Random Thoughts the Third

This hits a little too close to home.

 

For so long I've heard how awesome the dollar-fifty Costco hot dogs are.

Walked to the movie theater today and had to pass the Costco hot dog kiosk. I got in line.

Took a moment to realize it was the line to pick up hot dogs.

Looked behind and saw where you had to order on the computer.

Walked over to order my first Costco hot dogs, excited.

Then I saw the placard that said you had to swipe your Costco member card.

"You have to be a member to buy the hot dogs?"

The guy to my left, holding his little girl, nodded yes.

I turned and walked away. Total fucking bummer.

 

I think that’s a relatively recent change. But don’t worry, you’re not missing much. You get a decent sized hot dog for $1.50, but it’s not fantastic like a grilled sausage or bratwurst.

 

The Bible speaks of the Ark leveling mountains and laying waste to entire regions. Any army which carries the Ark before it is invincible.

 

There really should be a federal law requiring insurance companies etc. to have humans working the phones and be fully staffed. Their goal is to get people frustrated and just hang up.

I tried to enter the policy number, but it wouldn't accept the full number, telling me to wait for the next available representative,

 

Oh, and might I add that those people who finally do answer be from the country of origin.

 

“Sting over to Dusty Rhodes for the layup!”

 

That moment when you think you’re gonna go to work but the tree crew down the street has a different idea for your morning.

 

Just talked with a former colleague ... let's just say stuff did not end well. Long time ago.

He now has Parkinson's disease. Since that horrid disease gave my stepfather an ugly 12-year fight, I have some understanding that what he's fighting is much worse than any issues we had years ago. Hope he hangs on to my number ... when we did work well in the beginning, well, it was a lot of fun. And a good man.

In summary, grudges - or any semblance thereof - are not worth it. Wish I could get another former friend of mine to see that. But when you're almost proud to hold grudges, what can you do and how can you get through to them? How do you get them to realize that all they do is weigh you down, that they don't make you feel any better, that they do much more harm than good?

 

I think the bravest knight at the roundtable was Sir Mix-a-Lot, who had the courage to tell the truth about what he likes.

 

They still have to let you use their pharmacy in many states, however. I’m not a member (we make a yearly trip with the in-laws who are) but once saved $75 at their pharmacy.

 

So I found out through a Google search after thinking about an old grade schoolteacher that she died two weeks ago. She was far from my favorite and, quite frankly, not a particularly nice person at times.

I'll admit that I was probably the last troublemaker student to go through the American education system, a small Catholic grade school in the Mon Valley of western Pennsylvania, in the 1980s before Attention Deficit Disorder was defined, and that coupled with the teachers of that time period made for some unique interactions. -- like the time 11-year-old was told, "you better get your act together because welfare only lasts for six months." You can imagine how a roomful of classmates always looking for red meat recated to that. The flip side is she was the first teacher to identify my ability to write in her seventh-grade creative writing class, so maybe I'm not doing any of this stuff if not for that.

Anyways, I forwarded the obituary on to a handful of classmates that I'm still connected to on Facebook and shared it with a close friend from grade school that I maintain close contact with vis text message. We reminisced about her antics -- the time she dragged a kid's desk to the front of the room and put it against the wall because he was disruptive and how it wouldn't fly today.

When I sent the obituary to one old friend, Kumar, he shot back a few hours later, "she was mean and always corrected our artwork." He clearly had some PTSD similar to mine and we went down the rabbit hole for an hour or so. Kumar transferred into our school in about fourth grade and was the lone Indian kid in a sea of white faces. My friend Chris and I didn't care, and the three of us became friends with a common goal: to pretty much make fun of everything. We were obsessed with any new sitcom that came on television and I had informed them of a show on NBC after Carson called "Late Night with David Letterman," which I started staying up late to watch in the summer and would tape and watch the next day during the school year.

Regardless, the memories mostly were not happy ones for him, and I replied that you're so locked up in your own little bubble at that age -- puberty, which girl you have a crush on, what your favorite sports team is doing, what girl has a crush on you, who your favorite band is -- that thinking of someone beyond yourself isn't even on your radar, especially when everything seems so okay on the surface. We talked about seeing the Challenger explosion on television in fourth grade in class and I mentioned how we almost ended up seeing R Bud Dwyer ending his life on TV in fifth grade. It had started snowing and the fifth grade teacher had put the noon news on to get the weather forecast and, had she switched that old black and white on a good two minutes sooner, she would have exposed 26 10-year-olds to one of the most famous on-camera suicides in history.

Kumar had no recollection of this or even who Dwyer was. I sent him a link to an article and, a few minutes later, I got this reply back.

Needless to say my jaw dropped when I read this. I’d never thought of him having such thoughts when we were that age. He was just a dorky TV obsessed goofball like I was. I felt bad that he was feeling this way at the age but I guess felt good that my smartass helped in some way by accident.