Shopping For Pants

 I used to brag about my uncanny knack of being able to shop for clothes with far less drama and angst than my wife. In fact, eight years ago I wrote an entire blog about it HERE. If you click on that link you will feel the superiority practically jumping through the screen at you. This was a skill that I was quite proud of. I am here today to tell you that those days are officially over. My experiences over the past couple of days has served to wipe that self-satisfied shopping smirk off of my face. What, you might ask in the name of all that is holy, happened? I’ll tell you what happened, for the first time in five years I went shopping for pants. That’s what happened.

Ok, I’m not a big fashionista. I don’t want to look like a bum or anything, but I’m not the kind of guy who has to have the latest thing when it comes to clothing. Actually I’m confused by changing fashion trends. First of all, who exactly changes them? How does what is considered hip and trendy become so? It is a mystery, one that I suspect is the fault of a small but powerful cabal of conspirators in Paris and New York City. Be that as it may, the fact is that you wake up one day and realize that your pants are looking dated. Suddenly guys are walking around in different styles of pants. Those full cut puffy pleats aren’t working any longer. Besides, they are starting to look a bit frayed. When I look in my closet I see the carnage that has cut a swarth through much of the stuff I used to wear. There must be 6 or 7 suits hanging in there, all lined with a fine mist of dust on the far left of the closet. When I first entered the business world in the early 80’s I wore a suit and tie every single day while sharing a 9x9 office with a guy who chain smoked Marlboro’s. Now, the only time I have worn a suit in the past 10 years has been to weddings and funerals. On the left wall of my closet hangs a tie rack jammed full of silk ties of every color in the rainbow. I currently wear three of them, approximately 20 times a year at the office (never with a jacket) whenever I want to feel more professional. Its all part of yet another trend thats been with us for quite a while now…the drift away from formal and towards casual. I fully expect this trend will one day reverse itself, probably two weeks after I take all my suits over to Hope Thrift.

So, my collection of pants were old and unstylish. Big deal. I would just run over to Joseph A. Banks like I did the last time five years ago, spend ten minutes or so roaming around then see what I want, buy it, and be back home in less than an hour. Only…something strange and disturbing has happened to men’s pants over these past five years. Its as if a group of rogue tailors have colluded among themselves and decided what American men need is 15 different cuts of pants. 

The guy who drew the short straw over at J.A. Banks says to me, “So, you want dressy casual pants, do ya? What cut would you prefer?”

I look at him with a blank expression. “Wait…what?”

“Well, lets see, you can get this particular pant in straight leg, classic cut, athletic, trim fit, slim fit, or skinny cut.”

Having zero patience for this nonsense, I walked out and decided that Kohl’s probably had exactly what I wanted and would be cheaper too. I drive over to Kohl’s and discover the same dizzying array of cuts. Different brand, cheaper prices, but still with the cuts. Plus, what the heck has happened to Kohl’s? That place used to be a pretty buttoned up place. Now there are clothes laying around all over the place, picked over and disorganized. When I went to the changing room, every stall was full of discarded clothes from whoever had used the place over the last week! 

Undeterred, but feeling slightly annoyed, I went across Broad street to another of my old reliables…Men’s Warehouse. Here I was confronted not only with the cut business, but a new vexing problem. Color. I’m a rather conservative guy. For me, pants I’m planning to wear at my office, among other places, need to not be…how shall I say this…loud. When did men’s clothiers start offering khaki pants the color of pumpkin pie? Where was the great hue and cry among men for    Mauve and magenta? Who among us has ever walked into a clothing store looking for banana yellow pants? 

At this point I am completely annoyed and ended up going home. As I drove down Three Chopt I thought about all the times my wife has gone out clothes shopping, only to come back three hours later in tears. I wasn’t crying at this point but was beginning to feel an introduction to what I had always referred to as the shopping blues when it was happening to Pam.

The next day I go out again with a new game plan. I have done some googling and now had a better understanding of the subtle differences between Slim, Trim and athletic. Further, I had discovered that L.L. Bean might work out quite nicely. I had found a type of pants I might actually like on their website.  “Breathable fabric, water resistant, appropriate for the office and the golf course”, the sales pitch went. I show up over there and found more appropriate colors for a 63 year old man…black, gray, navy blue. Also, after an eternity in the changing room, I decided that straight leg in a 35x30 worked just fine. While I was at it I bought a new pair of stonewashed jeans using the same tyrannical new cut regime. However, L.L. Bean had no khakis that were khaki-color. if I wanted to walk around looking like yellow squash I was in luck, but since I don’t, I had to go to yet another store…Dillard’s, where I was commandeered by a super aggressive middle aged woman with a thick and menacing Russian accent…

“You not need skinny pants. They make you look like fool. You  need straight or classic. These. You try these on…now!!”

I hurried into the changing room as fast as I could and locked the door! The pants she had given me were actually perfect khaki pants. They fit beautifully and were exactly the right color. When I exited the changing room the Russian woman was standing like five feet from the door. She took the pants from me quickly, “You buy these now!”

When she rang them up they were insanely expensive…but there was no way in hades I was going to give this woman any trouble. I paid for them while flashing a nervous smile. To break the considerable tension I attempted to make conversation…

“So, you have an interesting accent. You from Russia?”

At this point, my mask-wearing saleswoman stopped what she was doing, stared at me while slowly lowering the mask, revealing clinched teeth, “I am Lithuanian.” She spoke the country of her birth an octave lower…then smiled broadly, replaced her mask. “You nice man.”

Finally, my two day pants buying mission was over. An international incident was avoided and I spent more money on a pair of khakis than I ever have my entire life.

Mistakes

        I mostly remember two things from my high school biology class several decades ago. One was that I was deeply in love with Arlene, a fellow sophomore who was also in the class. Alas, my love was unrequited: She broke my 15-year-old heart by asking one of my best friends to the Sadie Hawkins dance.

​The second thing is the project we did late in the school year called the Vertebrate Study. We had to write a fairly lengthy report on backboned creatures and on the day we turned it in, we were handed a test to gauge what we’d learned from our extensive, pre-internet research. I can’t tell you how many questions there were on that test because I only remember one: Birds are able to fly more easily because their bones are (blank). This was not a fact I’d turned up in my research and I had no idea how to fill in that blank, so I put some spectacularly incorrect answer. 

I will know until my dying day, however, that the bones of birds are hollow. 

​We really do learn from our mistakes. (Well, most of us do. I’m not sure Arlene did.) Our miscues have a way of lodgingfirmly in our memory.Maybe that’s why God seems to revel in using our frequently misguided efforts for good, to teach us some of life’s most important lessons. It’s so in character for him to take something we’ve done wrong and use it to make us wiser and more faithful than we were before. 

​It’s all grace.

​I’ve made, at last count, approximately a zillion mistakes way more serious than the hollow bones thing, and I have a tendency, at times, to think God must be pretty disgusted with me for all that. Lucky for me, and for all of us, he’s never thought the way I do. Maybe it’s that whole “my ways are higher than your ways” thing. His ways are certainly kinder and more patient than mine.

I can cite, for instance, some amazingly inappropriate things that have come out of my mouth at times when I’ve spoken before thinking about it. Some of these episodes are probably where the expression “cringe-worthy” originated. When I’ve consulted with my Maker about episodes like those afterward, I like to think he’s revealed to me not just the errors of my ways but how I might use a more thoughtful, considerate way to communicate in the future. I’ve rushed through events, conversations, tasks, days—all kinds of things, blundering past opportunities that might have been special moments or chances to do my best work. As I’ve thought about those times, I’d like to think that God’s shown me a slower, more present and deliberate approach to the days he’s given me now. I’ve made snap judgments about people and situations many, many times, only to discover repeatedly that this person is totally different than I thought or that something very different than I believed to be happening was really happening. Looking back, I’d like to think that God has used those moments to speak to me about a slower, more present and grounded way to go about my life.

​Spiritual writer Henri Nouwen suggests that we look at our lives with gratitude—the entirety of them. “True gratitude embraces all of life,” he says. “The good and the bad, the joyful and the painful, the holy and the not-so-holy. We do this because we become aware of God’s life, God’s presence in the middle of all that happens.”

​Later, he adds, “Everything that happens is part of our way to the house of the Father.”

​That’s a very redemptive perspective, something else so characteristic of our God. So, despite my life’s wrong turns, I’m working on being grateful for what God has shown me as I live them, and relying on his forgiveness for when my mistakes have caused others pain.

​I think of that sometimes when I see birds soaring by, no longer earthbound thanks to their strong, light, and hollow bones.

       

        Tom Allen

P.S. When I asked Tom to send me a photo of himself that I could put with his column the first one he sent was this…

Robert E. Lee

Yesterday, Robert E. Lee’s monument came down. For me it was a bittersweet moment. Most of my younger friends were ecstatic. Indeed, many of you can’t possibly understand my ambivalence. Much of it is generational. Some of it is the fact that when I was a young history major in college I read scores of biographies about the major players during the Civil War, Union and Confederate. I came away with a profound respect for many of them, great but flawed men. However, my feelings about many of them have changed over the years. The two portraits in the picture below once hung on a wall in my library. They no longer do for a variety of reasons. But in light of yesterday’s events, I remember now a blog I wrote just after the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville several years ago. I have reprinted the salient passages below:

When it comes to this entire statues controversy, I am not an absolutist. Each generation should have some say in how they interpret history. Although I happen to believe that the Monument Avenue statues are astonishingly beautiful works of art, and think that they are a valid record of the fact that our city was, in fact, the former capital of the Confederacy, I also understand how they might be viewed differently by a rather large segment of the city's population. The legacy of the Antebellum south was one of human bondage, the buying and selling of human beings. This is a fact of history that for many Americans is something that can't and shouldn't be celebrated.

 I am conflicted even as I write this. For over my shoulder on the wall behind me are two portraits hung in my library, one of Robert E. Lee and the other of Thomas Stonewall Jackson. I studied each of these men extensively in college and found them to both be fascinating men, complex, and tortured, whose lives were shot through with great tension and contradictions. Jackson, perhaps the finest  tactician in the history of this country, also nearly was kicked out of his Lexington Presbyterian church for teaching a class full of slave children how to read. The ironies were overwhelming. But, I came away from all of that study with a profound respect for each man's character. So their portraits hang in my library. For some of you reading this, you might be nodding in agreement. Others might be scratching your heads. I get it. I understand the tension, and the disagreements that flow from different readings of history.

But, here's the thing. What would I do if I knew that a family of African Americans were coming over for dinner? And suppose that this particular family had just lost a child at the hands of a white supremicist mob. What would I do with the portraits? You know what? I think I would remove them before they showed up. Not because I no longer cared about Lee or Jackson, but because I care much more about the tender feelings of my friends than I could ever care about a couple of dead generals. This is the essence of my position on statues. Let's all be a little less entrenched in our own positions, and more in tune with the point of view of people who might view them in a different light.

I suppose my bottom line is that I’m glad the Civil War turned out the way it did. Robert E. Lee made the choice to defend his home state of Virginia rather than honor the vow he took upon graduating from West Point as an officer in the United States Army, a decision that caused him a great deal of soul-searching anguish. But, ultimately he made the wrong decision. While his primary motivation may have been a sense of devotion to Virginia, his armies also were defending the institution of slavery, a crime against humanity that no amount of post-war rehabilitation can erase. Had he prevailed, thousands of African-Americans would have been kept in human bondage for years longer than they were. Ultimately, this is the verdict of history, one for which I am grateful.

So, where are these two portraits now? In the attic. The thirteen biographies of Lee, Jackson, Grant, JEB Stuart and Sherman are still in my library, but the portraits are not. They are still worth reading about, but the time for enshrinement has passed.

Father/Daughter Conversations

My daughter and I sometimes have strange text conversations. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is the fact that I am a writer and she is something of an expert in the fine art of understanding the English language…not to mention a fine editor. Consequently, a few days ago this happened:

Me: Hey, I found a list of some of the best words of all time. What do you think?

Bamboozled

Flabbergasted

Discombobulated 

Shenanigans

Cattywampus

Lollygag

Malarkey

Kerfuffle

Brouhaha 

Nincompoop

Skedaddle

Pumpernickel 

Kaitlin: ….Rutabaga

Me: And I would add asshattery, balderdash and knickknackery.

Kaitlin…Hullabaloo

Me: Rhubarb…I think that a day should not pass without using at least five of these words in a sentence.

Kaitlin: Agreed. We may bamboozle people with our shenanigans, but there’s no time for lollygagging!

Me: Enough with this discombobulated asshattery! If that rhubarb pie doesn’t come out of the oven pretty soon, there may very well be a brouhaha amongst the guests!

Kaitlin:…macadamia is another good one, and pomegranate.

Me: How about tomfoolery and pollyanish?

Kaitlin:…Flippertigibbet

Me: Wait…isn’t that Flibbertigibbet?

Kaitlin: Quite right!

Me: Not really sure what that even means.

Kaitlin:…Will-o-the-wisp… something you fiddle with, I think. No, actually it is a frivolous, chatty person.

Me: Now we know then…I’ve always been partial to the word Haphazard. Any word with a P AND a Z has to be on this list.

Kaitlin: Look up Batty-Fang—one of Jon’s favorites. 

Me: You should compile this list for your students and challenge them to write a 200 word essay using all of them!!  Yes. Batty-Fang…what Donald Trump did to the Republican Party.

Who says fathers and daughters don’t have anything substantial to talk about these days??

It’s All About the Throw Pillows…

4:45 AM is a dreadful time of day to wake up. It’s just a bit too early to give up on the idea of drifting back to sleep, yet close enough to your normal wake up time to consider getting up. So, a decision needs to be made. Unfortunately, no one does their best decision making at 4:45 AM. I glance over at Pam and she is enjoying the deep, peaceful sleep of the just. I crawl out of bed, give Lucy a scratch and head downstairs…where I hardly recognize the place. That’s because over the past couple of days, Pam has done a thing.

I believe that I am like most other men in that I could live in a house for two or three decades without ever feeling the urge to…redecorate. If I like the furniture, what on earth would possibly make me not like it? As far as the color scheme goes, I have no opinion one way or the other. I mean, once you hang curtains I feel like they are there for life unless they catch on fire or something, right? But Pam tells me that styles change and that our decor is dated. Our color scheme has outlived its useful life. She is tired of red. I am relieved to learn that our furniture will not have to be replaced since it is a neutral color. But, everything else will. Out with the decade-long reign of red. It has been determined that blue is now the thing. Everything must now be blue…and in our house, there is a lot of everything. Rugs, curtains, bath towels, kitchen towels, pillows, runners, throws and art work all must now conform to the new regime. She left the house two days ago with the credit card. By last night we had accumulated enough points for a trip to Aruba.

The deed is done. Well, nearly done. We still haven’t found art work for the wall behind the sofa. I’m told it is a crucial detail of the project because it will tie everything together. I’m sure this is true and I nod my head as if I completely understand.The problem is, this new artwork will replace my favorite wall hanging in the entire house…

As I recall, this was my only contribution to the last decoration scheme. I love it so much. There’s a Casablanca vibe and the umbrella’s color was perfect. However, it just won’t do any longer. It had a great run though. I’m thinking I will move it upstairs to the TV room. There’s no way I’m putting it in the attic or donating it to Hope Thrift. Plus, if you knew how long it took me to get that whole thing hung perfectly straight you will understand my reluctance to take it down.

But, I must say now that Pam has put all of the new blue stuff in place, it looks amazing. It really is like a new space, all freshly reimagined. It would never have occurred to me that it needed reimagining. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why men like me should always marry women like Pam.

No More COVID Jokes

I’ve learned something the hard way recently. I’ve learned that if you attempt to make a COVID-related joke on Facebook, the comment section turns into a contentious back and forth of name calling, anecdotal evidence which proves nothing, ad hominem attacks and lots of profanity. In other words…The Housewives of Beverly Hills. And while that might be great fun for some of you, I find it tedious, pointless and boring. So, no more virus jokes from me, which is just as well since most COVID jokes are…tasteless.

Here’s the thing, its not like there aren’t some really great COVID jokes out there, but if I post one, someone will inevitably chime in with, “Funny, but actually…”

For example, I could say…What’s the difference between COVID-19 and Romeo and Juliet? One’s the coronavirus and other is a Verona crisis. To which someone would reply, “But, to get the vaccine or to not get the vaccine, that is the question.”

Or I could go with… Back in my day, you would cough to cover up a fart. Now, with COVID-19, you fart to cover up a cough. But if I did someone would point out that the farter in question needed to be wearing a mask!

Of course I could just go with quarantine jokes instead, but they would be problematic too. I could say, “My Mom used to tell me that I would never amount to anything just laying around on the sofa all day. But look at me now, Ma! I’m freaking saving the world!” Or how about, “After years of wanting to thoroughly clean my house but lacking the time, this week I discovered that wasn’t the reason.” Or even, “The World Health Organization announced that dogs cannot contract COVID-19. Dogs previously held in quarantine can now be released. To be clear…WHO let the dogs out.” But if I did, someone out there wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to point out that the World Health Organization is a tool of the Trilateral Commission or something. So, since half of humor is reading the room, I have decided to take a step back from anymore COVID-themed humor.

Its just as well. With COVID jokes it takes two or three days before most people even know they got it.

Trying Times for Optimists

We’ve been at this for 18 months now, this COVID thing. I can hardly remember what life was like before. The virus seems to have changed everything, serving as the catalyst for the ascension of madness in our world. It is the single greatest dividing point in society, having vanquished even Donald Trump, who actually got booed for suggesting that people get vaccinated at one of his recent rallies. The United States of America has jumped the shark.

Here’s how it goes. Normal, well educated people come to wildly opposing conclusions about…literally everything having to do with COVID-19. Someone posts a chart that says that 95% of current hospitalizations for COVID-19 are of the unvaccinated. Someone else then claims that the chart is rigged by lying doctors and hospitals who are making up the admissions data out of ulterior motives like money or pressure from their superiors. So the rest of us are left to try and decide who we chose to believe…the chart or the alleged crooked doctors and hospital administrators. If we side with the chart we are assumed to be liberty-hating authoritarians. If we believe that the vast majority of public health officials across the country are all in on some kind of giant information conspiracy we are left with the obvious conclusion that we are living in the last days. When a conspiracy comes along powerful enough to persuade the nation’s doctors—a notoriously prickly and independent lot—to falsify admissions records in masse, can anything stop it??

Wearing a mask helps stop the spread of the virus.

No it doesn’t. It is simply a tool to enslave us.

The vaccine is enormously effective in not only preventing getting the virus, but also lessening the severity of the symptoms if you do get it.

No. The vaccine is worthless and could possibly contain microbes designed to manipulate the brain, making us more susceptible to mind control.

Wearing a mask is an act of selflessness and a form of respect for the most vulnerable around us.

No. Wearing a mask is a virtue signaling pose by people who want to feel morally superior to everyone else.

It is virtually impossible to find a common ground between these two schools of thought. Where would the point of agreement come between these two world views? I can’t imagine where…and this is why I have never been so discouraged about the state of public discourse in my 63 years.

I am at heart an optimist. When I contemplate the future I tend to think of innovation, progress, and opportunity. It is my belief that the arc of history bends decidedly towards those three things. I mean, 100 years ago the number one cause of death in America was diarrhea, people. The progress we have made in quality of life measures is astonishing and unprecedented. So, I have great reason for optimism. But it is becoming more difficult with each passing day to imagine how the great COVID-divide gets bridged…that doesn’t involve an awful lot of death.

Grinding

I cannot tell you guys just how annoying it is getting old. Some days I feel as good as I have ever felt. Then there are days like today. I am about to head out the door for a morning run. This despite a persistently sore hip that feels as if it might pop out of joint at the slightest provocation. To add insult to injury, about 30 minutes ago I was standing at the kitchen counter waiting for my coffee to brew when I made the mistake of opening a cabinet to retrieve my mug. The mug in question was on the second shelf, consequently it required me to reach up and to the right. This simple movement resulted in an uncomfortable pull in my back between the shoulder blades. I felt a slight pop, and now I have a wonderful new painful pulled muscle to deal with. However, the news is not all bad. My morning trip to the bathroom went off without incident.

Some of you might be thinking (along with my wife) why exactly I am heading out for a 5 miler at such an ungodly hour if I have a bad hip? This is a fair question which has many answers, none of which are satisfying (especially to my wife). First of all, putting in 15-20 miles of road work a week is the only thing insuring that I don’t weigh 300 pounds. Second of all, I do some of my best thinking when I’m dripping in sweat. And lastly…I’m stubborn, a trait I inherited from my sainted mother. When confronted with sore muscles or any number of other humiliations of aging you can either pull back or you can grind through it. You pull back enough and you wake up one day covered in wrinkles, angry at the world and shouting at kids to get off your lawn. If you grind through the pain and humiliation, you at least give yourself a fighting chance.

So, I chose to grind.

But, I always bring my cell phone with me so if I pull up lame I can text Pam to come pick me up!!

Morning Coffee and Dad Joke Blog

Ok. I’m hesitant to write what I’m about to write because the last thing I want to be is…that guy…the insufferable guy at the party who corners you then goes on an on about his latest state of the art coffee press/diffuser, the one that has the organic charcoal thing. You know who I mean, obsessed coffee guy. To be honest, I must confess that 35 years ago I was that guy. I had discovered the Gevalia coffee club, and would eagerly anticipate my monthly two pound shipment of coffee beans from around the world. The memory is as excruciating as it is humbling. Now, I buy Gevalia at Publix, already ground, and am happy as a clam. But, be that as it may, what follows will feel and sound like a trip down memory lane. I blame my son and his wife.

The last time I was in Nashville, Patrick and Sarah told us about this little coffee shop that was across from our hotel called, The Well, and insisted that we try some. It was wonderful. So, Sarah, my very thoughtful daughter-in-law, remembered and bought me a bag for Christmas. It has been in the cabinet ever since, waiting for its opportunity. This morning, I ran out of my regular stuff. I saw the bag up there so I opened it up, popped it in the grinder and made myself a cup.

Since I haven’t been a member in good standing of the CSC* in quite a while, I was unaware of this trend of blending beans from Africa with those from Central America. Back in the day you could get Ethiopian beans or beans from Central America. I guess this is like a coffee without borders sort of thing, perhaps an attempt by the coffee aficionado world to make some sort of political statement against immigration restrictions. Who knows? All I know is, this was one fantastic cup of joe.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking…$16.95 for a bag of coffee beans?? Two things…first, my Nashville children are generous, and second, the folks at The Well are busy doing good things.

On another note. I worked a volunteer shift at Hope Thrift Saturday. As soon as I walked in the door, one of the other volunteers or maybe one of the managers handed me something they had sat aside just for me…



See, once you develop the reputation as a devotee of infantile humor, people come out of the woodwork offering suggestions. This particular book is terrible, but it was nice of whoever went to the trouble of thinking of me. A few samples:

What brand of underwear does the World Farting Champion wear?

Fruit of the Boom…

What do you call a motorcycle with a sense of humor?

A Yamahahahaha…

Why are batteries always sad?

Because they are never included…

What do you call a stupid pirate?

The pillage idiot…

So, yeah…




* Coffee Snob Club

I Really Miss My Wife

I haven’t written much here this week. I’ve been distracted by the silence. Today is Day 9 since she left for Maine. Lucy and I can’t take much more of this.

It hasn’t been all bad. The first couple of days were actually nice. There is a certain feeling of freedom when you suddenly find yourself alone. It begins to occur to you that you can do anything you want at any time you wish to do it. There is a sense of relief that comes when you realize that there is no one to annoy or be annoyed by. If I accidentally leave the refrigerator door open and it begins to emit that hideous high pitched beep, there is nobody here to sigh heavily and flash me an eye-roll. I just go over and shut the door. Was that so hard? If I want to go for a run when its 90 degrees and as humid as a Bangkok sauna outside I don’t have to worry about anyone lecturing me about hydration and the limits of my no longer 30 year old body. If I want to eat a lunch consisting of bacon and cheese I get no negative feedback.

But about Day 3 you start to feel a gnawing loneliness. This isn’t the debilitating loneliness of depression, but rather the frank acknowledgment that you desperately miss the love of your life. You just aren’t the same man when she isn’t here. You’re still you, you’re just not as good.

There are many things you begin to miss. You miss the sound of her. Her footsteps around the house sound different than mine, they are softer, more graceful, the way she flits around is missed when it is no longer there. The sound she makes when she is getting ready in the morning is something that you have become so accustomed to that its absence makes the house feel abandoned. The sound of her voice downstairs when she is talking with a friend on her cellphone. You had no idea what a lovely sound that is until its not there.

You miss the smell of her…when she breezes down the stairs passing you in the living room with her hair wrapped up in a towel after getting out of the shower. When you sit on the sofa a certain way you catch a whiff of the way she smells when she’s cooking dinner. When you walk in the closet to find a clean shirt, her smell is everywhere. You find yourself lingering in there a little longer than you normally do.

You miss hearing her tell you about her day. This daily ritual of every marriage, so easy to overlook, and such a spectacularly ordinary thing, becomes something you would give anything to hear. 

You miss having someone you can have an unguarded conversation with. She is the only person in the world who you can speak to without fear. With anyone  else there’s the possibility that you will offend or be misunderstood or embarrass yourself. But with her, she gets you, understands your manner of speech, can translate your often nonsensical ramblings into something meaningful.

At night its worse. You have always had trouble sleeping without her. That hasn’t changed. But its not just that, its the nightly rituals you miss. She is a night owl. But sometimes she falls asleep downstairs with the television on and for some unexplained reason,  you can tell. So, you miss those times when you walk downstairs, find her sound asleep with schoolwork in her lap. You miss leaning over and kissing her on her forehead, turning the television off and turning out the lights.

On Day 9 you miss her a lot more than you ever have for two reasons. First, you have never been apart for 9 days. Ever. But secondly, she has not had a great week away. There have been difficulties. She is worn out. You can hear it in her voice when she calls. She is dreading the long two day drive home. She is a nervous wreck worrying about all the details. There are many things that could go wrong, and you are helpless to do anything about it.

But, you know one thing for sure—she is a super hero and will rise to the occasion like she always does.

For the next couple of days I will go nowhere without my cell phone. I will volunteer at Hope Thrift to stay busy. I will cut the grass and clean the house, all the while glancing at the clocks on the wall.

I hope that this hasn’t sounded terribly pathetic. I’m a grown man for crying out loud, not some lovestruck newlywed. I just miss her, that’s  all.

I Sure Could Use Bertha About Now

I know its all in my head at this point, but that doesn’t mean its not a real thing. Here’s the deal…I can’t sleep without Pam. It has been this way for years. Whenever I have to travel on business without her, no matter how luxuriously comfortable the hotel, I toss and turn all night. On the few occasions when she goes somewhere and leaves me here at the house the same thing happens. I go to bed at the normal hour feeling a normal amount of sleepiness. I turn out the lights and get into bed and then my eyes pop open like the eyes of one of those ventriloquist dummies. After what seems like an hour or so of tossing and turning I eventually drift off in an uneven and fretful sleep which eventually ends some time between 3 and 4 in the wee hours when I wake up for good. This morning when it happened I laid there in the darkness trying to make up a Dad Joke. I actually came up with a decent one…

You hear about the house that went up for sale right across the street from a grizzly bear preserve?

The Realtor described it this way: This place has great cub appeal….

Now that I see it written out, maybe my use of the word decent was optimistic. Luckily, I have put these sleepless nights to good use. It has allowed me to spend lots of time writing. I’ve been working off and on on my fourth novel for over a year now. It is a complicated story with a lot of moving parts and consequently difficult. But I have found that I do some of my best writing at 3 in the morning. It’s coming along quite nicely.

What I really need right now is Bertha, the window fan of death. Long time readers of The Tempest will remember her, the homemade box window fan that my father built and installed in my bedroom window when I was a child, a mere five feet from the spot where I laid down my head every night. It was like going to sleep on an airport runway. But sleep I did. A friend of mine sent me a picture out of the blue a couple days ago with the caption…Bertha’s Distant Cousin

Much fancier than Bertha but definitely from the same family.

In case you missed the original Bertha post… https://doug-thetempest.blogspot.com/2012/09/bertha-window-fan-of-death.html

Samaritans

I’m just going to leave this here….

This story is pretty incredible. 

"Give me a ready deck."

Somewhere, a few thousand feet beneath the waves of the South China Sea, there are a dozen or two helicopters. If an expedition came across them, they might believe that there was some great battle that had been fought in those waters. Perhaps they would see the emblem on the helicopters: a blue circle with a white star and red stripes, and wonder, "did America suffer some catastrophic loss here?" But if they looked closer, they might notice something else. Something unexpected. The choppers would be undamaged, save for that done by time and water and salt. The expedition would find no torn metal, no broken landing gear, no rotors destroyed. They might believe that, as incredible as it seems, the Americans intentionally scuttled their own equipment. But, for what possible purpose would a military force destroy their own equipment? Faced with such a question, perhaps they might remember the words of G. K. Chesterton, who once opined, "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." Only, in this case, April 29, 1975, what they loved was above them. 

This was the end of the Vietnam war, and the USS Midway--and the entire 7th fleet--was tasked with saving as many South Vietnamese refugees as possible. Some might claim that the saving of refugees was certainly not in the vital national interests of America. Perhaps not. We always have the option of seeing the person, lying in a ditch, and continuing on. We are free to leave them, telling ourselves as we go, "they are not my neighbor." Or, when we see them, we can be moved with compassion, and bind up their wounds, and show them mercy. Perhaps this is really the only national interest of Samaria. 

Perhaps the 7th fleet found that day that they could be both Americans and Samaritans. 

That day the USS Midway had already saved thousands of refugees. Chopper after chopper came and landed, bearing displaced families. And then came a sight that must have caused the sailors on board to gaze in astonishment: a small Cessna, circling them from above. Three times the pilot attempted to drop a note onto the deck of the carrier. Three times the wind took it. 

On board the Cessna was one Maj. Buang-Ly of the Vietnamese air force. Though he had likely flown many missions during the war, this was to be his most important. Although the tiny plane only has seats for two souls, Buang-Ly had managed to fit 6 on board in addition to himself: his wife and their five small children. His youngest, 14 months, sat on the lap of his mother. The other 4 children, the oldest being only six years old, huddled in the plane's tail section.

Buang-Ly was starting to run out of items to toss out of his plane. Perhaps fittingly, his fourth note he attached to his pistol--a pistol meant to save his life. It turns out it did. The pistol, with his note tucked into the holster, dropped onto the deck of the Midway. 

The note read, "Can you move the helicopter to the other side, I can land on your runway, I can fly for one hour more, we have enough time to move. Please rescue me! Major Buang, wife and 5 child."

The Midway was commanded by Capt. Lawrence Chambers. He had been given command of the carrier only a few weeks before. Chambers consulted the Admiral in charge to apprise him of the situation. The Admiral told Chambers to instruct the plane to ditch. Other pilots that day had ditched as well. The problem though, Chambers realized, was that those were helicopter pilots. They would be ditching after a fairly controlled water landing. The Cessna was a fixed wing aircraft, with no way of making a controlled water landing with the possibility of having the small children in the tail section surviving the impact.

Chambers faced a decision. Continue on and leave the man in the air to fend for himself, or stop, and help his neighbor. Chambers realized what Buang-Ly did not, that simply moving one or two choppers to one side would not give him enough room to land. There was only one possible solution: push enough helicopters overboard to give Buang-Ly a chance. Fully believing that a court martial awaited him, and that his career, and possibly his freedom, would be at an end in a few hours, Chambers gave his order: scuttle the helicopters. 

As he watched millions of dollars in equipment sink to the sea, along with any chance he ever had of continuing in the Navy, Capt. Chambers gave an order to Cmdr. Vern Jumper who was in charge of all flight operations aboard the ship. "Vern, give me a ready deck."

The entire crew jumped into action. One by one choppers went into the sea. But, one by one more choppers landed, as they approached and saw there was available space aboard the ship. They would be pushed into the sea too. 

The deck was cleared. Wet, but cleared. However, this was a Cessna that needed to land on the deck. A plane that has no tail hook because it was never built to land on a carrier. Not only that, it had to be landed by a pilot who had never seen a carrier much less attempted to land on one. It would be his first attempt. He wouldn't get another. 

The quick thinking Chambers knew that if Buang-Ly, his wife, and five children were going to have any chance, he would need some additional help from the ship itself. Chambers ordered his ship to turn directly into the headwind and make steam for 25 knots (29 mph). This would allow the plane to approach with a roughly 46 mph headwind to assist in slowing the landing. There went the aircraft carrier, speeding along at nearly top speed. All 1001 feet of it. All 64,000 tons of it. A floating city whose one purpose at that moment was to save a family. Or, perhaps, saving families was always its mission. Perhaps that is meant to be the mission of every US carrier. "...but because he loves what is behind him." Though sometimes we might forget. 

The men above the Midway were certainly reminded that day, as they watched Buang-Ly glide into a perfect landing on their deck. Capt. Chambers would later report, "...the aircraft cleared the ramp and touched down on center line at the normal touchdown point. Had he been equipped with a tail hook he could have bagged a number 3 wire. He bounced once and came stop abeam of the island, amid a wildly cheering, arms-waving flight deck crew..." Years later, Chambers would remark that Buang-Ly is "The bravest guy I know." This landing made Buang-Ly the first Vietnamese pilot to ever land on an aircraft carrier. Those on the ship marveled at his piloting expertise, and bravery as a husband and father. 

"And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’"

Maybe the crew had this verse in mind when they established a fund for the Buang family. Maybe they thought of it when Chambers was raised to the rank of Rear Admiral. Maybe they thought it when Buang and his entire family became American citizens. 

What we can say is that Buang and Chambers started out the morning of April 19th as citizens of different countries. One American. One Vietnamese. But it so happens that they had dual citizenship all along. It turns out they were both Samaritans. They both saw the need of others and were willing to give their lives, and livelihood for their neighbor. For in the end, the greatest Americans, the greatest Vietnamese, the greatest citizen of any country, are always first citizens of Samaria.

I’m Doing Just Fine

For those of you out there who had doubts as to my ability to fend for myself in the kitchen while the beautiful and talented Mrs. Dunnevant is away for a week in Maine, I offer the following photographic evidence to the contrary…

Dummer’s Beach and My Wife

My wife grew up spending every summer of her life at a campground called Dummer’s Beach on Webb Lake in Weld, Maine. Every single summer for the first 49 years of her life. It was there that I got introduced to Maine 38 years ago. Her Mom and Dad had a permanent site on the campground and a big RV camper parked on it just steps from the lake. But, ten years ago Russ and Vi finally sold the camper and gave up the site. Pam and I had discovered Mid-Coast Maine by then so we replaced Dummer’s Beach campground with beautiful lake houses only a 25 minute drive from the ocean. Pam’s parents have made a few trips up to Dummer’s since giving up their site to visit with life long friends, but the brutal drive up 95 has gotten to be too much for them. This year they really wanted to go up and stay in one of the cabins…one last time…but Pam was worried sick about the two of them making a 15 hour, two day drive. Neither one of them are as steady on their feet as they used to be. Pam just couldn’t find peace in her heart about it so…

This morning, Pam left to go over to their house at 6:18 am, her car packed with all of their things, to pick them up and drive them up for the week. She will serve as their official chaperone, driver and trip boss. The three of them will spend the week in a small cabin close to the beach with Pam sleeping on a futon.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what it means to honor thy father and mother.

I know my wife. It has been ten years since she has made that left turn off of 142 onto the long dirt road that leads to the most iconic image of her life…

When this sight peeks through the pines, my wife will cry. She will not feel silly or make any apologies…but she will weep. This place is in her heart, bones and marrow. She grew up here and it has that profound power of place that has gripped the imagination of human beings since the dawn of time. When we would go up every year with the kids, eventually it began to have the same impact on us. My children fell for the place at a very young age and both of them maintain a longing for Maine that survives to this day. But none of us had it as bad as Pam. Often, I would see her off by herself taking it all in…

And now, she will visit for the first time in ten years. It will be different. It will probably seem smaller. She has stayed on so many beautiful lakes in Maine now, back then this one was all she knew. This time she will get to see it with fresh eyes and from new vantage points. She will go out with her Dad on kayaks, something she never did back in the day…and she brought her paddle board. The thought of her out a couple of miles in the middle of this majestic lake with Tumbledown Mountain looming to the west almost brings tears to my eyes. But this week won’t be a vacation for Pam. She is there to see to it that her parents have a wonderful and safe vacation. It will be work, and when she gets home she will need a vacation.

So, if you are so inclined, say a prayer or two for them this week. Pray for traveling mercies, for cooperative weather, good health and patience all around. While you’re at it, put in a word for me, this being only the third time in 37 years of marriage that I will be without her for an entire week. 



Our last family picture on the morning we left Dummer’s for the last time.

The Wrong Way

I have written many times before in this space about my feelings with regards to American involvement in far flung military posts all around the world. In short, I’m against it. Perhaps no such far flung post has been more infuriating than Afghanistan. I understood the original reasoning for our adventure there 20 years ago, but ever since the original mission was completed it has been an epic misadventure. We followed Great Britain and the Soviet Union down the rat hole in the vain conceit that we could bring “democracy” to the ungovernable tribes who have violently resisted such notions for the past 4000 years.

So, when Donald Trump negotiated a total troop withdrawal, it was one of the few things he did as President that I agreed with. Neither of his two predecessors had the guts to do it. For that I give the man credit, like the broken clock that is right twice a day. 

But, there is a right way and a wrong way to do anything. What we have witnessed this past week is the wrong way. President Biden spent much of his last news conference assuring the American press corps that the upcoming withdrawal from Afghanistan would not be another Saigon, it would be orderly and that the Afghan army was more than capable of defending their country. His assurances turned out to be spectacularly wrong.

Now we learn that the President ignored the nearly unanimous advice of his intelligence services that the Afghan army was a disaster and that the Taliban would overrun Kabul. The heartbreaking scenes of people clinging to airplanes at the Kabul airport were actually worse than 1975 Saigon. This wasn’t grainy footage from half a mile away. These scenes of humiliation and defeat were in crystal clear HD. Up close and personal.

Victory has many fathers, but defeat is an orphan. Biden is getting hammered for his blame-shifting and stubborn refusal to admit that the debacle we have witnessed is partially his own fault. Why weren’t Americans and allied personnel withdrawn earlier? Why was so much valuable military equipment left to be gobbled up by insurgents? Whatever the reasons, its too late to do anything about it now. The disaster in money and human treasure that was Afghanistan for the last 20 years is over and our humiliation and defeat is absolute.

But there is a ton of blame to go around. Each of the last three Presidents deserves their fair share. This was a bipartisan debacle. Although it saddens me to see the scenes of chaos and the desperation of the many “helpers” who have been shamefully left to their fate, it doesn’t change the fact that we had no business sending men and women to die in Afghanistan for 20 years. Full stop. Could this withdrawal have been done with more intelligence, planning and care? Absolutely, and Joe Biden will pay the price for his bumbling and feckless stubbornness. But we shouldn’t forget that withdrawal IS the right decision. The United States of America cannot be the policeman of the world. It is not our job to bring democracy anywhere. We’ve got our own democracy that could use some work. If the Afghan army, after billions and billions worth of military equipment and training, isn’t willing to fight for their own country, why in hell should we?

What do you say to the mothers and fathers of the men and women who have given their lives in this effort? No words will suffice. So, forgive me if I don’t grieve for the Afghan people. The only people I’m grieving for are the brave soldiers who gave the ultimate sacrifice for such a fool hearty and tragic mission. The politicians who beat the drums for this war and continued to support it for twenty long years by their apathy and silence have an awful lot of blood on their hands. They include multiple presidents and politicians from both parties. It is a national disgrace.

If, as a result of this nightmare, the American people no longer will allow this type of nation-building misadventure, perhaps this will serve as a turning point. From now on the American military should only be used as a defensive force, and when it is deployed, it should be unleashed in all of its fury, not hamstrung by ignorant people who never served a day in the military. What our armed forces have been demonstrably proficient at over the 245 years of our history is killing our enemies and destroying their cities. Asking them to win the hearts and minds of hostile barbarian tribes of people who hate all westerners by building schools and libraries is NOT the job of fighting men and women. Our politicians need to stop asking them to do social work. Oh…and next time an American politician asks for a commitment of American soldiers and sailors in a foreign conflict, how about a declaration of war first?

 

The Inexorable March of Civilization

What a Picture!

The new Taliban government struggling with their first Zoom call…

Which one of these guys will write the next great Afghan novel?

I wonder what their position is on Transgender bathrooms?

So many questions….

Thanks, Dodie

A very sweet review of the book I wrote about the deaths of my parents. Thank you, Dodie Whitt!!

About Yesterday’s cartoon…

Like most Americans I find myself being whipsawed between two completely opposite views about COVID-19 and all of its variants. Both were on full display yesterday in the comment feed of a cartoon I posted on Facebook. Any summary of these opposing belief systems that I might attempt will not satisfy anyone, but I will give it a try anyway.

One group is convinced that COVID-19 is nothing more than the flu, and all of the public health recommendations from the vaccine to social distancing to masking are at best nonsense and at worst a naked power grab by government to rob us of our liberty and eventually usher in Communism. It is believed that the vaccine is dangerous, kills people and might even contain deliberately toxic elements intended to facilitate future government control over us (microchips). The wearing of masks is useless, possible harmful, and only serves to divide us. In addition, the public health workers in this country are only making their recommendations based upon their pursuit of money and power, and are intentionally and knowingly working at cross-purposes to what is best for the American people. 

The second group believes that the vaccine is safe and effective. Although the CDC has been all over the place on many of their recommendations, this group generally complies with whatever the latest guidance is, figuring that as more and more is learned about the virus, changes in protocols are inevitable. Some in this group are strict about the social distancing, others not so much. Some are ruthless when it comes to mask wearing, others are hit and miss. But generally, this group tends to accept the consensus of opinion of the world’s epidemiologists and scientists who have devoted their lives to the study of viruses and pandemics. These folks tend to think that government actions during this pandemic, while often maddeningly confusing and ham fisted, have been taken out of the desire to save lives.

There is a third group, although smaller in number than the other two. This is the group of poor souls who have been sequestered in their homes for 18 months paralyzed by fear, convinced that they are one unguarded deep breath away from death.

The one thing that everyone has in common is that we all hate wearing masks. All of us hate social distancing. Nobody likes to get shots. Everyone hates the disruption of business, the loss of income and jobs that shutdowns bring. Nobody likes to be quarantined.

My own views on COVID have gone through many phases over the past year and a half. In the beginning I was a bit suspicious, to be honest. I personally knew exactly no one who had it. Being a natural skeptic made me question the original shutdown. I thought it a terrible overreach, not to mention an unprecedented attempt to bring the world’s largest economy to a grinding halt. I was fearful more of the impact on my business than I was on my health. But then my young, healthy neighbor got it. She became deathly ill and was down for over a month. Another neighbor who works as a nurse in a COVID unit at one of the local hospitals told me about what her days were like, of the marathon running guy in his early 50’s who died after being on a ventilator for two weeks. It was a sobering story of death. Then I learned of people I knew who had lost their lives, some older but many middle aged with no serious health problems. then I began to watch the numbers explode. Then, just yesterday while my Facebook feed was alive with this debate, a friend tells me of his 40 year old neighbor who died last week of COVID, his wife deathly ill in ICU, and their two children having been sent to Ohio to live with relatives. If this whole COVID thing was a hoax, it sure seemed to have a ton of co-conspirators. So, I began reluctantly to take the thing seriously. Pam and I both got the vaccine as soon as it was available. We wore our masks when that was the prevailing advice. We attempted the social distancing thing with less success…it is so hard to stay six feet away from other human beings!! But, when the numbers began to drop and the guidance changed, we happily went back to our normal lives, grateful for the miracle that was the vaccine. So, put us in the second group.

But now comes this Delta thing. Now comes the possibility of more mask wearing, perhaps a booster shot, more social distancing…and I hate the very thought of all of it. But I have a decision to make. Do I allow myself to believe that all of the official protocols by Federal, State and local public health officials are a plot to bring Communism to America, and that every single doctor and scientist making these recommendations is on the take and drunk with power? Or do I trust that they are doing the best they can to fight a complex virus on the fly and do what they say? For me the decision is an easy one. In life, it is vitally important that human beings stay in their lane. I know a little bit about a lot of things. I know an awful lot about a few things. But I know virtually nothing about epidemiology, biology, pandemics or medicine. I think it best to defer to people with specialized knowledge. If this makes me a sheeple, thats a chance I will have to take.

We live in an age of greatly diminished trust. Nobody trusts anything or anyone anymore, and for good reason. But thats a horribly unsatisfying way to live. Believing that everything that you disagree with is a plot against you being waged by faceless, nameless villains is exhausting. If I might mix metaphors..when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail…But sometimes a duck is just a duck.

Again, I always prefer humor and sarcasm to make my points for me rather than cold, dull logic. So, I will end this blog with two great memes I ran across yesterday…

God bless you all and have a great weekend.

An Ongoing Process

How do plants comfort each other when they're sad?

….they…

….photosympathize

I hope all those firefighters from around the world that are rushing to help with Greek wildfires brought chemicals extinguishers and not just hoses…

Everyone knows You never use water on a Greece fire.

I got hit by a frozen raindrop this afternoon…

It hurt like hail.

That’s all I’ve got folks. Haven’t written anything since I’ve been back home, not because I’ve had nothing to say, its just that being back in the real world — 

when that world is 95 degrees — saps the initiative. By next week I’ll be totally back and clicking on all cylinders. For now, its an ongoing process.

But, I still have my pictures…

Maine by the Numbers

Got back today around 1:45 after 40 days in Maine. The drive home took longer than the drive up by about an hour, roughly 14 and a half hours vs. 15 and a half hours. Both trips took their toll on my back and hamstrings, but we made it without incident. Tomorrow will be all about work. I will get into the office around 7:30 or so to face the music. But this evening I wish to recap Maine 2021 by the numbers…

3275 miles driven

52 miles paddled in the kayak 

Over 50 fish caught

Two rounds of very bad golf played

Three puzzles completed. This one by just Pam and me…

Half a dozen hook accidents while fishing, one which required me yanking the embedded hook out of my finger with a pair of pliers while in my kayak.

Dove into cold lake approximately 40 times, give or take

One broken toe

Five lures lost in an assortment of trees due to casting errors

$1925 spent in Mid-Coast Maine grocery stores

$1275 spent in a plethora of dining establishments 

Seven books read

Over 40 naps taken

Read over 500 email alerts from Zillow and Redfin informing me of houses for sale in Maine that I might be interested in.

Number of houses that I was interested in? Zero.

Number of times either Pam or I complained about how much our hips hurt. 176

Percentage of meals eaten on the screened in porch at the house. 100%

Highest temperature endured over entire 40 days in Maine? 82. Actually, we counted only two days in the 80’s. The rest of the time it was in the 70’s and even several days in the low to mid 60’s

Lowest morning temperature at Quantabacook? 48.

Number of days before we return? 54…and counting.

I Don’t Get It

Our Maine adventure is sadly drawing to a close. We only have three more days, two of which will be cloudy with a bit of rain. No matter how long we stay here, we are never ready to leave. There is only one thing that I will not miss when we finally drive away from this house, these guys…

Manny, Moe and Jack here have been watching our every move for nearly three weeks now. I sit here every morning knowing that I am being watched which is a bit disconcerting. For three weeks I have looked up at these guys and marveled at the concept of hanging the busts of dead animals on the walls of a house. I have many friends who do this. They are perfectly wonderful people. But for the life of me I cannot comprehend what the attraction is of immortalizing animals that you have…killed. 

You’re out in the woods hunting, which best I can tell, involves long stretches of silent boredom punctuated by short bursts of manic action involving gunfire. You see your prey out there fifty or even a hundred yards away. You lift your rifle slowly, bring the beast into your sights and then squeeze the trigger. If successful, the animal staggers then falls to the ground. You and your buddies gather around the freshly dead creature and congratulate each other. That’s basically the extent of your interaction with the recently departed. You had no prior history, no past experience that bound you together. It was just in the right place at the wrong time and you shot him from your hidden place at a considerable and safe distance. 

I’m not a hunter, but I don’t have a problem with anyone who is a hunter. My extended family is full of them. I have dear friends who love everything about hunting. But who on earth was the first guy who thought after shooting a buck, “I know what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna pay somebody a ton of money to slice the torso off of this thing, fill it full of God knows what to preserve it for eternity, attach it to a plaque and hang it on the wall over the fireplace. The wife is gonna love it!!”

It can’t be any emotional attachment, right? If that were the case we would pay a taxidermist to stuff our dogs when they die, but nobody does that because…it would be creepy and weird. But its nothing to walk into a lake cabin and see beasts of all kinds hanging all over the place. 

All I know is, when I glance up at the moose up there and see that giant, hulking mass of fur and antlers, I just hope he’s not plotting revenge!

The Very Bottom of the Dad Joke Barrel

For her birthday, I took my wife to an orchard and we stood there looking at the trees for half an hour.

…not the Apple Watch she had in mind apparently.

I quit my job as a personal trainer because the weights were too heavy.

I just handed in my too weak notice…

Know why the Jedi don’t have a navy?

Because sailing is a path to the dockside…

What did the digital clock say to the grandfather clock?

“Look Grandpa, no hands!!”

What do you call a crowd of chess players bragging about their wins in a hotel lobby?

Chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.

I had to call the IT guy at work because of a tech issue on my laptop. He says, “Have you tried disabling cookies?”

I said, “Well, there was that one time when I bit the legs off a gingerbread man…”