Just The Tip

This story is for Brooke, a beautiful beautician who dropped by one evening just to chat. I’m proud to say that she’s also my niece.

Because Brooke is a beautician and I’m a storyteller I told her about the first time I went to a hair salon, back in the early eighties.

I was working at a 7-Eleven and I was being promoted to store manager. I had long hair and a goatee. I was told by my supervisor that, if I wanted to keep those two things, I should have them professionally managed.

My buddy Paul had long black hair and I knew he went to a stylist. I liked how his hair looked so I asked him for advice. He told me where to go.

The stylist was a pretty young woman with long blonde hair. She guided me to her chair, put a cape over my front and tied it around my neck. Then she asked me what I wanted. I had long thin hair that I pulled straight back into a ponytail.

I told her my situation: getting promoted. I told her I didn’t want to lose the length, but maybe she could do something with the front. You know, make it more business like and just trim the goatee.

She went to work. She was bubbly, funny and interested in everything I had to say. If I said something funny she’d throw her head back and laugh.

I thought, this chick really likes me.

She combed, cut and chatted, cheerfully working her way around my head. I had rested my forearms on the arms of her chair. When she got to my right side I felt something touch my elbow.

I could see both her hands up near my head in the mirror. I thought it might have been her hip, but she was facing me. What had touched my elbow was an inch below her zipper.

I thought it was an accident. I thought she’d just bumped me. That it was my fault for putting my elbow on the arm rest. That she would jump back and say, “Hey, I’m workin’ here!”

As a gentleman, I should have pulled my elbow in, saving her the embarrassment of having to point out that my elbow was in her, um . . . ‘space.’

Then she settled her 'space' there. On my elbow. I froze.

My side of the conversation became . . . stilted. My answers, single syllable. Grunts.

I imagined all kinds of reasons why this pretty woman was resting her . . . um, inseam? On my elbow, but I was coming up empty. Did she realize she was doing it?

Then she got to my left side. And, yes ladies, I should have pulled my elbow in but I was twenty years old. My libido was at a simmer all the time. She had brought it to a rapid boil.

When it was time to trim my mustache and goatee she put a hand on my knee, pushed my legs apart and scooched in between them. She leaned in to inspect my goatee, giving me a clear shot of her lace covered lovelies.

I was thankful for that cape.

I really enjoyed getting my hair done by a professional stylist. At the cash register I raved about how great she was. I said I was gonna get my hair cut there for the rest of my life!

The next time I saw my buddy Paul I told him about my experience with the best beautician in the world. Neither of us could believe how flirtatious she had been.

Then Paul told me about his last session at a salon. He said his hair looked so bad that he went to another salon to get it fixed.

“How bad was it?” I asked him.

“It was so bad that I didn’t give her a tip!” he said.

Ahem.

A tip? You’re supposed to give the beautician a tip? Why didn’t he tell me that!?!?

I blushed down to my toes, embarrassed for the dumb ass who raved to the cashier about the best haircut he had ever had.

Paul asked me what was wrong.

“Um,” I said.

“You tipped her, didn’t you?” he asked.

“I didn’t know!” I said. “You should have told me!”

Of course I had told her who’d sent me, so neither of us could go there, ever again.

I wanted to go back and tip her for her hard work, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get over just how stupid I must have looked.

I was scared to go to another salon thinking there would be a WANTED poster of me hanging in the lounge, with the caption, “DOES NOT TIP!”

For a year after that my mom trimmed my hair, until an old girlfriend of mine named Kris came into my store. I hadn’t seen her in a long time and we took a few minutes to catch up. She told me she was a beautician and that she was getting married.

I told Kris a ‘G’ rated version of my first experience with a beautician and we had a big laugh. She told me there were no WANTED posters of non-tippers in her salon.

I squinted at her.

Kris said, “Okay okay, I’ll take down the one with your picture on it.”

So I made an appointment and Kris did a great job cutting my hair. After paying for the haircut, at the cash register, I took a twenty dollar bill out of my wallet and loudly announced, “This is for you, Kris!”

It made me feel great. Until the next time I talked to Paul. This whole tipping business is complicated.

Why Are You Here?

Why Are You Here?

I woke up in a rest area one morning with an urgent need to visit the little boy’s room. I was a long distance truck driver at the time, so I crawled out of the sleeper compartment, slipped on sandals and a hoodie and trotted to the building. I pushed open the door and went into the first stall.

I sat there contemplating life and all its wonders when I heard footsteps coming from the car side restroom entrance. I’ve done my business in many a public restroom and you hear footsteps all the time, but these were unusual. They were quick and clicky. Like a kid wearing tap shoes.

I kept thinking that the clicky shoes would stop. That the person coming in from the other side would know I was there and choose a stall far away, but they didn’t.

They kept coming.

Then, the person making those unusual foot falls, chose the stall next to mine. I knew, having ducked down to get a quick look under the stalls, that I was the only one in there. Why choose the stall next to mine?

I wanted to shout, "Why are you here?"

Then I saw the shoes. They were high heels. I suddenly realized that the walls were pink! That the tiles on the floor had pink highlights!

As soon as she started doing her business I knew why she chose a stall right next to mine: she thought she might need backup.

I hated to abandon her in what might have been her time of need, but there was no way I could pass toilet paper under the stall without her finding out I was not a lady and that I had heard what she was doing over there.

The reveal would have been ugly.

Years later, when I worked for a trash company, I was in a similar situation, but this time I knew I was in the men’s room. I’d been in that restroom many times before. So, when I heard the clickety click of high heels on the floor I was in a more confident position.

Still, I was shocked when she dropped her purse on the floor and settled herself.

I tried hard to think of a way to tell her she’d made a mistake: one I’d made myself, and that it was okay if she went ahead and just did her business. I mean, she was locked and loaded so she might as well pull the trigger.

I began with, “Um . . .”

Her reaction was dramatic. She shouted, “Oh my god!” followed by a rustle of poly blended fabrics as she reassembled herself. I guess my voice gave me away.

I was surprised that there wasn’t a lady shaped hole in the door to the men’s room.

Those two incidents might prompt one to ask, “Why are you here?”

These days I work for a lumber company. Yesterday I was driving my ten ton dump bed truck, carrying fifteen tons of lumber, down a curvy, hilly country road. It was paved and there were lines painted on it but there were no shoulders.

I topped a hill and saw a cyclist. One of those wearing a helmet and stretchy clothes. I had to jam on the brakes.

Because it was a curvy, windy road there was a double yellow line down the center which meant, do not pass.

Now, someone in Jetta or an F150 could have popped over for a few seconds and breezed past this cyclist but I couldn’t. I didn’t have that kind of get up and go. I couldn’t see far enough ahead to know the road was clear enough for a big truck.

I was stuck. I had to follow them. For miles.

It was obvious that the cyclist knew there was a large truck behind them but they never looked back. Impressive. Big balls. Then I realized the cyclist was a woman. Okay, no balls, but still impressive.

As a seasoned driver of big rigs, I can tell you that diesel engines run fairly cool, compared to gas engines. If they’re going fast enough the cooling fan doesn’t need to come on.

However, I was following a woman riding a bicycle at about sixteen miles an hour. The engine was getting hot. When we started going up a fairly steep hill the clutch fan kicked in.

If you’ve never experienced the engine fan of a big rig engaging, imagine that a sink hole suddenly appears on the ground behind you and the devil has turned on a vacuum cleaner to suck all the sinners down to hell.

Yeah, it wasn’t that dramatic, but you’re not pedaling ten ounces of aluminum down a curvy, hilly road with nothing but styrofoam and plastic to protect your head.

When the engine fan kicked in her rump came off the seat and that bicycle rocked back and forth as if she was being chased by the devil driving a bicycle eating monster truck.

I was surprised that a wet spot didn't spread across the bottom of those stretchy shorts.

Even though I had been cussing and spitting the entire time I was trapped behind her I felt bad. I knew when my engine fan kicked in she thought I had tromped on the gas pedal, finally fed up with her hubris and determined to mow her down.

But I kept having this fantasy that I could somehow convince this woman to pull over so I could talk to her; so I could ask her, calmly and cooly, why are you here?

The Professional Crastinator

My sister and I came up with a term for someone that goes far beyond the normal amount of procrastinating: The Professional Crastinator. This is the story of one of those people.

Inside my head is a dried up old man that questions everything I do. I call him The Professional Crastinator. He won’t let me sit down to write until I have the proper tools and the right idea.

I’ve wanted to write a novel for a long time and I’ve come up with ideas for lots of them. I’ve even started a bunch, but I haven’t been able to finish one.

I thought writing a dirty book would hold my attention but The Professional Crastinator reminded me that I get a headache from eye strain if I sit too long in front of a screen, which is what’s required of the modern novelist.

So I bought an old laptop because you can turn the backlight almost all the way off. The laptop couldn’t do much but surf the web and run a word processor so it wasn’t a distraction, but there was a hint of backlight so it wasn’t the perfect solution.

I found something called the Alphasmart Neo. It has a clicky laptop style mechanical keyboard, a small four line green LCD screen with no backlight and runs on three triple A batteries. It’s very portable and the batteries last forever but you need a well lit room or a lamp to read the screen.

The Professional Crastinator had me scouring the internet for low eye strain writing solutions. Before I knew it I was watching videos of e-ink tablets attached to bluetooth keyboards thinking I’d found the perfect solution.

I could afford to buy the device but part of me was screaming for simplicity: for an uncluttered desktop.

I already have a computer on my desk. I built it for playing video games. When I wanted to write I pushed the 21 inch monitor to the back of my desk along with the keyboard and sat my laptop in front of it. When I bought the Alphasmart Neo to write with, again, I pushed the monitor and keyboard to the back of my desk and put it up front.

I thought, “If I buy that e-ink tablet and bluetooth keyboard I’m going to end up doing the same thing and I’ll have an extra device that I don’t need!”

I use an online word processor called 'Google Docs’ to write with and I decided to fiddle with the settings. I figured out how to make the background black and the text brown and how to turn on the night light settings through Windows 10. Now I have a 21 inch screen to write with that gives me very little eye strain. I can write for hours without getting a headache.

But The Professional Crastinator wouldn’t leave me alone until I got myself a new keyboard. The keyboard I used with my gaming computer was just a clunky old cheapy that you could find on any computer. The Professional Crastinator said I needed something better, so I found the clicky keyboard. The keys make a distinctive ‘click’ when you type.

The Professional Crastinator made me want that keyboard because I had closed off all his other avenues of distraction. He was getting desperate. When I put my foot down and decided I was going to use my gaming computer to write for the sake of  simplicity he wouldn’t shut up about that damn clicky keyboard.

I allowed The Professional Crastinator one last extravagance before I got down to some serious writing: the clicky keyboard. I’m using it right now. Zack tells me he can hear the clicking all over the house. It sounds a little like an old typewriter. It’s very satisfying.

I woke up at four o-clock in the morning thinking about the structure of my dirty book. I got out of bed, went to the toilet and back to bed. When I couldn’t get to sleep I got up and browsed the internet looking for different ways of writing books. Around seven I got back into bed and thankfully went to sleep.

I woke up again when I heard Zack, who’s nineteen, coming down the stairs. I asked him what time it was.

“It’s about nine thirty,” he said.

I told him I woke up at four in the morning and wasn’t able to get back to sleep because I was thinking about the dirty book. I told him I was thinking of a complete overhaul.

He said, “Meow.” We talk like cats to each other.

I sat down in front of my gaming computer with its clicky keyboard and looked for the new first chapter of my book. I got rid of old outlines. I found five of them and deleted them all.

I found a handful of chapters named Chapter One. I reread them, then renamed them something else. I thought I might have had a Chapter One already written but I would have to decide that after I reorganized my documents.

I worked on it for five hours. I even started a completely new outline; one that fit with my newly created structure.

Zack poked his head in my room around two thirty. I told him what I was doing with the book. I was proud of the work I had done.

“You should write funny stories,” he said, “like David Sedaris.”

He didn’t praise my dedication to the process. He didn’t tell me he thought restructuring the novel was a good idea. He’ll never read my book: I would never let him, so he doesn’t care about it.

After spending five butt numbing hours in front of my gaming computer with it’s new clicky keyboard I began to see that writing a dirty book was The Professional Crastinator’s way of keeping me from writing what I was meant to write: my stories. I didn’t recognize the dried up old bastard because he wasn’t telling me to buy something new.

Zack’s advice made me think about my stories. It popped into my head to tell him about my friend Adam’s wedding. Adam was my helper for several years when I was the Missouri Specials driver for Deffenbaugh.

The Specials driver was given a handful of tickets everyday: specials, that I had to make a route out of. Then I drove a little trash truck to each location and bid on what was at the curb. If the bid was accepted by the customer we picked it up.

There was a lot of time to chat between stops so Adam and I got to know each other very well. We became friends.

During our time together I told Adam lots of stories. One of them was about the day my son Zack was born.

When I met my second wife she had three kids. She used something called the Bradley method to give birth.

Put simply, the Bradley method is the opposite of Lamaze. Lamaze tries to distract you from what your body is doing and Bradley has you listen to your body. There was a lot of deep breathing and no drugs. She gave birth completely naturally. She used the Bradley method when we got pregnant, as well.

The birthing plan we gave the staff told them not to update her on dilation. They could come in and check her all they wanted but they were not to tell her how much she was dilated. She told them her body would tell her when it was time to push.

The birthing plan said, “When I tell you I’m going to push I will start pushing.”

She lay on her side and I rubbed her back. We chatted a little but most of the time she lay there with her eyes closed, concentrating. She seemed to be meditating.

After several hours she opened her eyes and said, calmly, “Tell the doctor I’m going to start pushing.”

I went to the door and shouted at the nurses station, “she said she’s going to push!”

Her doctor stood at the nurse’s station looking at a chart. She glanced up lazily and said, “Okay, tell her to hold on . . . I’ll be there in a minute.”

“She said she’s gonna push,” I said, “and she means it.”

The doctor sauntered over to our room. She pulled up a chair and casually tugged on a pair of rubber gloves. She put her fingers inside my wife, who, by that time, was shivering, growling and breathing hard.

The doctor shouted, “I can feel the head!” She stepped to the door and shouted to the nurses station, “I can feel the head! Let’s go, people!”

Everyone at the nurses station froze like a deer in headlights.

Then they all put on red rubber noses, big floppy shoes and started bumping into each other.

They tumbled and cartwheeled into our room, unlocked the wheels on the bed and tried to push it out the door with my wife panting and groaning, but the bed was too wide: it wouldn’t go through the doorway. I looked at the door and saw that you could unlock the frame and open it. So I did.

They pushed her bed down the hall bouncing off one wall then the other.


The groom at a wedding doesn’t have much to do, but I helped Adam with whatever he needed. I downloaded music for the reception and generally kept an eye on his needs. His biggest need was calm. He needed lots of it.

From time to time I would ask him, “How ya doin’?” He would answer that he was fine, just nervous. Time passed and the wedding was about to start. As the ceremony got underway I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “How ya doin’?”

He whispered back, “Isn’t this where everyone puts on red rubber noses, big floppy shoes and starts bumping into each other?”

Adam quoted my story back to me at such a momentous time in his life. I glow when I think about it.

Zack was right. I should just tell my stories. It made me realize that The Professional Crastinator’s biggest victory was convincing me to write this big complicated dirty book that my kids would never get to read, instead of just telling my stories.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

Stop funding NPR!

I've changed my mind about supporting NPR with government funding.

I love NPR. I think NPR is one of the few places that one can get a balanced perspective on the state of the world, today. But, because they receive a large part of their funding from the government, it is easy to criticize them for their political stance.

The fact that neo-conservatives are going after NPR has very little to do with the deficit. Yes, spending money on public radio is a part of the discretionary spending the government does, and does contribute to the deficit. Just as corporate loop-holes do, though there is a wide margin between which contributes more to our debt.

So take away the funding. NPR won't go away. They get about 25% of their funding from the government, so they will have to cut back. They'll have to do more beg-a-thons. And, I will start supporting them with my own money, which I've never done before. The fact is, I've been lazy about NPR, expecting it to just be there when I turn on the dial.

And, if NPR put a much more liberal spin on their reporting due to the fact that neo-conservatives knocked the pegs out from under them, then so be it. In fact, I hope it happens. Then, our congressmen can say nothing about what NPR might have to say. They will no longer have any skin in the game.

Besides, MSNBC is figuring out that heavy liberal spin on the news is profitable.

A note for you Blue Collar Conservatives

What's happening in Wisconsin should wake up my blue-collar brethren to the fact that the Republican party isn't on the side of Johnny Paycheck or Jane Six-pack. They want you to be responsible for the debt that too-big-to-fail institutions caused.

Hopefully, those on the fence, will see corpratism behind these moves. And if any of you think, "It's just the govenment workers, and they're paid too much," just kick back and wait for a minute. If they get away with stripping the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions, they will move on to the next item on their agenda.

I can't wait to see what that might be.

Mexico, not Canada

The Nazi Cheese-head union-busting freshman governor in Wisconsin got me to thinking about who we want to be as a country. It seems that we are always asking ourselves this question. It's obvious from the 2 wars we fought against it (Korea and Vietnam) we don't want to be communists.

So, who are we?

While the debate dragged on and on over Obama Care; as the Obama administration gave in and gave in to the hard right conservatives just to get something passed, I kept hearing that his bill was 'socialist' or 'communist'. That making sure every American had health care was foreign and bad thing to do.

We shouldn't want to be like Canada or England or Germany or France or, god forbid, like China.

Who should we wanna be like?

How about Mexico?

I wanna get back to Mexico, but first I wanna talk about a tiny blip of news I'd heard sometime last year.

Something that had nothing to do with America.

This little blip of news; this little factoid, was that China has passed Germany as the world's largest exporter of manufactured goods.

Let that sink in for a minute.

China has a population of 1.3 billion. Germany, less than 82 million. China's population is 16 times larger than Germany's, yet it was only last year that they exported more than Germany.

As an aside, Germany guarantees health care to all of it's citizens, and their economy is very strong. The same with China. In fact, China owns a huge portion of our American debt.

What this says to a trucker in the mid-west is that the United States might be looking in the wrong direction. It looks to me like we are looking towards being like Mexico, and not Canada.

But ya know, a funny thing about that . . . I don't wanna insult Mexico, but, when that thought first occurred to me, it was the worst thing I could imagine. And yet, this year; 2011, Mexico will be providing Universal Health Care to all of it's citizens.

What does that say about us if we don't wanna provide universal health care, or allow unions the right to collective bargaining?

Who do we wanna be?

Nazi Cheese-head

Fox News channel commentators have all called Obama a Nazi, at one time or another because of the Affordable Health Care Act. I didn't agree. I thought such a thing as the Affordable Health Care Act was more communist than fascist. More like France than Germany.

I was listening to one of my soft-headed, tree-hugging liberal podcasters, when someone brought up the point that, what Scott Walker is attempting to do in Wisconsin, is union busting. And, one of the things that Hitler the uber-Nazi did, was to outlaw unions.

I'm only 48; born long after Hitler was dead and gone, but I'm old enough to have heard the old activist allegory, "When they came for the Jews, I said nothing, because I wasn't a Jew. And when they came for the trade-unionists, I said nothing, because I wasn't a trade-unionist."

Where are my Nazi baiters at Fox News? We have a governor who is acting as a Nazi; as a little Hitler, yet they are not calling him a Nazi. Why not? Oh yeah, because Scott walker is not acting like a communist. So a governor acting as if he is a fascist dictator is okay?

What ya gonna do when Scott Walker comes for you?