Life with Loopy
[ 4 Comments ] Posted on 08.01.05 in observations
The belt is a great invention. It can hold up pants, whip disobedient children, and, if you’re a real handyman in a desperate situation, it can even act as a replacement belt in car engines.
But, as with any seemingly benign thing in the world, with the belt comes a certain degree of risk. The risk is not a particularly catastrophic hazard, but since I’m one of the most socially paranoid people I know (and trust me when I say that I know a lot of people), it can harbor some significant psychological perils.
Of course, I’m talking about the rare happenstance when you miss a belt loop. Sure, if you catch it right away as you’re slipping into your old faded Levis, it’s easily remediable. But if the snafu manages to slip you by and you walk out into public with a pair of inadequately accessorized trousers, you’re bound to be noticed. And when that happens, my friend, what is a boy to do?
Knowing that you missed a belt loop following notification from an outlandishly critical public is just about the most vulnerable feeling in the world. How do you handle it? You could excuse yourself and find a corner in which to reassess your attire, but there’s always that interim period wherein you are completely aware of your shoddy dress, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Then again, you could always just unbuckle then and there and repair the misdoings of earlier in the day, but that has the potential of being ill-received, as the majority of the world does share my standard of etiquette (or lack thereof).
Alas, there is no easy answer. However, if I ever unbuckle my belt near you, please don’t take it the wrong way. I don’t know any better.
Tick/Tock
[ 5 Comments ] Posted on 07.28.05 in complaints, family
Before I begin, I would like to make it clear that I love my mother very much. She reads my writing, so I wouldn’t want her to get the wrong idea about anything I post online.
That being said, the woman has the most skewed concept of time in the world. All of the clocks in our house (with the exception of the ones in my bedroom) are set to be approximately five minutes ahead of the actual time. Her reasoning is understandable: she never wants to be late.
Therefore, one would assume that it is easy to be able to know the correct time while looking at any clock in my house. All you would really have to do is subtract five minutes from the time which is upon the clock,. However, like many of life’s false promises, this protocol is full of flaws due to the fact that absolutely none of the clocks in the Peterson household are set to the same time.
Take, for example, a sample reading of a few of the house’s timepieces:
* The clock on the wall in the dining room (that is taped together with scotch tape because I accidentally made it fall one time) reads 10:48.
* There lies a small desktop clock atop the wine rack in the dining room that reads 10:31.
* In the living room, there’s a clock that chimes every 15 minutes. It reads 10:46.
* On the wall in the living room, there is a nifty cuckoo clock that reads 10:47.
* There also sits a cheap grandfather clock in the dining room that my brother got for my mother for her birthday or something a few years ago. It reads 3:50, but I’m pretty sure the reason for that inaccuracy can be attributed to a lack of consistent winding. Anyhow, it still contributes to the point at hand.
* The actual time, according to “The Man”:http://www.time.gov/, is 10:43.
The success of my mother’s goal of punctuality, therefore, is wholly dependent on which room you’re in before you leave. Me? I’ll just sit at my computer and be five minutes late to every place I go.
Coming soon to a country club near you!
[ 8 Comments ] Posted on 07.20.05 in family, sports
We Petersons have a sad and sorry history when it comes to the game of golf. My father brought a new level of amateurism to the sport when he started way back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth and has since passed along the torch of suckiness to his two sons.
Yesterday, in an attempt to feel rich, my brother and I traveled out to a local course. We qualified it as such: he’s soon to be a lawyer, and lawyers need to golf. Anyhow, we teed off on the first hole with positive attitudes and optimistic outlooks. By the 18th green, however, our hopes and dreams were cut at the seams.
Ian and I started this par 53 course with boxes and boxes of shiny new golf balls. We finished the course with (very lenient) scores of 85 and 99, respectively, and one golf ball.
One ball.
By the 18th tee, we had managed to lose upwards of 20 balls and were forced to play the hole separately. I used the remaining ball to finalize my already miserable stroke count and then brought it back to the tee so that my brother could finish up the course. That, my friends, is Peterson golf at its finest.
Perhaps we should just stick to video games.