An Experiment in Enhanced Performance

At the risk of being accused of over blogging, I felt it incumbent upon me to offer the following: 

With all of this talk of performance enhancing drugs and the controversy over whether or not they make a difference, I propose that we administer massive doses of these drugs free of charge to all bankers, investment portfolio managers and auto manufacturers.

Will these drugs work?  Historically, they haven't worked in October during the baseball playoffs, but, historically, the financial markets tend to suffer in October anyway.  However, we could use the other eleven months of the year to test this theory.

Can it help?

It couldn't hurt.

And these drugs should be offered (at the players option) free of charge to all athletes, regardless of sport, so "leveling the playing field" will no longer be considered a cliche.

And besides, some of these guys could use smaller testicles.

Retirement - It's Not a Job. It's the Last Great Adventure

It's been almost 11 years since I retired from my job.  It hadn't seemed that long until last weekend when I received a phone call from one of the guys I used to work with.   We had a nice chat about what retirement's been like and I thought I would share some of my feelings about it with you.

In August of 1998, I officially left my position as a corporate officer.  This wasn’t a resignation, a firing, downsizing, or retirement.  The parent company just decided to sell the division for which I was responsible and I joined the rolls of people enjoying early retirement.  

This exit from the work force came about a year earlier than my wife and I had planned. For eight years, we had been renovating our retirement home to fit our exact needs. The “adjustment” to our plan worked to our advantage as we were able to leave a year earlier with no financial penalty.

Although my official title was president, what I really did for a living was observe the human condition as it applied to the work place and the world as the company was in the radio broadcasting business.  I tried to spot trends in human behavior both inside and outside so  that we could capitalize upon these trends and have a happy work force inside  and a larger listening audience outside.  I’m not paid to do this anymore, but I still do it for my own enjoyment, to keep my brain functioning and to have fodder to feed  the blog.  What follows are observations from outside of the workforce.  It’s a primer, if you will, for those who are about to step out from under the safety of the company tree.   If this is not your plan for the near term, stash this away until the appropriate time.   I hope it helps.

1.  Although there is plenty of money, I have suddenly begun to focus on telephone calling plans, restaurant early bird specials, and various combinations of cable and satellite services that will give us the most channels for the least amount of money.  I think I do this because for the first time in fifty years I do not have a regular paycheck coming in.  I took back the bill paying duties from my wife Ellen (which she surrendered gladly) so that I could see just how much was going out each month.    I still don’t know for sure.  However, I did learn that Ellen no longer believes  that her late father owns the electric company, she thinks he willed it to me.

2.  I have developed routines for myself.  We live in a rural place so I must go to the post office each morning to retrieve our mail.  This is an excellent opportunity to snag any needed tradesman as they are there retrieving their mail as well.  I also get to meet and greet some of our friends and acquaintances.  While I am there, I go through all of our mail and throw away all of the junk mail as the postmaster is kind enough to provide large waste containers for this purpose.  I hope she is recycling this stuff.  So, in short, this is a half hour task that allows me to return home ready to retreat to my den to pay the bills (Our credit rating is outstanding as I turn the bills in 24 hours.  So much for cash management.) and deal with anything else that is generated by the mail.

3.  I spend a lot of time with e-mail.  I have appointed myself the official propagator of humor to a select group of about 125 friends and acquaintances.  This keeps me in touch with them and in tune with the humor of the day which has always reflected the mood and attitudes of the world at large.  Blogging has also become a passion and a way to stave off mental deterioration.  Crossword puzzles help as well. 

4.  I bought a larger Swiss Army knife.  For years I carried the Executive model with its orange peeler and tiny toothpick and scissors.  That little gem retired as well.  It is living in a nice wooden box on my bookshelf that is almost full of things I think I’ll need someday.  (I’m going to need some  more nice wooden boxes soon.) When you are retired, you need a major toothpick, larger scissors and a greater selection of screw drivers as I have noticed that every day  there are a far greater number of occasions to: (1) pick my teeth, (2) clip things out of newspapers or magazines and (3) tighten screws of various sizes, types and head shapes.

5.  A friend of mine related a story about a mutual acquaintance who  turned down a gazillion dollars for his company.  When asked why and how he was able to resist such a tempting offer he said, “I don’t want to be another one of those rich guys with nothing to do.”  To me, this is very sad because obviously this fellow has not developed an inner life.  He thinks he is defined by the company he owns.  He needs to find some other interest other than the work.   Many people have this same need.  I can’t count the number of retired executives I used to see in the building lobby of my former employer.  They were there more often than when they were on the payroll. They had developed no inner life so they had to come back to the mother building to regain their sense of self.  Many of them had business cards printed using the company logo (an illegal thing I think).  This card had their former title on it, their current home address and phone number and, somewhere, in small print,  the word “retired.”  Forget that “get a hobby” is a cliche and get one.  Find something that you will know as much about as you knew about your work.  Unless you truly hated your job, I suspect you will find this activity most rewarding.  I chose photography.  It has all the glitz and creativity that the work had.  It’s has equipment, varying techniques, changing technology and several publications dedicated to it that discuss the equipment, the varying techniques and the changing technology.  There are even contests in case you need the competitive buzz.

6.  If you retire to a place other than the one in which you worked, be prepared for the luxury of being no one special.  In the beginning, people here only knew us casually. They had no idea of who we were, who we are or what we did.  They had no social expectations of us.  They did not know anything about us.  Therefore, we could be who we actually think and know we are.  If we tend to expose our former social styles it is our choice and not one that is expected.  (No more “Wait till you meet this guy...he’s a joke teller, a jerk, a drunk, a bore, a fugitive, a fraud, a soothsayer, a pirate, a nay sayer, a prayer sayer, a dud, a big corporate guy.) If you ever really wanted to be accepted for who you are or think you are this is probably the last chance you’ll get.

7.  This is also a good time to check through your stuff.  At this point in our lives, the stuff we have is more or less permanent.  As you review your stuff you will find things you haven’t touched in years.   Chances are you are never going to touch them again.  Give them to a charity or the nice men with the big truck who come early in the morning.  On the other hand, if you have lusted after something like  new golf clubs, new boat, room addition, new furniture or any other thing you and/or your spouse think is essential to your well being, buy it now.  It will be almost impossible to talk yourself into it later. 

    

8.  This is also a time to give back to the community.  After all the community provided us with many luxuries.  So if you were ever going to do volunteer work, now is the time because for the first time in a long while you are truly in charge of your time.  Volunteer work can be anything you want it to be.  Lots of charitable organizations can use your skills.  Just remember that charity management is not about money (because there isn’t any for the administrators or anyone else for that matter) it is about power.  Let them deal with when the mailer goes out, how it will be folded and what color it will be even if what they have decided is, in your view, ridiculous.  It’s their payment and ego reenforcement.  Many of you may have been like this in your work and now you can see up close and personal just how stupid, time consuming and wasteful  micro management really is.  You should concern yourself with doing the real work for which  the charity was founded.   I know, it’s hard to be an Indian after you’ve been a chief.  However, you must remember you had to start out as a pretty good Indian to become the chief you became.  There is nothing wrong with Indiandom. 

9.   Think long and hard about that second home.  I’ve done the numbers and it does not  appear to be worth the worry of having the alarm company call you from hundreds of miles away in the middle of the night to tell you the smoke alarm has gone off, the fire department can’t get in and they want permission to break down the door.  Besides, for what you will spend annually on a second home, you can go to the finest resorts in the world for a month or two every year.  And if you don’t like the one you picked, return the keys and go somewhere else next year. 

10.  Make a daily date with your spouse.  Ellen and I try to sit down with a glass of something every day and just touch on what happened that day.  It’s easy to inadvertently live separate lives once you are retired.  You and/or your spouse are no longer road warriors with tales of the hunt to tell.  The job of retirement comes with its own set of tales and it is very easy to forget to share since we  think that because we are spending more time  together we are communicating more.  This will not be true unless you make it so.

What you have read is all I know about this part of the life adventure even after having lived it for almost 11 years.  However, I am keeping copious mental notes which I will share with you when I know more.

A Lighter Tone

I read my last few blogger posts and found them to be a bit ponderous.  So, I thought I would give you and excerpt from a piece I wrote a few years ago that is essentially some free association stuff.  Here it is:

Please read the following letter to Dear Abby carefully.  It is  representative of a society that depends on curing its ills easily.  Abby and her evil twin sister, Ann Landers, were "over the counter" before we ever identified or coined the term "generic."

Dear Abby:   

A few years ago, you printed a letter from a woman in Scottsbluff, Nebraska in which she described, step by step, the procedure by which her husband, an electrician's apprentice, removed her ovaries and uterus.  The operation, using commonly found household implements, was performed in their kitchen and seemed quite simple.  Unfortunately, I can't find the clipping.  Would you mind reprinting it?  Thanks, Abby.

Hoping to be Barren in Bangor

Dear Hoping:

Here it is, but speak with your clergyman before you proceed.

P.S. Be sure your husband washes his hands first.

Some quickies:

Television invariably projects those trends that were passe two years ago.  This includes television news.

My friend Gary's mother insisted that he wash his hands as soon as he got out of bed in the morning.  "You never know what you might have touched during the night," she offered in explanation.

My mother never opened the door without first asking who was there through the closed door.  (No peepholes then)  On one occasion, when told it was "New telephone book," she replied, "Go away, I haven't finished reading last year's yet."  

Some people save phone books for years but throw out instruction manuals.  They also save today's newspapers and magazines containing articles that seem urgent and relevant to their lives.  At the time they say, "I'll read this later."   Some people tear things out of magazines only to throw them away when, months later, they can no longer remember why they cut the piece out in the first place.  I am one of those people.  Except I keep the whole newspaper and/or magazine.

Some people, like sheep, often bleat when they are annoyed.  Andy Rooney bleats every week on "60 Minutes."

An Andy Rooney like bleat goes like this:  (As you read the following, imagine it sounding an octave higher than your normal speaking voice even if you are a woman.)

There are too many postage paid subscription cards in magazines.  One would do it.  It is a great waste of trees.  We should encourage people to tear them out and write in large letters, "YOU MUST STOP DOING THIS!" and mail them, unsigned, back to the magazine.  After paying 28 cents for these cards, maybe the publishers will cut down on the number of these insertions and save some trees.

Well, I feel better.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Lowest Point on the Magical Misery Tour

Author's Note:  Remember, some parts  are apocryphal and some parts are not. 

Don't play practical jokes.  They are almost never practical.  Sometimes, they are tragic.

My last practical joke victim was Michael Horowitz a rotund fellow from the Bronx section of New York City.   We were sophomores in college together.  Michael had worn a tie once in his life and that had been to his grandmother's funeral.  He was proud of this and, for me, that pride labeled him a buffoon.  In 1962, Michael was barely in school clinging to his student deferment from the draft with a 2.0 grade point average.  In his way, Michael was trying to be accepted by trading on his superior strength which was bolstered by his superior size.  Michael would burst into our dormitory's student lounge dressed in his gym shorts and tank top, muscles bulging and announce, "Betch youse I can....."

All one had to do was fill in the blank with some challenge like, scale the outside of the building, break a cafeteria tray over your head or the ever popular put your fist through one of the plaster board walls in the stairwell.  (He was Bluto before John Belushi was Bluto.)The stairwell area from the first to the fifth floor was pock marked with Michael's willingness to accept any task that would show off his incredible strength.  I watched this behemoth perform his nightly rituals of power silently.  I never had any words to fill in Michael's random challenges although I secretly wanted to voice something that would make the giant look foolish.  One night, I stepped up to the hulk and said, "Betcha if we wrap you up in athletic adhesive tape you can't get out of it."

"Betcha I can," came the standard reply.

Within minutes, I had gathered all of the strong unrelenting tape available and, along with three other boys, wrapped Michael as tightly as possible from head to toe.

I yelled, "OK!" to the trussed up Michael and sat back to watch the struggle.  After thirty seconds a ripping sound was heard and Michael had pulled his arms straight away from his sides where seconds before they had been mummified by the tape.  Once he got his arms free, he ripped off the remaining tape and the challenge had been met.

The three other perpetrators clapped Michael on the back and laughed at me, their former leader.

I was infuriated and retreated to my room to conceive the greatest challenge of all time.  Late that night, it came to me.

The next day, I boarded the bus for Germantown, PA and my almost alma mater the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science.  (I was only there for one year.  It was during that year that I discovered the existence of a group of people who are waiting for slavery to be reestablished.  But that is another story)  It didn't take me long to find Marvin Goldbloom and even less time to talk Marvin into ordering a bag to be knitted in his father's textile mill in North Carolina.  The bag had a tensile strength of ten thousand pounds per square inch.  Within two weeks, the bag was in my possession.

The next night, with two football linemen in tow, I waited for Michael Horowitz to return from dinner.  As Michael entered the lounge to issue his challenge for the evening, the bag was dropped over his head, pulled down to his feet and he was wrapped head to toe in athletic adhesive tape.  This time there was no ripping sound.  The only sound was the thumping of Michael's body against the wall, the furniture, the doors and finally the floor where he fell exhausted.  He was our prisoner.

When we had shown everyone the "captured" Michael and stopped laughing and pouring beer on the iron like nylon bag, someone asked a very important question.

"Who is going to let him out?"

I had anticipated the question, and was ready with an answer.

"We'll roll him down the stairs and out onto the lawn and the campus police or somebody will find him and let him out."

And we did.

The campus police did come across the enormous bundle within a few minutes of its arrival on the front lawn of the dormitory.  It took them about fifteen minutes to free Michael Horowitz who was so enraged he was unable to thank them.  Instead he ran into the dormitory, up the stairs to the fifth floor and began battering every animate and inanimate object in sight.  The city police were called and it took two of them with night sticks to subdue the crazed Michael Horowitz.  My friends and I had fled the building after depositing our package on the lawn and did not return until after curfew and Michael had been taken away.  The dormitory supervisors conducted a thorough investigation, but no one would confess to the prank.  The only one punished was Michael Horowitz who was expelled thereby losing his student deferment.   He was drafted into the Army within six weeks.  Six months later, a North Vietnamese sniper hurled a 7.62 millimeter challenge at Michael Horowitz from a Kalashnikov AK-47that he could not overcome nor did he survive.

Hail to the New Chief

Today we inaugurate a new president. He has a hurculean task ahead of him and there is an important thing we can do to help him.

Pray?

Well, yes. Except that we're in a "no prayer in schools" phase. So what about good thoughts...positive thinking if you will.

Ever since November, I find myself humming "Happy Days Are Here Again." This song was written in 1929 by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen and I believe it is in the public domain. The chorus goes like this:

"Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
Let us sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again
Altogether shout it now!
There's no one who can doubt it now
So let's tell the world about it now
Happy days are here again
Your cares and troubles are gone;
There'll be no more from now on
Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
Let us sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again"

Ok, it's simplistic.

But so are most mantras.

So, in the ensuing times of struggle (and there will be many), run this little song in your head and we will prevail and you'll feel better.

Thank you, Mr. Obama.

Happy days ARE here again.

A Small Sip From The Apocryphal Chalice

You may remember that apocryphal stories are those stories that are not true.  However, some of us are so taken by their sense of poetic justice that we dispense them thinking if we are diligent in our dispersal, they will become factual to at least some percentage of the receptors and that they will attest to the veracity of the story and it will become true by proclamation.  I suspect propaganda works this way.  

I digress.

Ever since we began warring among ourselves and others, we have found it necessary to take trophies from the people we bested.  We started with the valued possessions of our enemies and moved on (I was going to say progressed, but that would be a shameful thing to think) to making slaves of our foes and then to taking their body parts.  The Plains Indians, ever more civilized than we were, began the practice of counting coup (the "p" is silent).   The idea here was to get close enough to one's enemy so that you could touch him or steal something from him.  The more coup counts that could be documented, the more bravery that could be attributed to the warrior doing the "couping."

As time passed and we Americans became more and more enthralled with firearms, our soldiers began taking firearms from the bodies of our enemies and bringing them home as trophies of war.  Now some of these weapons qualified as heavy artillery, so our military leaders, through the use of regulations, made the act of bringing home enemy ordinance a serious crime complete with commensurate punishment.  It is the story of one man's attempt at sending a military trophy home from the front that we will examine in the following apocryphal story.

Sometime during the second world war, one enterprising GI liberated an enemy rifle and stripped it down to as many small pieces as he could.  He then began sending these parts home to his wife.  You need to know that all mail sent from the war zone was censored in the event that the mail was intercepted by the enemy, so our smuggler could not alert his wife as to what he was doing.

Week after week his spouse received all sorts of parts of various sizes and shapes while having no idea what the end result was going to be.  Eventually, the parts stopped coming.  She spread them all out on the dining room table and correctly surmised that it was some kind of rifle.  So, being the dutiful wife, she took it to a local gunsmith who confirmed it was indeed a rifle and told her that he would reassemble it for ten dollars.  The woman thought that was fair price and in about a week she stopped by the gunsmith shop and picked up the reassembled firearm.  From there she went directly to the post office and mailed the gun back to her husband.

I hope that's true.  Don't you?  

Of Kerosene & Pear Juice

My father kept a glass jug of kerosene in our garage. He used the stuff to clean his fishing gear and small outboard motor parts. The gallon container was tucked in the far right corner of the garage so that it was out of the way and would not be accidentally bumped by the car or the child as he played hide and seek or fort or whatever behind the closed doors in the front of the garage.

One day, my mother asked me to sweep out the garage. I protested loudly, but she appealed to the guilt that exists within people both large and small and soon I was heading toward the garage with a broom. Mom's instructions were simple. "Put everything in the driveway, sweep out the garage and then put everything back in the garage."

Every child charged with a task he or she does not want to perform will devise an "easier" way to do it. So, instead of removing everything from the garage so that I would have a complete and uncluttered field to clean, I moved everything to the back of the garage. I did this reasoning that, (1) I could hide some of the leaf accumulation behind the stuff in the back and (2), it would be easier to redistribute the stuff forward rather than schlep everything out to the driveway and then back from the driveway.

As I pushed my bike into the back corner, the front wheel nudged the kerosene container ever so slightly. It was just a tap with a rubber wheel, but it was just enough to crack the jug and start the flow of kerosene cascading gently toward the door and the piles of stuff I had moved from the sides to the center preparatory to flinging it all to the rear. To this day I don't believe that Kerosene is very viscous, so therefore it must have been my traumatized brain that saw the stuff spreading in slow motion to all corners of the garage. Watching its lava like flow paralyzed me.

Soon my fascination with the molasses like progress of the kerosene was replaced with an urgent need to do something. So I started slogging through the stuff dragging beach chairs, fishing tackle and ruined cardboard toward the door. In record time I had the garage empty and all the parts of our lives that had been relegated to the garage were strewn across the driveway.

Now, what to do about the kerosene? Not knowing anything about water and oil repelling each other, but with full knowledge that kerosene is flammable, I slipped through a basement window that I knew to be unlocked and hauled out the garden hose. I spent what must have been an hour with the hose and the broom washing the kerosene out of the garage, around and through our possessions and into the gutter. There was no rule of thumb to prepare me for knowing how long it takes to dissipate a gallon of kerosene from a garage with a broom and hose.

I was considering calling the police or the fire department when my mother's uncle Fred pulled into the adjoining driveway. He was a rotund bald man who paid me a dime a week during the summer months to get up before he did and roll down the windows in his Buick so that it would be cool when he went drove it to work. I resented him for the pretentious way in which he presented me with the dime each Sunday. The payout was complete with criticism about how early, how late, or how not at all I had performed the task. The only plus to this job was that he did not deduct anything for rainy days. To this day, the sound of morning rain still brings a smile to my face and to my heart.

All of that aside, I was happy to see an adult with whom I could share this disaster. I rushed over to him, and while trying to keep my ten year old heart in its place, I told him what had happened. He gave me the look he reserved for those 90 degree plus mornings when I overslept and agreed to survey the damage. Slowly, he walked by the rubble in the driveway and into the darkness of the garage. He lifted his shiny head and inhaled deeply testing the breeze like a bald lion in a man suit. Then he reached into his pocket and took out a pack of matches. Testing the aroma of the air again, he struck a match and dropped it on the wet floor. I held my breath. The match went out and he pronounced the garage safe for habitation by storables.

To this day, fifty plus years later, I can see him dropping that match in slow motion only this time; we are both vaporized in a fiery ball of exploding kerosene. In this twisted updated version, the police find only some bits and pieces of uncle Fred and me and a few heat fused 1954 dimes.

I've often wondered if Uncle Fred knew what he was doing. I think not. It was years later that I determined that sometimes adults do stupid things. Why? I guess it is because sometimes we just don't think. Sometimes there are things we don't think about because we can never imagine them happening. Several years ago, a friend of mine told me that the plastic that covered one of the family's television screens had become clouded. Upon closer examination, he saw that this plastic protective sun screen with which most portable models of that era were equipped, was not only clouded, but it appeared to have been etched or abraded as if someone had used sandpaper or thrown acid on the screen. After interrogating his children, one of them confessed that she had wiped off the screen with a napkin. Further probing revealed that she had used the same napkin to catch the drippings from a pear she had eaten. The acid in the pear juice had permanently clouded the sun screen of the TV.

So, when we are warning our children of the many dangers that lurk in the world, we must remember to tell them.....now remember, dear, whatever you do, don't wipe down the TV screen with pear juice and don't drop a lighted match into a garage that a ten year old has certified to be free of spilled kerosene.