You Could Do Shakespeare From That Balcony (Conclusion)

This ain't Carey Finnelly.

Okay, where were we?  Oh yeah, so as I said, she had beaudatious ta tas for a fifteen year old.  She tried out for the track team and literally had to run with her hands resting on top of them to keep from beating herself to death.  Okay, I guess you get the idea.  She was slender but had wide hips. I figure it was a biological adaption from ancestors that did a lot of sitting on hoofed animals?  I don’t know.  She wore her shoulder-length blonde hair in a pony tail.  You overlooked all her flaws, if you’re thirteen and she’s wearing a pink bikini.  Testosterone levels were off the charts.

“Whatter ya gonna do?” Randy hollered from behind his sister where he had taken a sort of refuge from the big monster snake.

“I ain’t doin’ shit,” I said and backed away from the reptile.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Cary whined as she pressed her thighs together for emphasis.

“Use the one down there,” I said pointing to another outhouse about a quarter-mile away.

“It’s too far.  Can’t you do something?”

Now I’m not sure what it is, and I’m sure it’s been studied, but it’s what I like to call “machotosterone,” and it takes over men and boys alike.  However, super high levels are found in pubescent boys.  It makes them do stupid things.  Really stupid things.  The effect on the brain is similar to adrenaline, only worse.  Because we think the poor distressed female with the bosom, will be so impressed by our stupid macho display that she will let you see them.  I point out an incident on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to prove my point.  His guest was Dolly Parton.  The conversation, of course, turned south when he asked her if she had always been “blessed, ” as she put it.  Dolly said that people where always asking her if they were real, and Johnny, insisted he would never ask such a thing, he had standards…”but, I would give about a year’s pay to peek under there,” he quipped.  I find it odd that I remember that.  Anyway, the machotosterone courses through our veins and we become, for example, an expert snake handler.

You knew I was going to share it with you.

You expect that the poor distressed female will be so thankful and impressed by your heroism and fearless protection that she will just rush up to you and kiss you on the cheek.  She’ll say something like, “Oooh, thank you.  You were so magnificent.  So brave.  I just don’t know what I would have done without you.  There must be something I can do to repay you.”  Ye-ah.

I brandished my four-foot stick and walked toward the snake.  He figured out pretty quickly that he wasn’t going to like what was about to happen.  Now, mind you, as you might remember from my Zooseum experience, I’m afraid of even the smallest garden variety snake.  This sucker was big, menacing, and making a lot of rattling noise.

I stuck the end of the stick into the center of the snake coil and quickly lifted.  He kind of hung over the end of the stick for a few seconds, head on one side, rattler on the other.  I walked backward through the door of the outhouse.  He was biting furiously at the air.  This was a big snake.  A venomous snake of the genera Crotalus and Sistrurus.  One of 32 known species of rattlesnake.  A biting, killing, nasty mother of a snake.  What the hell was I doing this close to it?  He slid off the stick and started towards me, then changed his mind and slithered off into some tall grass.

I turned to Carey with pride, “There you can go in now.”

“Are you crazy, ” she said.  ”I wouldn’t be caught dead in there.  That rattlesnake could go right back in there under the door while I’m peeing.  What if there’s another one in there or something?”

Right about that same exact second, I heard Randy scream, “LOOK OUT!”

The snake had decided to go on the offensive and was heading back towards me.  He coiled a few feet away and I heard the rattle again.  A rattlesnake has a group of loosely attached segments at the end of the tail that are vibrated to produce the rattling sound.  The sound the snake makes when he’s threatened and about to strike.  This is probably the only time in recorded history you will hear about a snake, who doesn’t really like people much, preparing for an attack.  I must have pissed this one off pretty good.  I managed to leap backwards out of the way just in the last possible second and ran like hell.

Carey headed off in the direction of the other outhouse down the beach.  I never got as much as a thank you from her.  She didn’t even stay to make sure I was all right.  I thought about that the other day, the way that turned out, and decided to renege on a 46-year-old promise.

You see, later that afternoon I did, inadvertently, get my “reward” for saving the damsel in the pink bikini who was in obvious distress.  Carey and I were out floating on some inner tubes, twenty yards off shore.  She leaned toward me just right, to say something, and the left one just popped out of her top.  Stayed there in plain view for several seconds before she realized I was burning a hole in her chest.

She “stuffed” it back in and looked at me with the most venomous of looks.  ”You EVER tell anyone about this and you’re dead meat, buddy,” she hissed.

I swear, Carey, I never told a soul. 

You Could Do Shakespeare From That Balcony

Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet

I’m a lake rat.  I wasn’t born that way or anything, I just developed into one.  A lake rat, by my definition, is someone who likes to be on, in and near water.  Anywhere will do, as long as it allows for motorized boats.  I’m not much into paddling, but I’ve done it on occasion.

 My first lake experiences were at Lake DeSmet in northern Wyoming.  Not a long season for water sport there as you might imagine.  The lake is man-made.  See, God didn’t make us enough lakes so we had to make some of our own to take our boats on.  You find a river or creek, condemn all the property that will be flooded, you build a dam, the water starts to back up, and presto you have a lake.  DeSmet is one of them.  Lake Powell, Lake Mead, Shasta, I could go on, are all man-made lakes.  Most of them are created as reservoirs for nearby towns and cities, but the more important result is that swimming, water-skiing, boating, and fishing are now available.

Lake DeSmet was named after Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet a Jesuit missionary from Belgium who brought Christianity to the “heathen” Indians.  It is said that he traveled 180,000 miles in 30 years in his dedication to serving America’s Indian population.  He had such a good rapport with them, he was used by the Federal Government to negotiate treaties, treaties of which he didn’t approve.  I was told that he was killed and scalped by the Indians, but that is obviously not true.  He died in 1873 in Missouri from illnesses that plagued him most of his life.  There is an iron plaque on a  stone marker commemorating Father DeSmet on a turnout overlooking the lake. 

Lake DeSmet was rumored to have it’s very own “sea serpent” for a good while.  They even sent a team of divers into the lake back in the 60s to look for some sign of it.  The only problem, and the reason the myth persists to this day, is you can’t really  get to the bottom of the lake because of all the underwater vegetation.  You can’t really call it “seaweed”, but it’s the same thing.  If you don’t believe me about the Lake DeSmet Sea Serpent, check out this link:  Wyoming Folklore  I don’t make everything up.  In 1939 they supposedly caught the sea monster, but when they dragged the body to shore it exploded so there was no evidence.  Something about water pressure or air pressure on the carcass.  There have been pictures taken of the Sea Serpent published in the Sheridan Press.  Probably taken by fisherman that had a little too much to drink, taking pictures of a floating log or tree branch.  But no actual evidence of the monster exists.

I heard a story about some industrious college students from the University of Wyoming building a sort of mock sea serpent one summer.  They launched it in the lake the summer of 1967, I think.  It was built on a canoe in a kind of sideways “S” shape and these guys would paddle the contraption around a cove.  It resembled a large snake with a dragon head floating on the surface.  They spent a good part of the summer terrorizing fisherman that had nipped at the Jim Beam all afternoon or slammed down the cold ones.  Scared the hell out of some of them.  But a good majority of these innocent anglers kept it to themselves.  Still the paper published stories of sightings and warnings to stay away from the lake until it was deemed safe again.  Of course the place was packed every weekend.

One lucky tourist had the good fortune of capturing the monster on film and sold it to the paper for a size-able sum, enough to pay off his repair bill at the local Chevy dealer where he had abandoned his car.  The photo was kind of blurry and hard to distinguish, but if you studied it real good, it sure enough looked like a sea serpent.  I forgot to mention that the sea serpent canoe was only put in the water late in the evening so photography was difficult.  Eyewitness reports put the creature anywhere from six feet to 40 feet in length.  Some confirmed it breathed fire, and others said it made a horrible roaring sound.  It did neither.

Dan Dryer’s father put an end to the fun when he roped the beast from the bow of Randy Finnelly’s dad’s boat.  He was sitting on the bow of the boat in his cowboy boots and swimming trunks swinging a rope over his head.  It was dark and they shouldn’t have been on the lake in the first place.  Finnelly guided the boat in and Dreyer made the perfect throw.  The rope was tied off to the starboard rail, and when Finnelly reversed the engine, the rope tightened and ripped the suckers head right off revealing the two college students who were struggling to paddle away.  Dryer and Finnelly were also allegedly rip-roaring drunk at the time.

I picked up the nearest weapon I could find, a large stick, and rushed off in the direction of the outhouse where Randy’s sister, Carey, had just let out one of her famous blood-curdling screams.  I got the weapon because what she screamed was “RATTLER.”

Now rattlesnakes are found around here often enough, but they are not known to frequent the outhouses by the lake.  This one probably happened on the cool concrete floor of the outhouse and thought he had found the perfect spot to spend a hot August afternoon.  Rattlesnakes like to be in the shade.  There he was, coiled up right inside the door, rattling his tail menacingly.  You would too if you were a snake and Carey had damn near stepped on you.

Carey had retreated a good distance away and was standing with her arms wrapped around herself shifting from one foot to the other because, well, she still had to pee.  The snake hadn’t helped her condition either.

She was two years older than Randy and me.  Randy had been my second-best friend since second grade, and they owned a boat.  I spent a few of my summers getting second-degree burns from too much exposure to UV light.

Carey wasn’t exactly stunningly beautiful, but she was the closest thing to a “Playboy” centerfold that we had.  At 15 she had one major attribute.  She was, shall we say, well-endowed.  You could do “Shakespeare” from that balcony.

(To Be Continued….)

We Had Finally Caught Up With The Russians

February 20, 1962. Launch of Friendship 7. Fifty years ago today.

When I was nine I was a “space junkie.”  I devoured everything that had to do with the NASA Space Program.  I watched every launch on TV, sometimes getting up in the wee hours of the morning to see a launch from Cape Canaveral.  Going crazy when there was a hold at T-minus 30:04:45  and counting.  Then another at T-minus 3 minutes, fifty seconds, and counting.  Wondering if the rocket would ever ignite.  And here’s an eye-opener for you, (maybe), the “T” stands for “Test” not “Time” as most people think.  It may not always be time related.

 During every hold we listened intently to Walter Cronkite and Science Editor, Jules Bergman, explain in minute detail how all the stuff worked.  I had a “Revel” model of the Atlas launch vehicle, launch pad and Mercury capsule.  So realistic that if you filled it with rocket fuel it would probably take off.  I had another model of just the Mercury capsule with the escape rocket tower, and you could see all the interior detail because the model separated in halves.

The odd thing is I never wanted to be an astronaut, as I remember it.  Probably because we knew what it took to be one, and I wouldn’t qualify if just because I wore glasses.  I think it was more the Kennedy challenge, “… I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth,” that kept me intrigued.  I, like most everyone else on the planet, could not conceive of how this could be done, and the process of how it was done was just too interesting not to pay attention.  And besides, every one of the three networks covered those early launches, interrupting their regular programming to give us all the details hours before the scheduled launch.

John Herschel Glenn, Jr., rode atop a Mercury LV-3B, the same basic Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) first launched in 1950, into earth orbit on this date 50 years ago.  The Mercury launch vehicle had first been used for a Mercury launch on July 29, 1960, a suborbital, unmanned, named “Mercury-Atlas 1.”  John Glenn’s “Friendship 7″ was “Mercury-Atlas 6.”  Glenn orbited the earth three times and splashed down in the south Atlantic at T+4:55:30.  The mission lasting four hours and 56 minutes.  John Glenn’s first words after being winched on board the USS Noa and bounced off the side, exiting the capsule through the exploded side hatch, were, “It was hot in there.”

It was a Tuesday.  We all sat around a small black and white TV on the audio-visual cart while the teacher kept adjusting the rabbit ears trying to get a semi-view-able picture.  Glenn was riding on the sixth Atlas rocket built for the Mercury program, and two of the previous five had blown up.  This rocket, after three previous unsuccessful attempts, one of which included a fuel leak in the rocket during fueling on January 30th, roared to life at 14:47:39 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), also referred to as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) .  That translates to 8:47:39 Mountain Standard Time where I was sitting.  UTC uses a 24-hour (military) time notation and is based on the local standard time on the 0° longitude meridian which runs through Greenwich, England.  For example, Midnight in Greenwich corresponds to 00:00 UTC.  It’s used for most weather related times, and most anything to do with astronomical and aviation publications.

The room exploded in cheers and we continued on with our math assignment.  Later that day we watched the recovery on the same TV.  We had finally “caught up” with the Russians and we all knew it.  The “Space Race” was on full speed.

Any of you that have seen the movie, “The Right Stuff,” should know that one of the biggest complaints that the astronauts had was that they didn’t actually “fly” the spacecraft.  They were perceived as little more than a higher species of the Chimps that rode before them.  It was all done remotely from the ground.  However, in the case of Friendship Seven, the system failed and John Glenn had to manually fly the craft for re-entry.

The original seven Mercury Astronauts.

Of the original Mercury Seven, only John Glenn and Scott Carpenter are still alive.

The space program plugged along through the Gemini missions and the Apollo fire, which put the program on hold.  The first manned Apollo flight was scheduled for February 21, 1967, but the fire investigation which determined that  major modifications to the spacecraft and launch pad were needed, delayed the first launch to October 11, 1968.  Around that time my mother and I got into an argument that we would not reach the moon before the decade of the 60s was out as President Kennedy had challenged.  I clearly believed they would, in fact, I was so sure that it would happen before the end of 1968 , that I bet her $300.  Now, neither one of us had $300, so the bet didn’t mean much, but in December 1968 when Apollo 8 went to the moon and passed behind it entering into lunar orbit.  It became the first manned object to leave earth’s orbit and escape the gravitational pull of another celestial object.  My mother insisted I hadn’t won the bet because no one had landed on the moon.  On July 21, 1969, when we landed and walked on the moon, she said little of nothing.  She never paid me the $300, although I would remind her about the bet from time to time.

I stayed a space junkie through all of it, glued to the television, building models, flying model rockets.  It was an exciting time for a kid.

 

The King of the United States

Sure, we’d like to think that we didn’t or don’t have a Royal Family on this side of the pond.  There is surely not a monarchy here.  Or is there?

Let’s take a look at some of the blood lines of United States presidents.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, everyone’s favorite war-time president, has these cousins and distant cousins:  Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George Bush, George W. Bush, Eleanor Roosevelt, his wife, and Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister (Maybe why they got along so splendidly.)  We’ve had two sets of father-son presidents, and one grandfather-grandson combination.  Sounds like the presidency runs in the family.  I think that’s pretty amazing.  They are on each other’s family tree.  George Washington is related in some way to every other president.  You can work it out to see that Barack Obama is his 9th cousin six times removed.

In all fairness, if you run a family out that far with tree limbs, there is obviously going to be a lot of commonality.  Most of our ancestors came here from someplace, except the Native American population I would argue.

Here’s another thing I find interesting.  Did you know, for example, that George Washington had three brothers, two sisters, two half-brothers and two half-sisters, a total of nine siblings.  James Buchanan had 10 siblings, four brothers and six sisters.  Benjamin Harrison had six brothers, three sisters, and two half-sisters.  Jimmy Carter had one brother and two sisters.  We heard a lot about brother Billy and his beer, but you really don’t think about all those other presidential siblings.  What happened to them.  You’d think they would have accomplished something.  Why is there little or no historical record about all those famous siblings?

He wasn't that bad looking.

Did you know that James Buchanan was the only president who never married?  I didn’t either.  Maybe it’s not important, but might come in handy in a trivia game.

The average age of presidents of the United states is roughly 54.  The youngest was Herbert Hoover and the oldest was, come on now, you know this one…Ronald Reagan.  He was 69 going on, very shortly, 70.  The oldest living former president is George H. Bush, not “dubya,” who was born in 1924.  And the president who lived the longest was Gerald R. Ford, the guy who pardoned Richard M. Nixon.  He was 93.

So, where was I going with this?  Don’t know really, just thought is was fascinating, and it’s that time again when winter, spring, summer and fall is filled with conventions, television ads, fund-raising, debates, and finding out how little we have to work with when it comes to presidential contenders.  Barack Obama raised more money in a few days on the West Coast than all the other Republican candidates to date, combined.  Is $34 million a lot of money in a few days, and who’s counting that?

I have always understood that you as an individual can’t donate more than $2,500 to a primary candidate’s campaign fund.  (Not that I have ever donated even 25 cents to a presidential campaign and I do check “no” on my 1040.)  Once they are the party nominee and accept public funding, (That little box you check or don’t check on your tax return) they can no longer accept contributions to further their election.  You can donate up to $2,500 to their compliance fund, however, which is maintained to pay only for legal and accounting expenses incurred trying to comply with the campaign finance laws which are so complex that the number of loop-holes must be astounding.   I’m going to take a wild stab here and guess that most modern candidates don’t accept public funding and add up the millions by private donations.  I’m not even going to bother to look it up.

Okay, sit back and enjoy all the mudslinging, name calling, exposure of illicit affairs, and other tidbits of information about your favorite candidate you didn’t know or don’t care about.  It’s an election year, and the monarchy is mobilizing for a new king to ascend the throne or keep an old one for another four years.  And, in case you didn’t know, presidents weren’t limited to two terms until the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951.  That’s why FDR won re-election to a third and fourth term.  Every other president only served a maximum of two, but that was by George Washington’s example.  Now if we could just get that passed in the House and the Senate.  WTF 

E PLURIBUS UNUM

 

 

Humor Me.

I’m about to bore you totally to death, but humor me.

The date is March 3, 1984.  Big Brother is not watching.  I have spent the last three hours answering multiple-”guess” questions on the LSAT.  I have one last section to complete, the writing sample.  I will have 30 minutes to write a well thought out response to the following topic:

“Some argue that the increased incidence of terrorism and other extremism is due, in part, to the coverage provided by the news media to such activities.  The individuals argue that hijackers, bombers, assassins and other destructive extremists should be deprived of the media forum they seek.

This position  is in conflict with the Code of Good Practice of the International Alliance of News Organizations (IANO).  The CODE calls for unswerving dedication to the duty of informing the public of all notable events.  It pr0scribes press suppression of facts in order to manipulate events.

A roundtable discussion of the conflicting positions is planned for the next meeting of the IANO.  As a participant in that discussion, you have been asked to prepare a brief statement of your views on the conflict. In the space proved below, write your views. “

I didn’t know there was such an organization, for one thing, and I stumbled over the word “proscribes,” thinking at first that it was a misspelling.  ”Roundtable” is misspelled.  Should be hyphenated or two words, at least spellchecker thinks so, and so do I.  So with the brain drained completely over the last few hours,  I attempt to write a response.  I wanted to prove that I still had the document in my files, and, yet again, humor me by letting me know if you think this addressed the topic:

Note:  The parenthetical remarks were obviously not in the original text, but added by me, now, 28 years later.

The conflict before us has many positions available for a stand to be taken.  (Yeah, like maybe two?)  The question which has to be addressed in any case is whether or not news media coverage of these events has an effect, and if so to what degree.  (Missing a few commas here, me thinks.  Wouldn’t make any more sense anyway.) I believe that press coverage of these events is not only desirable, but imperative.  (Will he offer any proof?)

News reports of terrorist activities are essential to the alleviation of the problem more than its major cause.  (Yeah, who says?)  A free society depends on unobstructed press coverage to get the information necessary to continue that freedom.  The CODE of the IANO is based on these assumptions.  (Is it?)

Does the press give ideas to prospective terrorists by their coverage?  I think not.  (I don’t know.  I used to watch “Columbo” and figure I could commit the perfect murder and know exactly which mistakes not to make.)  In fact, it should be argued that the whole, or greatest majority, of the viewing or reading audience is turned off by the coverage of bombings and assassinations and the like.  (…the like??)  A moral society will not accept it, and will take steps to curtail it in some way.  (Curtail it?  How about stop it?)

Although novel ideas may be learned by future terrorists from news media reports, we still must explain the positive affects of news coverage where terrorist attempts are thwarted.  (I’ve read that three times and it still makes no sense to me.  I’m still not sure I used the proper spelling of effects and affects in usage.)  Surely this must dissuade some would-be terrorists to rethink their proposed action.  (I’m back to “Columbo.”)   Effective action by authorities, documents in the news media presentations, will have that effect.  (Says who?)  A terrorist act which gets little result will not further a cause.  (Isn’t that the point?  If we don’t report it, they don’t get media exposure, and the cause is not furthered.)

The people’s “right to know” is always paramount in a discussion of this nature.  The founding principles of our news media are based on the idea that suppressing information is harmful to a free, democratic society and it is.  Exceptions to this rule are unacceptable and history has proved this, although current events such as press restrictions during the Granada operation had wide-spread public acceptance.  (Now, what the hell am I doing here?  Is it harmful or not?  The public accepted press restrictions in the example given.  Was it harmful to the democracy?)

The news media must stand on its principles.  It must report events accurately and fairly.  (And there, my friends, is the problem.)  This will eliminate the necessity for discussions such as this and provide the public the information they need to make rational decisions.  The rest is simply argument.   (Ya think?)

That’s all I got out in 30 minutes and I took every second allowed.  Reading over this again, the piece lacks substantive information.  I’m making stuff up and it’s obvious.  Making statements of fact with no support…at all.  And then, I go and contradict myself in the fourth paragraph. 

This part of the LSAT is not scored.  It’s a writing “sample” and that was probably a good thing in this case.  Each law school decides how they will use this writing sample in their evaluation of an applicant.  If you take the test more than once, which I would have had to do if I was serious about admission, they will send the three most recent writing samples along with the scoring.  Can you imagine taking this test that many times?  I can’t even imagine it.  Maybe I’ll see the same questions and get them wrong again.  The test cost $100 back in 1984, it costs $132 today.  I guess if you’ve got the money and the time.

The really horrible, and, looking back still sounds really horrible, thing about 1984, was three months later I was finally offered a “real” job.  A job as an assistant manager at Thrifty Drug and Discount.  A reasonable salary plus bonus that placed me behind a counter most of the day scooping cylindrical ice-cream cones for fifty cents a scoop.  An unending line of undecided ice-cream patrons that thought we were serving the world famous Thrifty Ice Cream from our counter.  We weren’t, it was Creamland Dairy ice cream.  Every night as I pushed a three-foot wide dust broom up and down the aisles, I wondered why the hell I wasted all that time and money to get a college degree.     

If you get to this paragraph, I want to thank you for taking the time to humor me by reading my LSAT essay.  You probably have a better idea of why there is no “esquire” after my name.  WTF  

What I Want To Be When I Grow Up.

When I originally went to college, I wanted to be a secondary school history teacher and a football coach.  That’s how I ended up at New Mexico Highlands University in the fall of 1971, a “teacher’s” college.  Early in my senior year of high school  was the first time I was faced with “what do you want to be when you grow up,” and there was a lot of pressure,  because I really didn’t have a clue.  The school was recommended by my counselor, who had forced my hand on what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.  She went there or knew someone who attended school there, otherwise I hardly would have known it existed.  It was two states away from home though, and that seemed good at the time, so I applied and was accepted.  I declared my major but changed my mind three times in my first year at NMHU, ending up with Pre-Law, which is dumb in a way because you can get into Law School with just about any declared major.

And I tried.  After a ten-year sabbatical of sorts, I earned my degree “with distinction” from the University of New Mexico, majoring in Journalism.  There were several changes along the way there too, from Studio Art, Political Science, Communications to Economics.  I immediately began studying for the LSAT, the Law School Admissions Test, after graduation.  I didn’t attend the ceremonies and they had some difficulty finding my diploma in the Dean’s office.  ”Oh, you graduated with distinction,” the girl behind the counter said after consulting a list of graduates.  She handed me my diploma and a special red cover I had earned for my final GPA.

The LSAT is very difficult to pass, let alone score high enough to gain acceptance into a Law School.  I purchased the book and study exercises and got right to it.  I was still the night auditor and desk clerk at the Western 6 motel, so I had most of the night to study.  I struggled with logic problem after logic problem.  Trying to figure out what color hat the woman third in line had on if there were five people in line each with a different color hat,  if the third person in the line was not behind the person wearing the blue hat, and the fifth person in line had on a green hat, and the person wearing the yellow hat was not in front of the person in the blue hat.  Drove me insane.  I did hundreds of these types of questions and finally felt I had a grasp of how to do them well enough to pass the exam.  I paid my money at the UNM School of Law, and waited, and studied some more.  I always felt special the few times I walked into that building on campus, felt important.

The test date finally arrived and I was early that Saturday morning, still studying logic problems and going over other areas of the test.  There are three multiple-”guess” sections in the LSAT:  Reading Comprehension Questions, (Piece of cake.)  Analytical Reasoning Questions, ( Not so much.  These involve an ability to understand a structure of relationships and draw conclusions.)  Logical Reasoning Questions. (Where I spent most of my studying time.)  The final section was an essay question.  My forte.  I can baffle them with bullshit better than most.  Learned that in summer school taking Political Science classes.

That was the most intense half-day, without a break, I have ever spent in my life.  When I walked out, I had a massive headache, desperately needed a cigarette and a drink, and was sure that I had failed.  I wasn’t going to be taking it again either, because of the cost.  This had been my one shot.

 I discovered a few things after taking the test that I didn’t know or didn’t think much about in my zeal to become a lawyer.  First-year law students are not allowed to hold down a job.  That never would have worked.  I had two kids, a mortgage, and wasn’t making enough at the motel as it was.  Preference was being given at the time to minorities and women, probably still is.  I was neither, so my score and grades had to be killer to get accepted to a law school.  Only 12.5% of those taking the test fall into the upper third of test scores, the ones headed to Harvard and Yale.  I hadn’t given much thought to where I was going to get the money to go to law school either.  I guess I intended to borrow it.  Finally, when I got my test scores back, I passed, but was in that 75% of average, just plain average, test scores.  I put the test scores and essay in a manila folder where it still is today in my office filing cabinet, never actually applying to the UNM School of Law.

I don’t think I’m really sorry that I didn’t pursue a career in law.  There are a lot of broke lawyers out there.  All those TV shows that glorify the lawyer life are not very accurate either.  A lot of lawyers never try a case in front of a judge or jury.  Most of a lawyer’s day is spent doing research.  Not all that exciting I suppose.

The reason I got on this subject was because I noticed I have one post on my site that continues to surpass all the others in searches and views.  It has been viewed 4,910 of the almost 19,000 views I’ve had on my site since I started.  I’ve posted a total of 196 stories since February 2011.  If you search “Who invented the light bulb” on Google, its page one, up top.  I posted the story June, 14th.  It’s a short post about who really invented the light bulb.  I have numerous comments from students thanking me for helping them with their homework.  I’ve had comments arguing with my conclusions about who really invented the incandescent bulb.  My only intention was to show that it wasn’t Thomas Alva Edison, and I point that out.  It’s clearly not a concise history of the invention, but it’s billed on Google as though it is.  

Where I’m going with this, is I should have stayed on course and taught history in secondary school.  Maybe?  I love history, especially the misconceptions people have about many historical events.  I could have been an assistant football coach, maybe one day moving into the ranks of high school head coaches.  But, truth is, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

 

What Does A Stuffed Frog Say About Valentine’s Day?

I hate Valentine’s Day.  It’s a strong word, I know, but I really do.  I hate it most because it was invented by a card company to increase their after Christmas sales.  ”Why not St. Valentine’s Day?” the big card company executives thought.  ”We could sell millions of heart-shaped cards.  We’ll do it by making men feel guilty for not getting their sweethearts something on one specific day every year, February 14th.”  It has now exploded into every possible thing imaginable.  For example, how do you go on a Valentine’s Day Weekend?  It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?  But they’re advertising it, and on television too.  Maybe you could go on a 7-day “Valentine’s Day Cruise” on Carnival.  Yep, or just the thousands of dinner cruises available around the country if you want to stick to the one day.  But why not take those extended trips to celebrate the “holiday” and hell yes, propose?  WTF

So, yesterday, I’m fighting the crowds in my local “Walgreen’s” on a mission to get something for my wife for Valentine’s Day.  It’s 2:30 in the afternoon on a work day, and I can’t even get into the seasonal aisle with all the heart-shaped crap, so I force my way into the card aisle.  I find an open spot and start reading cards specifically designed for “My Wife On Valentine’s Day.”  Should find something here, right?  I pick one up, read the message, sounds perfect, hold on to that, and read a few more, not as good.  While I’m doing this, without moving from my spot, evidently other “husbands” want to see the cards in front of me and are pushing me and reaching across in front of me.  It’s starting to feel like ordering a beer at a crowded bar, and I don’t want to get into a shoving match over a card, so I decide the one I have is perfect, if not good enough.  I’ll add some personal message to it to make it just right.

Now I need something to go with it.  The choices seem endless.  I sneak into the seasonal aisle from the back and start my search with eatable panties and body paint.  Don’t think so.  There’s a “Love Kit” here, but they want too much for it, $14.95.  I have a budget.  Something like ten dollars.  There are now 25 feet of heart-shaped boxes and tins with every kind of candy you can imagine; The Whitman samplers,  M&Ms,  Mrs. Fields Chocolates.  I thought Mrs. Fields made cookies?  I almost go for a lighted heart filled with Skittles, but put it back on the shelf.  Who knows how long the batteries will last, and are they replaceable?   Everything seems too obvious.  There’s an eatable rose, one that sings, one that smells, even a real one, and one that pops up a message from the center.  Then I turn to the other side of the aisle, and the entire length of the gondola is filled with stuffed things.  I almost go for the coffee mug with the little devil sitting in it, but I resist.  There is this giant stuffed frog with a big heart on his chest.  I’m thinking, “What does a stuffed frog say about Valentine’s Day?  Maybe kiss me and I’ll turn into a prince?”  Anyway, it’s out of my budget, $24.95.  A guy is standing next to me pushing the “try me” button on a white teddy bear with a big red heart on its chest, playing “I-I-I-I-I-I-I, uh I-I-I-I will al—-wa—-ys Lo-ve You…I,I,I,I…” a song, frankly, I can’t take much more of since the untimely passing of Whitney Houston.  I liked Whitney Houston’s music well enough…back in the 90s.  I’m kind of bored with it now, but this character just wants to hear it over and over again, so I eject myself out of the aisle.

The next thing I think, is why is there so much “stock” of Valentine’s merchandise still in the store.  It’s the day before the event.  I guess us guys don’t plan this stuff, huh?  Ya think?  Or maybe we’re thinking they’ll have markdowns.  Which they do, but nothing that interests me.  We have hundreds of stuffed animals anyway.  Mostly from Valentine’s Day, I should add, Teddy Bears with big bulging red hearts, and bunnies, and little devils in baskets, and god knows what else.  They’re “stuffed” under the bedside table in the guest bedroom, at least what is left from the hundreds we gave away at our last garage sale to some little tyke who loved them all but her parents wouldn’t put up fifty cents for one.  So we tortured them and gave her the whole box.

  So, on a bay-end, I find a display of Ghirardelli chocolates, extra dark, with extra cacao, the kind she likes.  Perfect.  I grab it and head for the check-out.  Mission accomplished.  The lines stretch to the back of the store.  I pick one, always the wrong line, and this is no exception.  A strange lady in front of me, holding a lollipop in one hand and a bag of candy in the other, turns to me and says “Can you hold my place while I grab one of those?”  She points to display of weird Valentines.  I assure I will hold her place and I watch her grab a box of “Tattoo Valentines.”  

“I think she’ll like these,” she says, and I answer, “Oh, I’m sure she will.”  I wondered why she didn’t have the valentines in her hands already, since that was probably what she came into the store for in the first place.  She went on for another few minutes about the types of valentines, I assume, her daughter, would not like.  I smiled pleasantly.  When she got to the check out she further delayed us by using a Food Stamp card for the candy and a Debit card for the box of valentines.

Safely back in my truck in the parking lot, I watched the people exiting the store for a while.  Many guys walked out carrying assorted stuffed animals that they tried to hide under their arms, or even behind their backs.  Then the guy came out holding the big green frog.  He shifted it from arm to arm, obviously uncomfortable carrying it, and looking from side to side to make sure no one saw him.  I smiled to myself.  I wonder if he’s going to use the “kiss the frog” routine.

 

She’s Not Dead Yet.

I’m pretty sure I’m partially responsible for killing my great-aunt.  I didn’t mean to do it, really I didn’t, but it kind of haunts me a little to this day.

My father died February 1, 2004.  We went home for the funeral, and almost perished getting there from Reno, NV.  The blizzard that hit southern Wyoming the day we left was a pretty good one, and we had several close calls with the big dually diesel truck, “The Green Hulk,” during the trip, especially the “shortcut” through Shirley Basin.  The truck was prone to slipping sideways while going down hill, so you couldn’t apply the brakes hardly at all.  It was “fun” to say the least, especially if you had to navigate a turn at the bottom of a hill.

The snow had stopped by the time we headed out from Rock Springs where we decided to spend the night.  We passed semi-trucks overturned and jackknifed on the highway, in ditches, and UHaul trucks with their contents spread all over the roadway.  We made the crucial decision to get off the interstate and head to Casper through the basin when the sky cleared.  It can be a beautiful clear blue in “The Equality State,” but you don’t actually get to “Big Sky Country” until you hit Montana.  Where we were headed was about 14 miles from the Montana border.

What I had forgotten about Shirley Basin is the ground blizzards.  If you have never been in one, the blowing snow, which is crystalline from the cold, creates a white-out condition about the height of your vehicle.  In other words, you can’t see the road in front of you, at all, but you can see the clear blue sky above you without difficulty.  To top it off, the windshield wipers on the Hulk needed to be replaced.  But when we took the US287 cutoff and headed to Casper, the sky was clear, the weather improving, and we really hadn’t intended to stop the night before, which turned out to be a good decision.  Now we needed to make-up some time.

It wasn’t long before we were faced with zero visibility and we had to drive 100 miles in this stuff.  It was too late to turn back so we kept going.  It took us twice as long to keep the truck moving to Casper than it would have if we had stayed on the interstate.  As we pulled in, a Napa Auto Parts was the first building we saw.  It was a godsend.  We stopped and replaced the windshield wipers.  The snow started up again, and by the time we got to Sheridan, the ice was about an inch thick around the sides of the truck.  We pulled up at my brother’s place and had to kick the door open to get out.

Relatives I hadn’t seen in years, lots of years, were there in the house.  My Aunt Peggy, my dad’s only sister, was there from New York.  She sounded the same with that thick upstate New York accent.  After passing around condolences, we left to check into our hotel, and took the truck to a warm-water car wash and de-iced it.

The next day, one of my younger brothers, my wife and I decided to visit the municipal cemetery.  My mother, my father’s parents, my great aunts, and tomorrow, my father, are all buried there.  I wanted to see if I could find my grandfather’s grave because I remember he was buried under a tall tree overlooking the valley below.  I had not made the trip for my grandmother’s funeral, but I had been there for my Great Aunt Anita’s burial.  I knew she was close by.  I assumed my other Great Aunt, Genevieve, would be next to her’s.

Sheridan didn’t have a cemetery until 1890 when a group of businessmen formed the Mount Hope Cemetery Association.  Many of those buried in the surrounding area were later moved to what is now the Sheridan Municipal Cemetery.

We found the marker for Albert L. Olson, Sr., my grandfather, exactly where I expected to find it.  My grandmother, Marguerite was buried next to him.  The view of the valley was beautiful.  We spent a few moments visiting and then headed off in the surrounding plots to see if we could find my Great Aunt Anita’s final resting place.

My two great aunts had moved to Sheridan in 1971, shortly after my grandparents had moved there.  Anita’s husband died previously and Genevieve moved in with her in Long Island, although I’m not sure that they hadn’t lived together for much longer.  My grandparents convinced them to get away from the east coast and move to the small, quiet community where my Dad had settled in 1958.  I helped them move into their second-floor apartment off of W. Loucks Street, on Jefferson.  Within a few months, Aunt Anita, had a massive stroke while taking a bath, and died a few days later after suffering another stroke.

Aunt Genevieve, we called her Aunt Gen,  had never married.  The story I was told, was that her fiance was killed in a car accident on the eve of their wedding.  I later learned that her betrothed was a pilot and died in a plane crash some time before the wedding.  In either case, she never recovered from it, and remained a single woman the rest of her life.  She worked for New York Life for 43 years, as an underwriter, later a supervisor, and retired from there just before moving.  I always thought she had worked for AT&T, but I know she had a comfortable pension.

We stumbled, literally, across Aunt Anita’s plot a few yards away.  I assumed that Aunt Gen would be buried nearby, but we walked the area several times and could not find a marker for her.  The weather was turning cold, so we gave up the search.

Upon returning to my brother’s house, my Aunt Peggy asked me what we had done that afternoon.  I told her we had gone to the cemetery to visit some graves, and was upset that we couldn’t find Aunt Gen’s marker.  We had found everyone else, but we couldn’t find her.  I asked if she had been buried in New York.

“That’s because she’s not dead yet!” my older sister said with some amusement.

“She’s down the street at Sheridan Manor,” my Aunt added with some indignation.

The look on my face has gone down in the annals of Olson Family history.  How could I have not known she wasn’t dead?

The question is, now, how we missed this.  It must have been partly covered in snow.

She just celebrated her 101st birthday on January 28th, I was told.  Sheridan’s oldest living resident.  I immediately suggested that we should go visit her, and my sister told me it would be a waste of time because she doesn’t remember anyone.  I was assured that she was still doing well, although her pension had run out, (Who plans to live to 101?) she was now a ward of the state, and no longer had any assets.  No one was going to see any inheritance from Aunt Gen.

A few weeks after returning home, my sister, Margaret, sent me the front page of The Sheridan Press dated February 24, 2004.  The headline was “101-Year-Old Sheridan Resident Dies.”  ”Genevieve Matedero – described by relatives and friends as a ‘grand lady’ who helped people throughout her life – died Thursday at the age of 101.  Matedero died in Sheridan Manor where she had resided since 1997…The Sheridan Press featured Matedero in January 2003 when she turned 100.  She was photographed with a big smile on her face, enjoying cake and ice cream with friends.”

Oh my God, I thought, maybe if I hadn’t gone looking for her headstone, the higher powers might not have realized they had forgotten about her.  Some members of my family thought to suggest that as well.  Two sisters, my Great Aunt, Anita, my Grandmother, Marguarite, and one brother, my Great Uncle, Jerome, preceded her in death.  I didn’t know him at all.  In the end I was just sorry I hadn’t taken the time to visit Aunt Gen the few weeks before.  

And thanks to my favorite niece for reminding me about the story. 

The Gorilla Chronicles

I was watching a news program a few days ago, and they showed a motorcycle stuntman with the Shrine Circus hit a cable, plummet 20 or more feet, and fall on a clown.  The clown probably saved his life, accidentally, and most of the people in the stands thought it was part of the act.  The motorcycle stuntman suffered some broken bones and the clown, amazingly, was not hurt.  Well that incident reminded me of the Shrine Circuses we used to see as kids, and what become known as the “Shrine Circus Gorilla Incident”  which involved my grandmother and my little brother Steven.  This probably won’t sound all that funny to anyone else, but to us kids that summer, those that were there, this couldn’t have been more hilarious.

The first Shrine Circus was held in Detroit Michigan in 1906.  Starting out as a one-ring circus, in a very few years it grew to a three-ring affair.  The circus’ are affiliated with the “Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.”  That’s a mouthful, and there is more than one Shrine Circus, each affiliated or prefaced by the sponsoring Shrine organization.  The one that came to my home town was the “Kalif Shrine Circus,” put on by the “Nobles of the Powder River Shrine Club,” and we always enjoyed it.  I don’t know much about the Shrine Circus, but I know it’s run as one of the major fundraisers, not for Shriners Hospitals for Children, but mostly for their own Shrine Temple operations.  Thus the ticket donation, or any other donation to the circus is not tax-deductible as a charitable contribution.  They contract or lease animals from other circus groups and have often had star performers from other circuses on tour with them.

This particular June day in 1964 my grandmother offered to take us to the Shrine Circus which was being held for three days at the rodeo grounds.  We didn’t get any circus tent, and the seats we had in the stands weren’t the greatest for watching a circus, but we were excited and enjoying every minute of it.  We were sitting about halfway up in the bleachers in a section to the right of the main aisle.  The elephants were there, and the trick ponies, and the clowns, and the trapeze artists, and the lion tamer, and the high wire act.  They shot the guy out of the cannon, and ten clowns exited a small car that couldn’t possibly fit all of them.  It didn’t take much to entertain us I guess.

I was sitting next to my little brother who was sitting next to my grandmother, bless her heart.  My other brother, Tom, was sitting on my left.  My sisters were there too, I think, but I don’t know where they were sitting.  They pulled this circus cage into the center ring with a gorilla who was obviously agitated and straining to get out.  He rocked the cage back and forth to the uneasiness of us kids.  We watched in horror as the gorilla bent the bars open and escaped, chasing all the clowns and gorilla handlers around the center ring.  Then he took off for the stands to the squeals and screams of the audience.  My brother Steve was noticeable fearful, and he had reason.  Tom whispered in my ear, “This isn’t going to be good.”

The previous Halloween, we discovered my little brother Steve, probably four at the time, was petrified of a gorilla costume that one of the neighbor kids was wearing.  He would absolutely go bonkers screaming at this kid, until he took off the mask.  As soon as the mask went back on, he screamed like he was being gutted.  So we had to go trick or treating in separate groups.  That summer, just before the Shrine Circus, my brother and I, and Jeff, the neighbor kid, decided to test out this fear of gorillas.  We put two bamboo rods in the side door of the garage to look like a cage.  Jeff put on the suit and mask, and got behind the bars.  We shut the door and went to look for little Steven.

“Do you want to see what we have in the garage?” Tom said to him.  He was game.  So we dragged him by the arm and opened the door.  Behind the bars was Jeff in full gorilla regalia, making what he thought sounded like agitated gorilla sounds, and pulling on the bamboo rods, jumping up and down…and within seconds, Steve screamed at the top of his little lungs.   We assured him that the gorilla was safely behind bars and he couldn’t get him.  He calmed down a bit, but was still very nervous.

And then Jeff the Gorilla ripped the bamboo bars out of the door and ran after my brother who was by now turning a three-minute mile towards the back door of the house.  He made it safely inside, and we rolled with laughter.  Until my mother appeared in the doorway.  ”What are you boys doing to Steve?” she screamed at us.  Jeff was sent over the fence to his house and we were incarcerated in our rooms for an hour, promising never to do that again.  Jeff left the mask in the yard.  When Steve when back outside to play, he saw it and screamed bloody murder.  It wasn’t the gorilla he was afraid of, it was the mask.

So my brother and I watched with anticipation as the gorilla made his way through the crowd.  He was behind us now coming down the aisle.  ”UUh.  UUh.  UUh.” he grunted as he made his way towards us, stopping every so often to pound on his chest.  Steve was clutching my grandmother for dear life.  And then…the gorilla sat on Steve’s lap!  Of all the hundreds of kids he could have picked, he picked him.  The look of alarm in the eye’s of the man inside of the gorilla costume, a better costume, I have to say, than the one we had used, was classic.  Tom and I were laughing uncontrollably.  Steve was screaming murderously.  My grandmother, who had no idea what was going on, was trying to console him.  The gorilla ran off, with one terse look back.  He continued down to the center ring where he somehow managed to pull a bra off one of the circus actors, and, beating his chest, ran out of the arena chased by the gorilla handlers and the clowns.

It makes me laugh even today, thinking about it.  We tried to explain it all to my grandmother who was about to have a stroke, and she vowed never to take us to the circus again.   We were chastised, even my sisters who had no idea,  for not telling her about little Steve’s fear of gorillas.  

“He’s not afraid of gorillas, Nana,” Tom explained, “he’s only afraid of the mask.”  

A Closed Mouth Gathers No Foot

Over the years I’ve developed quite a taste for shoe leather.  I’m the guy that is always saying something when the person I’m saying it about is standing behind me.  You know the type.  I can rarely spread a rumor successfully, without the rumored knowing that I’m the one who broadcast it.  Yeah, it’s all about a closed mouth.  The shoe can’t get in if you just shut the fluffy up.  It’s definitely harder to say something embarrassing if you don’t say anything.

Last week, in a job interview, I was asked what motivated me.  I said without hesitation, “Money.”  The interviewer looked at me like I had potatoes growing out my ears.  I quickly tried to confine the obvious damage by further explaining that I was far more likely to be motivated to do something if I was paid for it, than if I wasn’t.  The interviewer wrote that down as I continued with damage control.

“I’m mostly motivated by challenge,” I lied.  Challenges don’t motivate me that much by themselves.  A challenge with a monetary reward, well now we’re talking.  But the interviewer smiled and wrote that down, hopefully crossing off that awful word, money.

That's me in the middle.

I continued with my interminable need for the taste of shoe leather as the next question asked was, “Why, would you say, that someone won’t hire you?”  Where do they come up with this stuff?  I answered that the only reason I can think of that someone wouldn’t hire me was because of my age.  I got the look again.  The woman who was interviewing me was clearly older than me, or she had suffered a hard life.  Again, at some lame attempt at crowd control, I sputtered that I had recently felt that my age had come into play in an earlier interview I had.  When I was telling that interviewer about my experience with Mountain Bell, the interviewer said that I was “dating myself.”  He went on to say that he remembered the “breakup” of the Bell System, but just barely.  Sounds like he was dating himself too, don’t you think?  I was one of five to be interviewed for the position of factory sales rep, and I got an email two days later stating that they had decided to “go in another direction.”  I’m going to believe that it was because I have no direct outside sales experience, but that conversation about Mountain Bell haunted me.  I sent a reply stating that I hoped their decision to move in another direction had nothing to do with the interviewer’s comments about “dating myself.”  See, even keeping your mouth closed doesn’t help.  Sometimes the foot gets in there anyway.

Back to why someone won’t hire me.  The interviewer said, and this a direct quote, “A lot of people say that, but end up getting the job anyway.”  The interviewer was a third-party, not employed by the company with the opening.  Her job was to screen the candidates, probably in the neighborhood of 200 resumes that had been received from the job placement, to determine who to pass on to the hiring authority for a second interview.  I’m waiting for the email about going in different directions.

Hindsight, having the clarity that it does, I decided on the ride home that the correct answer might have been that I couldn’t think of one damn reason why anyone wouldn’t hire me.  Then I figured out that the question was absolutely designed to get you to put your foot in your mouth.  I wondered how others would answer that in a job interview.  Probably trying to think of some obscure, unimportant thing that would make them un-hire-able.  What would that be?  Let’s go back to that money answer.  Maybe I should have said, “Because I want too much money.”  But, in fact, when asked that question, what was the least amount I would take for the position, I had answered in the mid-thirteens an hour.  She said something to the effect that they were offering in the twenties, so maybe I should say eighteenish.  I quickly agreed and promised not to tell she had suggested that answer.

Every job interview has a set of questions that are asked all the time.  Questions like, “Where do you see yourself in five years.”  My answer used to be, and I emphasize the “used to be,” “I see myself in your job.”  I always thought that answer showed some motivation to succeed and move up within the company.  The shoe leather taste was evident every time I said it.    What I really want to say now, is that I see myself retired in five years with a huge amount of stock options, and a 401K that puts me in a higher tax bracket, but I know how stupid that answer might be.  So I struggle with the question.

Another one of the questions in an interview that I despise is, “Give me an example of a time when you had a difficult customer and what you did to resolve the issue,” or some such “give me an example question.”  I sit there totally lost.  I can’t think of one example in all the years of experience that I have, to offer in answer.  The mouth is clenched tightly shut, afraid that anything I say will invite a foot.  So I make something up.  What are they going to do, check it?  Is it written down somewhere in a history book?  Sometimes I come up with some pretty good stuff, but in truth I have a cheat sheet.

Shorthorn heifer with foot and mouth disease. Does this affect humans?

I’ve done my share of interviewing over the years.  I remember one candidate I interviewed would look at pages in a manila folder she held on her lap every time I asked a question.  She would then read, yes, actually read, the answer she had on the sheet, verbatim.  I asked her how long she had lived here, and she read the answer.  I asked her the example questions, and she read the answer off her sheet.  There was not one question that I asked that she didn’t have the answer written down on the sheet.  That’s where I got the idea for the “cheat sheet.”  She didn’t get the job.

My least favorite question in an interview is, “Why should we hire you over all the other candidates for the position?”  Well, first of all, I don’t have any idea the caliber of the other contestants.  What I want to say is that I NEED a job.  What I usually do is start spouting off all the great skills and experience that I have that makes me highly qualified for the position, more qualified than any other mortal person applying for it, and how dependable I am, and a team player, and, and, and, faster than the interviewer can write the stuff down.

Although a closed mouth gathers no foot, you can’t follow that advice in a job interview.  You have to answer, and sometimes the foot is going to find its way to your mouth, no matter what you say.