Look before you leap without hesitation at dueling proverbs

July 8, 2018

Aesop was confused. The guy credited with cooking up a Crock-Pot full of fables packed with wisdom couldn’t make up his mind. The sages who followed did little to untangle the wacky webs he weaved. We’re left with dueling nuggets like these: Look before you leap, but he who hesitates is lost; Many hands make light work, but too many cooks spoil the broth; Silence is golden, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The contradictions clang in my cranium. Exactly when am I supposed to jump over cooks’ hands to blast the stew pot with my grease guns blazing? The great philosopher ...

Eat popcorn with chopsticks? Don’t tell mom

July 1, 2018

Researchers at The Ohio State University offered advice last week on how to turn old and boring into exciting and new. Get weird. They worded it a bit more scholarly than that, but weird is what they meant. For example, they suggest eating popcorn — a known and habitual hand food — with chopsticks. “When you eat popcorn with chopsticks, you pay more attention and you are more immersed in the experience,” Robert Smith, co-author of the study and assistant professor of marketing at the OSU Fisher College of Business, said. “It’s like eating popcorn for the first ...

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, what a wonderful shape

June 24, 2018

Walking, I suppose, is a wonderful workout. Also, I can’t afford to fill my gas tank. According to the annoying herd of health cranks, walking’s good for you. Really good. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, my-oh-my-what-a-wonderful-day good. I’d jump in the car and speed away from these exuberant exercise enthusiasts, but I’m out of gasoline. A few years ago, a program called ShapeWalking urged me to, “Get out of those doldrums, stimulate the flow of oxygen to your muscles and brain, and boost your mood and energy.” I wasn’t dumped in the doldrums, I was snuggled into my easy chair. ...

Keep whatever’s inside; I’ll take the box

June 17, 2018

Giddiness set in every time Mom bought a new box of Quaker oats. Not for the cereal. I was an Alpha-Bits kind of guy, myself. It was for the box. Back then, rolled oats came in a big cardboard tube. With strings, crayons and a wooden spoon, Quaker Oats boxes converted into great tom-toms. Or you could jam the wheels from a broken plastic truck into them to make an oil tanker. Or with construction paper, Elmer’s glue and a pipe cleaner twisty tail, you could build a pig. Or a doll cradle for my sister. They even worked as new containers for our Lincoln Logs when we ruined the ...

We’re not leaving this house until the dishes are done

June 10, 2018

I don’t know why the dishes have to be washed first. Why can’t we leave home without them being out of the sink? It’s frustrating. Or maybe it’s just being a guy. We established days ahead of time that to make our appointment, we needed to leave the house by 8 a.m. The night before, we both agreed that both of us knew that the both of us must be in the car by 8 a.m. or we’re both going to be late. The next morning, one of us — me — sat in the car watching the clock relentlessly click way past 8 a.m. while the other of us — not me — apparently lollygagged at the ...

I don’t know why age is mistaken for wisdom

June 3, 2018

Lately, people have mistaken me for someone with wisdom. I don’t know why. I think it’s the beard. When one’s beard is snowy white, and his hair is well on its way to matching, people tend to think, “Now there’s a guy who’s been around for, like, a million years. He must have learned something.” The main thing I’ve learned is that “older” isn’t necessarily on speaking terms with “wiser.” I could fill volumes of books about the things that I don’t know. I don’t know why I keep pressing the snooze button. If decades of evidence suggest that I’m not ...