A Glimpse Into My Qualifications For Public Office

Some time ago, a reader said she thought I should run for political office.  Her opinion, I think, was based on one of my predictable anti-government rants in which I offered a few solutions of my own, for one or more of the ills infecting this country.  Anyway, I was flattered by her confidence in me, but quickly realized I could probably never get elected to anything with only one vote… no matter how sincere or well intentioned it might be.

It’s certainly not that I don’t think I’d be a great candidate, especially at a time like this when an idea person like myself is so desperately needed to turn this country around.  And though you shouldn’t expect a sudden announcement that I’ve changed my mind and will be launching a surprise third party run, I do think it’s my duty to provide evidence, (if only to that one reader), of how effective a public servant I might have been had she voted for me on election day, and everyone else stayed home.

Let’s face it… budgetary astuteness seems to be what will “make or break” the candidates running for office this year.  For that reason alone, this would be a perfect time for me to enter public service.  With a proven record of thinking out of the box and finding creative solutions when there is no money on which to rely, I am the perfect political storm.  And my God-given ability was honed over almost forty years of labor with young humans in the Elementary classroom.  In short, I always found clever ways to shelter my students from the ravaging effects of consistently smaller classroom budgets each and every year.

Once, around Thanksgiving, there was loud grumbling in the teacher’s lounge that the school was out of the necessary elements of most Thanksgiving art projects… that is, black and white construction paper.  I, of course, had all I needed because I had anticipated the shortage many months before, and taken action by stocking up when it was available.  Voila!  I offer this brilliant “foresight” as my first strong qualification for public office.  In times of bounty, my cynical mind always anticipates that things will inevitably get worse, so I apply basic squirrel mentality and do what is necessary to save my nuts ahead of time.

My second and most crucial qualification for elected office, is that I think creatively and solve problems in unique but effective ways.  This skill was evident during the construction paper crisis  I just mentioned.  One day after the kids were gone, I was using the restroom when I noticed a pile of boxes in the corner.  I had seen them on prior evacuation missions, so I took a closer look.  My investigation confirmed they were toilet seat “barriers” made of tissue paper, the kind one uses when he fears that illegal organisms might sneak across the bowl/seat border and establish residence on or around his derriere. 

Anyway, the wall dispenser was full, and at a count of one hundred pieces per box there were enough in the stack to get the whole teaching staff through a dysentery epidemic, as well as a wild lounge party featuring prune juice and bran muffins.  So I began thinking.  These oval seat covers seemed a very practical shape for uses NOT indicated on the box.  That’s when it came to me.  How about turning them into THANKSGIVING ART PROJECTS!…?  The shear number of boxes seemed to be not only a present from the artistic gods, but a guarantee that the dear children would NOT be cheated out of a hands-on, creative holiday experience.  Besides, this “unique” art medium was ironically appropriate, since kids (not teachers), were the only non-germ-fearing contingent at our school.

Anyway, the rest is history.  My creative vision and ability to think tangentially, spawned the infamous “Toilet Seat Art Projects” of 1986.  And while they never quite caught on with less “adventurous” teachers, they did prove (at least in theory), that a creative mind can solve problems and save the day. Below, then, is a sample of some of the seat cover art that resulted, and visual proof that if I ever decide to seek public office, my whole campaign will most likely begin and end in the toilet.

                           ORIGINAL THANKSGIVING PROJECT IDEA:  Pilgrim Collars

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                    SOME OTHER HOLIDAY ART PROJECTS THAT CAME LATER

Disappointment At 30,000 Feet

I’m away on my semi-annual trip to visit with family on the east coast. And while I don’t usually give out the top secret details of my personal comings and goings, this time something occurred on the flight that, while not life-altering, was depressing enough to make me consider walking across the country next time.

The whole thing is a classic study in shattered expectations.  Having been in the first group of passengers that boarded the plane, I sat there watching as those who followed proceeded down the aisle to find a seat.  Now this is where a speculation game begins with most travelers.  You carefully study each person who approaches, and wonder which of them will end up sitting in the seat next to you.  Will it be the one with that grouchy look on his face, or that overweight woman who will unknowingly poach part of your seat with her overhanging girth, or that rather suspicious looking guy you can picture being a lunatic terrorist who will end up holding a nail file to your carotid artery as he tries to hijack the plane?

Anyway, as I was conducting my own personal “profiling” of each individual, down the aisle walked an absolutely stunning young woman in her mid twenties.  She was trim and petite, with dark long hair and a smile that seemed to illuminate her face.  Now, beautiful females like her have been on my flights in the past, but each has always ended up walking past me to sit somewhere where I can’t even admire her from afar.  So I figured this would be the same deal.  I mean, why would an attractive young chick purposely sit next to an old fart like me?  To my surprise, however, she stopped.  And whether it was because she just couldn’t see any other available seats, or she noticed the “Oh, PLEASE” expression on my face, she placed her bag in the overhead compartment and sat down next to me.

Now, if any of you romance novel readers are about to visualize a steamy fantasy, you’d better take a cold shower before you continue reading.  At my age, the only realistic steam that might have materialized is if the galley coffee machine blew up after a filter gasket failure.  Despite that, my expectations were that I would get to spend a few hours with an attractive female chatting companion, while all the young guys on the plane sat there wishing they were me.  As it turned out, we exchanged a few amiable words when she first sat down, but by the time we had taken off, she was sound asleep.  So much for conversation, or anything else for that matter.

As I looked over at her, there were a number of very interesting things about her body.  One was that the more deeply she slept, the more limber it became.  And it wasn’t long before she slumped to her right and morphed onto the shoulder of an older woman sitting in the aisle seat.  Immediately the lady jabbed her arm with an elbow, causing the girl to wake with a start, then readjust her sleeping position.  But as she faded away again, she slowly drooped back onto the lady’s shoulder a second time.  This time she got a sharp shot to the ribs, and awoke to a “dirty look” that could only grace the face of an irritated senior citizen.

This was good.  After all, “Sleeping Beauty” had been rebuffed twice by elbow strikes and a scalpel-like senior stare, so falling asleep again seemed out of the question.  That said, let the conversation begin… right?  Wrong!!  The dark-haired damsel quickly fell into another coma-like stupor.  This time, however, she slumped to the left and her head landed on MY shoulder.  Wow, with our cheeks only inches apart, my mind began to wander backwards in time to when this sort of configuration would not only be pleasant, but reserved for someone with whom I had some “history.”  Anyway, it didn’t take long for the daydreaming to end as I realized this dainty female’s head weighed about twenty-five pounds, not to include the added downward pressure of gravity and sleep-induced dead weight.

Now, I am truly a gentleman in the old-school sense of the word.  So rather than poke the girl as had the senior on her right, I sat there patiently waiting for the plane to hit an air pocket or something “sudden” that might cause the girl to wake up.  But it never happened, and her head continued to bore into my shoulder for the next hundred or so miles.  Slowly my right arm began to fall asleep, and my back started hurting because I couldn't adjust my sitting position.  A number of times the older lady on the isle looked over and gestured that I should use her strategy and  employ body blows to wake the girl up, but I really didn’t have the heart to resort to physical violence.  So, for what seemed like a lifetime, I endured the anvil weight of the sleeping damsel’s head, as well as her muffled snoring and strands of a.w.o.l hair that kept tickling my right ear.

I guess the greatest indignity occurred as we were making the final descent into Fort Lauderdale.  The young lady woke up, yawned, and after righting herself in her seat looked over at me as if to say, “Oh, are YOU still here?”  Then she began fixing her makeup and straightening up her clothes, never once saying “thank you” for my supporting role her comfortable flight.  Truthfully,  I felt cheated and violated.  And while I’m convinced I would have made a superb chatting companion, all I ended up being was a vintage head rest with a very sore shoulder due to impaired circulation.  What a gigantic disappointment!! 

Anyway, I will NEVER allow this type of indignity to happen again, you can bet your boarding pass on that.  Next time a fine looking female appears to be interested in occupying the seat next to me, I’m going to tell her I’m holding it for someone else, then invite a guy who looks like a terrorist to sit there.  At least he won’t fall asleep on my shoulder, and might even talk to me until it’s time for him to pull out his nail file and hold it to my throat.

Hey, Weight Just A Darn Minute……!!!

For years I’ve been wondering who in the heck makes up those “ideal” weight charts that pop up in books and magazines every now and then?  For every time I compare their poundage to the actual weight displayed on my trusty bathroom scale, I’m never even close to what they say I should weigh to meet reasonable health standards.

I’m bringing this whole thing up because recently I got back the results of a medical test that oldsters like me are subject to  take every now and then.  And though it was not meant to be  weight related, in a box at the top of the page next to my height and weight, was the label, “OBESE.”  Now, I’m no fashion model by any stretch of the imagination.  If anything, I’m more like a Model T Ford.  But obese???  The nerve of whoever prepared that report!  I mean, they’ve never even seen me in person.  They drew their conclusions using one of those “ideal weight” charts that were devised in Bangladesh using patients who suffered through decades of famine.

In anticipation of this post, then, I checked out about a dozen weight charts on-line.  Looking under the maximum allowed weights with a “big frame,” (whatever that means), the range of difference between their lowest number and 150 pounds, was SHOCKING!  (I used 150 pounds as my weight, because though I’m more than that now, it’s what I weighed when I got out of the Army fifty years ago.  And at that point I was in the best shape of my life… strong, lean, and without an extra inch to pinch.)  Worst scenario, then, at 150  I was still overweight by 32.3 pounds according to the one chart.  Best scenario, I was 12 pounds over my ideal weight on the heavier chart, even with the presumption that I had one of those “big“ undercarriages they mentioned.

Of course, to all of this I say, “Bologna!” This whole thing is downright scandalous.  I mean, if I was that badly overweight, my ever vigilant doctors would rough me up like they were loan sharks back in the old neighborhood, “reminding” me I had missed my last couple of payments.  Not only that, even though I am short in stature , I still wouldn’t seem so shrimpy in a crowd of my fellow citizens, who these days are more “full figured“ than not.  And I certainly wouldn’t be totally blocked from sight when almost any one of them happened to pass in front of me.

So, could I stand to lose a few pounds?  Absolutely.  But even at my present weight, by every other measure besides those charts, I’m OK.  I guess that’s the problem when humans try to find the “ideal” state of anything.  We tend to get carried away, and often set the bar at somewhat unrealistic levels.  Besides that, in the case of weight charts, the wide variance in the numbers they present as fact, tells me they’re probably based on someone’s opinion rather than specific medical criteria.

Anyway, not to sound self-righteous here, but if the charts are correct and I truly am obese, then new weight categories must be established to account for the growing number of folks I see, whose growing girth and rotundity make me look reasonably slim. Perhaps the chart makers could just keep it simple by adding a column called, “obeser,” another labeled, “obesest,” and a super classification for the very largest of our friends and neighbors called, “obeast.”  But even if they do, I have a plan to circumvent  future attempts to fit me into ANY of these corpulent categories.  I’m going to move to The Republic of Nauru in the South Pacific, and start taking my medical tests there.  Since 95% of their population is overweight, it won’t be long before I’m known as the “Puny” Paisano.