Scattershot

Soup Nazi philosophy

We've all seen and laughed at Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi" episode. This weekend I encountered the Soup Nazi's sister.

I was at a national conference where Cottonwood Press had a booth. At Cottonwood Press, I stress customer service: Go out of your way to help a customer. Be nice. Be efficient. Solve problems with a smile.

But I'm starting to question that philosophy. A booth near us featured nice scarves at a ridiculously low price. People flocked to the booth where the woman selling yelled at the customers. Yes, yelled at them. She yelled at them to put things back where they found them, to stop messing up her piles, to wait their turn, etc. She took cash only—no, no checks. No, no credit cards.

And how did people react? They bought scarves, piles and piles and piles of scarves. The woman probably took in more money than anyone else at the conference—and without a shred of TLC for the customers.

My friend Elaine left our booth to look at scarves, chose five, and set them aside, telling the woman she was just running across the aisle for her money. Yes, the woman yelled at her. But how did Elaine react? She came back to the booth, laughed at how she was yelled at, and—you guessed it—went back with her money to buy the scarves. I guess if you have a good product at an unbelievably low price, people will put up with anything.

Our business was a bit slower than usual at this conference, so I decided that maybe we needed to start yelling at people. "The next person who sets a cup of coffee down on our books—I'm going to let them have it!" I sad. "No more Ms. Nice Guy!"

It was just a passing thought. And, yes, I let it pass. We continued to be nice.

And people continued to flock to the yelling scarf lady.

Sigh.

Breaking guitars and losing bags

The item in the newspaper this morning made me laugh: United Airlines lost one of Dave Carroll's bags.

Now I"m not usually one to laugh at someone else's misfortune, but Dave Carroll, I am sure, will find a way to make lemonade out of this lemon. He's the Canadian musician who created the YouTube hit, "United Breaks Guitars". This funny song tells how baggage handlers tossed his guitar and broke it on an earlier flight.

This week Carroll flew into Colorado to speak about customer service at a convention. United lost one of his three bags filled with musical gear. It took them three days to find it.

No, it's not funny, but I'll bet it will be when Carroll is finished. I love the way he seeks a kind of revenge through humor. I have to fly United a lot, and I'm thinking of writing my own song--this one about carry-on luggage. Flight attendants now complain non-stop about how we need to find a place for our luggage and step out of the aisle so people can board because "it's a very full flight." (When is it not a very full flight? The last one I remember was a late-evening flight from Detroit about eight years ago.) They seem so annoyed at all the carry-on luggage and the trouble it causes.

Big surprise. Now that they are charging to check a bag, people like me who used to check a bag now haul it aboard. (Anyone who has ever had a bag disappear may logically wonder why anyone would pay for that privilege.) Boarding has become more of a clogged mess than usual.

Maybe I'll write a song, too:

United makes us pay,
and so there really is no way
that I will take that little tag
and let them take away my bag.
The plane is now top-heavy
'Cause of charges that they levy,
and we struggle to find space
while down below--a slower pace.

Down there's nothing much to load
while up above, "It must be stowed!!!"
Then they yell at us to hurry.
Makes you kind of have to worry
why the brains who gave us this
can't see that something is amiss
and that they wouldn't have to nag
if we could only check a bag.

So, United, want less battle?
Then don't treat us all like cattle.

Well, it's a start anyway. Now if I could only sing like Dave Carroll...

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Snow day.....

Today schools are closed in much of northern Colorado, as is Cottonwood Press. There is something about a snow day that is such a thrill. Part of it, I'm sure, is a leftover feeling of joy from childhood snow days. But there's more to it than that. There's a spirit of adventure and camaraderie--digging out cars, wondering if the branches laden with snow are going to break off, shoveling walks and talking to neighbors you normally pass in your car with a wave.

There's the challenge of seeing what kind of soup you can concoct without going to the store. The promise of popcorn in the afternoon, with a Netflix movie. The peaceful settling of white over everything, softening the world. Snow clinging to tree branches, forming lacy doilies in the sky. The warmth of a fire, a blanket, and a book. The feeling of playing hooky from real life.

Though much of the U.S. sees Colorado as a big rectangle on the map usually blanketed in snow, the truth is that, outside the mountains, Colorado is almost always sunny and, yes, even warm on many winter days. When a snowstorm comes, it's an event. 

And today, as the snow continues to fall, it's an event I'm savoring.

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Canyons of the Ancients

Colorado's glorious blue skies were showing off this week-end when my husband and I visited good friends in Durango. On Saturday we visited an area that, as a Colorado native, I'm ashamed to say I didn't know existed—Canyons of the Ancients.  Wow. This area of southwestern Colorado has ample evidence that human beings have been around there for at least 10,000 years. 

My favorite part was visiting Hoveweep National Monument, a twenty-mile area along the Colorado/Utah border. Under sunny, brilliant blue skies, we hiked Little Ruin Canyon and saw the incredible remains of stone buildings built around 1230 to 1275. The website describes the place accurately: "Multi-storied towers perched on canyon rims and balanced on boulders lead visitors to marvel at the skill and motivation of their builders."  I couldn't help but worry about long-ago mothers raising toddlers along the rim of a steep canyon.

A few pictures give you only a taste of this fascinating area:

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A sucker for kindness

I am a sucker for kindness. Kind acts that I witness reduce me to a puddle of gratitude—whether the kindness is toward me or toward someone else. Often it is not the big acts that are most special—oh, I cried when I heard about the people who mowed the lawn, cleaned the house, and left a check for $1000 for someone I know, whose husband had just been diagnosed with brain cancer. But often as not, is the tiny, considerate, "I'm paying attention" kindnesses that really get to me. I have a collection of them in my mind.

A simple one is the image of my nephew, at only around age 10, wordlessly going up to his crying mother at a funeral and putting his arm around her and simply staying there beside her. Such a simple action, yet it showed what I knew about this boy, that he is so fundamentally a good person. Or when I told my step-son that his father was in the hospital, how he called twenty minutes later to tell me he was driving to the airport, would soon be on a plane, and would meet me at 1:00 a.m. The kindness, to me, was that he didn't bother me with details, or "Should I come now?" or "What would be best?" He just dropped everything and did what he knew we both needed. 

Another kindness I've held tightly in my mind for years comes from when I was only six years old. I had been invited with other prospective first graders to attend an Easter egg hunt at the school I would be attending. I was paired with a girl already in school, Martha Bridges. There were certain "get a special prize" eggs hidden, but I had trouble finding anything, let alone a prize egg. Martha found a prize egg and then, perhaps because she saw I was so incompetent in the egg-finding department, said simply, "Here. You can have my prize egg." I am just so touched, whenever I think of this moment, that such a small girl could have such kindness and generosity in her. I don't know whatever became of Martha Bridges, and I don't remember the prize I got. But I will always remember Martha for that simple act.

A friend of mine recently told me that, at her first parent-teacher conference, the first words out of the teacher's mouth were something along the lines of, "Your daughter is one of the kindest children I have ever known." What a sweet and wonderful thing to hear about your child.

I don't know why "kindness" is so much on my mind lately, but it is. Maybe I'm just seeing that there isn't enough of it go around in our world. 

Amazingly, as I was in the middle of writing this, an email popped up from someone who reads Scattershot and uses Cottonwood Press books her classroom. I don't know this woman, and yet, out of the blue on a Saturday morning, she took a moment to write and say she loves Cottonwood Press books and, "They have helped me tremendously. I just wanted to let you know how appreciative I am. Thanks!" She couldn't have known that this came at the end of a bad week when I have been feeling quite incompetent. Her simple kindness meant more than she could possibly have known.

Sometimes a simple "thank you" is the greatest kindness of all.

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Balloon mania

The helicopters hovered over our office all afternoon yesterday. Later in the day, we found out why. We are only a short distance from the home of the little boy who captured the world's attention by floating away—everyone thought—in a balloon.

What a story. Tears filled our eyes as we watched the balloon on our computers, bobbing through the air. We were filled with horror when it landed and the boy wasn't inside. We went back to work, checking the story frequently, but it was my friend in Phoenix who called and said, "They found the little boy!"

When the UPS man came to pick up packages later, he told us why the helicopters were hovering. "The family lives in that area just across the street and behind the tire place." The helicopters were doing live feeds of all the action at the little boy's house.

Now here's the weird part. Without thinking, I called my friend in Phoenix, told her we were only a couple of blocks away and, seemingly impressed, she said, "No way!"

I had fallen victim to the "insert myself into the story" phenomenon.

Why on earth is it important that this whole story was happening in the area where I live and work? When the live feed was showing video of the balloon near a town on the eastern plains of Colorado, why did I feel the need to say, "Oh, I go through that town on the way to visit my dad!" Why did I feel some pinprick of pride, tiny though real, that this happened where I live? That Fort Collins is national news? That the kids go to schools in the district where I taught? That I'll bet I go to work today and someone will come in with a story about someone they know who knows someone involved with the little boy's family?

It's so strange that this "I'm connected!" thing happens in situations like this. I'm puzzled by it but a party to it nonetheless. I keep wondering why...

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Poor "of"

Remember learning in school about "you understood" as the subject of a sentence—and how weird that was? To refresh the memory of anyone who has forgotten, in the command, "Close the door," the word "close" is the predicate. But where is the dang subject?

It's not there. It's invisible. It's understood to be "you."

I don't know about you, but I think grammar is difficult enough without having to deal with invisible stuff.

Which brings me to "of." Increasingly, it is disappearing in the phrase: couple of, as in couple of kids, couple of beers, or couple of days. It's being shortened to couple kids, couple beers, or couple days. For example, in Richard Russo's latest novel, That Cape Code Magic, it is everywhere. I guess if an accomplished author like Russo can skip the "of," the practice must have become mainstream.

But for all those poor students still having to learn grammar in school—now what? How the heck do you deal with a prepositional phrase that's missing the preposition? Do English teachers now have to teach "of understood"? Do teachers still diagramming sentences have to teach students to put a word that isn't there into that little line dipping below whatever is being modified?

(And why, incidentally, do we say "being modified"? That has never made sense to me. "Modified" means "changed" or "adapted," as in realizing a grammar lesson is being met with blank stares and modifying it on the fly.

But don't get me started. I find a lot wrong with our emphasis on grammar at the expense of writing, and I believe strongly that our approach should be modified to something more sensible. But that's another topic...)

   There are more than a couple reasons students hate studying grammar. Dealing with an invisible preposition in a prepositional phrase will soon be another one.

Viral trolls

One of the computers at work wigged out this week and shut down, strangled by a virus posing as a virus alert. A pop-up screen warned that a virus was lurking and because the pop-up wouldn't go away, the user clicked on "more information."

Not a good idea.

The computer technician who took an hour and a half to bring the machine back to life said that if such a screen ever pops up again, not to click "no" or "more information" or anything else—but to shut down the computer immediately.

I can't help but wonder about the people who spend their time creating such viruses. What are they like? Are they in front of us in the supermarket pushing baskets around? Are they dropping their kids off at school? Or do they fit the stereotype of a 20-something holed up in his parents' basement, eating pizza and getting his jollies from computer hacking?

I imagine that a virus creator is smart, and I even understand, kind of, the challenge of creating a virus that really works. I could understand it better if I could imagine him actually seeing the havoc he wreaks. But where is the thrill in creating something you can only imagine doing its diabolical work? (And how the heck does he ever test a virus? Not on his own computer, I'll bet. How does he know it works?)

If what the geeks are really after is a challenge, why not pick a challenge that works for good rather than evil? (Okay, "evil" might be a bit strong to describe computer mischief—unless its your computer that is shut down, your work shut down, your money paying to fix it.) Why don't these people challenge themselves with something useful, like, oh, making Windows boot up at a faster than glacial pace, or reliably sending SPAM to a far-away planet, or blocking money sent to Mr. Abdul Najib Rahman in Malaysia?

Doing something challenging that helps people, for free.....how could the satisfaction be any less than doing something challenging that hurts people, for free? I don't get it.

As I write the check for the computer "healing," I suddenly get a very clear picture in my mind of the virus creators. They are nasty little pasty-faced trolls who never see the sun and cackle in their slimy, high-tech caves.

Yes, I'm sure of it.

Plus they are sociopaths devoid of a conscience.

And I hate them.

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"Glee"ful melodrama

I never miss an episode of the new TV show "Glee," but I have to confess that the show bothers me. I love the musical numbers, but the story is so over-the-top ridiculous that I have trouble getting beyond that. I mean, really, a girl on a school stage singing, "I bust the window in your car" while half-naked cheerleaders bump and grind around her? Or a drunken 30-something woman being allowed to join the glee club and sing about a one-night stand with someone whose name she never even learned?

But when I start to think the situations and characters in the show are just too much, I'll remember some of the situations and characters in my real-life teaching career. Ahem. Well.....

There was the teacher who really, really loved working with the boys in the junior high...and eventually was sent to prison because his interests turned out not to be so pure. Or the principal who was having such a torrid affair with one of the staff members that we were all afraid to pop into the school after hours, for fear of accidentally walking in on them. Or the loony principal who hoarded supplies and hid them away in locked closets around the school, refusing to let staff members use paper or brand new overhead projectors or other equipment. Truckloads of stuff was discovered all over the school after he, um, "retired."

Or the school where the teachers learned to send kids to the office for smoking cigarettes, but not for smoking marijuana. (The principal enforced the three-day suspension rule for cigarettes, but he sent marijuana smokers back to class because, if he acknowledged them, the community would know we had a problem. Teachers felt stupid running into kids they had busted for dope, back in the classroom only half an hour later, so they learned to turn a blind eye to even the most egregious offenses.)

Or there was the beautiful teacher who decided it was a good idea to offer her kisses at a booth at the school carnival. Or the new high school teacher who met a young woman at a bar the week before he started a new job and spent the night with her, only to find out the next week that she was a student in his school, smiling knowingly at him and saying, "Hi, Mr. ______." Or the teacher who lived with both his wife and male lover, forming a happy threesome. Or.....

Well, I could go on. Maybe real life isn't so different from "Glee" after all.

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The "the" mystery

How did "all of a sudden" morph into "all of the sudden?" It's a mystery that fascinates and irritates me. When I hear the phrase spoken these days, I hear "all of the sudden" about 80% of the time. When I see it written, it is always "all of a sudden."

      Years ago, a native English speaker would never have said "all of the sudden." Now it's common. How did that "the" sneak into the idiom? Are people perhaps unconsciously mimicking "all of the time," for example? Or what? I simply can't come up with an explanation.

    And what's next? Will it soon be "once upon the time?" "Shake the leg"? ""The mile the minute"? "The good head on his shoulders"? (Maybe a bad head is waiting in the closet at home...)

    A couple of nights ago at a play, I heard a character—a writer—say "all of the sudden." I don't for a minute believe that the author of the play put those words in a writer's mouth. The actor, I am sure, substituted what came to her most naturally, and that, sadly, was "all of the sudden." (Maybe someone told the actor to "break the leg" before she went on...)

    If articles can float about so freely, our language may be in for a good deal of change. Maybe we'll soon be saying, "She is the ham" or "He can't cut a mustard." (Will he still be able to cut the cheese, though?) Will someone "hit a sack" or "get off on a wrong foot" or feel "under a weather"?

   I guess a proof will be in a pudding.

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