Category Archives: Random

Overnight Instant Sensations

Leave a reply

With Kei Nishikori about to compete for Japan’s first grand slam (more on that comment in a minute) I suddenly find myself thinking about other Japanese who’ve won things and those who haven’t.

As a rule, the Japanese focus primarily on baseball with priority given to the local major leagues. When a Japanese player goes to the US majors, he’s given what can only be described as a base level of popularity. The news will always report what he’s doing, especially if he’s doing well. If he’s a star, Matsuzaka, Ichiro, Hideki Matsui, he’ll get a shocking amount of media coverage. If he’s playing, NHK (Japan’s BBC) will cover the game, until the moment he’s pulled and then they switch to regular programming and viewers never learn what happened. (No joke, I’ve seen this happen twice.)

However, everyone loves a winner, especially Japan which suffers from a very strange lack of confidence you wouldn’t expect from the third largest economy in the world (for now). The Japanese press is always looking for “Local kid makes Japan look awesome” stories and is always interested in what foreigners have to say about Japan, so long as what the foreigners have to say is positive. If it’s negative, there’s lots of excuse making and accusations that Japan is being picked on even though it’s the only country to have been attacked with atomic bombs. (Yes, they really do go there sometimes, especially on panel shows.)

Before 2011, barely anyone in Japan could name more than a couple players on the Japanese women’s soccer/kick ball team. Everyone knew their nickname “Nadeshiko Japan” but knew little else about them. Nadeshiko, by the way, is a surprisingly sexist thing to be called. It’s roughly the equivalent of calling them “They don’t make women like that anymore Japan” or “Good girls Japan”. However, after they won the world cup, they were suddenly popular. Attendance at women’s soccer started breaking records (at least for the team with the most “Good girls”) and some of them started appearing on TV a lot.

The same happened with a group of women wrestlers who brought home Olympic medals, and even a group of women archers and a some badminton players. They didn’t even have to be cute, just successful, although if they wanted to make real money from their 15 minutes, they had to be cute.

That said, no one is as brutal toward their athletes as the Japanese. If someone loses, a reporter will ask “what happened” in a very strict tone. The athletes have their own cliches “Well, I got a bad start and I wasn’t able to swim my race, I had to swim their race” or “I wasn’t able to play my badminton and couldn’t make the shuttlecock work for me”. At that point, it’s common for the reporters to say something like “well, I hope you’ve learned from this and will do better next time.” (I would love to hear the expletives some US athletes would unleash on a reporter who said that.)

This brings us back to Kei Nishikori. If he doesn’t win, he’ll get some praise for going where no one has gone before but we’ll see at least two weeks of detailed analysis about why he sucked. If he wins, we’ll hear about it for at least month and it will be considered a victory for Japan. (Even though he spent most of his career at IMG Bollettieri Tennis Academy and is currently coached by American Michael Chang.)

I hope he does well, but part of me kind of hopes he doesn’t, because the press coverage will stop sooner.

 

Beer Pizza Sports and Instruments

Leave a reply

Today’s is random memories and I’m not even sure how many of them are accurate, but one of the best things about growing up in the ’70s was political correctness and “if you do this you will end up deadness” and the precautionary principle hadn’t yet ruined discourse and the ability to have fun. The worst thing that could happen to you was putting an eye out someday. We brought knives to school to show off and playing shooting games didn’t yet result in therapy and lock downs. You could even bring BB guns on school grounds in the summer without involving SWAT teams and suspension.

The other thing you could do was take overnight school trips and, while you were on the trip you could visit breweries. I do not remember why we went there, and I don’t remember what grade we were, but I remember visiting the Coors Brewery in Golden, Colorado on one school trip. The thing that stands out the most was hearing that the hops room (or the grain room) was kept at a high temperature and 100% humidity. I remember my friend Shawn and I pondering what that meant. Was the room full of liquid? (Now that I live in a humid region I can tell you that the room was #@%&ing nasty inside, that’s what it was.)

I also seem to remember that the teachers were able to sample some of the, um, local produce, although they did it whilst we students were on the tour. None of them, to my knowledge, were ever fired, although I may have just revealed a major secret.

The other trips I remember were some sort of band trip that involved eating apple crepes somewhere downtown, sleeping during a classical music performance and a trip to Celebrity Sports Center, which seemed like one of the largest places in the world at the time. I bowled a little and played some games. I wasn’t good at any of it but I had fun. (This was before the days when everybody had to be good at something or you weren’t allowed to do it.)

I also remember eating at the Organ Grinder pizza parlor which featured a two story pipe organ and a couple professional pipe organists (if that’s an actual phrase). I don’t remember the food at all, but I remember the show. I also remember the performers hitting a mechanical monkey every now and then when it wouldn’t stop playing the cymbals.

Either that, or I had sampled some of the local produce without realizing it.

A Container Full of Stark Raving Jerks and the Mad

1 Reply

Autumn term starts tomorrow which means I’ll once again be riding the train. Riding the train means I’ll once again be thrown in the mix with the normal train riders and the train jerks.

First you have to understand that, for all their seeming politeness, the Japanese, especially those in the Tokyo area, are in fact seething with a surprising level of selfishness that gets turned loose as soon as the train doors open. The ugliest fights are for the seats on the ends of the benches and for the last seat on the train. Granted, I don’t mean a fight in the literal sense, instead it’s more of a “#@$% women and children first; I’m getting mine” attitude, Which leads us to:

Jerks Inside the Train:
Once in their seats, the occupants will immediately become train jerks and enter what I call the “Tokyo Doze” which is a form of sleep that allows the seat occupants to ignore the senior citizen, pregnant woman and/or man with crutches standing in front of them. This is especially true if the Dozers have occupied the “silver seats” reserved for senior citizens, pregnant women and/or men with crutches. (Not a joke. I’ve seen that happen, even with She Who Must Be Obeyed. More about that in a minute.)

Anyone who doesn’t get a seat then enters a battle for space. It’s important to plant your feet securely and grab hold of the cross bar. At this point, you encounter the Oozers. Oozers start to ooze over into your space in order to make more room for themselves. They use a combination of hips and carry bags to push you over. The secret to defeating the Oozers is, if you’ve remembered to grab the cross bar, a well placed elbow right next to their faces. They’ll stop oozing.

The next form of train jerk is the Readers. The Readers open up their newspapers full, especially if their seated, and it rubs and annoys you the whole ride. Or they are standing and they open it up to that it’s over your head or in your hair (if you’re tall). Or, the Readers pull out books and use you as a book stand. I’ve been knows to fold up the tops of newspapers and remind people I’m not a book stand. (More on that later.)

Jerks Outside the Train:
For the most part, the people boarding the train let the people on the train deboard. For the most part. But there is always a form of train jerk called the Barger. The Bargers come in two flavors, those who barge directly through the people trying to exit and those who wait until the main wave exits and then pushes through the slow moving little old ladies to get an open seat.

Before the doors open though, you encounter the Dashers and the Drifters. The Dashers stand in front of a door, then as soon as that door opens, they Dash down to a different door because they see more space or an open seat. If they bump into you, well, you should watch where they are going. The Drifters float between doors. (Important note: Unlike the USA and the UK, trains in Japan actually stop with the doors next to the numbered marks on the platforms.) When the doors open, Drifters suddenly choose sides and push into a line.

Hybrid Jerks:
Pushers wait until everyone else has boarded a crowded train and then use a combination of leverage and Judo to force their way onto the train, even if it’s so crowded that even the air has been pushed out of it. It doesn’t matter to a Pusher if a little old lady or a child is in the way, all that matters is that they are in the way the Pusher wants more space.

Cutters are an especially vile form of train jerk. Outside the train they may be a Drifter or a Dasher or may seem like normal people. When they door opens they walk in carefully and then abruptly change directions. For example, you enter on the right, the Cutter enters on the left. Suddenly, the Cutter decides he should have gone right and cuts in front of/through you. It’s like someone on an expressway suddenly realizing they’re in the wrong lane and about to miss their exit.

This takes us to our final category of jerk, the Foreign Asshole. The FA comes in a couple forms, most of them loud. If they are not talking loudly and disturbing the wa, they are being unpleasant to other train jerks.

Guess which category I’m in?

I’ve been known to, how shall we say, get vocal with Dozers pretending they are asleep, especially when She Who Must Be Obeyed was several months pregnant and had been cut off and forced to stand by a Cutter. I’m also pretty good at leg sweeps and can perform world class soccer dives that bring both me and the Cutters down. I’ve stood close to Cutters once they got a seat and pretty much had a “chat” with them about their rudeness. I once gave a man three warnings about resting his book on my shoulder, then snatched the book and put it on the luggage rack.

Oddly, I’ve never been a physical fight. Mind you, I don’t intend to, I’m just an FA when it comes to dealing with train jerks.

Itsy Bitsy Noiseless Patient Spider Agreements

Leave a reply

As I have become the designated bug killer in my house, I thought today I’d talk about bugs, or more specifically, spiders.

When I lived in Nou-machi, my apartment was surrounded by large green and black spiders. We quickly made an arrangement, the spiders and I: If they didn’t come inside my apartment, I wouldn’t kill them.

This agreement would, however, undergo a few modifications.

First you have to understand the spiders’ size. They were about 3-5 centimeters (1 1/3 – 2 inches) across. Their legs would just about reach across the width of an iPhone without having to stretch. They built their webs around the walkway lights and around my door light, which meant getting from the steps to my front door was rather like walking through a tunnel in lost Carcosa. The webs themselves were surprisingly strong and could move your cap a bit before they broke.

This led to the first modification: I would tear out any web that hit me in the face or head as I walked to and from my apartment, even if the web wasn’t in front of my door. I would also tear away any webs that touched my door, although I let them have the front window.

The second modification was that they couldn’t build any webs on the laundry pole on the back balcony where I was supposed to hang my laundry.

However, the third modification was a rescission of the second modification. This was done because the “balcony” was little more than an unsupported plastic shelf stuck to the side of the building, I wasn’t confident walking around on it, so I ended up drying my laundry indoors next to the window and using a fan. This actually worked better than putting laundry outdoors in three of four seasons (Pleasant, Humid and Static). (My adult students were convinced I was crazy, but I had dry clothes and they didn’t, so there.)

What I earned from this bargain with the spiders was a nearly mosquito free existence. My apartment had a rice paddy right in front of it (that I once fell into; long story, especially since I was sober when I did it). and a rice paddy next to it. There was a third rice paddy on the far side of the parking lot. These weren’t as bad as you’d think because they had frogs and crawfish eating a lot of the mosquitoes, but Nou-machi could still be overwhelmed with the little bloodsuckers especially during the Season in Which It Rains.

I only found spiders inside twice. They died.

Special Things and Unspecial Things

Leave a reply

Tonight’s topic is based on this probably apocryphal conversation:
Isadora Duncan to Anatole France: Imagine a child with my beauty and your brains!
Anatole France to Isadora Duncan: Yes, but imagine a child with my beauty and your brains!

I think it’s a truism that if you want to know what you love about your spouse, imagine what features of theirs you hope your children inherit. If you want to know what you hate about yourself, imagine what features of yours you hope your children don’t inherit.

Since we already have kids, I spend a lot of my time watching them and going: lucky, lucky, lucky, push, damn sorry about that, and well, it could be worse.

Luckily for the girls they inherited most of She Who Must Be Obeyed’s face. Especially important is they actually have lips, which is something I was pretty much denied which makes me look pensive even when I’m not, um, pensed. They both did, more or less, inherit a version of my nose, but that could be worse. They also inherited my creased eyelids which will save them a lot of make up and/or plastic surgery in the future.

The push is that they both seem to have inherited my height. Our oldest is already taller than her mother and the youngest is getting closer and closer. The oldest has big feet, which makes this a push. Being tall is a mixed blessing in Japan, especially when you try to buy shoes.

Unfortunately our oldest inherited my oily skin and the youngest at least some of my allergies. The odds are more or less against their hair. She Who Must Be Obeyed’s hair went completely white at a young age and white hair runs in my family. Mine waited a while, but is getting there slowly. My Dad’s hair was completely white by the time he was my age.

They both have good eyesight, which comes from me, but have inherited She Who Must Be Obeyed’s inner ear disturbance which makes it difficult for them to hear and understand the male voice.

Our oldest has inherited my propensity for putting off until tomorrow what is due the day after tomorrow. She’s already pulled her first almost-all-nighter and is, as I write this, finishing up the homework she had all summer to finish. (It’s 11:45 Japan time.) The youngest inherited She Who Must Be Obeyed’s work ethic, mostly. She likes to help out, but mainly on her own terms and she distracts easily, which she got from both of her parents.

Our oldest has a well developed back-talking skill, which she got from me, and she frustrates easily, which she also got from me. These are things of mine I really wish she hadn’t inherited.

Our youngest has a remarkable ability to make a small mess into a big mess when she doesn’t want to clean something. She didn’t get that from me as my skill is stretching a small five minute project into a seven day project, which means she must have got that from She Who Must Be Obeyed.

They are both much more aggressive about getting out and making friends than I am. They aren’t exactly extroverts, but they seem to enjoy people. They also aren’t easy to push around. I’m glad they inherited all that from She Who Must Be Obeyed. What they would have got from me wouldn’t have been as helpful to them.

Quite Comically Droll Really

Leave a reply

I have a couple hundred things I could and should have done today but rather than waste time playing World of Tanks or other games, I decided to waste it binge watching Inspector Morse and that has me thinking about British television and the odd influence it’s had on my life.

When I was growing up, I would occasionally catch snippets of British TV on PBS. Please remember, we only had four channels at the time, one of which was “educational” The first show I remember seeing and being freaked out by was The Tomorrow People. which is basically the X-Men with annoyingly perfect people and lots of 70’s hair and clothing.

There was also bits of The Benny Hill Show, which I’m still not actually sure I was supposed to watch. I mostly remember him not speaking very much and him being surrounded by lots of occasionally clad women. I also learned the many meanings of “crumpet” from that show.

The other comedy show was Monty Python’s Flying Circus which I mostly remember for the Spam sketch and people getting hit with fish. Later I would see all the Python movies. Yes, I can recite them all word for word, and no, I’m not going to do it now. The best part about Python was revisiting the shows years later and finally getting the jokes.

I also remember, a late 70’s series called Blake’s 7 which was gruelingly pessimistic, full of moral ambiguity, didn’t have seven people, got rid of Blake for a while and wasn’t afraid to kill off main characters. That said, it’s the kind of show that I suspect I’d hate if I watched it again. (Which means I have a moral obligation to watch it again. I’ll add it to the procrastination viewing list.)

The biggest show, though, was and remains Doctor Who. It was another show that I’d watch in fits and starts because, in those days, a week was a long time to have to remember the time something was on. It was also the first show I remember triggering a “What the hell is that?” when I saw a version with a different Doctor. (I didn’t yet know yet that Time Lords regenerate as a new person when they die/ask for more money per episode.)

The first Doctor I saw was Tom Baker and, quite frankly, he’s still the best Doctor. David Tennant did a great impersonation of him as did Matt Smith, but only Tom Baker could properly deliver a line like “I say, what a wonderful butler. He’s so violent.” He was also good at being the clown and then suddenly getting dark and moody. The worst Doctor was Colin Baker followed closely by the guy who had celery on his jacket.

Since then I’ve seen, I think, every available episode of Doctor Who and a couple webisodes. I’ve even watched bits of The Sarah Jane Adventures, based around former Doctor Who Companion Sarah Jane Smith after Elisabeth Sladen’s dazzling return to Doctor Who.

I’m not sure why I liked British TV. I think it was just different enough to count as vaguely exotic and I tended to latch on to things most other people didn’t like or didn’t yet get (Styx; dark beer; sci fi; mustard on French fries; potato chips on sandwiches; peanut butter on celery; Christopher Eccleston as Doctor Who).

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got more Inspector Morse to watch. I just wish I had a pint of real ale nearby.

 

Hard Work With Mere Fantasy

Leave a reply

One of the things I’ve generally tried to avoid, partly because it seems too much effort for the pay off, is participation in fantasy sports leagues. That said, I have participated in two leagues before and have been recently been persuaded to join another one.

One of the things that’s kept me from taking part in fantasy leagues is how serious some of the participants take it. The first time I remember meeting a serious player was when an acquaintance of mine used paid holidays to fly back the USA from Japan for the fantasy baseball draft.To me this seems like something you don’t do unless lots of money, drugs or hookers are involved. Whatever was involved, the most surprising part was it made perfectly good sense to him to spend real money to fly back for a fantasy draft and his wife was supportive of it, in a kind of “you boys” sort of way.

A few years later I would be coaxed into joining a fantasy hockey league with a few Canadians and a couple Scotsmen. It is important to understand that despite their reputation for being nice, when it come to Hockey (they always capitalize it) they are as ruthless as the most bloodthirsty people you can imagine, even in a fantasy league. When they discus teams like the Leafs (Leaves?), Canadiens (Canadians?) and the Senators (Crooks?) which are the only teams I’ve heard them discuss, they lose all sense of humor but retain all their snark.

In the league, they started by stacking the rules to favor them: you select a team and you are only a allowed a few trades. (The game we joined allowed unlimited trades.) This hampered those of us who’d been on skates only once, thought you dribbled the puck and actually thought the highlighted puck on US sports channels was a good idea. Despite this, I managed to finish second in the pool. I was first for a while but a trip to dial-up land (my in-laws) prevented me from making an important substitution.

The next year we played again, but allowed unlimited trades. Once again I was first towards the end and once again was sabotaged by my in-laws (who I suspect were bribed by Canadians). Once again I finished second. Both years I had the Canadians (Canadiens? Habs?) worried but in the end one of them prevailed which is why I am still alive to write these posts.

Now, for the first time, I’m part of an NFL fantasy league and actually had to participate in the draft. Proving, once again, that I’d rather be lucky than good, my team is picked to win our league.

This means I won’t even finish in the top five in our league of four teams. I’m optimistic that way–and not that good at math.

Half Done is, Well, Begun

Leave a reply

Today marks blog post 183, which means by the end of it I’ll be over half done with this daily project. 183 down; 182 to go. I’ve tried to write at least 400 or so words each time (more or less) which means I’ve already got at least 72,800 words on this blog (some of which actually make sense and are spelled correctly.)

I remain shocked that I’ve been able to keep up with it. For the last few weeks it’s been a particular chore. A bunch of posts were written, quite literally, in front of the in-laws, who didn’t seem to understand why I was swearing at myself and telling them to shut up so I could concentrate. (At least one of those statements is not true.)

My rules remain the same: Post before midnight Japan time (10 a.m. Kansas time) and spend no more than one hour writing the post. Unfortunately, life and life related things–and computer games–generally have pushed back my start time until after 10:00 each night, which is not always the best time to write, especially if it’s been a hectic day. I also don’t always have a clear topic.

One time I was playing World of Tanks about 10:00 at night and, via TeamSpeak, one of my friends asked me what the topic of the day was. I said I didn’t know yet. I’m not sure he realized I was serious.

I’ve opened up the “Add New Post” form at 11:15 at night still not knowing what topic I wanted to write about. Quarter by Quarter Dollar By Dollar and The Politics of Work Sustaining Energy Shots came out of nowhere. Others went nowhere. Some were just strange although I kind of liked them. I still don’t know where The Application is Half the Battle came from.

Some of them have been pleasant surprises. I’m especially happy with the recent No Good Idea Goes Unpunished and Let’s Have a Drink and a Chunk of Your Wallet which also came out of nowhere. (If you have any favorites, please tell me which ones they are as my goal is to assemble the best posts into a book when this year is done.)

I, too, have been shocked at the large number of drunk blogs.

I have about a third of a small notebook full of possible topics, but I’ve been holding off on those. Some of them are seasonal and some are for the dark places when all other lights go out.

I’ve also been holding off doing other kinds of posts on the site–photography, hobbies, reviews, random bits of randomness–mostly so I don’t mess up the nice and neat post count. However, the long term plan for this site is to start doing things like that.

I’ve made feeble attempts at monetization. I have PayPal donation button and, at the suggestion of a friend, included a Bitcoin donation plugin, but I didn’t like that the Bitcoin donation link was almost as large as some of the posts so I pulled it. (If I learn how to adjust the size, I may put it back on.) Instead I’ve added a wallet number in the sidebar for those who 1) find it and 2) understand it. For the future, I may add a page of recommended books with Amazon Affiliate links and encourage everyone to shop through those.

I’ve also noticed that I tend to go in phases in posts about Japan. I’ve tried to stagger those out more, but, well, 11:15 p.m. and no topic. My long term goal is still to modernize The Crazy Japan Times which right now can’t be read on most mobile devices and start a daily Japan related post there.

Readership has been small but consistent, but that’s partly because I’ve not been expanding the subject matter beyond myself. Some of the random posts about pens and notebooks have been picked up by the Pen Addict but that’s only provided short bursts of new readers. Russian spammers remain my most loyal commenters.

I remain torn about how honest and revealing to get in the posts. There are topics I’ve been putting off because they might dredge up unpleasant history even if I don’t name names, but, well, we’ll see. There are also topics that push the edge of political, which I’ve also been avoiding. (Hint, think of where I live and the big events that happened in August in 1945.)

That’s an hour, now, so it’s time to stop. For those who’ve stuck around since the first post, thanks. I hope I haven’t wasted your time and I hope you’ll stick around until the end.

No Good Idea Goes Unpunished

Leave a reply

I don’t know why I’m thinking about this today, but suddenly I’m reminded of an unpleasant moment when I was in the Boy Scouts back in Hayden, Colorado. It was one of those moments where personal initiative met personal ambition in a storm of politics. (Warning, some language below not safe for work and/or sensitive types.)

For reasons I don’t fully remember, but some kind of troop exposition was involved, our troop (Troop 193?) had to come up with an information booth based on one of the various merit badges. The idea was to put together a booth so impressive and so full of information that grown men would cry and your troop would win prizes (something like that). For reasons I also don’t remember we either were assigned or chose “Astronomy“.

On the way back home after our weekly troop meeting, my friend Bobby and I started talking about the booth and, in a sudden flash of inspiration/evil (depends on your point of view, as you’ll see later) we suddenly started rattling off ideas about how to make the booth. We’d have slideshows of celestial features–basically our own planetarium–and diagrams of various constellations. I remember us being really excited about the possibilities and wanting to volunteer to run the planning. Keep in mind, neither of us were particularly ambitious at the time, but the Boy Scouts is/was supposed to be about training young leaders and we suddenly had the leadership bug.

The next day I brought our ideas up to our Senior Patrol Leader, let’s call him EJ, while we were at school. He mumbled something about needing troop permission or something or other but he clearly wasn’t as excited about our ideas as we were.

I told Bobby what happened and we went about our school business. At the next troop meeting I had my first experience with what I would later realize is called a “shit storm of petty bullshit” (that’s a technical term). Although because I was just a teen all I could say was “it fucking sucked” (another technical term).

One of the senior adults in the troop, let’s call him DJ, also happened to be the father of EJ. Rather than simply saying “no” to our ideas, he’d actually spent the week calling other high level Boy Scout leaders in the area to all but accuse Bobby and me of beating his son to get control of the exposition. It was all part of a plot to undermine the leadership of the Senior Patrol Leader and to kill children in Asia with unwashed spoons. (Hey, I was only a teenager, that’s about how much sense it made to me at the time.)

We then spent pretty much the entire rest of the troop meeting explaining how we were excited about our ideas and thought we were helping out the troop and no offense was intended. The approximate response was “Well, you’re fucking not helping and offense was taken!” (Well that was the tone anyway and I wish it was an exaggeration.) I was right at the edge of walking out–and learned later at least three people would have gone with me–but it all got resolved by a troop vote and suddenly Bobby and I were the equivalent of a dodgy interim government after a coup when were were voted in charge.

We then got to work putting together the booth. This involved photographing celestial features and making posters of the merit badges requirements. Every time we asked DJ for advice we got “you’re in charge, you tell me” (remember, DJ was the adult, EJ was the teen.)

Somehow we got it all put together and assembled at the exposition. The job was then to occupy the booth and answer questions about the merit badge requirements. If our show was good enough, our troop would win the prize.

We did a pretty good job–we even knew most of the celestial features in the slide show–but one judge walked up and asked “What is the altitude for geosynchronous orbit?” This is roughly the equivalent of asking a kid showing horses at the county fair what the air speed velocity of a laden swallow was. Yes, it had a connection–both are animals and geosynchronous orbit is in space–but we weren’t supposed to be experts in space, just in the astronomy badge.

In the end we didn’t win, a much more politically connected booth that only handed out a few pamphlets did–once again, I wish that was a joke–and EJ and DJ both pretty much scoffed at Bobby and I for the rest of the year four our failure.

At that point, Bobby and I pretty much resolved never to take any initiative or to show any leadership or to try to implement any good ideas ever again. I still haven’t– I think Bobby enlisted in the Air Force so the jury’s still out on whether he has or not.

Temporary Friends Forever And Also in My Head

3 Replies

Some of the best friends I ever had I knew for only a few days or a few minutes. One of them didn’t technically exist.

Back in my graduate school days I had the opportunity to attend a couple graduate student conferences in Columbia, Missouri. In each case I fell in with a group of fellow travelers based simply on being at the same place at the same time. I still do not understand how  groups like these form, but at the second one I was best friends with a university Marxist, a cute basketcase from somewhere in California, a Canadian guy, a guy from California carrying a rather potent thing some people refer to as “weed” and a guy who did “meta” criticism which I didn’t actually understand but he was really cool.

We hung out for the few days of the conference and I quickly learned that when I said something was “only a couple blocks away” I had to clarify if I was using coastal or mid-Western blocks. (Mid-Western blocks are apparently larger than coastal blocks and, according the complaints I received, the difference is apparently several miles.)

We all promised to keep in touch, which means we exchanged exactly one email and then never contacted each other again. Still, they were a fun group and I’m glad I got to know them for a while. I don’t even remember their names.

The ones I knew for a few minutes I met whilst waiting in some sort of endless line, probably university related, or at a ski slope. Misery loves company, especially when you’re all in the same miserable line.

One year, though, while I was still an undergraduate, I went skiing in Colorado with my friend Steve and his friends. I quickly encouraged them to abandon me as they had skiing skills and I didn’t. While I was on my own, and oddly before any alcohol was involved, I decided to pretend I was English and started speaking in an English accent. “Do the queues, I’m sorry, the lines, do the lines always move this slowly?”

I was worried at first when the lift attendant–some random blonde ski bunny–simply mocked my accent when I asked a question. I didn’t know the proper response: “Bugger off? Go #@$% yourself? Suck it, bitch?” I’m still not sure what a proper Englishman would have said, but then, technically, I wasn’t a proper Englishman.

I quickly developed a back story for my character. He was from Bath (which I had actually visited recently and still remembered some details about)  but he had an American mother, which would explain any pronunciation slips and odd phrasing. I chatted with a father on son during the gondola ride and remember talking about how humiliating it was to be falling about on the course whilst five year old children raced past with little trouble. I skied with them for a bit, but they were heading to a smaller lift that would take them to courses with names like “Widow Maker” and “Death’s Door” or which were so terrible they only had codes like “K1” (which means Kills One Each Day. No really. Look it up.)

The main thing the English accent got my friend, er, me was beer. I was still only 20 but I went to the bartender and asked “Which of your American beers do you recommend?” I got beer with no problems.

I said goodbye to that friend by the end of the day and never met him again. I never actually gave him a name–it was safer to use my own as “Dwayne Lively” is somewhat English sounding–but I always wish I’d thought to give him a name. I’m funny that way.