Typing Out Loud

I like campy things.

That does in fact include the 1960s version of Batman that starred Adam West.  But that’s not the type of campy I’m talking about.

The other campy.

The picture in your head right now is probably the correct one, but how do I know that?  How does one convey what “campy” stuff is?  I think we more or less know it when we see it, but how do you define it?

Since I was a little person with curly hair, I’ve been fascinated by the natural space under the clouds, hatchets, campfires, knives, guns, tents, hiking, chopping wood, cooking over a fire, etc.

Campy stuff, you see.

But what, precisely, is camping?

It’s different things to different people.  And over the past short while I’ve read the journals of Lewis and Clark Clark as well as a biography of Daniel Boone which informed me of the idea that the definition changes over time.

The stories about these historic characters got me  thinking more about a definition for camping.

My parents, my dad specifically, were camping people.  My earliest memory of camping is of a trip to Canada to a place called Bouchard Lake.  My folks borrowed a weary old pop-up trailer for the trip.

Bouchard Lake was located on an old logging road that had years before been retired.  There were numerous rivers and streams on the route, each traversed by use of a hand-made log bridge.

Our camp was dozens of miles from anything.  It was remote and baren.  We fished for walleye and lived off the land to a great degree.

And the mosquitoes, they lived off us.

It was dirty and it was basic.  But that of course is relative.  We had a Ford pickup truck, the aforementioned pop-up camper, sleeping bags, a Coleman gas stove, a Coleman gas lantern, fishing rods and reels, bait, axes, aluminum camp chairs and toilet paper.

Basic compared to our home life at the time, but basic compared to humans in the wilds a few hundred years prior?  I suspect we were in such a state of luxury that in prior eons we could have sold passage to our little camp for many valuable trinkets.

Our camp, around 1972, on the shore of Bouchard Lake.Your author, playing the part of wilderness pioneer.

My memories of that particular trip are vague.  I remember the mosquitoes and some minor details, but I have comfy places in my mind about the trip.

But more comfort was desired by the family.  And a longer stay was planned (my mom was a teacher and thus had summers off, my dad was retired).  Before the summer of 1973 we had purchased a self-contained travel trailer.  The camper, a 23-foot Terry, had a furnace, refrigerator, freezer, toilet, shower as well as the implied shelter and protection such a construction affords.   The beers of deeper Canada could probably still have snacked on us, but I felt invincible.  We had a fort on wheels!

1973 Terry travel trailer, our wilderness outpost.

We camped with the Terry for several years.  I’m not sure what made it “camping,” though.  We were away from home.  But we had running water, heat and as a rare treat, homemade cinnamon rolls made by my dad in the camper’s gas oven.

During many summers we’d spend months in Canada, at our preferred location of Atikameg Lake.  Atikameg Lake was more remote than Bouchard, on the same series of logging roads, but more people knew about it so while we were more isolated from civilization (about 25 miles), we often had the company of like-minded campers.

We were without doubt we had the most advanced camp.  By that point we had large, industrial size LP gas bottles to keep the fridge going, benches made for comfortable fire-watching, wildlife feeders and a large tarp laid beside the trailer to keep dirt out of the “fortress.”  We bathed in the lake and used the camper’s toilet only for middle-of-the-night necessities.

We had pretty sophisticated equipment, but we were remote and camping.

We had many modern tools to make our time in the woods more efficient and comfortable.  Once in a while we’d spend most of the day to make a trip by truck to the junction of the logging road and Canada’s Highway 17.  We went  to a place called the White Lake Lodge.  There we would get milk, soft drinks and other camp supplies.  We’d finish the supply run with an ice cream cone and then head back to camp.

I learned a lot of “camp skills” during those years.  Even though we had fancy rigid shelter, my dad, other campers and Canadian Indians, taught me how to cut wood, how to make a fire, how to catch and clean fish, how to throw an axe, how to make a lean-to, etc.   I treasure those skills. Whenever I watch one of the overly-dramatized programs on TV about surviving in the wilds I think to myself “I probably don’t want to do that…but I think I could.”  And it’s camping that did that for me.

In 1978 my parents decided that we needed to see more of North America apart from Canada. We loved Canada, but wanted something differnt.  The decision was made that something simpler was required.

With a pickup truck and travel trailer you have the hitching, un-hitching, leveling, backing, etc. that add to the hassle of making a foray.  So my parents decided that a motorhome would be the next fortress on wheels for us.

They purchased a Southwind motorhome. This unit had many of the same capabilities as the Terry, though it added air conditioning to the mix and a higher level of luxury.  This was not the vehicle for deep woods affairs — we would stick to improved campgrounds that catered to rigs of this size.

We spent a few years being campy with the motorhome but one thing and another (not the least of which was that this rig was a lemon — pits, peels and pulp), we bought our old Terry travel trailer back.

We did a little more camping, but with my dad’s declining health, trips became rare.

I still had that cowboy giddyup in my craw, so when I was a teenager I took my lawn mowing money and ordered an 8×10 tent from the Montgomery Ward catalog.  I was ready to pack it all up and hit the deepest reaches of the frontier!

I was too young and stupid to realize that the frontier didn’t have NBC or CBS.

My final camp outing came when I was about 15 years old.  The youth group at church, egged on by our “adult” leaders Tony and Rick, decided the boys should go camping for a weekend.  We were to do some fire-building, some fishing, some shooting of guns and conduct some general teenage boy craziness in the woods.  And me, having such a great tent, camping experience and firearms was all for it.

Ah, but did I mention that this trip was slated for February?  In Michigan?  With overnight lows of about 10 below zero?  And that the fishing would be ice fishing?

Hindsight, baby, it’s a trip.

Well, I won’t bore you with the details of that outing, suffice to say that a nylon tent, when subjected to temperatures below zero, gets brittle, cracks and for all intents and purposes goes “Poof!” into a bajillion little flakes of worthless confetti.

So that was the end of my tent.

And the end of camping for this author.

Until I met the woman I would later marry.  A couple of years ago, before we were even dating, we decided to go camping together.  I bought a little one-person pup tent for myself since she already had a small tent and assorted gear herself.

It was great to get back out there!  I found that all of my camp skills were still with me.  I could still pitch a tent, cut wood, make a fire and cook a decent dinner over the flames.  We sat around our campfire until the hours of the next morning:  watching the snap and pop of the fire, crying the smoke out of our eyes and watching the dark, dark sky.

Since then we’ve camped a few more times and are now, in the footsteps of my parents, looking at travel trailers.  We want more of course.  We’re good Americans.

There’s also something about camp food.    I suspect hot dogs, hamburgers and marshmallows are pretty standard camp fare.  But camp food can vary based upon your experience.  My wife, for example, used to camp with a group whose tradition was to construct a ginormous pot of stew, with everyone providing ingredients for the cauldron.  While a tradition for my family was Wyler’s Instant Lemon Aid.  Oh how I hated that foul fluid!

So, throughout my career as a human, I’ve had many adventures that I classify as some type of camping.  But what, exactly, IS camping and why is it so restorative and good?

On our most recent trip beneath the trees I decided, regardless of how many conveniences you have, it’s being close to nature that does the job.  At least for me.

Being “close to nature” is probably a cliche, but it’s apt.  When I spend concerted time getting soil lodged beneath my finger nails and make fire, I contemplate my life and place in the world.  The stunning beauty of God’s hand, close and personal for a day or two, brings me peace and recharge.

At any point in history people have had certain tools and skills available for living beneath the canopy of sky and trees.  They’ve used them to their best advantage.   We do the same.  In a few hundred years I suspect that people will still “camp”.  They’ll just get to the site with a jet pack and their shelter will spring from a disk that has been sprinkled with magic water.

The smoke will still get in their eyes, no matter where they sit.

I really like to play the Scrabble board game (www.hasbro.com/scrabble).  I am an only child and I played the game a few times as a snot-nosed short person, when my mom could be cajoled to join me.   My love of words and wood perhaps made my affection for this sedate game a natural.

My wife and I generally play a couple of games a week.  It focuses our minds, we talk, we have a drink or twelve and we play Scrabble!

Some of the rules of the game, however, seem oddly arbitrary.  I often sit there staring dumbly at a rack full of totally unusable letters.  I wonder:  Why aren’t there more play options?

Well, I would like to suggest a few modifications to the standard rules of play.   And don’t worry, if all players agree to play by these clever rules of mine, nobody needs to go to jail.  Sure, Hasbro owns all the legal bits, but since I’m in the sanctity of my own little castle, I’m going to change the rules to make the game more interesting.  If not more interesting, more differenter (NOTE:  ‘differenter’ is not a legal Scrabble word in any galaxy).

So then, here are Aaron’s rules for Scrappy Scrambled Scrabble!  Word up!

PREPARATION

You’ll need the Scrabble game.  That would be the board with the colored squares, little letter tiles, a bag to hold the letters and a rack to hold each player’s tiles.  Oh, and some paper and a writing implement in order to keep score.  If you’re into the scoring thing, that is.  If you just want to play until the tiles are gone, that’s cool, too.

ALLOWED WORDS

Any word may be used during game play.

Words may be from any language.

Acronyms are allowed.

Abbreviations are allowed.  ROFL!

In short, if you would put the same letters together in an e-mail, letter, article, professional communication or instant message, you’re good.

That means proper names are good, too.  Like Xerox.

If you are the victim of a challenge to the legality of a word you’ve played, maybe you should get new friends.  If your friends have too much dirt on you you’ll probably have to defend yourself against their challenge.  If you can provide evidence of the word in a dictionary or in use by anyone other than yourself (from a website for example) then you can use the word.    If you are unable to provide such evidence during game play, the nice thing to do would be to withdraw those tiles and play something else.  But I’ll leave that to you — the civility of your game is really up to you.

If a word would normally need some type of accent character, the word may be played without it.  For example, you can play résumé, the word for your list of professional achievements, as “resume”.  But, duh, that’s a word, too!  Whoopie!   So, let’s see, another example may be apéritif, which may be played “aperitif”.

Similarly, if a word form is normally hyphenated, such as post-modern,  you may play it as “postmodern”.

BEGINNING PLAY

To determine which player starts the game, place all letters in the pouch and give them a good shake about.   Each play draws one tile.  The player with the alphabetically lowest letter (closest to “A”) begins the game.  If a blank tile, which can be played as any letter, is drawn, that player starts the game.  If there is a “tie” (two players share the lowest letter), replace the tiles, re-shuffle, and try again.

Once the starting player is determined, all of the tiles are placed back in the bag and shuffled again.  The player determined to start the game draws seven letters and places them on their rack (it may be obvious, but for those of you who are new to this:  the letters face the player and are hidden from other players).  After the starting player has drawn their tiles, the bag is passed, clockwise, to the next player, who draws their seven tiles.  Continue to pass and draw until all players have their seven tiles.

WE GOTTA HAVE SOME RULES

Each player, in turn, places a tile or tiles on the board to spell a word.

You can play a single tile.  For example the article “a” is playable.  See how much fun this is going to be?

Letters may be placed anywhere on the board.   Words may be played across, down or diagonally.  For ease of reading and scoring, all of the words should be played in the same orientation.  Each player should place their words in the same orientation as that chosen by the starting player.

The player then must announce their score so that whomever is keeping score, if you’ve elected to do so, can record the value of the play.  (The full scoop on scoring comes in a few paragraphs.  Patience, my friend).

Finally, the player draws from the letter bag new tiles to replace those just played.  For example, if the player used five tiles from their rack, they draw five tiles from the bag.

That completes the player’s turn.  The party seated next in the clockwise rotation now gets to astound and amaze with their wordspersonship.

The next player may now play.  They may place their tiles anywhere on the board.  They do not need to intersect nor make contact with any previously-played words.

STRATEGY

You can garner many more points by adding one or more letters to a word or letter already on the board.  Use your creativity to build on existing words.  Eventually you may be a force to be reckoned with in the world of Scrappy Scrambled Scrabble!

WE NEED MORE RULES…

No tile may be moved or replaced after it has been played and scored.

You may use a turn to exchange any or all tiles in your possession. To do this, place your discarded letter(s) facedown. Draw the same number of letters from the pool, then mix your discarded letter(s) into the pool. This ends your turn.  That means if things are so bad you can’t spell anything, you can draw fresh letters, but you have to wait for your turn to come back around to place any tiles on the board.  Boo hoo.  You’ll get over your lost turn, you’re all resilient and whatnot.

A player may “pass” when it is their turn to play.  Play moves to the player next in the clockwise rotation.

If you question the word someone has played, you must speak up before play moves to the next player.  Be nice.  Don’t be a jerk.  If the player is unable to provide suitable proof that their word is indeed a word, they must remove their tile(s) from the board and play a different word.  This time, hopefully, something that doesn’t rankle the others around the board.  Rankled Scrabblers are decidedly unattractive.

The game ends when all letters have been drawn from the cute letter bag and a player uses his or her last letter.  Or when all possible plays have been made.

HE SHOOTS, HE SCORES!

If you decide to keep score, use a piece of paper to keep a tally of each player’s score, entering it after each turn.

The score for an entire word is doubled when one of its letters is placed on a pink square.

The score for an entire word is tripled when one of its letters is placed on a red square.

Calculate premiums for double or triple letter values, if any, before doubling or tripling the word score (we’re talkin’ big numbers here, bro!).

If a word is formed that covers two premium word squares, the score is doubled and then re-doubled (4 times the letter count), or tripled and then re-tripled (9 times the letter count).

Letter and word premiums count only on the turn in which they are played. On later turns, letters already played on premium squares count at face value.

When two or more words are formed in the same play, each is scored. The common letter is counted (with that letter’s full premium value, if any) for each word.

If any player uses all seven tiles in a single play, that player automatically wins.   Congratulate that player and start a fresh game!

When the game ends (a player has used their last tile or the table agrees no more plays are possible), each player’s score is reduced by the sum of his or her unplayed letters.

The player with the highest final score wins the game.

Here are some scoring examples from the official Scrabble site.

In the following, the words added on five successive turns are shown in bold type.

The scores shown are the correct scores if the letter R is placed on the center square.

In Turn 1, count HORN.

In Turn 2, FARM.

In Turn 3, PASTE and FARMS.

In Turn 4, MOB, NOT and BE.

In Turn 5, BIT, PI and AT.

I look at nearly everythng in my life by one measure: is it maintenance-free? And if it’s not totally free from maintenance, how much maintenance does it require?

While I admit to not being the most get-up-and-go type of dude, my aversion to maintenance is not due to laziness. Part of it is the result of a realistic understanding of what it’s like to get old. The maintenance requirements that surround us are simply evil serpents waiting to attack us when we’re old, weak and feeble. Or before if we’re distracted by an episode of CSI.

Now, some maintenance tasks are more wicked than others. For example, maintenance that carries relatively minor inconvenience and cost, isn’t too bad. But maintenance that comes with the risk getting splinters or costs enough to make you think about the laws you could have broken with the money, that’s pure evil.

Have you ever considered all of the maintenance tasks we are supposed to do in any given month? If we did everything we’re supposed to do, we’d do nothing but maintain crap so it continues to function – but we’d never use the crap for its intended purpose.

Let’s take a look at the oil change. It’s not too expensive (except for my Hemi-powered pickup which drinks oil not in quarts but in gallons). With places like Jiffy Lube and Uncle Ed’s, it’s not very inconvenient. I can easily understand the need and importance of this chore. So it’s a part of life that I accept. Besides, the magazines at Jiffy Lube are pretty good.

Now the exterior covering on my house is a different matter. Fortunately we have a wide variety of materials for this job that don’t require maintenance. Aluminum, vinyl, brick, stucco, concrete: lots of ways to slay the maintenance dragon. Painting and caulking a house, well, that’s a nasty kind of business.

On the one hand, it’s a lot of hard work and costs large amounts of money. And when I’m 107 there’s no way I’m doing it myself. Not to mention that I will probably be grasping my last nickel and prunes will be my preferred purchase, not a gallon of Glidden.

And even if you’re Mr. DIY, be honest. You’re not going to paint and caulk around the windows. You’ll always find something more fun and interesting to do, like clean the link trap on the clothes dryer. And before you know it, you’ve got rotting window sills and cracked siding.

For a few dozen years now, my dream home has been one that is made from poured concrete using insulating concrete forms (http://www.polysteel.com). The exterior of those forms should be clad with concrete logs (http://everlogs.com). Add vinyl windows and you’ve got a house that will last, is quite, efficient and requires no exterior maintenance. Yes, you’ll probably have to replace shingles once. But with a structure like this you’re eliminating the painting and caulking. Not to mention you don’t have to deal with rot and the creepy crawlies that like to gnaw on your pine.

Every little task that you can eliminate helps. Just consider this non-exhaustive, though exhausting, list of things that we “should” be doing that we probably aren’t doing:

・ rotate tires

・ check air pressure in tires at each fill-up

・ check wiper blades at each fill-up

・ check oil at each fill-up

・ check coolant at each fill-up

・ check windshield washer fluid at each fill-up

・ check security of shoe laces at lunchtime

・ lubricate all your hinges every six months

・ clean out the aerators on all your faucets every six months

・ lubricate the wheels on your lawnmower every year

・ lubricate the chain on your bicycle every year

・ lubricate those little wheels on your garage door every six months

・ lather, rinse and repeat

・ use compressed air to blow out the fans on your computers every month (more if you have creatures without opposable thumbs living in your house)

・ apply furniture oil to your wood furniture each quarter

・ check your credit report each year

・ change batteries in smoke and radon detectors each year

・ trim your wicks

・ sweep your chimney annually

・ clean the burner on your furnace annually

・ change the oil on your power equipment (yes, the lawn mower needs an oil and filter change each year, too)

・ review your will each year

・ update your resume each year

・ floss

So call me lazy, but all this stuff is just too bogus in my book. And when I’m old I want to be able to enjoy my rocker and a good read or some heavy metal on the headphones. I don’t want to be oiling the tranny on my wheelchair.

I have just returned from a weekend in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

I live in (near) Provo, Utah.

That’s nearly a full day of travel, by air, in each direction.

That’s right.

A weekend.

I flew up there on Friday, returned on Sunday. (Well, the 757 flew, I was merely along for the ride).

The occasion of this semi-insane travel schedule was what my sister in-law had termed her Big Fat Romanian Baptism. This because it was the occasion of her second-born’s christening.

I don’t consider myself to be a sophisticated world traveler by any stretch of the imagination. While I’ve made it to a few foreign lands, I spend most of my time on the couch in my home zip code. But when I do put my feet in motion and get my travel on, I do so with hopes of seeing new and interesting things and learning a thing or five.

The trip that I’ve just finished has been very stimulating to the thinky parts in my head. Usually those parts are consumed with mundane thoughts of kerning, point sizes, DPIs, variable scope and whether or not I left the keys in the car. But the past few days really got me thinking about myself, my history, the world, people, faith and whether or not the TSA dude left my wife in the full-body scan machine just a bit too long.

The following, potentially very-boring-to-you observations, come to me as I enjoy a frosty IPA and the quiet company of my amazing wife, Mrs. A, whose own personal journey through life amazes and humbles me on a regular basis.

IMMIGRANTS

My wife is from Romania. She immigrated to the United States about a dozen years ago and earned her citizenship. Her parents are still in Romania, but her sister and brother in-law chose Canada as their refuge from Romania. But that’s not really the beginning of the story for me when it comes to immigration. That story begins with my dad.

Most of us who live in these United States have a story of immigration somewhere behind us. That’s not unique. Experience has taught me that my story is very similar to perhaps tens of thousands of others. But my story is my story, important to me, and a part of the person I am today and will be tomorrow.

My dad was unique in a couple of ways. One is that he was 60 years old when I was born. (My mom was many decades younger then he, but that’s another book). And my dad was a child of German immigrants. He used to joke that he was born on the ship on the way over. That wasn’t technically true — he was born in Wisconsin. But he was born very soon after his parents arrived.

Dad was born in 1907. Life was just a little bit different in those days. But the part that is important to my story is that in those days there was no real effort made to integrate and assimilate immigrants. There was no language education. He went to school for a short time, but couldn’t understand what they were saying, so he simply stopped going.

Due to the severe abuse administered by his mother, dad ran from home about the time he turned 13. He simply walked away from the house and struck out on his own.

Nobody went looking for him. Life was simply too hard I guess. One less mouth to feed and worry about was a relief.

My dad became a hobo. He rode the rails, stealing rides on freight trains, living by his wits, drinking Sterno fuel in the winter to stay warm, doing odd jobs here and there. He told me that he only stole on very desperate occasions — he tried hard to find work to earn a dime.

During the years he picked up the language from the other men and boys on the trains. That was his language training. And he would tell me it’s how he learned to read people and understand them. He saw all types of men down on their luck and not finding their way. And it was his perception that in most cases these were good people who tried and failed. They weren’t bad, evil or criminal at their core. They had just been knocked down by cruel circumstance. Even by his death at age 87, he would have been considered illiterate. He could read bits and pieces, but wasn’t a reader. His skills with mathematics were impressive, however. He would amaze me with his ability to add and subtract a series of numbers in his head. His education was totally from the trial-and-error lessons of living and getting by. And a strong desire to improve himself. And his life.

When he retired he was the plant foreman at a paper company, earning a very good salary. Even during the Great Depression, he never lost his job. He credited the fact that he was a hard worker, who always did what he was asked to do, for saving him during that time of national hardship.

My growing-up years were totally framed by what it was to be an immigrant. I knew from my hard-working, honest and soft-spoken dad that being an immigrant is hard, hard, hard. Everything is foreign. People look like people, houses look like houses, food looks like food. But each is a different experience. There are subtle ways that locals assume, that foreigners must learn. Like a handshake when greeting someone versus a kiss on both cheeks. Like eating cheese with pancakes for breakfast, versus eggs and bacon. Like eating organ meats versus steaks from the best of the cow’s muscle.

The list of differences encountered when trying to integrate into a culture is long. The items on the list comprise everything from minor breezes to major craters in the road. Sometimes the differences and discoveries that an immigrant encounters are fun and exciting. More often they are difficult, humiliating and scary. And even after many years, they feel like outsiders looking in, not quite embraced by the place they want to call home.

So when I gathered with my Romanian relatives in Canada, I knew I’d be exposed to new and different customs. Particularly because at its heart was a religious ceremony and rite that is very foreign to my background. But it was more than that. So much more.

I am once again humbled and reminded of my dad after spending a few hours with some amazing people. My sister in-law and brother in-law have a story similar to my wife’s. They left a very repressive and corrupt system in Romania to find something better. The goal was simple: a place that gave them options to build something better for themselves. They expected to work hard and contribute, and they’ve done that by a great measure.

I met a man who is from Ukraine. Like my wife and her sister, he, too, was raised under Communism. His wife is from Romania. He knows several languages and spoke to me in English, seemingly without any effort. He had lived in Montreal but has recently moved to Toronto. Mind you, that’s AFTER leaving his home in Ukraine and changing countries.

This man, 40 years old and with a newborn, told me that he wasn’t happy with Montreal so he looked around and thought he’d try something else.

I complain when the traffic is backed up, when my job frustrates me or when the gas bill is higher than I expect. But here’s a guy who left his home, traveled to a foreign country where they didn’t even speak his language, and he started anew.

And then after several years of getting grounded in a new culture, he decided he wanted to change direction so he made another change. He remained in Canada, but left a society that is based on the French language, to one that primarily speaks English.

And smart! This guy was so fascinating! Very smart, friendly, conversational, approachable. Within a few minutes of meeting him and experiencing his open acceptance of me into the circle of friends, I was feeling like my little trip through life was but a trifle. It would seem logical, and understandable, if he had been timid, reserved, halting and unsure. But nothing could be further from the truth. Even in a secondary language, he was like a long lost friend.

After the formal religious ceremony, where he and his wife were the godparents, we went to a fine restaurant for dinner and dancing. He continued to make conversation with many people there and was interested in everyone’s story and experience and lives.

I met another man at the party who drives a cross-country semi truck. He, also, is from Romania and imigrated to Canada. He drives a truck from Canada to California. A hard job for any driver. But except for a slight accent, you might not know that he, too, was an immigrant.

I hope you “get” the importance here. Think about deciding one day that you’ve “had it” with whatever is going on in your own country. And not just the day-to-day frustrations of life. I’m talking about problems that are too much to live with. You must first take that mental step to determine that leaving is the answer. Then, of all the corners of the world, where? Once that is decided, then the steps required must be investigated, documented and followed.

The language you know: cast aside. The people you know, your friends, your family, the routine of your day-to-day life: gone, but for a chance! Just a chance, at something better. No guarantee that life will be better. No guarantee of success. To the odds makers in fact, everything is against you. And what are you after? Freedom. Options. Choices. Hope. Things the fortunate often take for granted.

And unlike the immigrants of my father’s generation that came to the States during a mass influx and with great fanfare, these folks are quietly showing up, taking their place and adding to the color, interest and strength of wherever they settle.

Could you do it? Would you do it? I don’t know if I could. I don’t know how bad it would need to get for me to consider it.

In some respect is makes me proud to be an American. But it’s less about being an American and more about my respect and admiration for people who DO something. They undertake incredible efforts to achieve the best life can offer them.

Maybe.

AIR TRAVEL

Almost any comedian who has been in front of at least one audience has some riff on air travel, airports and the absurdities that take place when one travels.

But in my most lofty opinion, those who devise airports, security processes and rules about how to behave in public, should spend an hour at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport in Montreal. I felt like I was cast in a science fiction movie with a substantial special effects budget. All that was missing was a shiny polyester jumpsuit to adorn my body.

What could make the experience so noteworthy?

For starters it was quiet. The airport is large and modern. And quiet like a library. And I’m not referring to a quiet like that in the kid’s wing of your local library. I’m thinking of something more like a university, academic facility. One of those old joints, with many feet of rocks and mortar making up the walls. That kind of quiet. Even though I tend towards exaggeration in my daily life, I am being dead serious when I tell you that my wife and I spoke to each other in hushed tones. It was quiet and, whether due to some Eau du Pinetree Mist that they pumped into the place or not, we wanted to keep it that way.

And clean, clean, clean. There weren’t fingerprints all over the surfaces (perhaps due in part to the fact that the people were so well-behaved that they weren’t pawing at the walls like they do in a Chicago or Detroit airport). The floors had no dust bunnies scurrying around. There were not any stacks of leftover reading materials nor sticky cups from fast food emporiums. It was just clean.

And the people. You could not have found a more orderly and considerate group of people if you had showed up at Emily Post’s for dinner. Young and old it didn’t matter. People waited their turn, they didn’t complain, they didn’t get all pissy because they had to take their shoes off. They just followed the rules, quietly and efficiently and even with the occasional smile. Americans, we’re a bunch of pompous arses. We are. You shan’t convince me otherwise.

I had my “papers” checked more in this airport than in any of my other travels. But it was done so quickly and efficiently (aided in most cases by the use of a handheld scanner, much like a grocery store’s pricing gun) that I barely noticed. Well, okay, I noticed because it was so unusually fast and thorough. Yet it never created a slowdown in traffic. Everyone kept moving along. And I actually had the sense that if Boogie Mann was on the loose, he wouldn’t make it past one of these capable security trolls with the scanning pistola.

And that still blows my mind. It’s a big airport. There were a lot of people. But because they were so well-behaved and because the layout of the facility and the systems were so well-planned, it never felt crowded.

Oh, the things we could learn! Now, I don’t want their socialized, wait-for-a-year-to-fix-my-heart-attack style of medical care, nor the Imperial Gallon nor the Quebecois bias. But these people from the land of the walleye fish and maple syrup surely have things to offer.

TECHNOLOGY

Like I said earlier, it has been a year since I’ve visited the angry airways. Wow, a lot has changed in a year.

A year ago I was hip and stylin’ with my Acer Aspire netbook. It’s a few years old now (I was a very early adopter), but what a nice little gadget to have when travelling. When I bought it I was thinking iPhone or netbook. I figured I’d rather have a real computer with larger screen. For travel it would be nice to watch a movie, read an ebook or do actual computer work. It has been great.

But this past weekend the preponderance of the devices was tablets. They were everywhere. And I see one huge marketing problem for the tech companies. The tablets are so small that you can’t see a logo or defining detail to know WHAT tablet device someone is using. I don’t know if I was looking at hardware from the evil fruit monger or from the boys Hewlett and Packard or from the child labor camp in downtown Slobovia. Someone should get right on that gap. I see the cool dude with the retro shades tableting away, and I want one! I just don’t know what it is.

But even though I like new tech, and I had thought of tablets in passing, after seeing them in the hands of creatures loosely characterized as humans, I am having thoughts anew.

I like the size and format. They’re thin and lightweight. But what struck me was that on all but the newest ones I saw, I could see every place the user commonly touched and dragged. The screen looked like a sandpaper test zone. I still think I’d like to take one for a spin, but unless they come down to under a hundred bucks or so, I think I’ll keep walking.

There was another type of technology that I had higher hopes for. That was the telephonic flight updates from Delta. My wife is signed up to get the updates. So throughout our journey, at seemingly the most peculiar times, the phone would ring and a message from Delta would be delivered.

The concept is, I think, a good one. If you’re a busy traveler it would be handy to know about changes in departure times, gates or the color of the blankets to be offered on an upcoming flight. And this programmer’s logic would lead me to believe that such updates would be the absolutest mostest currentest information. I don’t expect the gate printed on my boarding pass, half a day before my connection time, to be correct very often. But if Delta’s Cray in the sky calls the ringy-dingy little box in my wife’s purse, I’m thinking it’s got the details right! But once again I am proved incorrect. Wrong, in fact. It is perplexing and, to me, angering, that the phone message has the wrong gate information. In fact, the irony is ever more ironic in that we got the call while sitting in the gate area for the flight we were being called about. We sat there, like dumb lambs, looking at our aircraft and observing the sign by the door to said aircraft which clearly displayed our flight information. At the same time we listened to the little Delta lady telling us our connection was waiting for us at a totally different location.

Technology is just amazing.

As a concept.

POST TRAVEL

I like to travel. And I enjoy the planning and time just before a trip. And, except for depressing trips back home to Michigan, I usually have a grand time on the trip itself. But I surely do look forward to being home. Especially when I settle in to the seat on that last flight. I park my keister, make sure my seatbelt is fastened and my seat is in the full, upright position and I contemplate being home.

And home is freshly appreciated for the familiarity of it. No matter the warmth of my travel lodgings, nor the plushness of the hotels, my own hot shower and my own bed close the book on a chapter of travel.

And it’s in those unique periods of exhaustion that I rest and contemplate the marvel that is travel. I appreciate that I live in a country where travel is free. And even though our post-9/11 travel troubles continue to enflame my nerves, we are still free to roam hither and yon.

And I appreciate how easy the travel is. I mean, a hundred years ago the experience would have been far different. The time and money required would have been greater by many multiples. In fact, the difficulties in times past made such travel, in a practical sense, impossible.

Of course I fully appreciate that 100 years from now people will look back on episodes like my recent foray to the north lands and chuckle at my naiveté because that future traveler will simply wink and nod and be at any position in time. But life is what it is, and for that I am grateful.

Once again my status-quo has been challenged and I have peeked outside the cocoon. I’ve gotten to know new family members better, met some interesting new people, seen some new customs and methods. I appreciate the world in a deeper way as I do my humble home and my lifestyle and culture.

New.

Different.

That’s what travel is about for me. The new and different. Sometimes better, sometimes not. But the seeing, considering and taking in the lessons, that is what scratches the itch inside my soul.

I do not return things.

If I paid too much or it doesn’t fit or is somehow not right, I figure it’s my error and I go along on the trail of life with yet another lesson firmly locked away later to be forgotten.

But today my wife and I were at Bed Bath and Beyond.

Yep, I used their name.  I did!

And that’s where today’s tale originates.  But this is not a story about BB&B…it’s a more general story about how businesses view training.  It could be almost any retailer.  And in my experience, over time, it has been most retailers with whom I’ve done business.

Today’s adventure started shortly after we’d checked out.  We had purchased four items that were, we thought, clearly marked at $1.39 each.  After we’d paid and walked toward the parking lot, my wife checked the receipt thinking the total was high.  Well, it was too high.  Because each of the four items had charged to us at $1.99…a 60-cent difference per item.  Yep, that’s right, you did the math correctly:  over-charged by $2.40.  In the olden days that would have bought a gallon of gasoline.

In my single days I would have said a few bad words or kicked a pebble in the parking lot.  In my married days, my indignation over being wronged rose up with venom and I encouraged my wife to go back to the little people inside the store and make a scene.  A really big, loud scene!

Well, she didn’t want to make a scene, but she did want to go back in and check the sign to make sure we hadn’t mis-read it.  I was a little nervous about walking back through the store with our bag full of goods.  I was afraid we’d be shot as suspected shoplifters.  But my wife assured me that we didn’t need Kevlar, our receipt was protection enough.

We arrived  at the display and yes, we agreed, the sign was pretty clear that our items should have cost us $1.39…not the $1.99 that appeared on our receipt.

So off we trekked to the Customer Service counter where the sign indicated that we should  queue up to have the mistake handled.

We got in line behind a woman who was exchanging a set of bed linens — exchanging queen-sized for king-sized.   It didn’t take hours for me to determine that the employee behind the counter was a little green behind the gills.  She was polite and friendly, but seemed to flounder over the details of how to handle the woman’s transaction.

We waited, shifting our weight from foot to foot, waiting for our turn to present our case.

After a few weeks, it magically became our turn at bat.  My wife pleasantly explained that we had been overcharged, that the sign said the item was $1.39 but we had been charged $1.99.  The clerk was very confused.  She took our receipt and one of the items and read them both…including the bio-hazzard warnings and the first 11 chapters of War and Peace.  It appeared to me that she sorta, kinda, in a vague way, knew what she needed to do, but didn’t quite know what buttons to push on the computer to make it all become a living reality.

What transpired during the next many minutes was mildly painful:  for us and the clerk.  She inquired of approximately five co-workers for information on what she needed to do.  The most-helpful clerk nearby stated that she needed to push Department 009 and then pro-rate the coupon and factor in the binary rate of taxation recovery and the bogus-charge-reduction-fee and the hazardous waste disposal fee and the electrical use rebate….  Oy, what a bunch of buttons she was told to push!

Then she got stuck.  She had all kinds of help from her colleagues to tell her which of the myriad and non-sensical buttons to push and paper forms to complete, but yet she was confused.

She didn’t quite comprehend the phrase on the receipt that read:  “4 @ $1.99”.  My wife kindly explained that we had purchased four copies of the item, at $1.99 per item.

“Aha!” the gal exclaimed.  NOW it all made sense to her.  She was so proud, and who could blame her?

Her next step was to verify that we weren’t liars by calling on the two-way radio to the “Soft Goods Department” to enquire as to the per-item price that was shown on the sign.  This took multiple tries as the soft-goods person couldn’t hear her clearly, and she could hear the responses from the soft-goods person clearly, either.  At day’s long end it was determined that we were honest people and that we merely wanted our $2.40 returned to us.

But we weren’t yet on our way to an enjoyable late lunch.  No, now she had to push the buttons that would actually record the error and get us our refund.  That took many more minutes.  Oh, and we couldn’t have the debit to our debit card “fixed”…no, she had to give us cash in return.  This was because we’d used a debit card.  Presumably if we’d used shells and chickens, she could have credited our account.

All this took place in a fairly busy store, with many people in line behind us, and many “managers” milling about, helping out with one question at a time rather than stepping in to service the customer and get us all on our ways.

I’m sure by now you can appreciate that I was a little torqued off.

Where’s the training!?  I know, it’s not cost-effective to properly train employees.  But is it cost-effective NOT to train them?  This poor kid was in front of a bunch of people who were more impatient by the second.  She was doing her best to figure out the process (and she was smart and friendly and professional — I am NOT in ANY way criticizing her).  But she didn’t know what to do because, I suspect, this was her very first time dealing with a transaction of this nature.  That should never happen!  There should be some formal training before someone is dropped into the den of wolves that is the public.

I firmly believe that this poor child was hired on Tuesday and the person hiring her, after asking her to complete the W-4, put her with another employee and said “Watch and learn.”

That is simply not right.

Especially for a large, national company like this.  They should have online training.  Training should include a visual of the cash register showing how to process any transaction.  And lessons should teach how to handle returns, refunds, exchanges and split transactions.  It doesn’t serve the business, the customer nor the employee to have them wallow in confusion and frustration.  Spend a few hours to TRAIN them so that they can confidently handle the job.  I know it wasn’t Susie Salesperson’s fault — it was the fault of the system that failed to train her and prepare her for her job.

I’ll think two or five times about going back to Bed, Bath and Beyond.  Not because they overcharged us by $2.40.  But because they made us stand at the Customer Service counter for 15 minutes of our lives while the whole world continued to spin out there.  It was painful.

To me it seems so simple.  If I were to hire someone, I would not want them to represent me, my business, my metrics and my potential bonus until they understood how to use my computer system and hot to process the majority of transactions that they may see.  It’s laziness, in my opinion.  Training takes some time and it’s an investment in doing business.  Do it, people.  Train employees, give them confidence, give them the ability to put the best face on your business.  Your cashiers and customer service people are the front lines of your business.

Please don’t just put  humans out there with every inclination toward failure.  Rather, give them every tool to help them, and you, succeed.

It all seems so simple to me.

When I was a kid we got three channels on the TV.

Three channels on a good day.

Three channels if the weather was just right.

My dad was what today we call an “early adopter” of TV technology. I have photos that he took in the mid-’40s when he got his first television. The pictures are of a test pattern being broadcast from across Lake Michigan in Chicago. It was the middle of the day and the only “programming” was a test pattern. And he was thrilled to have it.

From the TV in his living room to wires through the wall to a big aerial on a pole, he was pulling in signal from across the waters.

Decades later in another house and with a different set, he had connected an aerial to our house, complete with a “rotator” that would control a motor to rotate the antenna for the best reception. Only problem was, living in the boondocks like we did, the “best” reception was not much different from the “bad” reception.

From our home in rural Michigan I yearned for TV from Grand Rapids. We could pick up, though weakly, the NBC station in G.R. But the ABC station only visited our living room on those rare occasions when sun, moon and karma aligned.

All that said, we did have TV. I still got my TV and developed my addiction early. Whether it was The Muppet Show, Space 1999 or Ironside, I yearned for whatever the magical box had to offer.

I have memories of going with my dad to Radio Shack to test tubes and get replacements. I always hoped that replacing just the right tube would bring a clearer picture, brighter colors and less interference.

It was not to be.

My aunt and uncle who live in Grand Rapids had early cable television. Even though the only thing their household was interested in on TV was sports, I would look forward to the crystal picture they’d get. I didn’t care about the food, pool table or other activities going on as long as I could have access to the cable tuner (which was a metal box with a lever that slid left and right to select channels – all of which was connected to the wall with a big, heavy cable).

When it was time to get my own apartment, the top requirement on the list was access to cable. Cable. It’s a very generic word but in our culture has come to mean a service and technology of delivering high quality television programming. It’s such a simple word but I still very much remember the excitement that built as moving day approached.

I was working for low wages at a newspaper, going to college part-time and making a car payment. But after having signed a deal for about the cheapest apartment in town, I went to Montgomery Ward to buy myself a TV. I was still living with my parents then and took it home where my dad and I admired it. It was connected to nothing and still had Styrofoam clinging to it, but was admired the possibilities that it had to offer.

On moving day I couldn’t wait to finish unloading crap into the apartment. Everything was hastily brought in but the primary thing to unpack and set up was the TV and the cable.

It was like stepping into some other form of reality. From the perfect picture and sound to the variety of new and interesting programs, life took on new meaning on that day.

Years passed and I later added satellite TV to my life. I started with DirectTV and later ended up with DishNetwork. Yep, I’m one of those junkies that has a $100+ monthly bill for programming. In fact the package I subscribe to is called “The Everything Pack.” So, apart from the porn and NFL channels, I get it all.

Tonight we turned the TV off because there was “nothing on.” That of course isn’t strictly true. There are thousands of options at this very moment, but nothing that interests us. Or that is fresh and new.

And we’ve got a digital video recorder (DVR) with many dozens of hours of programs on it. But none of those are a fit for our current mood.

So, yeah, like The Boss says, “57 (or 100s) of channels and nothing on.”

They now offer streaming services that allow you to order up programs on demand. But so far that has held little appeal for me. I want new stuff. I don’t want a rerun or a movie. I want a good 30-minute episode of “something good.” So until they invent the type of artificial intelligence that knows what mood I’m in and what type of action/drama/comedy/adventure escape my mind desires, I’m still stuck.

So decades have passed and technology has taken great leaps, but am I really any more ahead now than back when The Waltons was ending and I found nothing else on the aerial? Maybe not…but I still want my MTV.