Who Are Those Two Women?

Wife Lois and I went to a pizza place that was ranked as top notch by the local news paper. We ordered our pizza and then went to the back of the room to wait.

On the wall was painted a mural that was over ten feet long. The theme of the place was New York Pizza and the painting was of a subway. There were two dozen people standing in front of and in a train. We could identify about half of the figures: Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Mohammed Ali, Gandhi, and Jesus.

We could not identify any of the people in the train. When the waitress brought the pizza, I asked her who the two women were in the last window of the train. She said, "The one on the right is me!"

______________

The mural artist had painted some of the pizza place employees in the train.

Wrong Number!

I was sitting by the fireplace when the telephone rang. It was a telephone survey.

The young voice asked me prioritize the radio stations I had listened to in the last week. I gave her the names of four stations.

She then asked, "How old are you?"

"65," I said.

There was a long pause. "Are you still there?" I said.

"How old?"

"65!" I replied.

"Is there anyone in the house between the age of 21 and 64?"

 

Chris at Safeway

I set down my gallon of milk at the grocery checkout counter. The clerk with the nametag "Chris" asked in a somber tone if I had my Preferred Card.

"How ya doin'?'" I asked as I handed her my card.

"Terrible. I hate this job, this store, this management. I'm going to get out of here as soon as I can."

"How much longer?"

"As soon as I can pay some bills and get out. Such a waste--a college dregree and I am doing this."

"What did you graduate in?"

"Statics and Management. This is dull, dull, dull."

"You must make a difference somehow..."

"No, nothing, I can't make a difference, I don't make a difference."

=====================================

A few days later I heard on the radio that the grocery clerks were voting on whether to go out on strike. Maybe Chris is usually just a cheerful checkout clerk.

Wish Comes True

Back in the late 70's I worked for Hewlett Packard in Loveland Colorado as an R&D section manager. We were under the aegis of Executive VP Paul Ely. He was a brilliant, driving, abrasive manager. No one knew what would happen when he visited our Division, but we all knew we would be asked tough questions and some heads would probably roll.

At a time management seminar I attended, we were to think of some long term goals we would like to achieve. One I wrote down was to "one-up" Paul Ely. Pure fantasy, because I was no match in intelligence, wit, or power.

Time passed. Once a year, we had a division review, where all the top executives would come to review the progress of the products we were developing. At this particular review, I was chosen to give the pitch about the computer we were developing for the market.

Paul Ely was in the group as I started my pitch. He always put me on edge.

Part of my presentation was to show how much faster our prototype was than other products on the market. I had three competitor's products to compare our computer against. I started the first computer which computed a complex problem. It took fifteen seconds. I used a stopwatch to catch the time.

I did the same for the other computers. Each was computing the same problem. Finally, I tested our computer and bragged that it had solved the problem in less than a second.

After I gave the result, Paul jokingly said to the crowd, "It looks like he has a quick thumb," meaning that I had fudged the results.

[Now you must know that I actually am missing the first knuckle of my thumb that was on the stopwatch. I lost it when I was nine from a dynamite cap explosion.]

Serendipity. I raised up my thumb and said, "It's a birth defect."

Wild and crazy laughter. Everyone was ribbing Ely. Non of the execs were dismayed to see their irritating counterpart embarrassed and piled on.

I crossed "one-up Paul Ely" off my life list. It was an incredible bit of luck and uncontrolled bit of quick thinking. I could not have achieved my goal any other way.

True Justice

I was driving Interstate 25 through Wyoming at night. Traffic was heavy and slowed down to a few miles an hour when we passed the "Form Single Lane Left" sign. The sign was two miles before the multi-mile construction area. As suggested, everyone politely formed a queue, leaving the right lane vacant.

After ten minutes, I had progressed about a mile. Looking in my rear view mirror, I saw the headlights of a jerk racing up the right lane at 60 miles per hour. A rude dude!

But there was hope. Ahead of me a Safeway semi pulled out into the right lane, stopping the jerk. The driver pulled up along side of another Safeway truck ahead of him. Side by side, the Safeway drivers escorted the jerk the mile to the start of the road construction. 

Sitting in the dark, I could feel the cheers from drivers around me for the vigilante truckers. 

The Cyclists

This morning, I went to run in the Garden of the Gods, a beautiful geological formation in Colorado Springs. As I drove into the parking lot, I saw two guys stopped on bicycles that were towing small trailers filled with camping gear. They wore brillint cyclist outfits emblazoned with "Colorado College" on the front.

I asked them where they were from. They told me they had ridden from Tillimuck, Oregon. They had graduated from Collorado College here in the springs last spring and had decided to bike accross the USA to raise funds for a CC chairty fund they were starting.

We had an interesting discussion for about five minutes, and then I sensed that they were ready to do something else--a TV crew from Channel 5 had driven up next to us. The Garden of the Gods makes a beautiful backdrop for TV.

I left for my run.

Wish for the worst and ...

A few months ago, I was having trouble sleeping. I went to my doctor, who scheduled a sleep test. I was a bit concerned about the test. Would they find a problem? -- or they find nothing -- making me a malingerer?

At the sleep test facility, the technician attached at least fifteen electrodes and sensors to my head and body. The wiring was to monitor such things as breathing, heart rate, brain waves, eye movement, jaw pressure, and leg movement.

Around ten o'clock, as I started to fall asleep, I experienced extreme twitches in my legs. I have twitchy legs, but nothing like this. Next when I fell asleep, I had severe sleep apnea, continually waking, because I stopped breathing in my sleep.

The intercom voice told me that the sensors had detected leg twitches and apnea. I agreed.

Time went by with fitful sleep, then the technician came in and gave me a CPAP mask to put over my face. The mask, lashed tightly around my head, put positive air pressure over my nose. When I opened my mouth, air rushed out, forcing me to keep my mouth shut while sleeping.

The mask made the apnea sensation worse. Terminally restless legs and not breathing made sleep for more than a few minutes impossible.

Time went by. The intercom lectured me: "You have to get in six hours of sleep or the insurance company won't pay for this test. I don't think you would like having to pay the bill."

Well, that warning didn't help me slip into REM sleep. I was miffed by intercom's attitude.

Eventually the tech brought in a new mask.  This one tightly covered both my nose and mouth. Now when I woke up not breathing, I felt claustrophobic, trying to rip off the mask.

The intercom, frustrated by my lack of cooperation, asked me if I could had time to stay later, so I could get in the required six hours. I said yes.

The tech came into the room, took away the CPAP mask, and put me on oxygen. Finally, I fell into deep sleep.

The intercom interrupted, "Time to get up it said."

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Five forty-five."

"How could I have gotten in six hours of sleep?" I thought.

On the way out, I overheard the technician talking about the poor guy who had a terrible sleep night.

______________________

This was a night from hell--orders of magnitude worse than anything I have ever experienced before or after.

 A few days later, I realized that before I started the test, I had probably forgotten to take the pills I take each night. It was a night of withdrawal. At least I didn't have the shame of being outed a malingerer.