New Song

My sister Sarah called today and asked about Tina and the chocolates–she had sent Tina an enormous box of high-quality chocolates as a belated birthday present.  To make them last, my wife and I decided to give the chocolates to Tina only as a reward for a visit to #2 Potty Lane.

Just recently, as it happens, Tina looked up from her play and said, quite randomly, “Papa, my chocolates are from Sarah.”

So I was able to report both the good news and the bad news.  The good news is that Tina–though only three years old–definitely associates the chocolates with her aunt Sarah.  The downside is, she tends to think of the chocolates–and thus of Aunt Sarah–in connection with a particular constrictive feeling in the lower abdomen.

But Sarah was cool with that.  As a long-distance aunt, she’s takin’ what she gets.

Teresa the five-year-old lost her first tooth yesterday.  Jacinta had warned me that the kids were falling apart this week, but really I had no idea things had gone so far.

Tonight Teresa tucked her tooth under her pillow, safely encased in a plastic box, waiting for the tooth fairy to come and replace it for money.  “Mama,” she asked, “is there really such a thing as the tooth fairy?”

“What do you think?” Mama evaded.

Regina the all-knowing seven-year-old leaped in to save us from the unpleasant necessity of popping a bubble:  “No, I think that Mama or Papa comes in and takes the tooth,” she said.  And at that moment, a new way came to me of working past the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy with a single, all-purpose scholastic distinction:  an sit versus quid sit, “whether it exists” versus “what sort of thing is it?”

You see, Teresa’s questions was, formally at least, a question of an sit, “whether it exists.”  And to that I could honestly reply, “Yes, it exists.”  But Regina’s reply jumped to the level of quid sit, “What sort of thing is it?”  She was confusing two different questions. Yes, the tooth fairy exists.  But no, the tooth fairy is not the sort of thing that shimmers through walls or revives when people clap their hands.  As a parent, I could keep answering the first question until they became clever enough to ask the second.

And if my kids said to me later, “You lied to me.  You’re a liar,” I could reply:  No, I’m a thomist!  To which they could reply, “No, St. Thomas was a Dominican, and you’re speaking like a Jesuit.”

Tina, moaning, found me in the hallway.  “Paapaa!  Regina’s being mean!”  I try to stay neutral in these things, so I don’t respond.

“Paaaaapaaaa!” Tina insists.  “Regina’s pinching me when I pinch Teresa!”

The College sponsored a lecture tonight by Fr. Kevin Fitzgerald, a bioethics expert from the University of Georgetown.  Fr. Fitzgerald has both a doctoral degree in molecular biology and a doctoral degree in bioethics, so back in Austria where I went to school he would be Herr Fater Doctor Doctor Fitzgerald.

His talk was about ethics and genetic research.  Since I was asked to introduce the speaker, my mind turned to what I know about genetic medicine.  Which is nothing, really, but I did recall a ramshackle old building a few miles north of Lander topped by this ominous sign: GENE CHOPPING.

The kids have asked me, What goes on in there?

I don’t really know.  All you can see out front are a bunch of old cars.

Fr. Fitzgerald’s talk was not only wonderfully enlightening but also funny.  My favorite part on the humor front was when he described how scientists can cause a human liver to grow inside a sheep–and not just a human liver, but the exact liver of a specific human being.  Then, he explained, you could take this sheep home and have it wandering around in the back yard with your liver in it.  You party hard, drink all you want, and when your liver fails then they wheel you into the emergency room, together with your sheep, and a few hours later you come out with a brand new liver–and a wool coat!

So yesterday was a wash.  A stressful event at the end of the day deleted all memory of humor, and I lost a day from the 365.  That puts me two full posts behind pace for the year, but I hope to catch up.

Catching up will require some strategy, given the difficulties of finding non-confidential, non-Tina funny events.  Technique #2 for finding such content:  Make it happen.  Do funny things.  This could be the start of a goofy trajectory in my life, but extreme situations call for extreme solutions.

So today, a colleague typed “A Couple of Things” into the subject line of an e-mail and then accidentally hit the send button, thus firing his missive off into the world with no content at all.  Snooping about for the FTT, I put “Nothing at all” in the subject line of a blank e-mail and zapped it back to the aforementioned colleague.

So which is funnier, the deed done or the fact that I’m so desperate?

Posting for yesterday here.  I was sitting in the kitchen, eating chili while reading some work papers, when David appeared in front of me.  “Where does this go?” he asked, thrusting a Miraculous Medal toward my face.

“Just a minute,” I said, trying to finish my paragraph.  Whereupon the Medal flew from David’s fingers, slid down my papers, and landed in my chili.  “OK, you didn’t have to do that,” I added, “just because I asked you to wait.”

Whereupon David shriveled up like a raisin.

Posting for yesterday here.  It’s a challenge, because the one thing that had us laughing again and again was not a funny gag or zingy one-liner but a slow, ongoing natural event.

The weather station was still predicting no precipitation when the snow began early in the afternoon–huge flakes plummeting in piles.  By evening, when five or six inches lay on the lawn, the weather station was conceding the possibility of a two- or three-inch snowfall.  The kids were beginning to offer opinions about what the Boss ought to say to whomever was on duty at the weather station.

I have sympathy for these people, but I think maybe they need to install better technology at the station.  Maybe a window, for example.

So today was not a funny day.  I spent my entire day in meetings, dealing with people’s distress and failings, while on the home front the kids were worn out and cranky after a way-too-fun Sunday.  (We spent a whole day at the Mortensens’–worked on a robot, poured gasoline on a Christmas tree and lit ‘er up–the whole package.)

At the end of the day, neither Jacinta nor I could remember a single funny thing from the day.  Not a single giggle.  So I called in David and Isaiah, explained about the blog, and told them, “OK: do something funny!”

David about died of self-consciousness.  He grinned awkwardly, fumbled his fingers, and chewed on his alarm clock.  Isaiah punched him in the ribs.  They both squirmed and giggled.

And you know what?  IT WAS FUNNY!

On January 15 of this year, the 1st Financial Bank USA sent me this letter:

Dear Jeremy R Holmes:

We recently discovered that the amount of the Cashback Reward that has been credited to your 1st Financial Bank USA credit card account is less than it should have been in accordance with your Cashback Reward Terms and Conditions.  We apologize for this error, but are pleased to report that it has been corrected and that your account has been credited the full Cashback Reward to which you are entitled.

Sincerely,

YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVES

Now that’s what I like to see from a bank.  I want Cashback and Rewards–note the capital letters highlighting the importance of each word.  I’ll bet they apologize.  The nerve, holding back on the loot, the booty, the inheritance to which I am entitled!  “Entitled”–that’s a good word, too.  Lucky you, 1st Financial Bank, ’cause I was about to sue until you apologized.  Don’t try it again–I might not be so patient next time!

Since we were gone all day yesterday, I hadn’t sorted through the mail until this morning.  There it was:  a check from 1st Financial Bank USA for $0.13.  They spent more on postage for that check than the check itself was worth.

Good thing I hadn’t booked my tickets to Hawaii yet.

Yesterday we went to Casper to look at flooring, and we did not get back until very late.  So I’m posting now for yesterday’s FTT.

It was a great trip.  We had lunch at the Fire Rock Cafe–the food excellent, the service obsequious.  While waiting for our food, I suddenly thought to myself that I need to stay alert for the FTT–who knows what might happen on a trip!  And at that exact moment, Jacinta commented, “You need to be on the watch for the FTT–you never know what will happen.”

Eerie.  How does she do that?

A clue came later in the evening as we dined with friends.  Our friends had invited over some other friends, a deacon and his wife, and the conversation turned to why people in Wal-Mart look so strange.  The deacon’s wife, Ruthie, had a complete account of the Wal-Mart people, and it begins with sweaty shirts:  some scientists did this study, see, in which they had a bunch of men work out and get sweaty, and then they took the sweaty shirts and had a bunch of women smell them.  Normal women, explained Ruthie, could smell the phonemes in the shirt.

At this point, confused about how these otherwise normal women could smell the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language, I suggested that Ruthie meant “pheromones.”  Ruthie admitted that this was probably the right word, and went on to explain how women who were using contraception couldn’t smell the phonemes at all.  This meant that their choice of men was completely thrown off, because they went for men with the wrong phonemes for their genetic make-up.

I don’t know exactly how that gets us to the Wal-Mart people, that secretive bunch that never comes out in daylight in Wyoming except in Wal-Mart and at the tattoo shop, but it did set me to thinking about Jacinta’s ability to read my mind.  What if I signal my thoughts by way of masculine pheromones?  What if, having been married to me for so long, Jacinta can actually smell what I’m thinking before I let off a single phoneme?  It’s an intriguing possibility.

I wonder if it works better when I’m sweaty.