Flat Earth

June 12, 2017

Greetings from the flip side,

I like to think of myself as open minded.  Which is how I excuse the fact that I am sometimes naive and not well informed.  Combine that with an overactive imagination and too many science fiction novels in my formative years, and now you have license to call me gullible.

So I’ll admit to being influenced by a variety of theories that have been floated over the years, including alternative universes, time travel, and the whole thing about Paul McCartney being dead and Elvis being alive.

But this time I have done my research and I am convinced.

Recently Rapper B.o.B. and Cleveland Cavaliers player Kyrie Irving have told the press that they believe that the world is flat.  I missed that in my headline news feed, (in part because I don’t follow basketball and the last rapper’s name I knew was Biggie Smalls) but this in no way minimizes the credibility of these two.  After all, they are famous and successful so they are probably experts in astronomy.  And physics. 

But because these two brave pioneers came out on the subject, Flat Earth experts flooded the media with interviews, and eventually that bled through into my narrow cocoon of heliocentric ignorance. 

I visited several Flat Earth websites and blogs and I have learned the truths that have been kept from us by Neil deGrasse Tyson and those whackos at NASA.  Astrophysics, the ‘theory’ of gravity, geology, the fairy tale about the changing of the seasons, all of that is made up.  It is one of the longest running pranks in history.

So; the earth is not a globe, it is a disc.  The ‘north pole’ is at the center, and the perimeter is surrounded by a wall of ice, which we see as the ‘south pole’.  No one knows what is beyond this wall of ice.  We are not spinning on a ball, we are spinning on an LP. There is a variety of proof for this, but it begins with the fact that when you look at the world it is flat.

I went outside to prove this and it’s true.  I was just on my deck, (flat) and looked as far as I could see and the world is flat.  I went to my neighbor’s yard; flat. It has been staring me in the flat face my whole life. 

What occurred to me this morning is that if the earth is flat, it only makes sense that there is another side, probably populated with another 8 billion people!  And they are spinning in the exact opposite direction as we are.  Imagine that. (I wonder if THEY know the world is flat.)

This would explain why sometimes at night I can hear people talking outside my window, and then I look and there is no one there.  Or why sometimes I hear a loud ‘thunk’ from an unknown source, or the sound of music that I would not listen to.  It is just our downstairs neighbors on side B.

Armed with this new knowledge I have been propelled into postulating solutions for the world’s problems.  For example, it’s possible there is a conduit between our side of the earth and the other side.  I believe this is where my missing socks go when I do the laundry.

Recently the carnival came to our little town and I saw the ‘Round Up’ ride, which is basically a giant flat disc that spins.  The people on the ride are pinned to the circumference by some magic force that also induces nausea, disorientation and dizziness.  Combining this scientific study with my new knowledge about the spinning disc we live on, I think I may have discovered the source of a host of illnesses, not to mention the effects of alcohol.  I plan to submit this information in a paper to the New England Journal of Medicine. 

This revelation has opened up a whole new world to me, literally.  I will look at my place on our plane in a whole different way, one with less dimension and the without the distraction of science and natural laws.  It is so refreshing and liberating to finally see the world through the eyes of a child.  Or a dachshund. 

Hope this finds you holding on,

David

Copyright © 2017 David Smith

Spokes

June 5, 2017

Greetings from the three cross,

Each of us is given a little discretion in our day to make adjustments in our actions and our attitudes so that we have a good mix of what is required and what is desired.  This balance of work and play, of focus and daydream, of doing and going and just being, is what makes our days satisfying and fulfilling.  It is also true of the people you choose to share your day.

There has never been a part of my life where bicycles were not present.  Some years I had more time in the saddle than others, but I have never been far from two wheels and two lanes. 

The care of a bicycle is both science and art; it is as much technical as it is intuition and feel.  Almost everything you do to keep a bike running has something to do with very subtle nuance, the sense of your body interacting with the mechanics of the machine.  Nowhere is that more so than with the wheels.

For many of us we simply expect the wheel will spin and off we go.  But allow me to point out what is easy to take for granted: building a wheel, lacing the spokes in a particular pattern, is what makes the ride possible, enjoyable, for decades.  The rim of the wheel is connected to the hub by spokes, usually 32 of them, attached in a pattern that provides strength without adding a lot of weight that will slow the rider. 

Where each of the spokes crosses its neighbor it shares the load on the wheel.  If your spokes are laced correctly, and with the correct tension, these thin tendrils of metal will support all manner of weight and stress of travel.  If the spokes are tightened correctly, they will keep the wheel running exactly straight.

I love this; when you set the tension of the spokes so that your wheel will spin straight you ‘true’ your wheel, or ‘balance’ it.  Tiny adjustments in the spokes make the desired change possible.

When the wheel is out of true, it is out of whack.  It is wobbly or flat, which makes the ride less efficient, or impossible.  Bend a spoke, or break one, and you find out how important it was to keeping the wheel true.

This week I had my sixtieth birthday, which is to say I have a lot of miles on me.  I will admit here that many of those miles were harder, or less enjoyable, than they had to be because I was out of balance.  I’m here to tell you that in order to make the next six decades possible, I am going to true my wheels.

One of the things I have learned is that I don’t always have all the skills I need to create a rich life.  I don’t need to have them all, I just have to be willing to seek and accept what I’m missing.  This week I celebrated being alive, something we all should do every day.  But you know how it is; take for granted the wheel will always spin.  So my friends and my family helped remind me, and they brought me the help I wanted and didn’t realize it.

Sometimes it happens like this; you are riding your bike up a mountain pass in front of someone you met that morning and he pulls alongside you at the top and says; “I noticed your rear wheel is pulling to the right.”  So much that at each revolution it drags a little on the brake pad.

And maybe he offers to get out his spoke wrench and tweak things just a bit; a quarter turn on this spoke, a little less here, then spin the wheel and watch the rim spin.  True.

And from then on you realize how much you needed that.  You are humming down the road, spinning with less effort, head up, eyes to the horizon.  No longer grinding out each mile wondering why it’s so hard to do what used to be so easy.

My life is laced with amazing people who give me strength, who support me and keep me straight.  I am most happy when I feel all of them interlaced, feel the balance of those who love me, those friends who share my beliefs, those who challenge me, the people who are connected to me.  And of course, I am part of their wheelset too.

In order to feel true, I cannot focus just on one or two spokes, and not just the ones that are loose or bent.  I need to touch each one, feel that it is in the right place, feel that it is connected and pulling the wheel true.  Each day I will run my hands over these parts of my life, so that I know and they know. 

Hope this finds you true,

David

Copyright © 2017 David Smith

Memorial Day

May 29, 2017

Greetings from where we remember,

Eighty years before.

Walking to the marble quarry, his lunch pouch bouncing against his hip, the man makes his way through the meadow that rings his little town.  The dew is heavy and soon his shoes are damp from walking through the grass.

He spends the day setting the wedges in the groove they have chiseled in the marble, and one by one, hammering them a few inches deeper.  When the slab is finally released from the mountain and lowered to the floor of the quarry it will be slid into position to be cut again so it can be lifted onto the wagons to be moved. 

He sits and eats his lunch, watching the horses work, straining to pull the enormous weight up the rise out of the quarry floor.  He knows from the sound that something is wrong, and watches as the wagon tips slightly and now the load is unbalanced.  The slab shifts and upends the wagon and crashes to the ground.

When the slab is finally raised again there is a triangle hunk that has broken off.  The man kneels to look at it.  The white marble is creased with blue and green ribbons in a pattern that almost looks like a butterfly.  The man smiles at nature’s intricacies and goes back to his work.

The triangle piece is carried to the port and sorted out, too small for the project that was it was ordered for.  It is loaded on the ship with the rest and begins its voyage across the ocean.

Seventy-two years before.

Men he will never meet have surrounded his village.  His own son is in the woods with his friends, part of the partisan resistance.  He is afraid, but more afraid for his son.  The Americans are coming, but maybe too late to help.  They have been listening to the big guns booming, but the soldiers in the meadows are closer, and more dangerous. 

He waits in his little courtyard, his village is quiet now.  And he sees three men in uniform, Americans, moving between the houses on his street.  They stop at his courtyard, kneeling behind the low wall and speak to him.  He motions as best he can to tell them where the enemy is waiting.  He cannot speak their language so he cannot tell them about his son, Michael, his only family, waiting afraid in the woods, with his friends, carrying an old hunting rifle, hoping to be of help.  He can only point and gesture.  One soldier, a private, whose name is stenciled on his uniform as ‘Clawson’, pats his arm as they leave. 

Seventy-one years and ten months before.

In a small town in a Midwestern state, a woman who has been asked to make too many choices in this week is asked to make another.  She stands with her husband, both of them tired, eyes red from crying, sick from grief.  The man who is showing them gravestones speaks in quiet tones, trying to be considerate.  He has known the Clawson family for his whole life, and does not love this part of his job.

She pauses at one stone.  It has been cut into a rectangle, but not quite square, narrowing at one end.  The whiteness is striking, but she is drawn to it by the ribbons of color, blue and green intersecting in the face of it.

“It is beautiful isn’t it?  We don’t often get Cararra marble here.” the man says.  “Took some work to save the best part of it, it was almost a triangle when we got it.”

Sixty years before.

Michael Moretti walks down the gangway from the ship, his bag in one hand, all he owns inside it.  In his pocket is a letter from his father.  He has read it so many times the paper is soft from being handled.  Michael will never see his father again, but he carries him with him each day.

Now he is starting over in America.  It is the chance his father wanted for him.  He will make the most of it.  He walks across the pier from the ship and out into the future that was given to him.

Forty years before.

Another war has ended.  The cemetery has new stones surrounding the Clawson plot.  Some are larger, some more elaborate, but no one passes without noticing the white marble with the blue and green veins.

The Clawsons moved away when they could not take care of the house anymore.  Their only son was gone, and there would never be grandchildren.  They hated to leave.  They could only hope that someone would tend to their son’s grave.

Twenty years before.

Michael waits in the neat little house with his wife.  His son and his family will be here soon for the cook out.  Their car pulls into the drive and the grandkids boil out of the car and soon the house is filled with noise.

He love them all, but holds a special place for Cararra, his granddaughter,  blonde haired and blue eyes, always wants to sit in his lap.  She never tires of his stories and always calls on his birthday.  His refrigerator is covered with her art.

Michael has his traditions, and before they go to the parade he asks them this one indulgence.  He gathers his family around the table and takes the framed letter from the wall next to the door. He puts on his glasses and translates the words from his father.  He tells them, as best he can, how it was possible for him to be here, and that he will always remember the sacrifices that were made for him.

Today.

The car comes to a stop at the small parking space and Cararra gets out.  She helps her son Michael out of the back seat while her husband gets the flowers and the flags from the trunk.  Pulling a small wagon loaded with the flowers, they make their way along the path that leads among the gravestones.

She holds Michael’s hand as they place the flowers, with a flag in each to honor the veterans. They walk from place to place, touching the stones as they go.   The dew is heavy and soon their shoes are damp from walking through the grass.  She answers Michael’s questions as best she can, wanting him to know why they are here.  He is too young to fully understand, but there will be many Memorial Days to share, and he will know one day.

They stop at the Clawson stone and pull away a few overgrown grasses from around the edge of the white marble.  She remembers this grave every year, because the stone is so beautiful.  She bends to place the pot of flowers and Michael pushes the small American flag on a stick into the soil.  He puts his hand on the gravestone and looks up at his mother, smiling.

“Look Momma,” he says “It looks like a butterfly landed right there.”

She laughs and looks closer and sees what he sees.  And something is lifted into her heart, a sensation she knows is love.  She looks at her son, and at the stone that belongs to someone else’s son, and knows.

Hope this finds you honoring what has been given,

David

Copyright © 2017 David Smith

Cloud

May 22, 2017

Greetings from the intersection,

She was not going to the cafeteria.  She knew that because her mom told her that if she ran down the hallway again she was not going to the cafeteria to get cookies at Subway.  Her mom said it like she was whispering but she was saying it real loud too.  And then she ran down the hallway and had to sit in the chair and not move a muscle.  And not go to the cafeteria.

The room smelled funny and everyone had to sit quietly, even the grownups.  It was like school, or church but it smelled like when mom cleaned the kitchen floor.  She slid off the chair and dropped her feet onto the floor extra loud to see if anyone would notice and only a nurse looked up.  Her mom was showing Nanna something on her phone.  Maybe it was a word game. 

She walked over to the hall and looked; it was longer than any hall she had ever seen. It stretched out past a lot of doors and other rooms.  She felt the urge to run, but resisted.

She made giant steps across the hall from the waiting area, almost getting in the way of a man pushing a woman in a wheel chair.  She stood near the windows, on her tippy toes, her chin just above the marble sill.  At first she was looking at the reflection of the waiting area, wondering if her mom was going to look up at her.  Then she looked at her own reflection, the top of her head.  She reached up and touched the glass.

Beyond the windows was outside, but there was no place to play out there.  Just cars parked everywhere.  She saw them when they came in here to bring Nanna, about a million hours ago.

She looked beyond the glass at the sky; she was not tall enough to look down at whatever was there.  She watched for a moment, her fingers still resting on the glass, and saw a big fluffy cloud drifting in the sky.  It could be a puppy, a white one, or if she squinted a little it could be the shape of Mickey Mouse.  But white. 

She looked out of the corner of her eye.  She was going to run down the hall.  Just a little bit.

“Howard.”  A woman was calling his last name.  At least that is what he thought.  Was he supposed to go with her?  He started to get up and then someone else walked up to the nurse and maybe his name was Howard.

He sat back down.  He held the clipboard with the papers they wanted him to fill out.  “Just do the best you can.” is what the nurse said.  She looked at him differently because he was alone and old.  She figured he was not up to the job.

He had flown planes in combat.  He had raised a family, always had a good paying job.  Never took welfare.  He changed the oil in his lawn mower and sharpened the blades.  He balanced his checkbook every week.  He could fill out a form.

He had circled and checked and filled in the places he needed to.  He wrote down what surgeries he’d had and when he quit smoking and scribbled in the name of his doctor and the one prescription they didn’t list.  They never listed it for some reason, and every time he met a new doctor he had to fill out this same form.

He knew they had all this information somewhere in all those computers.  They just gave him this form to work on to keep him occupied while he waited.  He filled out the form and he waited to hear his name.  The nurse would ask him his birthday; he always felt like this was a test. 

He did not write on the form that he was depressed now.  It was none of their business.  He ran his hands over the bruises on his skin, from where they stabbed him with the IV.  Every time it was hard.  He wished it was not so hard.  He had enough hard.

He looked away from the wall with the paintings of lakeside cottages, country roads, other peaceful settings.  He looked at them every time he came here and now they seemed false and it irritated him to look at them.  He looked over toward the windows instead.

A little girl was there trying to see outside.  He noticed her stomping around earlier.  Kids today have no respect, he thought, don’t know how to behave.  Even little kids.

The sky was blue, such a relief after all the grey days.  If it stayed nice one more day he could mow his lawn, and maybe sit outside in the evening.  He knew if he was on the front porch the neighbor across the street would stop by and ask him how he was doing.  He looked down at the form to see what he would say.  He sighed.  A big deep breath in, and then out.

Higher in the sky was a bank of clouds.  Cumulus.  They were bold white in the blue sky, innocent clouds with no rain intent, just drifting over, making their way on some wind he would never feel. 

He watched the clouds, happy to be looking at something other than the cottages and the country roads.  They were big, white, mashed potatoes on a blue plate.  He puffed a little laugh.  Now he was hungry.  At least that was something.

She stood behind the sign that said: “For the privacy of other patients, please wait here until you are called to the desk.”

She could feel the muscles in her calves starting to cramp.  She was going to sit down soon, no matter what the sign said.  She hated standing here in the hall, like she was at the DMV.   This was her life, not renewing her license plates.   It was awkward, people pushing past to go into the waiting area, just to have to come back out again to get in line behind her.

She was long past feeling self-conscious.  People looked at her headscarf and they knew.  She knew her skin was ashy and that she looked like she needed a good meal.  She could see the grey circles around her eyes on the rare occasion she looked in the mirror.  She shook her head to stop thinking about it.  She didn’t care about that.

She cared about whether her children were worried.  If the dog was being fed while they were here.  She couldn’t remember if she sent a thank you card to the neighbors for the food they brought.  Lasagna she couldn’t bear to eat.

She felt herself sway for a moment and put her hand on her husband’s arm to feel steady.  She was going to sit down, very soon.  She never imagined in her life she would be in such a state that she could not stand for five minutes without tiring. 

Nearly everyone in the waiting area was looking at their phones.  God it was a lonely place.  All this suffering and none of us speaking to each other, about anything.  She shook her head again.

A small girl with a tangle of blonde hair, probably four or five, came stomping out of the waiting area.  Where was her mother?  She watched her weave between the people in the hall and go over to the windows, reaching up to put her hand on them.  So sweet.  It had to be hard for her, waiting in here with nothing to do, nothing to play with.

Her own eyes lifted to see beyond the glass.  On this floor she was looking at the top of the trees, already green and leafy, flush with the spring rain.  She loved spring.  The sky was so blue and bright it hurt her eyes a little to look at it.  Above the trees were clusters of clouds; china white in cerulean blue.  Had she read that somewhere?

They were so vivid against the sky.  It was as if someone had cut holes in the blue and the white was shining through from the other side.  She smiled a little at the words in her head.  Maybe when she sat down she would write something in her journal.

Just then the little girl began running down the hall, her hair streaming out behind her, little feet whirling under her.  As if she could run forever.

Hope this finds you looking up,

David

Villainous

May 15, 2017

Greetings from the next in line,

It is a busy place, so much that in spite of being in there on a regular basis, there is no reason to think I would be remembered.  The baristas behind the counter always greet me with friendly but generic exchanges that could be plugged in for any of the next in line.  As much as I like meeting people, I am here for the coffee.

Behind the counter a young man is working the drive through lane, headset pinching his long hair back.  He catches my eye and says hello and shakes his head.  “Every time I see you,” he says over the noise, “I think you must be, like, some kind of super villain.”

Right about then I am handed my tall-sumatra-with room-thank you-have an-awesome-day, and since I can only concentrate on one thing at a time I choose the coffee over a witty response.

This is the kind of thing that normal people ignore in their day, as well they should.  But for some reason it stuck with me.  Why would anyone think I looked like a super villain?  Have I developed a resting-face that inspires that kind of reaction?  I looked in my rear view mirror and tried smiling; it looked like a super villain getting his license renewed at the DMV.

Maybe a week later I was back in line.  I had mostly forgotten the exchange until the young man spotted me again.  He waved and said hello, smiling and shaking his head.  He said something to one of his coworkers and pointed at me: “This guy reminds me of, like, a super villain.”

 He stepped closer to the counter:  “What do you do?” he asked me.

“I devise plans intent on world domination.” I said.  I took my coffee and left, with what I supposed would have been an air of villainous mystery.

It is revealing to hear what kind of impression I make to strangers.  I suppose this barista could have guessed my profession as lawyer or hit man or politician, all of whom might have been represented in movies and media as a guy in a suit and tie.  But for reasons that will remain unknown, he had me pegged me as super villain.

In a way it is flattering.  I am probably the least villainous person I know, but it tells me that maybe it’s still possible.  I have evil potential that someone saw in me.

A few weeks later I walked into the Starbucks and ordered my coffee. The young man picked up right where we left off.

“We have to come up with a name for you.” he said.

The barista waiting on me, who had no clear idea what was going on, gave us both confused looks.  Was this going to complicate my coffee order?  Would she be writing a new name on the side of the cup?

“A super villain name.” he said to her, as if that would clear everything up.  I said nothing, which contributed just as much to help the situation.

“Let’s see.  What superpower would you choose?” he asked, ignoring the look from the other people in line.

“Invisibility.” I said, not missing a beat.  I reconsidered my answer later but you can’t go back and change.  It’s the rules.   Plus if I had waited much longer there may have been some kind of revolt in the line behind me. 

This did not immediately inspire a moniker of sufficient wicked ilk, so as I walked out he tried again:

“What is your favorite animal?”

“Invisible giraffe.” I said.  Again, a moment later I wanted to change, but …the rules.

He nodded and smiled as if this would be enough for him to work with.

Goldfinger, Doctor Octopus, Dr. No, Darth Vader, General Zod.  I don’t know how these super villains got their start, or earned their name.  It might not have been in line at Starbucks, but who knows? 

It’s exciting to think that I have lived this long, accomplished as I am already, and I still have this whole other nefarious earth-conquering future in front of me.  I admit I haven’t really developed my villainous personality, other than this diabolical demeanor, so maybe it will be a challenge. But I feel like with my invisible giraffe at my side anything is possible.

Hope this finds you ruling the world,

David

Copyright © 2017 David Smith

Denied Boarding

May 8, 2017

Greetings from the aisle seat,

In the 1800’s people would climb into a stagecoach and travel from one place to another.  The conditions were less than ideal; bone jarring ride through cold and heat, dust in the air, packed in among strangers who may not have bathed in weeks.  It was hard, but it was better than walking, and usually safer than traveling alone. 

And things happened.  Highwaymen ranged the stagecoach routes and raided the passengers for their possessions.  Rattlesnakes spooked the horses.  Wooden wheels broke.  The drivers sometimes got drunk and fell off their seat.  Or got lost. 

What didn’t happen was this: no one pulled out their cell phone and videoed the calamities and posted it in on social media for everyone in the universe to watch.  Mostly because cell coverage was so bad in the western territories at that time.

If aliens were watching YouTube recently they might get the impression that the people running our flying machines are engaged in a contest with the people who are trying to fly.  They lure us into these magical tubes with promises to transport us anywhere in the world, but first we have to pass certain tests.  If we fail, they get to beat us up and drag us back off the plane, and another contestant gets to try.

Yes, times have changed.  Now when we fly across the globe, we have to submit to all manner of arcane rules that are capriciously applied by a bunch of surly or inept people whose sole purpose seems to be to ruin our plans.  Well, while that might be one perspective, it is not the entire truth.

First, let me share with you that I have been That Guy.  I have been the person whose flight was cancelled, whose bags were lost, whose gate was changed.  I have been angry and lost my temper, berated hapless gate agents, threatened to sue, wrote vicious diatribes to the executives of now defunct airlines.  I never got dragged off of a plane but on a few occasions I would have deserved it. 

I am a frequent traveler on planes, enough now to know what to expect: the unexpected.  I have also been guided into maturity by friends who have been kind enough to share that what I lost in my ugliest moments was far more valuable than the price of a ticket. 

Most people I have talked to about the recent spate of hostilities on airlines have similar opinions.  The passengers were usually treated poorly.  There is plenty of blame to go around; crazy policies, poorly trained staff, heavy handed law enforcement.  And of course we have all the answers for the airlines.

Well, the answer is simple: don’t overbook your flights.  Or just make more planes.  Get more pilots.  Have more flights to the places we want to go when we want to go there.  Don’t let weather interfere with your schedules. 

But, keep us safe. Make sure our pilots are well trained, well rested, and if possible, attractive and of a certain age that inspires confidence.  Make us comfortable and above all safe from terrorists.  Without inconvenience.

Airlines rely on business travel for a good portion of the profits they need to function.  They compete for this travel by offering incentives, a hierarchy that we don’t all have access to.  Airlines have to move personnel around, and that takes seats.  Planes break down and that means someone is getting shuffled to new seats on other planes.  This is just the tip of the iceberg in what goes on every day that leads up to someone getting bumped.

We don’t want to be inconvenienced or have our vacation spoiled, or arrive late for a convention, or miss our daughter’s graduation.  Along with that, to the greatest degree possible, we want things to be fair.

So you know my opinion, it is not fair to come on a plane and tell someone sitting there reading Skymall that they have to leave the plane.  That practice has to change or there is going to be more rebellion on flights and one day it is not going to end with just bruises.

In truth, ‘denied boardings’ have decreased over the years even as air traffic has increased. 

But be aware, it still happens 40,000 times every year.  If you are one of the 900 million people flying somewhere in the US this year, and you leave for the airport not knowing that these things happen,  you open yourself up to becoming That Guy.  It is the reality of travel today.

There are some really unfair, unpleasant things happening in air travel, and some of them are avoidable.  Frankly I think they will change because of the YouTube pressure.  But as human beings, not consumers, we have to regain some perspective.  This isn’t the old west, things have gotten better; it doesn’t take months to get to San Francisco, it takes hours, and we probably won’t get an arrow shot into our neck. But there are still challenges to traveling. 

The comedian Louis CK had a message that included these words: ‘..everything is amazing, and no one is happy.’  When it comes to air travel, he said, we have forgotten how incredible it is.  “You are sitting in a chair…in the sky…and you are flying.”  And yet what we talk about was how slow the high speed Wi-Fi was on the plane.

This won’t be news to you but sometime in our day plans are going to be spoiled by circumstances beyond our control.  How we respond to that interference is what determines the quality of our lives.  I, for one, intend to respond in a way that does not prompt people to pull out their cell phones to capture and exploit the worst in human behavior.  And I am going to remember to be amazed.

Hope this finds you in first class,

David

Socks

May 1, 2017

Greetings from the end,

“When I was young I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock.
So I stopped wearing socks.”   Albert Einstein

Having reached a point in life where I may be described as ‘a man of a certain age’, I have resigned myself to a variety of truths that in spite of their inconvenience must be accepted.  One of these certainties is that all socks will eventually disappoint me.

Like most men, particularly those of a parsimonious proclivity, when I invest in socks I expect them to provide years, (if not decades) of service.  In return I will wash them regularly, keep them paired with their life-partner, and provide a well-organized opportunity to cohabit with others of their ilk.

In return I naturally expect unrelenting service.  When I put on a pair of socks I don’t want to have to negotiate which foot the sock should best be worn so that the hole in the toe does not interfere with my comfort.  I would like to choose the socks I wear depending on couture not based on the likelihood that I will remove my shoes in public later in the day, weighing the risk of toe nudity.

I know that half of you will not be able to finish this essay because of the challenge of reading while rolling your eyes in derision.  For the rest of you, let’s explore how to manage this issue.

When a sock develops a toe hole, my first thought is: most of the sock is still good.  I should repair this and make good use of it.   However, I have no darn skills.

A few of you recognize that I’m obliquely referring to the art of fabric repair, usually associated with socks, called darning.  I dare you to ask 5 people under the age of 20 what this means.  If you can get 3 to tell you the correct definition I will send you a free sock.  That aside, I have no idea how to sew my darn socks. 

So I delegate the task to someone in a developing nation.  It’s a little awkward but it amounts to this: I wear out a tiny portion of a sock and dispose of it and its mate, (or more accurately, my wife does)  and somewhere in Vietnam an underpaid worker is making another pair to replace them.  It’s wasteful, it’s bad for the ecology, (landfills are rife with socks) and it’s exploitative.   But most important, it’s inconvenient to me.

There are practical solutions; if you buy only one color sock then you extend the effectiveness of your sock inventory; you can switch them around as one toe wears out, plus getting them paired up after washing is a breeze.  Some might suggest using a felt pen to color any toe that threatens to protrude, or perhaps a well-placed piece of electrical tape.

I suppose if I consult Google or Pinterest or other oracles of wisdom there are probably lots of great ideas on how to deal with this issue, but I am still stuck on the concept that we have the problem to begin with.  We can send robots to Mars and create self-driving cars and find advertisers to support Fox News but we can’t invent socks that won’t fail our toes?

My experience is that no matter what you invest in the sock it is going to give up and abandon the toes it was committed to protect.  And so I live in constant disappointment.  The most obvious solution is to lower my expectations. 

Or change my thinking.  Perhaps the sock is only meant to challenge the toes.  Like that old saying: “A toe may be safe inside a sock, but that’s not what toes were meant for.”    Maybe I am underestimating my phalanges, and overestimating my hosiery.

If you are still reading you no doubt have learned that this essay, like most sock philosophy, has no real conclusion.   Since inception of the sock mankind has had to adapt to the sock-hole, and we are no worse for it.  Perhaps it is what has propelled us this far. 

We could all go sockless but I think Darwin would point to the Neanderthal and suggest that barefoot didn’t do that group much good.   I think mankind’s future is inextricably enmeshed with the sock, so we’ll have to make the most of it.  Darn it.

Hope this finds your socks knocked off,

David

Copyright © 2017 David Smith