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November 17, 2012

Happy Trails Hostess

Filed under: Uncategorized — DrAnthonysBlog @ 3:54 pm
Tags: Abandoned, Actually, Already, Amazed, Apple, Appreciated, Barter, Box, Boyhood, Breakfast, Closing, College, Convenience, Correctly, Cruising, Cupcakes, Delicious, Elementary school, Favorites, Find, Flown, Food, Fruit, Fruit pies, Growing Up, happy, Homes, Hostess, Hot Wheels, Indeed, Junk, kids, Later, Living, Local, Long ago, Luch, Lunch bag, Memories, Milk, mom, money, morning, Old, Order, Packages, Pail, Pals, Passing, Personal, Purposes, Ranked, Recall, Recently, Saddened, Sandwich, Shelves, Smiles, Smoking, Snack cakes, Stores, Surprised, Suzy Q's, Sweetroll, Tasted, Tenacity, Thanks, Things, Times, Trading, Trails, Trans-fats, Treats, Twinkies, U.S., Understand, Unhealthy, Weekends, Why, Witness, Years, Zingers

When I was growing up, smoking was still popular, as was cruising on weekends, and things like trans-fats and junk food were not yet being discussed. During these times, which really was not that long ago, my mom would sometimes place Hostess snack cakes in my lunch pail (Hot Wheels, if I recall correctly), along with a sandwich, fruit, and milk money.

Though not always included, these delicious treats were much appreciated by the boyhood me whenever they were. Also, for lunch trading purposes, Hostess treats could be bartered for nearly anything else that was in any lunch bag or pail at my elementary school!

My personal favorites, not in any particular order, were Cupcakes,

Zingers,

Fruit Pies (Apple actually),

and Suzy Q’s!

Years later, when I was in college and had abandoned my unhealthy, old pals, I must admit, I would occasionally still enjoy a SweetRoll, or two, when I did not have time for breakfast!

I never really cared much for Twinkies, though I was surprised to learn they were 85 years old!

I was even more surprised to learn, like many in the U.S. recently, that Hostess was closing…

and not due to low sales either. Indeed, when I went looking for Hostess products this morning, I was amazed to find that they had literally flown off the shelves from most local stores already!

Through tenacity I nonetheless managed to find a few packages at an out-of-the-way convenience store and brought them home to share with my kids.

Though it has been a while since I last tasted them, the memories came back as did the smiles! In living to see the passing of Hostess, I am more than a little saddened to witness it, even though I understand why. Thanks for the memories Hostess!

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October 30, 2012

A Teddy Bear Tale

Filed under: Uncategorized — DrAnthonysBlog @ 11:52 pm
Tags: Altered, Appendages, Balanced, Bean, Bedroom, Believed, Brother, Brown, California, Church, Clarity, Closed, College, Commute, Company, Corner, Credible, Dated, Decade, Desk, Details, Dogs, Dusty, Earthquake, Educated, Ex-Boyfriend, Experienced, Eyes, Floor, Friday, Glue, Good, Goose Bumps, Grandmother, happened, Head, Heart, History, Holy Water, Inbox, Landlord, Little, Living, Millimeter, morning, Mortgage, Next, October, Odd, Oddest, Office, Office Manager, Parents, Parked, Party, Perfectly, Performance, Person, Pose, Position, Pounded, Read, Rented, Repeat, Scream, Served, Shoes, Shorts, Simply, Sister, Small, Southern, Spare, Spot, Statement, Story, Strange, Street Fair, Strings, Table, Tale, Teddy Bear, Terrier, Thing, Torso, Townhouse, Trendy, Typical, Understand, Unnatural, Walk, Wall, Wonders, wrong

What you are about to read is believed by the party involved to have happened. The person is completely credible and the story is unusual. I have altered some of the details at the request of the person involved though, aside from that, what you are about to read is the story as I understand it. It is up to you to decide how it happened…

Cindy lived with her two terrier mix dogs in a townhouse she rented in a trendy area of southern California. She was 28 years old, college educated, and worked as an Office Manager for a mortgage company. Her commute to work took nearly an hour each way, but she did not care because she enjoyed where she was living.

Her life to this point was fairly typical and according to Cindy she had no history of anything strange ever really happening to her. Her parents were supportive and she was close to her brother and sister, though they lived in another part of the state. She dated occasionally, though she had no one steady in her life at the time.

One day in October, she believes it was a Friday, she came home after a long commute and walked upstairs to her bedroom to get comfortable. As she passed the spare room that she used as an office something seemed odd. She continued on to her bedroom and as she put on her shorts and walking shoes, but she could not shake that feeling that something was not quite right. Before she took the dogs out for a walk, she retraced her steps and stopped in her tracks when she looked into the spare room.

As she looked into the office she saw that the bed was still made and nothing was on the floor. She also noticed that the closet door was closed just as she had left it that morning. In the far corner, her desk chair was exactly where she parked it under the small table that served as her desk. So far so good she thought to herself.

However, when she looked on the desk, her heart pounded, her hairs stiffened, and goose bumps appeared instantly. She froze and just stared at her desk for a long while. What she saw, was really nothing much at first glance, but to Cindy it was surreal and not possible. Her small brown teddy bear was standing on its head in front of the inbox, perfectly balanced. The problems with this were several and they were exactly what had unnerved Cindy so much. The first problem was that Cindy did not leave the bear that way and the second was that she knew it probably could not be done, at least not without glue, strings, and/or some other manner of support. Lastly, all of this caused her to want to scream, though she held back.

Being a practical person, she spent a long while just studying the 12 inch, 8 ounce, toy with a bean filled body and stuffing filled head and appendages. She did this to confirm that there was no way that this pose was possible without support. She looked for thread, wires, and glue and found absolutely nothing. She then stopped and quickly checked the rest of her townhouse for signs of someone having been there. Since she was a very neat person she would have spotted anything out-of-place in an instant, but she found everything in perfect order except for her bear.

She went back to the office, sat down, and finally grabbed the bear taking it from the unnatural position that it was in. She then thoroughly checked it over for anything that could explain what had happened. The bear was a little dusty, but otherwise in like new condition and, as far as she could tell, completely unaltered in every way. She thought to herself that perhaps she was wrong and that an earthquake had made the bear fall and land on its head and that maybe just maybe it could somehow be posed in that way after all. She spent the next half hour trying to repeat the pose but the bean bag torso and stuffing filled appendages would not allow it. The bear simply could not be posed on its head perfectly balanced the way she found it, no matter what she did, even by leaning it against the wall for support!

Two people had access to her apartment, her landlord and her ex-boyfriend, who still had not returned his key. The next day she explained the weird situation to both and was told flatly that neither had done it. In fact, her ex-boyfriend was at work from the time she left that morning until well after she returned home that night, so he could not have done it. Her landlord, who was also a neighbor, was honest and not one to break rules. He told her that it is illegal for a landlord to enter without some compelling and urgent cause, like a fire, or without advanced notice being provided to the tenant, in non-urgent situations. He then reiterated to her that he did not do it, though he agreed the whole thing was very odd.

That day she felt uneasy, but she still loved the toy and did not want to get rid of it. Her mother understood that her daughter loved antiques and had a fondness for bears. So, when her mom spotted the vintage teddy bear in like new condition, at a local street fair, she bought it and gave it to her daughter for Christmas. Cindy immediately loved the bear and put it on top of her inbox in the office. The bear had been in the same spot for nearly a year, and only moved when Cindy picked it up to place unpaid bills underneath or pull them out to pay them.

After much thought, Cindy, who was raised Catholic, though she did not attend church, made a decision. She grabbed some holy water that her grandmother had given her and sprinkled it on the bear. She then said a brief prayer to herself. After that she looked the bear in the eyes with a clarity of thought and absolute intent and said out load if he ever moved even millimeter or so much as gave her a creepy feeling again, she would immediately burn the bear to ashes and scatter what remained over a wide area. When she was done with her statement to the bear, she left the room and went on with her life not thinking much about it again.

That was well over a decade ago, and according to Cindy, he still sits on top of her inbox, in her office. He has not ever given a repeat performance, though Cindy still occasionally wonders how, and why, it happened and she still says it is the oddest thing that she has ever experienced before or since.

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November 13, 2011

What is fair?

Filed under: Uncategorized — DrAnthonysBlog @ 2:16 pm
Tags: Beliefs, Blog, Characters, childhood, Circulation, College, Comic Books, Complicated, Conversation, Countries, Deceptively, Deeply, Defend, Definition, Disagreements, Economists, Ethics, Fair, Family, Foreign, Fortunes, Frenemies, Friendship, Fundamental, Funny, Growing Up, History, Impact, Instant, Intelligent, justice, Learned, Life, Little, Longevity, Low, Necesaary, Negative, News, Obvious, Odd, Performance, Philosophy, Policies, Politics, Positive, Region, Regions, Religion, Right, Scholarly Journals, Simple, Stan Lee, Superheroes, supervisor, Taught, True, United States, Universally, Widespread, Wonder

Many of us have said, or heard, that something is “not fair” at one time or another. In childhood, it could have taken the form of telling our mother this when she wanted us to go to bed. When we were older, it could have been uttered when we realized that we had a flat tire while headed to an important meeting. Or, we could have agreed with a close friend that their supervisor had not treated them fair in passing them over for promotion. Regardless of when we heard, or spoke it, we were probably certain about what we believed to be true. Fair is deeply personal to most of us.

What is fair? Is it simply treating everyone the same? Or, is it defined by faith, understood through philosophy, or learned by comparing it to past experience, or by watching it on a screen? Economists will tell you that fair is but one of several means to justify the allocation of, always finite, resources. HR professionals might say it involves applying policies without regard to anything but employee performance and/or perhaps longevity. When I was little, I thought fair was what Stan Lee wrote about and his characters, superheroes of course, staunchly defended every month. Growing up in the United States students are taught in school that the country was founded, at least in part, because the colonists felt they were not taxed in a fair way. Fair is many things.

Is what I consider fair about something the same as what you believe? Do your friends, family, or even frenemies, if you have any, use the same standards to measure what they believe to be fair as you do? Is fair the same in other regions or foreign countries? If intelligent life exists outside of the earth, what is fair to them? If you stop and think about it, really think about it, fair is complicated!

Another interesting thing about fair, is that when we focus on it the discourse is mostly about a lack of it rather than an overabundance of it. I mean how many times have you heard someone, anyone, opine that something was really very fair! Granted it does happen, but those conversations, or comments, are more the exception than the rule. Why is that? If fair is so important, as it appears to be, why do we not pay more attention to it when it is present? Is what we believe to be fair so fundamental to us that, like air or water, it is simply taken for granted generally, but felt deeply the instant we perceive it to be lost?

Funny thing is, for a word that most of us are very familiar with, many of us would be hard pressed to define fair in a way that others would readily agree with, though we can spot it in an instant when we see it! Also, regardless of your definition, many people would probably agree that the world is not filled with nearly as many examples of fair as most of us would like. Friendships have been soured, fortunes lost, needless lives taken, and countries throughout history have, and continue, to go to war over disagreements concerning what is considered fair. All of this, over a deceptively simple word that really has no universally agreed upon definition…

When we talk about what is fair, the conversations are sometimes loud, can be emotionally charged, and, as mentioned above, may result in disagreements with negative outcomes for one or more parties. The disagreements can involve anything from how observations of details are perceived to questions about how others would feel if they were on the receiving end of a situation, or decision, that is not fair. Regardless, conversations about what is fair are often not pleasant to have, though certainly necessary, at times, if we are to be true to ourselves and what we each understand to be right!

Given the importance of what we believe to be fair, and the obvious impact that it has on our lives, both positive and negative, I find it truly odd that these aspects of it have not received more widespread attention. Granted conversations about it do happen, mostly in college ethics courses, and I have no doubt that it is written about in low circulation scholarly journals, but those are limited in scope and appear to do little to add to the greater conversation and understanding. I wonder; is that truly fair?

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July 16, 2011

Our last family vacation!

Filed under: Uncategorized — DrAnthonysBlog @ 10:54 am
Tags: Asphalt, Baja, Benito Juarez, Bickering, Blog, Bull, California, Cellphones, Chevy, College, Conversation, Dune Buggies, Entertain, Fall, Family, Father, Great Stories, Guaymas, Gulf of California, Highway, Hispanic, Hours, Impala, Important Lessons, Internet, Latin, Latino, Life, Locals, Maps, Memorable, Mexican, Mexico, mother, Mulaje, News, Persevered, Photos, Ranchers, Red Clay, Rocks, Summer, Super-8 Film, Teamwork, Travel, Trip, Unpaved, Vacation, Venomous Snakes, Village, Web, Young

“We are going to take a vacation to Mexico” my mother told the five of us kids as we listened, most only half interested. She said that it was going to be our last family trip together because my sister was starting college in the fall. I do not recall the rest of that conversation as I was very young, but the outcome is permanently imprinted in my mind.

The next thing I do remember is all 7 of us piling into our brand new Chevy Impala and driving from our home in southern California towards the Mexican border, which was a couple of hours away (this was before the current problems made trips like this less desirable to take). We crossed the border and drove to Guaymas de Zaragoza, a port city on the eastern side of the Gulf of California notable to tourists for its warm weather and many undeveloped beaches. From there, we boarded a ferry, the Benito Juarez (I am not sure why I remember the name, but I do), headed across the gulf to Mulaje in Baja, Mexico. However, after a few of days of fun, somehow, we missed the return ferry to Guaymas, but learned that we could take the newly completed Baja highway and be back home in a day. This is where the trip took a really memorable turn!

We followed the directions and drove a couple of hours to the place where we were to connect with the highway. When we arrived all we could see was more dirt road. My father checked with some locals and found out that the highway was not yet completed, but that the asphalt was only around 30 miles away. My father had to be back to work soon and so we decided to go for it!

Unfortunately, that information turned out to also be incorrect – this was long before the days of cellphones and the Web, and no maps were available that showed the progress of the road construction in Mexico. We continued on and, at one point midway in our journey, we ran over a large cactus that was half buried in the sand and had transmission problems. Some ranchers were nearby and helped my father make the car drivable again (I never heard exactly how they did that with few tools and no parts). Another time my mother was answering nature’s call when a bull started heading in her direction. When have super-8 film of her running back towards us with the animal clearly visible in the distance!

At times we had to move large rocks to enable the car to pass the very rough dirt road. At night, my father and brother slept on the hood of the car, while my sisters, mom, and I slept inside as we had no camping gear. Along the way we passed a small village where my father was able to get enough gas and food to keep us going. We also met some Americans in a dune buggy going the opposite direction who updated us on how far we were from pavement (still over 100 miles) and gave us some foul-tasting water to drink. I am sure they thought my parents were crazy and, being a parent today around their age then, I can totally understand why!

By noon on the third day we finally connected again with the asphalt. My mother literally kissed the pavement, which was not very clean but mom did not care (we have that on film as well)! We ended up driving well over 200 miles on unpaved roads in the Baja desert, during the middle of summer, with 5 children, and few supplies. Later, we learned that there were 7 species of venomous snakes in the region and the car forever after had a layer of red clay that permeated the interior no matter how well it was detailed. This was no doubt deposited during the numerous times my brother was slow to roll up the window when wind gusts or passing dune buggies kicked up dirt and dust!

Mom and dad are gone now and that trip is just a memory from many summers past. As mom predicted it turned out to be our last trip together as a family and it was very memorable, though not for the reasons that she had hoped. Still, we persevered, worked together despite the occasional bickering, learned some important lessons, and have great stories to tell about it that never fail to entertain!

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