by Peter Rodman
"If it was your wife he killed, you'd want him dead!"
Yes. Of course. There's a big difference between a bleeding-heart liberal and a bloody-nosed liberal. I'd want revenge. But is my judgment to be trusted when I'm howling with pain? Am I inclined to be rational?
When I'm angry, hold on to me, calm me down. Keep me from acting. Someone else needs to argue that case. And if I repudiate everything I'm saying now at some future time, it doesn't make any difference. What's right is right. The death penalty is wrong.
Ask Mr. Ecology!
Dear Mr. Ecology,
I love whales and have all their albums. I've even changed my name to a whale name. I hope to record my songs and play them for the whales, then record the whale responses. What else can I do to help the whales? --Tahruu Humpback Whale.
Dear Tahruu,
buying whale albums doesn't help all whales, just the whales with recording contracts. The best thing you can do to help the whales is leave them alone. For thousands of years whales didn't need help, then people noticed them, and since then life has been hard for whales. --Mr. Ecology
Dear Mr. Ecology,
Elections are coming up and I'm very confused about who a good candidate is. It seems like everybody is for the environment, but I know they can't all be or the world would be a better place. How can I vote for a good candidate? --Baffled Concerned Citizen
Dear Baffled,
It isn't as hard as you may think. Look at the bottom of each candidate's literature. The ecologically aware candidate will have, "This litter printed on recycled paper" at the bottom of the page. They couldn't say it if it wasn't true. --Mr. Ecology
Dear Mr. Ecology,
Wouldn't it be more natural if we turned loose all the animals in the zoo to live free? People could feed them. --Animal Lover
Dear Lover,
Although a zoo is not a natural environment for wild animals, neither is a city. The animals would not be better off living free near me. The zoo sponsors an adopt-an-animal program if you're interested in that, and the animals themselves run an adopt-a-human program to keep track of people they'd like to visit if they ever escaped. --Mr. Ecology
Dear Mr. Ecology,
I bought a 10 oz. bottle of water for 87 cents, and when I brought the bottle back, they only gave me 2 cents. What happened? --Short Changed
Dear Short,
Obviously no one in his or her right mind would sell (or buy) 10 ounces of water for 85 cents. You must have been caught in a temporary glass price fluctuation. You bought when glass was high and sold when it was low. In the future, save all your bottles at home until you hear the price is high, then sell them. --Mr. Ecology
Dear Mr. Ecology,
My dog is pretty old and real sick. Can I use him in my compost pile when he dies? --Answer Quick
Dear Quick,
Although anything alive will die and rot, so technically the answer is "yes," you'll find it's a very bad idea to compost your dog. I generally bury my pets and plant a tomato or something on the grave. The only exception is well-aged roadkill (doggie disks, raccoon rounds, flapcats), which can be used in small amounts. --Mr. Ecology
Dear Mr. Ecology,
I'm a politician up for re-election this year. I keep hearing about ecology and the environment, but I honestly don't have a clue what they're talking about. This recycling stuff seems like touching things other people have made dirty--like buying a used car. I looked at recycled paper, but it lacks brilliance and has poor texture. What can I tell people to make them believe I'm green? --Vote For Me
Dear For Me,
Tell them? what makes you think anyone has believed anything you've said since you got elected? The word "honestly" in your letter also disturbs me, you seem detached from reality.
Use the quality paper and just say, "Printed on recycled materials" at the bottom. Re-using something is recycling it. For instance, throwing something in the trash recycles it as landfill. You recycled a tree in a forest that no one is even sure makes a noise if it falls when no one is around--you had paper made out of it.
In fact, what you are asking the voters to do is recycle you; isn't that what re-election is? Show your environmental awareness with a catchy slogan. I suggest, "I have California Redemption Value." --Mr. Ecology
Dear Mr. Ecology,
What do they use the plastic I recycle for? --Pure Virgin Vinyl
Dear Virgin,
They make more junk plastic that's just going to end up eventually getting thrown away. All you can make with plastic is plastic of lower and lower quality to go into products that no one really wants. The whole point of recycling plastic is that it lets people pretend that the first clean, shiny, use of new plastic is okay because it can be recycled. But it's still junk and it still lasts forever. Sorry. --Mr. Ecology.
How Guys Know How
I didn't mean to break the ancient vow, it was an accident. I just forgot for a moment and blurted out the truth.
My boss was in her office. The air conditioning was off again and the windows don't open, so she had her fan on.
The fan sat on the bookcase swinging its head back and forth. The fan blew mostly against empty wall; for a little while it would blow across the top of her desk and ruffle papers; and for a very short time the fan actually blew on my boss.
"Why do you have the fan going back and forth?" I said.
"It does that when you turn it on," she said.
"If you want it to stay in one place, you just wait till it gets where you want it then pull up on this thing," I said, and pulled up on the little stud. The fan quit oscillating and just blew on her.
"I didn't know you could do that! Where'd you learn about that?"
"Gym class," I said, "It's a guy thing."
Just as easy as that--I just blurted out the secret of how guys know all the things they do.
When I stop to think about it, just about everything useful and impressive that I know, I learned in gym class. The instruction started back when they first started separating boys and girls for gym class. I didn't realize the things coach was telling us was actually part of school because there was never any test and we never went back and reviewed. It wasn't like history or math.
The information also seemed random. We never took notes and there were no books, chalk-talks or handouts. We just got told how to do things. And the girls didn't.
Some of the information has to change from generation to generation. Obviously the ancient Greeks wouldn't be taught how to straighten out a wandering electric fan. And they didn't wear pants, you'd have to wear pants to learn how to sit on a stool at the counter of a café and have your pants drag down in back to show cleavage.
I know for a fact that in the olden days--back when police cars had only one light on the roof and it was red and the siren only went rrrrRRRRRrrrrrr instead of the reee-haaaww, whoop-whoop, reee-oh, reee-oh that sirens do now--I know for a fact that they taught guys how to make toy tractors out of a wooden spool, two matchsticks, a rubber band, and soap. They didn't teach guys that in my time because we didn't need to know it.
They did teach us how to open a pop bottle on the edge of a countertop or car bumper--which they don't teach now except in Europe where the tops still don't screw off.
Some of the information is certainly timeless and has been passed down from before the ancient Greeks. Spitting for distance, for example. And blowing your nose without a handkerchief. Two tricks that transcend culture and time, and are really best taught in a facility that has showers.
How well I remember those days at Skyblue, Royalblue, and White High School with coach Poole acting the part of a modern-day Aristotle:
"All right, REESE! Your lawn mower's been throwing off black soot from the exhaust for a while, but you've been ignoring it and now the damn thing coughs a couple of times and dies on you. You check your gas and you've got plenty, but the damn thing won't start again, or just starts and dies. W
hat the hell's the problem REESE?"
"Uh, I'm out of gas, coach?"
"I just told you you had plenty of gas. Take five laps and maybe you'll jog loose some of that ear wax. TAKE OFF." Reese took off running. "All right, RODMAN!" (Coach Poole believed knowledge should be dispensed alphabetically to be fair) "What's the problem with the damn mower?"
"I don't know coach," I said.
"Of course you don't know, I haven't told you yet, have I?"
"Uh, no, that's very perceptive coach."
"Well it's your damn air cleaner: it's all choked up with crap and needs to be taken apart and cleaned up. That's why it was throwing off soot before it stopped. All right, everyone into the teacher's parking lot, we're going to practice opening car hoods. MOVE IT!"
That probably explains why some guys know that if you call the Beef Council, you can get individual one-on-one beef counseling to teach you how to bar-be-cue ("seasonings unique to bar-be-cuing are dirt, ash, and insects"), and some guys don't. Some guys know how to walk a quarter flip- flop over the back of their fingers then back again, and I don't.
See, nobody can be in school every day, and even if you are at gym class every day, sometimes you miss things. Like poor Reese--he still doesn't know why his lawn mower won't run or how to open a car hood, because he was running laps that day.
Advice To New Fathers
One of the things that happens when a guy acquires a new child--whether through birth, adoption or lease-to-own--is that everyone suddenly feels obligated to give dad advice. Most of this advice is nonsense, a combination of hoary rumors and old husbands' tales.
I've never actually owned a child, but many years ago I used to be one, so I am specially qualified to tell people what to do with theirs.
Years ago, I remember my father sitting in the back yard with my little sister, Connie, whom I've always affectionately called, "What'shername." (Or was she, "Theotherone?")
Anyway, I was five or six, it was summer morning, we were in back at the picnic table, and dad was debunking some of the myths of fatherhood. Mom had just finished giving dad instructions on how to keep from ruining a baby--as if he'd messed up the first four they'd had--and she went back in the house. I guess she was satisfied he'd caught on.
What followed was one of those warm father-son moments that a boy remembers all his life. "Y'know, Ron," my dad said, "all that stuff about--"
"Peter!" I interrupted.
"What?" he said.
"Peter. My name is Peter. You called me Ron again."
"Did I? Well whatever. Anyway, all that stuff about babies being so delicate is a lot of nonsense."
"It is?" I was just being polite. Babies interested me about as much as dust bunnies under the bed.
"Stands to reason. I mean, how can letting a draft hit the baby make her sick when she spends most of her time wet anyway?"
"I guess," I said. "Does that mean I shouldn't take baths?"
"No. That means it doesn't make any difference."
"Oh."
"And take that stuff about, 'Support the baby's head,' what a bunch of silliness."
"Won't it fall off?"
"Hell no. I mean, heck no. It's connected on pretty good. It's not that easy to snap off a baby's head."
"Okay."
"It's just the neck muscles are weak so she can't support her head very well. But how is she going to get stronger muscles if we go around supporting her head all the time?"
"Hit her on the back till she spits up?" Burping had me baffled.
"Maybe that does help, but isn't it easier to just exercise the muscles that are weak? Like this:"
Then he slid the crook of his elbow from the back of my sister's head to behind her shoulders. Her head fell back, her eyes rolled up into her head, and her mouth gaped open, showing some nasty red gums. When he slid his arm back up, her eyes came back and her mouth closed. Connie gurgled and blew a bubble.
"Neat, do it again." Dad slid his arm down and Connie's head flopped back, her eyes rolled up, and her mouth popped open. He lifted her head again, and everything closed up.
"Listen!" dad said.
I listened. "I don't hear anything." Dad whistled: "Too-wheet, teedily. Tweep, tweep, tweep." I remembered the melody, it was like a song I knew, but didn't know the words to. I kept trying to remember how the rest of the song went when I heard the same melody come out of the tree in the middle of the yard.
Then dad repeated it: "Too-wheet, too-wheet. Teedily, teedily." Then he whistled, "Wheep, wheep, wheep," and a robin flew out of the tree and landed in the flower bed. The robin started scuffing around in the dirt and turning over old dead leaves.
'"Wheep, wheep, Too-wheet," dad whistled, and the robin flew from the flower bed to the edge of the picnic table where we were sitting. It had a red worm in its beak, twisting and wiggling.
I froze in my chair. The robin was jerking its head around, trying to find out where the other bird was. It seemed confused, then suddenly dad started making faint little cheeping whistles between his teeth. At the same time he slowly slid his arm down from behind Connie's head.
Connie's head dropped back, her eyes rolled up, and her mouth popped open. Dad kept cheeping and cheeping. I held my breath. The robin cocked its head, listening, then hopped twice across the table toward my sister.
The robin stopped, started jerking its head around again, then flew off into the tree.
"Damn," my dad said softly.
"I thought it was going to give her the worm," I said.
"Naw, bird's not going to waste a worm on a person. It was just curious."
"Boy, but it sure looked like--"
"Naw, it wouldn't have, believe me."
"Okay," I said. I kept the incident my own secret, expecting someday to have my own kids to pass this kind of fatherly knowledge on to. But that never happened, so I'm passing it on to the world now.
At odd times I remember that melody my dad whistled; The melody it seemed like I knew before I ever heard him whistle it. And at those times I get a craving for spaghetti: cooked soft and served cold, with lots of Parmesan cheese and a sprinkling of dirt. Comfort food.
Hiding In The Phone Book
The best way to have an unlisted phone number without paying for it would be to have list my number under another name, such as John Smith or Ann Wong. I'd be in the book, but no one would be able to find me.
Government offices hide that way. Most businesses want customers to find them--they'll advertise, come up with clever or easy-to-remember names, and maddening jingles. But because government extracts money from its clients before any products or services are provided, having customers show up tends to complicate the day-to-day operation of the business and clog up the phone lines.
In Texas, popular wisdom says that once an armadillo starts to burrow, you have to grab its tail and hold on, because once it's burrowed out of sight, you'll never find it again.
Government agencies are like that, once they start burrowing, you can lose them forever. Jim Holloway discovered that; he went to shoot some people over a tax bill and ended up at the wrong state tax office. He went to the state office that taxes equalizations rather than the one that taxes franchises. So the poor man was blown away by the SWAT team while making a pointless protest in the wrong building.
Even as a child I was confused by government names. Near my school was a school for exceptional children. I thought it was a school for geniuses--and today I'm still not sure--but that was about the time people stopped using the phrase "mentally retarded" because it was offensive. Maybe that's what exceptional meant.
This adopting of obscure names goes back a long time. It can't be because they're trying to hide, everyone knows who the Internal Revenue Service is, but why aren't they just called the Income Tax Department? And what's External Revenue?
When I began working for County Parks and Recreation I started realizing just how odd some of the naming can be. A
t one point Recreation for the Handicapped became Adaptive Leisure Services, which confused just about everyone, especially the clients. They'd call up asking for Handicapped, we'd have to say, "I'm sending you to Adaptive," and the clients would be very upset. We got around the problem by saying, "I'm sending you to Kathi" or "Phil," and leaving out the name change completely.
But at least County Parks used the word "parks" somewhere in its name. We would get calls from people who wanted Federal Parks, City Parks, and Park Districts, but couldn't call them because they weren't called Parks and so they were listed somewhere else.
Federal Parks is the Department of the Interior, which is pretty damn clever labeling--in the County we kept our parks out in the exterior.
For a long time City Parks didn't have parks at all, they were Community Services--no doubt because they serviced the community by filling in potholes and responding to fire alarms (or was that someone else?)
After the first thousand or so calls from people ticked off at County Parks because we weren't City Parks, we started telling callers, "Why don't you ask them why they're not listed under Parks?" And today City Parks is listed as Parks and Community Services.
I don't work for parks anymore. Now I work for the County Department of Human Assistance. Our name is self-explanatory: we assist humans. And it's good that we have such a clear and obvious name, it cuts down on the number of people who come in looking for pet and vegetable assistance.
Of course we weren't always called Human Assistance. Years ago the federal government decided to start paying money to people who didn't have any. This was called many different things, but most people called it welfare. The State decided this was a good idea and kicked in some money and rules of their own.
As time passed, welfare got more and more complicated as more and more programs were added. Also, people began to not like the word "welfare" because it had a sense of "giving money to people who don't have any." The Welfare Department's name was changed to Social Services.
