealth menace of the dreaded ... humming cat!

• A healthy hen can deliver 250 intact eggs each and every year. My question: At what point do the gender reveal parties cease?

• It’s by now abundantly clear either though ignorance or reckless bravado, our deer are totally disregarding the "Deer X-ing signs. They X where ever the hell they feel like X-ing. How can you tell the difference between the stupid deer and the ones that think they're being cool? The ones that think they're being cool are vaping.

• I’m nostalgic for the days when if you wanted to share a great TV show with a friend, you wouldn't tell them to find Roku, Fubo, Hulu or some other hard-to-remember name with a trendy "U." You'd just tell them a channel number. Usually just two digits. Then you'd tell them a day and time and then the very next morning, everyone in America would be singing, "Makin' your way in the world today takes everything you've got ..." It happened like that with lots of shows back then. It happens no more.

• I don’t know if the guy or gal who came up with the name ever even opened a bottle of the stuff, but if they’d ever spilled a tall, cool glass full of it in their laps they would never have called Canada “Dry.”

• We’ve been taught to believe that heroes run toward the sound of gunfire. Today the sound of gunfire is coming from Jacksonville. The echo of lethal gunfire is still ringing in from Detroit, Las Vegas, Sandy Hook … The ceaseless gunfire is coming from every direction all at once. It's bound to confuse the heroes who know not where to run. And when the gunfire outnumbers the heroes, there is only one thing left for the rest of us to do. Everybody run. Run for your lives.

• When I was a kid, there was one kind of Pringles & they were all Pringle-flavored. They fit on one tidy shelf. Today Pringles come in 25 different flavors and they require five shelves. It's that way with Utz, Herr's, Lay's, etc., and now chips hog an entire aisle. I predict in the near future chip varietals will take up whole store except for one lonely shelf for toilet paper, milk, bread and a grape.

• I must have a low threshold for mystery 'cause anytime someone breathlessly announces, "The suspense is killing me!" I'm already dying of boredom.

• I was railing against this world of woe to some friends who advised me to embrace the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer — “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.” I thought about it, but decided instead to pray that God grant me god-like powers for just 12 hours. Goodbye war in Ukraine! Goodbye climate change! Goodbye credit card debt! Hello bestseller lists!

• Earth tones -- gray, brown, forest -- are associated with colors that dominate nature. But climate change and rampant wildfires are changing nature's palette. More and more, earth tones are primarily red, ember, lava, inferno, etc. I fear if we don't find timely solutions then our future will involve just one earth tone: cinder. 

How to Make Friends

 (990 words)

This is the week I used to tell the kids one of my favorite wisdoms, one that positively rings with cheer and hopefulness.

“Remember, today you could be introduced to someone you’ve never met who is destined to become the best friend you’ll ever have.”

It’s true on the first day of school and it’s true any time you walk out your door. None of us has any idea what fate is going to shove into our path.

We look at strangers differently when we realize there’s a chance that dorky new kid in the mail room will one day be the one who’s asked to deliver the toast at your wedding and the eulogy at your funeral.

As our girls have gotten older, I’ve re-structured the advice to encompass modern predicaments.

I say, “Choose your friends on how well you’ll get along should you ever become cellmates.”

This stems in part from personal experience. It was back in 1990, and me and a buddy got tossed into the Dormont slammer for drunk & disorderly. (I was neither). We composed letters to public defenders, railed against injustice, dreamt of righteous vindication  and emerged feeling a warm kinship with Nelson Mandela, who’d been a political prisoner for 27 years

We’d been in stir for, oh, about 10 hours.

I couldn’t have asked for a better cellmate. It made us friends forever. Lifers, if you will.

I’ve never been able to make money, but I’ve always had the happy knack for knowing how to make friends.

That I’m incapable of simultaneously doing both is, to me, puzzling.

I have no doubt that many of the wealthiest men & women in America would trade their gift for making money with my gift for making friends — a deal I’d refuse without even a moment of just consideration.

(That primal scream you just heard was my wife who tends to view the whole situation with a not irrational chagrin that many years ago fell for the dude with all the friends and none of the money.)

Who can blame her?

Anyhoo, what kind of a friend would I be if I didn’t share with you what I think are the keys to making friends.

First, you could take the low-hanging fruit and go the needy friend route. These are the drama queens, the substance abusers, the fools for love.

There is a certain nobility in befriending the friendless.

But know this: It’s okay to have needy friends, but you need to understand the more needy friends you acquire the greater the risk that you are becoming someone else’s needy friend.

There’s only so much you can do to help someone else before you start hurting yourself.

Here’s a tip: Be friendly with everyone but strive for friendships with those who’ll harmonize with you through both whispers and screams.

How do you find tha person? Zero in on who’s laughing when you say something funny. You don’t have to necessarily be funny to to get people to laugh. Adam Sandler proves this every 6 months or so. Having even one person who gets your jokes is essential

I don’t believe in love at first sight. But I do believe in drinkin’ buddies at first sight.

It usually happens when someone in a position of authority says something blatantly stupid. You glance around the room to see if anyone else is alert to the fact that we’re all at the mercy of titled incompetents.

Invariably, you’ll lock eyes with someone like-minded. Approach when available and say, “I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to need a drink or two to unpack this. Want to join me?”

I hear that’s how Cheech & Chong got their start.

Lastly, and I can’t stress this enough, the surest way to make friends is to cease being an asshole.

I know this because two of the nicest things anyone’s ever said about me were both anal in nature.

One was on my last day at my last job. It was at the Tribune-Review, July 2, 1992. I was making the rounds in the building. I ran into one of the press men and told him it was goodbye.

Without pausing for even a handshake, he said, “Well, we’re going to miss you. You’re one of the few guys in that newsroom who doesn’t behave like he has a giant stick up his ass.”

It brought tears to my eyes —not because the compliment was so well-concealed. I teared up in friendly empathy over anyone who must go through life with a giant stick up his or her ass. 

The other is a long story that I’ll brutally summarize so you can get free to start making great new friends.

I was in a minor accident where I foolishly tried to beat a monster truck through a stale yellow light. We each pulled into a nearby lot and commenced the tense incident reconstruction.

We agreed on every point until got to a key aspect about turn signals. He said his was on. I said it was not. At stake was insurance blame assignment and possibly thousands of dollars in increased premiums.

We were both adamant then he abruptly conceded. I must have been right, he said.

“Anyone can tell just by looking at you, you’re not an asshole.”

You’ll think I’m being facetious, but it is a real blessing to effortlessly not look like an asshole. 

Who would have guessed two proctological references would make such dandy credentials for close friendships?

So those are some tips on what to do if you want to make new friends or if all your current ones turn cold.

People are so sensitive these days. You just never know when something you say or post might get misinterpreted and people who once stood by you flee at the first hint of controversy.

Well, all but me. 

That’s what friends are for.

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The tattoo I'm thinking of getting ...

 

I did something this week I swore I’d never do, something I’ve viciously mocked others for doing.

I contacted a tattoo parlor about getting some ink.

We’ll get into all of that but first I need to wrestle with why it was a parlor.

The venerable Oxford English Dictionary says parlor (they spell it, parlour, the Limeys) is “a room or place for talking.”

Really?

I talk everywhere I go. Talk all the time. Wide awake or sound asleep.  I just can’t shut the hell up. I even talk out loud to myself when I’m driving down the road. Does that turn my crappy Ford Fusion into a car parlor?

Parlor sounds so dainty. You don’t hear parlor being used much to describe a place of business. In fact, the only other parlor that’s commonly used — or at least it was `about 30 years ago — is the fabled pizza parlor

I used to work at a place commonly referred to as a pizza parlor. It was a neighborhood joint. Good food, reasonable prices. I did that for a few years until I got called up to the big leagues: I became the starting cook at the Pizza Hut, then the New York Yankees of the ubiquitous flavorless pizza industry.

After that I worked at a couple newspaper parlors and eventually at the National Enquirer parlor.  Lots of talk went on there and most every conversation began with, ‘Pssst …”

Back to the tattoo parlor.

If you’ve ever heard me speak at a library, it’s likely you heard me open with this gem: “People who want to appear more colorful get tattoos. People who want to become more colorful, get library cards.”

It’s a strong line because it feels like you’re sticking it to the bullies. Plus, there’s a lot of truth to it. The more time you spend reading in libraries, the more interesting you’re bound to become.

But I don’t begrudge anyone who through their tattoo displays the kind of wit we’ll need to differentiate the robots from the human. For instance, George Carlin advised men to get a groin tattoo that reads, “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY PULL HANDLE.”

So, I could get a tattoo, but it would have to be the perfect tattoo.

Then, I realized it’s been there all along. In fact, it was one of the first items I dreamed up for the book that would become “Use All The Crayons! The Colorful Guide to Simple Human Happiness.”

I recalled it all these years later after being introduced at a golf event to four lovely fellows who I was told “were artists at the local tattoo parlor.”

Parlor!

I thought it would be nice spending a few hours with them in the parlor. Distractedly, I glanced at my wrist watch. It hasn’t kept time for six months. But getting it jump started usually costs between $20 and $35 depending, I guess, if the jeweler’s T-Mobile bill is due that day or not.

Why wear a wrist watch that doesn’t work?

It looks good on a sleeveless arm. It’s the same reason some dandies wear necklaces

Then there’s this. I was too busy.

You could say I couldn’t find the time, but that would be fraudulent.

Finding the time isn’t difficult. Time is everywhere. It’s on the walls, in our cars, in our pockets.

On one hand we’ve never been busier, yet on the other we have all the time in the world.

I like my watch very much. It was a gift from a Vegas host for a story I did about 15 years ago.

It’s been appraised at $1,200 and looking at it makes me happy I never became so pompous I disdain material things. But it’s not the watch I would have picked.

I’d have picked a Rolex, the finest in luxury watches. One of my good friends had a high-profile role with Arnold Palmer, a Rolex sponsor. The watchmakers gave him one just for being a swell dude.

Just like me!

I don’t know what kind of Rolex he wore, but I was told my friend’s watch was worth about $18,000.

I figure I’d have to internally grow six extra kidneys and donate them to ailing Rolex executives for them to give me one

So years ago I expressed my craven covetousness in “Crayons!” deluxe: “No. 11 …  ‘Get a $75 tattoo of an $18,000 wrist watch.’”

Now, that’s colorful. Very unique. Idiosyncratic. Only one problem:

My tastes had changed. An $18,000 Rolex tattoo just wouldn’t do.

Today, I need a $17.8 million one. I needed the Paul Newman Daytona Rolex, well, a tattoo replica of it.

It was perfect because Newman is my favorite actor. “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Verdict,” “Slap Shot,” ‘Butch and Sundance,” “The Sting,” I’d revere him even if he wasn’t one of Hollywood’s finest. He’s also a devoted and creative philanthropist and a charter member of Richard Nixon’s Enemies’ list.

His watch was auctioned in June to an anonymous bidder for the jaw-dropping sum.

A tattoo of one is, in fact, preferable in many ways to the real thing.

Think about it. It’s water proof. Hard to misplace, Your greedy descendants won’t fight over it, and only a truly ghoulish thief would try and steal it.

Still, a tattoo is so not me.

But that’s not what stopped me. What did?

The tattoo industry is too immature.

Let me explain. The tattoo guy said in order for me to get the kind of detail I’d need for it to be recognized as a Rolex, the tat would need to be as big as my palm. It would look like a hood ornament on my wrist or the kind of kitsch the hip hop performers wear around their necks to alarm gents like me.

“Maybe in a few years we’ll be able to detail like that, but we’re not there yet,” he said.

Structural immaturity is an interesting predicament for an industry that’s been run predominantly by people defiantly reluctant to mature.

I could wind up with a crude tattoo that looks less like a real Rolex and more like a cheap knockoff Rolex, albeit one that’s a subcutaneous impostor either way.

It is a true conundrum.

I wish I had time to think about it. But the world is moving too quickly and I need to unwind. 

Too bad. Because when it comes to making time stand still, a tattooed wrist watch is hard to beat.

Firetruck racing to end boring parades

(657 words)

 One if the most satisfying aspects of spending so much time staring out the window is being the recipient of random genius thoughts. It’s a sort of brain lightning. You see solutions to problems that have for years bedeviled your fellow man.

Problems like way too many firetrucks.

That’s just the way my brain works. I wish mine worked like Dr. Jonas Salk’s did. The window he looked out of showed him the cure for polio and millions of lives were saved.

Oh, well. That’s enough about him.

Now, many of you are wondering how having too many firetrucks could be a problem. I sense this acutely from any of you who might be reading this post while standing locked inside a burning building.

Well, it’s not, per se, the glut of them that’s the problem. It’s that so many of them show up to participate in our summer holiday parades leading to common complaints. The parade takes too long. Too many firetrucks. Seen it all before.

Now, I take a back seat to no one in support of our local volunteers. The work they do at all hours and under all conditions saves lives — not to mention tax revenues — for the benefit of all. Even me! And I’m the guy that finds it irresistible to refrain from telling this Happy Hour joke I repeat every Friday when the shrill fire whistle sounds to summon these brave volunteers drop whatever they’re doing to do something heroic.

So as they’re rushing to put themselves in harm’s way, I say loud enough for the whole bar to hear …

“Now, I’m not saying our volunteers join for purely social reasons. I’m sure it’s just a happy coincidence that every Friday at 5 p.m. the local whore house catches on fire!”

So they deserve our salutes on the Fourth of July when they assemble en masse in the back streets of Latrobe awaiting their turn to idle at about 4 mph down Latrobe’s main street.

I’ve been going to Latrobe’s Fourth of July parade for nearly 40 years so I reckon I’ve seen. oh, about 400,000 fire trucks creep past me. I’ve seen them in rain. Seen ‘em when it was chilly and I seen ’em when it was roasting. And every time I’ve seen ‘em I’ve probably thought the same thing.

“There goes another dang firetruck. Nearly indistinguishable every other firetruck. Is this thing ever going to end?”

I recognized my thinking was shallow. These men and women are heroes. Their trucks mechanical marvels. This should be celebrated.

And staring out the window, just thinking about solutions to the problems vexing humanity it came to me.

The problem isn’t that the parades are too long. The problem is that the trucks move too slow.

The firetrucks should be required to race through the entire parade route as if they were responding to a report that an area orphanage had caught fire. The sirens would wail, the lights would flash, the engines would roar. 

Imagine the exhilaration.

Of course, this is inherently dangerous. Narrow streets. Twenty-five ton firetrucks careening pedal to the metal, barely in control. There are bound to be accidents.

And what better place to have one than amidst a sea of alert first responders?

Community teams could be lining the parade route, standing by with the Jaws of Life  — and Jaws of Life I’m not referring to the tubby glutton who keeps the food trucks in business.

There could be competitive aspects to the endeavor: Fastest heat, fewest  casualties, least amount of space-saver folding chairs clipped.

Maybe “Survivor” host Jeff Probst could host.

But with racing firetrucks covering in 90 seconds what used to take nearly a dawdling hour, the parade would conclude in a jiffy.  

Problem solved.

I wonder if Jonas Salk ever thought about things like too many firetrucks at the Fourth of July parade.

If I’d have been him, I’d have thought about changing my name to one that isn’t pronounced “SOCK.”