From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XIV

Introduction

This is the fourteenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, and Volume XIII is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another and can be read in any order, in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, and/or not at all.)

What are bits and bobs? In the context of albertnet, they’re mostly excerpts from emails, letters, etc. that I wrote to friends and family before blogs were a thing. Read on if you’re too tired to watch TV. Better yet, read this aloud to your pet or your plants.

February 2, 1990

I spontaneously decided I was through wearing old bike race t-shirts etc. Among these were the polo shirts I got from being a media liaison at the Coors Classic, and some other polo shirts (the bright red ones) that Mom got from somebody who’d marshaled at the Coors Classic. It’s a ton of shirts. Simultaneously, my art studio roommate, C—, whom I call Dithers (for reasons I don’t myself understand), and who calls me Dithers as well (ditto), decided he was tired of wearing nothing but grey and black (which was, and probably still is, the unofficial uniform of the starving artist). So I offered him virtually my entire wardrobe, and that is all he wears now. Buzzard to peacock literally overnight. Naturally, the fact that every single garment promotes cycling, in which he has zero interest, has not escaped him; I guess you could say he wears the shirts ironically. Every so often he complains to me about some nerdy cyclist type who quizzed him eagerly about his involvement in the Coors Classic, and who was disappointed when C— replied, “I was never a marshal for anything and I don’t even know what the Coors Classic is.”

January 19, 1991

[Reminiscing to my brother.] And so, a job at a factory. Underwear. Cans. Crates. Cardboard. Time clock, big bell that rings for break, picnic tables and vending machines. The factory like a giant hive, hundreds of sewing machines going at once, turning out underwear. You and I sticking endless size/color labels on the cans, crating them, stapling wooden lids, packing boxes, filling out shipping forms, noting on invoices where an order—seemingly every order—is short because the factory cannot sew underwear fast enough.

You speak fondly of the experience. Fighting together against the oppression of our (rightfully disgruntled) factory floor colleagues, underpaid immigrant laborers. After-hours hijinks. You and I singing “G— W—” [the factory owner’s name] to the tune of “Richard Corey.” Disabling the safety mechanism and firing the high-powered compressed-air staple gun out over the factory floor. You grin, laugh, reminisce, and what do I do? I sit back, real cool like, maybe mumble a little bit. Do you know why? It isn’t because I don’t cherish those memories. It isn’t that I didn’t enjoy it. It’s that my ambitious preoccupations are censoring me from admitting to having enjoyed a factory job. Yeah, god damn it, it paid the rent. No it wasn’t a stepping stone. Yeah I did it but only because I’d been unemployed. No brass plaque from that one to hang on the wall. It wasn’t a part of my plan. But these are all only delusions of dissatisfaction. I was afraid to admit that I enjoyed it. Afraid I might never transcend it. Gotta getta outta here. Gotta move on. Drive, man, drive.

I have this vision of driving that ‘52 Ford, the closest thing the factory had to a work vehicle, down to the warehouse, unloading all P’s and G’s personal shit because they were too cheap to rent a storage locker. This is not important company business. This is something others are too lazy to do. No talent here. But we were talented in a way, weren’t we? We taught ourselves how to enjoy it. I took half an hour rolling down the screwed-up window so I could coolly hang my arm out and try with one hand to steer that horribly misaligned truck in a straight path down the driveway of the factory, all the time checking out the tits ‘n’ ass of the girlies in little round pictures mounted on the dash. You’d have a book of human sexuality on your lap (found among P—’s stuff), reading aloud with fascination at all this scholastic explanation of the carnal. Written by experts.

But at the factory, we were the experts, making it all a big joke, stumbling through our work recklessly, giddy like little kids left with a babysitter who lets us cuss. Fuck, shit, god damn. Look at my crazed smirk when I say that. Hey G—: fuckin’ shit bitch hell. Laughing so hard we’re dribbling spit down our chins which we wipe away with the back of an arm. After a while the babysitter says, “Hey, quit cussin’, it sounds like shit,” and we are back on the floor, rolling with laughter. Laughing so hard we can’t even make our lips shape the next obscenity. That was our factory life, in all its true glory. It was like a science fiction role-playing vacation, not Westworld or Futureworld, but Factory World. We knew it wasn’t our life, it wasn’t our destiny, but a few months of living paycheck to paycheck, no lofty ambitions, standing in line to punch the clock behind a fat ‘n’ sassy waistband technician. It was like a vacation. But now I’m in dangerous territory. I better shut my trap before I say something stupid like “I’d like to go back.”

April 3, 2000

Next week we’ll be putting an offer on another house, also in Berkeley, that’s ugly on the outside but really groovy on the inside. We should have a bit better chance on it, I reckon, due to its ugliness. (How far we’ve fallen since we started this seemingly doomed house hunt!) It’s on kind of a sketchy street—generally nice, but with a couple of totally derelict houses. One of the houses is abandoned, and the other ought to be condemned whether it’s occupied or not. It looks like it would collapse if you blew hard on it. There’s this big old truck out front that looks like it was driven through the fires of hell. It has a really bizarre mural painted on the sides and back, that looks kind of cult-y. We asked a neighbor what was going on, and he said, “Oh, that’s Mike The Mover. He’s been here since the dawn of time and always will be. He runs an illegal moving operation out of that house.” Fingers crossed … Mike The Mover could become my new neighbor!

January 16, 2001

Oh yeah, I’ve heard of the Stinking Rose, and in fact I ate there once. It’s somewhat famous, probably because of its name and its gimmick (which is, of course, gobs of garlic). It was written up in a “Smithsonian” article on garlic (and is probably mentioned in every other article on garlic as well). It has a prominent location on Columbus Ave, not far from House of Nanking. E— and I took a couple of friends from out of town because they specifically wanted to go there. It was a bit overpriced, and they didn’t really do anything fascinating or brilliant with garlic other than, well, using too much of it. They also had these order-placing devices that looked like phasers, so they could shoot your order into the kitchen rather than walking there. Neat idea, and fun for the diners, but it seemed to actually slow things down. The most memorable part of the evening was when our gay, bald waiter said to me, sternly, “What’s your name?” I told him and he said, “Dana, let’s get one thing straight. I would kill for your hair. Kill!” (My hair was shoulder-length at the time.) Anyway, if they had a Stinking Rose in Phoenix I might go there during a business trip, but you can certainly do better in the Bay Area.

April 26, 2001

Quick question for you. Any tips on child care? E— is due in September and we’re having a hard time finding good day care. Some of these places fill up a year in advance (I guess the couple gets on the list before even trying to conceive) and we don’t want to end up having to settle for one of those places where a chain-smoking ex-hippie sits forty-five kids down in front of the TV, puts her pit bull in charge, and then heads into her bedroom to work a psychic hotline.

I think you guys said you had a nanny back when C— was a toddler? Gosh, that brings me back to a nanny my brothers and I had. I didn’t learn her name until years later but the whole time she watched us, we called her “Darlin’” for reasons we ourselves probably didn’t understand. Probably she called us “darlin’s” and we got confused. We actually thought that was her name. Not that we thought it was her first name—we would never call an adult by her first name—but more like she was a Cher or Madonna type who had only one name. Darlin’ was a very old lady, and very cool because she would let us watch “Adam 12,” and would occasionally give us Trident gum. The only downside was, she absolutely forbade us to suck our thumbs and would always threaten to cut them off if we persisted. In fact, once she chased me under the bed with the kitchen scissors. I remember peeking out from under there, terrified, watching her stick her head down under the bed and say, “Stick out your thumb! I’m going to cut it off!” Such an exciting lady. We always looked forward to having her over. Reading over what I’ve just described, it doesn’t appear that this was top notch child care, but in fact it really was.

Is having a nanny way expensive? Day care places are running about a grand a month and that’s what we’re expecting to spend. It seems impossible anything could be more expensive than that but then you’re probably already laughing at my naivety.  I’m thinking I could just drive down to Fourth Street and find one of the nameless workers that gather down there to get picked up for day labor. For $5 I’m sure a laborer would find childcare easier than digging trenches or putting up sheetrock. Of course, if I suggested this to E— our daughter would end up being raised in a single-parent home (assuming E— beat the murder rap). So I’d appreciate any advice you could give.

September 4, 2001

Thanks for the advice about strollers, particularly the bit about how newborns can’t ride in them because their heads will flop around, frightening Mommy. Someone advised I start with a pram. Near as I can tell, a pram isn’t a terribly useful device, as it only gives the baby a view of the sky. There’s probably a lot to see up there, but not as much as if the kid is facing forward. We’re borrowing a “Baby Bjorn,” which is some kind of frontal baby seat that you wear. Our birthing and bondage coach insists that they’re terrible for the baby’s back, and we should use a sling, but with a sling the kid can’t see much of anything. What do you think? I’ve always had a terrible slouch, giving me a “vertebrae be damned” attitude, so I’m not completely sold on the Baby Bjorn prohibition. I’m tempted to ignore the birthing teacher’s advice simply on the grounds that she’s a radical post-hippie alternative type, but I’m anxious to get the birds-eye low-down from people who know such as yourself.

I was trying to remember what model of Maclaren stroller youse guys had there in the Netherlands. If you’re still using the original one I saw when we were out there, and that you brought out when visiting us, that alone speaks volumes for its durability, as does the fact that you can get replacement parts for it. I also like the British in the web-page descriptions, particularly “colourway.” Some of these look incredibly fancy. Needless to say I won’t be getting the titanium one; if I don’t have a titanium bike, my daughter’s not getting a titanium stroller.

January 21, 2005

E— and I took the youngsters to House of Nanking on Sunday, and in the midst of L— detonating and doing her best impersonation of a fish out of water—in fact, an alcoholic fish out of water having the DTs—no, make that a fish out of water having the DTs combined with a generalized spaz attack—a guy at the next table noticed my Gaastra pullover and got all excited. (Only once before did somebody recognize the Gaastra brand on this garment; it was my friend D— who does a lot of windsurfing, and he asked, “Why do you have that?” to which I replied, “Why, whose is it?”) Our dining neighbor was a kind of nerdy, kind of . . . well, European-looking guy, and he asked, “Hey, are you into kites?!” It was all I could do to keep L— in my grasp—she was on the verge of launching herself out of my hands, and as I was standing up, she could have landed right on the guy—and so instead of having him on, which I might have been tempted to do (“What makes you think of kites?” / “Your Gaastra pullover. They make kites.” / “Is that what they make? I thought they made that heartburn medication!”), I only stammered that I don’t have a Gaastra kite, but rather a brother in Holland. The guy was crestfallen.

January 23, 2009

You asked about the wounds on my finger. They’re from a farming accident—my arm got caught in this big threshing machine we call the Mangle. Oh, wait, that’s how I lost my arm. The finger cuts were from a freak dishwashing accident.

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XII

Introduction

This is the twelfth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, and Volume XI is here. (The different volumes have little or nothing to do with one another.)

“Bits and bobs” are little anecdotes from my letters and emails to friends and family, which comprised most of my writing before starting up this blog. The dispatches in this volume were to my brother Bryan, written when I was newly married and living in San Francisco. He was still living in our hometown of Boulder, Colorado. Here is a photo of the two of us from around the time I wrote these.

January 25, 1995

I bought the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing program for DOS. (I call it “Mavis & Butthead.”) It was supposed to run on 560K of RAM, & they recommended a “meg.” Now this is really confusing: how much is a meg? I’ve heard it’s 640,000 bytes, but I’ve also heard it’s 1,000,000 bytes. Very confusing. Anyhow, it wouldn’t even run when installed, although I have a meg. I made a DOS bootable diskette with modified AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files to get past its memory verification, and was therefore able to run it. However, it really was slow. I couldn’t make it keep up with me. I would type, “Mavis Beacon, your program stinks!” and on the screen I’d get, “Mvi Bn, yr pgm sk!” It was absurd, a total disaster. I took it back.

So, instead I bought this cheesy el cheapo Typing Tutor software. It only requires 512K of RAM; an IBM XT, AT, 286, 386 or higher; hard drive optional. Now that’s my kind of program. Its proudest feature is the Typing Lobster Sea Adventure game:

The Lobster Sea Adventure(TM) is an exciting game of chase and it’s an incredibly fast way to increase your typing accuracy and speed. Avoid being “pinched” by the lobster while typing in full sentences and using the shift keys. So many users have increased their typing speed and accuracy with the lobster and had fun at the same time!

Pretty much the most amazing video game ever. Not. 

Feb 1, 1995

Thanks for clearing up the meg issue. I grasp now that there is no standard. Say, that reminds me: at work I sent around these Computer Information Forms to get an inventory of what software people have, and what they want. I put a checkbox for “I need Microsoft Office” and another for “I only need Word.” On one form, an engineer had drawn in a new box and written “I need a new computer” and checked it. That inspired me. Our office manager (or “Director of Marketing and Administration,” a lofty title designed to boost her morale on the cheap) is using a petrified HP fossil called a Vectra. It’s so slow I made a special computer information form just for her; instead of having her fill in the RAM, ROM, MHz, CPU, etc. I just made one checkbox next to the text: “My computer is a tired, crippled old thing that barely runs anything at all. I’m surprised it doesn’t use 8-track tapes instead of diskettes. Somebody should just take it out and shoot it. But please, back it up first.” She put a huge check mark in that box. Alas, as it turns out nobody’s PC seems powerful enough to switch from WordPerfect to Word. Cash flow is too tight. We’ll all have to wait.

March 22, 1995

Things are pretty stressful at work. My boss, the company president, totally dissed me. He’d promised a paper to a magazine called the Inspectioneering Journal, but totally forgot to write it. At the last minute, realizing he had nothing to write, he kicked the project down to me, telling me to write a paper on Mechanical Integrity, on the double. I wrote one, in a huge rush, and I thought it came out pretty well … I even put in some neat visual things, like a table and a pie chart showing the types of issues discovered by OSHA during inspections. I sent the finished article to the journal’s editor for review; if it passed muster, he’d submit it to a panel of other editors for final approval. There wasn’t time to run it by my boss first—we were literally right against the deadline. Well, my boss read it after the fact, and totally bagged on it, freaking out that it would be torn apart by the editorial panel and this would make him look bad (since he was the alleged writer). He said I needed to extensively revise it immediately before the editor could pass it along. He didn’t say one positive thing about it.

One of my boss’s main demands was that I eliminate my entire introduction, which was an overview of OSHA’s Process Safety Management standard (upon which the guts of the paper were based). He also wanted the whole article put into the passive voice (e.g., “we determined” becomes “it was determined”) which of course violates one of the most fundamental principles of style. There were a few more nitpicky “corrections,” all of which were equally wrong. So, my morale being in the gutter, I just didn’t bother making any of the revisions and sending along a new version. I did call the editor and left him a voicemail saying, “With the benefit of hindsight we’ve determined that our initial paragraph may have been needless so I’d like to revise the paper before the panel review.” I didn’t hear back right away, but when I did, it was a message on my voice mail saying, “Well, I wanted to let you know that I got the paper and ... congratulations, you did a great job, it’s just perfect for our journal. I’m really impressed with the clarity of your writing and I am very excited about working with you on more projects. As for the introduction, I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s all appropriate. Further, I would like you to submit a photo of yourself along with the one of your company’s president, to accompany the article, since I’m listing you as a co-author.” Needless to say I feel totally vindicated. I’ve been leafing through The Joy of Cooking for a good crow recipe to give my boss. I need a low-cal one because he really ought to be eating this all the time.

April 27, 1995

You might remember my cool Benrus analog wristwatch with the fancy rotating bezel on it. I’ve known for well over a year that that ring is in fact kind of like a slide rule. Yesterday an engineer at work ripped it out of my hands when I showed it to him, and fairly drooled all over it. In the course of two or three minutes he demonstrated like twenty different calculations you can do with it. But “slide rule bezel” is confusing because it doesn’t slide and that doesn’t sound cool. So I call it the “hyper-alloy detonator depth-charge bezel.” The only problem is, it only rotates one way. Does that mean you can add but you can’t subtract? Multiply but not divide? Clearly I did not retain the engineer’s lesson; I only use the bezel to time parking meters, but rarely, and I usually forget I’ve used it and just go by sixth sense anyway. Besides, I don’t use parking meters that often, since I don’t have a car.

May 11, 1995

I can’t believe you actually complained about the poor bike racing coverage in the [Boulder] Daily Camera. You’ve got to be kidding me. That paper has the best racing coverage I’ve ever seen. We’re lucky to get a list of top ten results in the back pages of the Sunday sports section, next to the bowling results. I can get a little bit of information from CompuServe, the online information service, but my main source is forwarded messages from my friend who can get complete results from America On-Line, which has a Bicycling Magazine forum or some such thing.

October 29, 1995

On a cold, blustery day we went to the San Francisco Center and poked around. One of the things I looked at was a thick wool button-down shirt from Woolrich, just like the ones we all wore back in high school (and which are featured in our Four Brothers portrait that hangs proudly above my desk as I sit here typing).

Lo and behold, I did finally find some wool button-down shirts, but the price tag was staggering … close to $100. Just for a shirt! (Okay, a nice, thick one, but still.) You’ll certainly recall that we bought ours at the Factory Outlet in Broomfield, back when Factory Outlet meant slightly irregular and overstocked stuff that was really cheap, instead of what it means now (which is nothing more than a company-run store that sells only their brand of product and nobody else’s, for a price that is supposedly cheaper, but usually not by much). I’m sure there was something wrong with our Woolrich shirts, but I never could figure out what. A friend of mine back in high school once hit upon a theory: my shirt was defective because the front pockets didn’t have buttons. Well, they did: I just hadn’t buttoned them. So much for that. I have to wonder: now that factory outlet stores generally sell all first-quality stuff, what do companies do with their seconds? Surely they must have seconds. Do they just pitch it? Or do they pretend it’s fine and put some extra tag on there talking about how such variations give the garment character or something?

Finally I came upon some reasonably priced shirts but they looked really cheesy. I was lamenting the downfall of this once proud brand when I realized I’d drifted right out of Woolrich and into the Dockers store. I guess I’m just not cut out for shopping…

November 25, 1995

My job is slowing down somewhat. Now that I’ve given notice, I’ve been branded a treacherous backstabber, not to be trusted. I’m having my projects taken away from me and given to people who don’t know how to do them, which leads to these people tearing their hair out while they come up to speed. At least I’m around to help for a while. (“Like this,” I’ll tell them, grabbing a huge hunk of hair in both hands. “You want to tear as violently as possible.”) I’m also helping to interview the candidates for my replacement. This is good too, because I get to ask those probing questions: “You’re walking in the desert, and you see a tortoise flipped up on its back, its stomach baking in the hot sun. You could flip it back over, but you don’t … why is that?”

December 12, 1995

Well, I hope y’all had a good time at Dad’s birthday dinner. I talked to him today briefly. To have an excuse to keep the call short, I used a long-distance calling coupon that the cash register at Safeway spat out when I bought some gum. I dialed the 800 number and a recorded message said, “Thank you for buying Carefree gum at Safeway!” and gave me directions for entering my PIN, etc. The coupon was good for five minutes, which was really kind of strange because you feel like you can’t think of anything to say since you’re so hurried. I managed to remind Dad to reimburse me for Max’s b-day present; Dad had called me on Max’s birthday to say, “Give Max $50 for me and I’ll reimburse you.” But when I reminded him, he claimed he didn’t know what I was talking about. Could he be that scatterbrained? It was only three weeks ago! I’m trying to convince myself I haven’t just been scammed by my own dad.

December 12, 1996

Yeah, I know what you mean about web pages. I could make one using this CompuServe web page wizard, but what’s the point? The only reason I could think of is that by doing a search engine (i.e., AltaVista) search, a long-lost friend could find me. But I got no friends.

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Ask Mr. Laundry

Dear Mr. Laundry,

I’m rather farsighted and without a microscope I can’t read the washing instructions on most of my clothing tags.  I can make out the symbols, though.  Problem is, I don’t understand them.  Can you translate?

Walter Darnell, St. Louis, MO

Dear Wally,

Here’s a nice summary of the washing symbols, but be careful:  these are the American ones and may not match the overseas symbols used in your clothing:

(Click above to zoom in.)

Fortunately, lots of clothing gives you the various versions of symbols you might encounter based on what country you’re in:

See?  Some countries use black bleach, apparently.  Others have really weird looking irons.  Some keep their bleach in beakers.  The circle with the P in it?  P for Permitted, I assume.  A for Allowed, perhaps?  Or A-OK?

Dear Mr. Laundry,

Help!  My wife is a very careless laundress.  Wait, let me restate that.  She’s not a laundress.  Not by profession.  What I mean is, she is very careless about the laundry.  She’s always putting, like, cashmere sweaters through the washer and dryer, or washing my Lycra on hot and drying it on high.  Is there anything to be done?

[Name and location withheld by request]

Dear Withheld,

All I can recommend is getting as involved in the laundry as you can.  Develop a system for hiding those non-machine-washable garments.  I wouldn’t nag your wife too much about it because this just won’t do any good and you need to pick your battles … marriage counselors and divorce lawyers are a lot more expensive than clothes, after all.  (If your wife has a sense of humor, and has seen the film “Raise the Red Lantern,” you might yell—upon discovering another ruined garment—“Cover the lanterns!”)

Also, look for the silver lining.  My sister-in-law inherited a nice wool sweater from a guy who shrunk it in the dryer.  Then she shrunk it in the dryer and so it went to her daughter, and so on down to her toddler.  As for me, my wife put my nice merino wool sweater through the wash and made it all ratty, which greatly increased its utility because I no longer had to “keep it nice.”  In fact, it became my favorite sweater for this very reason.  When’s the last time you got to work on your bike while wearing merino wool?

Dear Mr. Laundry,

I’m terrible about leaving things in my pockets when I put things through the wash.  I’ve ruined three cell phones this way!  Is there any cell phone you know of that can survive a trip through the wash?

Sarah Kitteredge, Providence, RI

Dear Sarah,

The Motorola FONE (aka Motofone) F3 is the only one I know of.  My nephew put this through the wash twice, and the first time it survived completely intact.

If you’re looking for a smartphone that will handle this, I think you’re dreaming.  That said, my Motorola Droid Turbo fell into the ocean recently and was almost swept out to sea, but miraculously survived.  But a full wash cycle?  I wouldn’t try it!

Dear Mr. Laundry,

Is it true that other developed countries are less profligate than the US when it comes to drying everything in the dryer?

Robin Baxter, Portland, OR

Dear Robin,

In much of Europe, line drying is very popular.  In England, even in London, I’ve seen permanent clotheslines in backyards (or “gardens” as they’d call them).  And check out this rig in an apartment in Glasgow:

My brother had an apartment in The Netherlands with no dryer … he line dried everything, including cloth diapers.

In the U.S., of course, you’re more likely to run into a homeowners’ association ban on clotheslines, even though these bylaws are currently illegal in 19 states!  Fortunately, you’re protected by a 1979 Oregon Law that says any restrictions on “solar radiation as a source for heating, cooling or electrical energy” are “void and unenforceable.”

Dear Mr. Laundry,

You have a Ph.D. in Laundry Science from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.  Why don’t you call yourself “Dr. Laundry”?  Just curious.

Bob Snelling, Phoenix, AZ

Dear Bob,

I am aware that The Clorox Company has an online Q&A called “Dr. Laundry” and I don’t want to get into legal trouble like Mr. Beer did, that poor bastard.  He tried to use “Dr. Beer” and was sternly warned to “cease and desist.”  Those close to him say he never recovered from the ordeal.

Dear Mr. Laundry,

What’s the funniest laundry instruction tag you’ve seen?

Alex Hayle, New York City, NY

Dear Alex,

Are we talking intentionally funny, or unintentionally?  Here’s a winner in both categories:

That’s from a pair of bike shorts.  The manufacturer is clearly having a little fun with “Avoid crashes.”  But it’s unintentionally funny, I think, that the size is given as both XXL and M; that there are two sets of washing instructions that contradict each other; and that we get this cryptic instruction, “Iron low, right side only.”  What could possibly be the point of that restriction?  And who in the history of mankind has ironed a pair of bike shorts?

I also like this tag, from a pair of bike gloves:

“Don’t allow to lay on itself or with other items when wet”?  How do you keep something from laying [sic] on itself, anyway?  Or even from lying on itself?  What could possibly be the consequence of this happening?  And what shape could you reshape the glove into that it wouldn’t be lying on itself?  And can you really reshape a glove to begin with? 

Dear Mr. Laundry,

Let’s get down to brass tacks:  when laundering is taken into consideration, are cloth diapers actually better for the environment than disposable?

Juanita Perez, El Paso, TX

Dear Juanita,

This article suggests that cloth diapers are actually highly problematic because they’re made of cotton, and as she puts it, “the data on cotton is damning.”  I don’t put a lot of stock in this article because the author works for a think tank that represents the interests of the waste management industry; because she thinks “data” is singular; because I’m not going to stop wearing cotton in favor of disposable clothing (which would be the natural extension of this article’s conclusion); because this article presents a pretty good rebuttal; and because babies are quicker to be potty-trained when they’re clad in cloth diapers, which isn’t even considered in the article.

I’m not saying everybody should necessarily switch to cloth diapers.  After all, cloth diapers are a huge hassle.  In fact, babies are a huge hassle.  (On the flip side, vasectomies are arguably a pretty serious hassle, too.)

Dear Mr. Laundry,

What pre-washing, stain-removing product is better:  Spray ‘n Wash, or Shout?

Charles Simon, Boston, MA

Dear Chuck,

They seem to work about the same, as far as I can tell.  So the difference has more to do with what song you get in your head upon using them.  If you watched TV during the ‘80s, you’ll likely get the “Spray ‘n Wash gets out what America gets into” jingle lodged in your brain, which can be annoying.  On the other hand, if you listened to the radio during the ‘80s, you’ll probably fall prey to the Tears for Fears song “Shout.”  This song is terribly catchy, and includes the line “in violent times you shouldn’t have to sell your soul,” which makes no sense.  It implies that you should only have to sell your soul during peacetime.  WTF??

Dear Mr. Laundry,

Do you have any answer to the widely acknowledged mystery of why so many socks get lost in the dryer?

Tom Mahoney, Littleton, CO

Dear Tom,

I researched this phenomenon for years, tirelessly, and got nowhere, and then I stumbled across this blog post, “Conundrum of the Lost Sock,” and realized all my work had been in vain because everything that could ever be said on this topic has already been said.  Glad I could provide the link to you, anyway.

Dear Mr. Laundry,

What’s the most absurd washing instruction you’ve ever seen?

Wanda Bobat, Boseman, MT

Dear Wanda,

Definitely this one right here:

That’s a tough one to read (whose idea was it to print the washing instructions on a black tag, for crying out loud?) so here it is in plain text: 

“WARNING!  This garment has received a special dyeing treatment in order to achieve its unique appearance. Colour may vary from piece to piece.  Please wash this garment separately, inside out and avoid exposure to sunlight which might alter the fabric’s appearance… Avoid making contact with light coloured surfaces.  Be careful with light coloured clothes—body heat may cause bleeding.”

I don’t even know where to start here.  I guess I’ll go sequentially.  First, “WARNING!”  I mean, is this a washing instruction, or a safety advisory?  And then, “Colour may vary from piece to piece.”  I mean, isn’t that true of everything?  And why do we need a label telling us this?  Can’t we tell, just by looking, that this pair of jeans is a different color than that one?  If this “warning” is targeted toward blind people, why isn’t it in braille?  Then we get to “avoid exposure to sunlight.”  Is this a pair of jeans, or a vampire’s cape?  Who doesn’t wear jeans outdoors?  Are these jeans exclusively for nightclubbing?  And in what way could sunlight “alter the fabric’s appearance” other than fading it?  Has society gotten so far off-track that faded blue jeans are no longer acceptable?  And then we get to the startling conclusion:  “Body heat may cause bleeding.”  So I guess even nightclubs are off-limits unless you’re determined to just sit there on a bar stool, as still as possible, perhaps shivering in a dark-colored t-shirt?  Give me a break.

Dear Mr. Laundry,

What would happen—hypothetically speaking—if you didn’t separate your darks from your lights in the laundry?

Lisa Stone, San Francisco, CA

Dear Lisa,

Believe it or not, I’ve been doing just that—for decades!  My recklessness has produced almost no negative consequences.  My whites are plenty white.  Nothing has bled, not even the jeans that are vulnerable to body heat.  The single exception is a pair of unripe-plum-colored yoga pants my wife ran through that turned everything pink.  They were pure garbage, those pants.

Have you ever noticed how laundromat dryers will tell you to dry all cotton garments on high—and yet you’ll never encounter a single tag that says “tumble dry high”?  In decades of careful laundering I think I’ve only encountered one garment that even said “tumble dry medium.”  I think it’s a giant liability shift on the part of the Clothing Industrial Complex.  They create these stupid rules for laundering so that if anything ever goes wrong with a garment they can blame the consumer.  Look at this tag:  the manufacturer blames the clothing’s “pilling effect” on zippers, Velcro, and even embroidered saddles.

Dear Mr. Laundry,

Will you do my laundry?

Greg Crow, St. George, UT

Dear Greg,

No.

Mr. Laundry is a syndicated columnist whose advice column, “Ask Mr. Laundry,” appears in over 400 blogs worldwide.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--

For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

OK Calling Bike Clothes “Kit”?

Introduction

Some people really care about words.  My favorite people are the type who will argue passionately and at length about a subtle shade of meaning.  I was reminded of this when, in a group e-mail to my cycling club, I employed some questionable vernacular, causing  a massive e-mail debate, comprising over thirty messages in all.

In this post I’ll capture some of the snarkier highlights of the debate; get at the heart of why “kit” is such a divisive term; and provide the perfect alternative so all cyclists can enjoy nomenclature that’s as frictionless as their bicycles’ bearings.

The mêlée

It must be said that a widespread dialogue was already underway, on a topic you shall read about soon enough, when my friend Trevor commented on my use of “kit.”  (As you may recall, our verbal sparring has appeared in these pages before.)  He wrote, “Calling it ‘kit’ is the pot calling the kettle black.  That’s British hipster lingo, and if they say things like ‘Campag’ and ‘mech’ and then say ‘bidon’ you should choose wisely from such a low body of terms.  ‘Kit’ is unwise.”

To appreciate Trevor’s point requires a bit of background.  About a year ago, in these pages, I excoriated the Velominati, a bunch of self-styled cycling experts, for their blatant cultural affectation.  One of the things I pointed out was that saying “bidon” instead of bottle strikes me, like so many of their behaviors, as pretentious and twee.  My outspokenness in this vein puts me in a vulnerable position should I ever abuse such lingo myself.

With this in mind, I immediately fell on my sword, replying-all, “Nice catch on ‘kit,’ Trevor.  I certainly wobbled over my own line there.”  But even though I agreed with him, several members of the club stepped forward to defend “kit.”  Here are some salient comments.  (I won’t bother identifying the correspondents other than to give each of them his/her own text color so you can tell them apart.)

è Here in Kiwiland ‘kit’ is not a hipster term. No one would call riding clothing (or sporting uniform of any kind) anything but ‘kit’. Even to my still somewhat Yankee ears ‘kit’ sounds absolutely common.

è Newb.

è Curmudgeon.

è As to “kit” and “curmudgeon,” might I suggest a dictionary?

è I was being economical! And I do have a dictionary. Also, “curmudgeon” was a polite form for what I really wanted to call you.

è Sounds like something you need to discuss with your therapist.

è Hold on a sec, I’m still trying to find “newb” in the dictionary…

è Newbie or noob is old prep school talk for the “new boy.” As far as I can tell from my OED, “new boy” likely goes back to Chaucer.

è I like and use the term kit. What other one-word term is there that works better? (No, MB, “costume” doesn’t count!)

è The convenience of “kit” is illusory. Just what is it? It isn’t just jersey and shorts. It’s everything and not everybody has the same stuff. My recollection from listening to British sports announcers is that they use the word correctly, as in “that’s a nice bit of kit.” It’s used specifically, not generally. If you’re going to buy a cycling kit, what are you buying? If you bring your racing kit with you, what’s in it? Glasses, helmet, sunblock,…? It goes beyond what you wear.

è I took a break from cycling from about 1999 to 2008. Before 1999 I had never heard the word “kit” when referring to cycling clothing. It was always a “jersey” and “shorts”. When I returned in 2008, the whole outfit was a ‘kit”. “Kit” still sounds dumb to me, but I use the word because I think I am supposed to.

è Do people (or hipsters) prefer ‘strip’?

è Okay, I’ll bite.  “Strip” is short for what? Strip joint, strip mall? And don’t think I haven’t noticed the single quotation marks. By using them, you’ve made both our points, I think.

è I did not mean to offend anyone. The word “kit” is not dumb. I’m the dummy.  Since the shorts and jersey, indeed the whole cycling get-up, are now one (dashing!) matching ensemble, a word is needed.

è I think you’re missing much of the point of this list if you fail to offend at least one recipient.  I think kit sounds dumb, too.

A question of motive

To me, the fundamental question of whether or not it’s okay to say “kit” centers around motive.  Are we trying to sound Euro, or not?  The difficulty is that we cannot know each person’s motive in using this word, and frankly, I doubt many of us bother to question our own motives in adopting one word or another.  Meanwhile, when we use a word, we participate in all its connotations whether we like it or not.  We are not, usually, at liberty to explain our motives.

The first respondent I quoted above is a American expatriate residing in New Zealand.  I have no doubt that “kit” is a totally innocuous word there (as are his single quotation marks, per Trevor’s comment).  The reason “kit” perks the American ear is that it’s one of those British words that has only recently crossed the Atlantic, and isn’t in widespread use beyond our cycling vernacular.  For such a term to become ubiquitous even within such a vernacular takes time, and may not happen if the term isn’t particularly useful.

Here’s an example of how that works.  Consider the word “jersey.”   Absolutely everybody who wears a jersey calls it a jersey.  This is a very useful word because it differentiates between a basic t-shirt and that funny Lycra thing with the zipper in front and the pockets in back.  I cannot think of a single effective synonym for “jersey.”  Use of this word is so entrenched (having been in wide use when I started cycling, in 1981), most people don’t even know its etymology—that it’s named after Jersey, the largest of the islands in the English Channel.

Consider the correspondent above who said, “I use the word [kit] because I think I am supposed to,” even though she personally finds it dumb.  She wants to fit in, and the question is, who has the authority—and the right—to make this word, or any word, into a cultural signifier that tells whether someone is “in” or “out”?  Positioning yourself as an authority and throwing around a word like “kit” is, to me, a distasteful act.  (A cyclist doing so might be said to “velominate,” if I may coin a term.)  Of course, it’s dangerous to reproach anyone on these grounds because we can’t know who is promoting a term versus merely (and sometimes reluctantly) adopting it.

Sometimes will I use an uncommon word instead of a familiar one if doing so increases exactitude.  Consider “twee,” which I used above.  My American Heritage Dictionary flags this word as “Chiefly British.”  Uncommon as it may be in American English, I doubt anybody uses it just to seem more British or more Euro.  “Twee” is free of trans-Atlantic cultural baggage, because modern usage has morphed it and thus reduced its air of British-ness.  In the original parlance, “twee” meant “overly precious or nice” (it stems from an alteration of “tweet,” a baby-talk alteration of “sweet”).  But when modern Americans use “twee,”  we keep the sense of precious but drop the sense of sweet; quite often, we use “twee” to flag instances of hipster affectation.  (Check out urbandictionary.com if you don’t believe me.)  The more this word evolves on the American tongue, the further behind it leaves its “chiefly British” air.

In the absence of such evolution, and in a case where a word’s usage is restricted to a subset of a subset of society (e.g., the more cutting-edge members of the cycling crowd), we must ask ourselves:  can a somewhat useful but chiefly British term be used innocently by an American  without opening the door to accusations of affectation?  Or to put it more simply, is it twee to say “kit”?

How efficient is “kit”?

The key to solving this riddle, I think, is to weight the utility of “kit” against the inescapable fact of being a cultural vanguard by using it in the U.S.  If the utility is bulletproof, the word is bound to gain wider adoption and will, over time, cease to be a cultural signifier.

So how useful is “kit”?  There’s no question that it’s convenient, being a single syllable and such a short word.  But where language is concerned, let’s not confuse convenience with efficiency.  Yes, “kit” is easy to write and easy to type, but having written a blog post called “Down with Convenience!” I can’t bring myself to care about ease alone.  After all, saving labor is also the justification for going out in public dressed in the sweatpants you wore to bed, which practice I totally disapprove of (unless you’re a gorgeous UC SantaBarbara coed who makes all attire look great).

The point of language is to express yourself with precision, and educated people can be precise without being verbose.  That’s the whole point of having a large vocabulary.  It is more efficient to use the word “twee,” for example, than to use a paragraph worth of words to explain exactly why it bothers you when college grads get written up in the local style magazine for their online storefront selling locally-made macramé caddies for their college roommate’s deluxe line of handmade, gluten-free moleskin notebooks.

So does “kit” do a significantly better job than “jersey and shorts,” “bike clothing,” or “overdue Voler order”?  Not necessarily.  As Trevor points out, there isn’t a single, unified meaning of “kit,” since we all have different stuff; thus, it’s not nearly as useful a word as “jersey.”  On the other hand, as another correspondent rightly pointed out, “kit” does uniquely connote “one (dashing) matching ensemble,” in a way “bike clothing” does not.  Indeed, I never heard (or used) the word “kit” until it became common for bike clubs to order all their clothing—including socks, arm warmers, vests, and even gloves—from a single manufacturer so it can be customized with colors and logos that create a uniform.  If I throw on a pair of plain black shorts from company X and a plain blue jersey from company Y, that’s not really a kit.

So, perhaps “kit” is useful … but is it useful enough that we should use it, even at the risk of sounding like poseurs?  My answer is, we don’t need to determine this at all:  we can slip between the horns of the dilemma and trot out a totally new word, devoid of wannebe-Euro overtones, that is as precise—or more precise—than kit.

A perfect word?

During the e-mail debate, correspondents did trot out alternatives to “kit.”  (Speaking of precise words, maybe “debate” isn’t the perfect word for that protracted correspondence.  At  a post-ride refreshment stop, one of my teammates described it as an “e-mail shit-storm,” for which I chided him, because my thirteen-year-old daughter, herself a budding cyclist, was present.  Another teammate said, “Right, you shouldn’t call it that.  It was more of a shit-tornado.”  Did my daughter say, “Thanks for the visual on that”?  No, I beat her to the punch.)

“Strip” was proposed, along with “livery” and “clobber.”  The benefit of these is that, being virtually unknown in U.S. cycling parlance, they won’t send any untoward cultural signals.  But the use of “strip” as a noun doesn’t even appear in my six-inch-thick Webster’s unabridged dictionary.  The guy who suggested “strip” is the New Zealander, whose Collins English dictionary (likely published for the New Zealand market) defines strip as “the clothes worn by the members of a team, esp a football team.”  The downside of “strip” is that, being unknown here, it’s useless except as a private joke. 

Similarly, I’ve often promoted my brother’s favorite term, “ABCs,” an acronym for “Angry Biker Clothes,” but to understand this, you have to know the term “angry biker,” meaning any uptight, aggro racer-type, but of course this term isn’t widely known outside the Albert family.

But wait!  There was one term thrown about in the e-mail thread that I really like, notwithstanding the fact that it was both introduced and rejected in a single parenthetical aside:  “(No, MB, costume doesn’t count! )”

What’s wrong with “costume”?  The more I contemplate it, the more I like it.  At face value, bicycling clothing fits within the basic definition of costume (“a style of dress characteristic of a particular country, period, or people”).  It’s true that other definitions bleed over (e.g., “an outfit or disguise worn on Mardi Gras, Halloween, or a masquerade”), and it’s also true that “costume” makes us think of superheroes.  This isn’t necessarily inaccurate, though; after all, if you took the typical Lycra cycling getup and added a cape, you wouldn’t be far from Superman or Batman (other than the lack of boots).

If you think about it, the sense of an outfit worn to a masquerade fits perfectly, because the vast majority of us cyclists really are just pretending.  Our participation in the sport, though perfectly valid and worthwhile, is really just our best facsimile of the professional peloton.  Club racers invariably have this aching desire to look just like the pros, even if we fully grasp the vast distance between them and us.

You may argue that, in light of these ideas, using “costume” would be a form of self-mockery.  I would agree—but then, sometimes self-mockery is a good thing.  Consider the song “Yankee Doodle.”  This song, as we all know (and as neatly described by Wikipedia), “was sung by British military officers to mock the disheveled, disorganized colonial ‘Yankees,’” until “the Americans embraced the song and made it their own, turning it back on those who had used it to mock them.”

Likewise, by using a term that mocks our own pretentiousness, we bicyclists beat others to the punch.  Who are these “others”?  I can think of plenty:  the non-bike people who think we look silly and/or act overly self-important; the casual bike people who laugh at our aspirations toward Euro-cool; the bike club curmudgeons who rescue us when we start to velominate. 

Brits and Kiwis, along with Americans who are lazy and/or blasé, can keep on saying “kit,” but I’m going with “costume” from now on.

A Man’s Gotta Do...

I probably shouldn’t admit this, but (look at that, I got your attention!  What a great way to start a sentence.  The audience is promised something to pity or despise the speaker for.  It’s almost as good as, “I love so-and-so to death, but…” with that “but” promising some great gossip—but I digress) I sometimes cheer myself on by thinking, “Sometimes a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.”

The action I have to take, that warrants this silent self-encouragement, is never something really manly, like dragging a guy out of the pub (because he’s been mean to the barmaid or something) and giving him a good beat-down.  Usually it’s something that I simply don’t want to do.  This thing may require grit or steely resolve, or not; I guess the idea is that I’m trying to convince myself that by doing this thing, I’m manning up.  Manning up for a change, if you want to be a dick about it.

Tonight my wife didn’t feel like cooking, so I did.  If you think I’m going to complain about this, and say something silly about “women’s work,” think again.  That said, I do consider myself lucky that my wife does most of the cooking.  This is not such a routine that I can actually expect dinner on the table, per se.  Sometimes my wife makes dinner; sometimes she shows no sign of making dinner and then abruptly throws something together; sometimes she announces, “I’m not making dinner” and then—makes dinner.  Other times she says “I’m not making dinner” and means it.  Sometimes she doesn’t say anything, and I start a timer in my head and eventually either say something or start cooking.

Tonight I made my go-to quick combo:  grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  These sandwiches are not actually grilled.  They’re fried.  If I were manning a grill—because that’s what you do, you man a grill, and if your wife offers to help you say, “Now you stand back from that grill, little lady, that’s man’s work”—that would be one thing, but a) nobody puts cheese sandwiches on a grill, and b) I don’t know how to work a grill, and c) I don’t even own a grill.  So these were fried sandwiches, which I guess is better than making a frittata but still nowhere near serving up charred meat that’s pink in the middle, and let me just say that even if I had a grill and manned it, I wouldn’t mess with all that stupid stuff about pressing your finger against the web of your thumb and thinking that has anything to do with whether meat is done.  Meat is done when the outside is no longer red, because when’s the last time you heard of a guy getting e. coli or tapeworms from a good piece of meat he bought from a butcher, a real butcher who wipes his bloody hands on his apron and has a Brooklyn accent?  But this is all just posturing because I don’t even own a grill.

So anyhow, I served the family some fried cheese sandwiches and soup, and then everybody scattered, and I wasn’t full, so I started making a second sandwich, and my wife, perhaps worried for my delicate physique (I’m just saying that, of course she’s not actually worried, as I’m very slender, certainly not the kind of broad-chested dude who has gravitas and can carry off a double-breasted suit, certainly nothing like Henry VIII) said, “You’re making a second sandwich?”  So I answered, “Yeah, sometimes a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.” 

Immediately following this I considered issuing a caveat, something like “And sometimes a guy’s gotta do what a man oughtta do, if there were an actual man around.”  I wish I were the kind of man’s man who can say things like “Sometimes a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do” without issuing a caveat, but I’m just not.  I worry that my wife will start laughing, or will silently think to herself, “Dude thinks he’s a man?”  So I usually beat her to the punch with the caveat.

But there’s something so wimpy about this.  If real man’s behavior is questioned, he doesn’t deign to answer.  But of course nobody would question a real man’s behavior anyway.  That’s Walter Mitty territory.  When’s the last time a Bond girl asked Bond, “What are you doing?”  No, they’re about to be killed, and Bond is fiddling with his watch or his pen or something, but she never doubts him.

So, after telling my wife that eating a second sandwich is the kind of thing a man’s sometimes gotta do, I managed to stick the landing and not offer a caveat.  A small victory, but I couldn’t help but reflect that less than an hour earlier I’d said those same words, but to myself.  What is this, a mantra?

I was at the store.  Not a sporting goods store, not REI, not a purveyor, not a place that sells outdoor survival gear.  I was at Safeway.  I was buying groceries.  That is an activity that is not on the list of things that a man’s gotta do, not even sometimes.  I’d worked my way from one end of the store—produce & salad dressing—to the other end:  beer & meat.  Isn’t that great?  It’s like the store is organized into His & Hers. 

My love of the beer & meat section is tempered because every time I go to the store, it seems like the price of a six-pack has gone up another buck.  This cuts into my freedom, because I refuse to pay those prices.  I have to look at what’s on sale.

Mindy Kaling, the comedienne from “The Office,” writes about the differences between a man and a boy.  If she were differentiating between men and women she might discuss the matter of whether a male of any stripe should be reading her book, which talks a lot about shopping and how to be a good girlfriend.  I should really be reading Cormac McCarthy or something.  But presumably she wants both sexes to buy her book, so she only goes into boys vs. men.  She’s got a whole chapter on this.  She says (among other things) that when the shampoo is almost gone, a boy puts water in the bottle and shakes it up to get the last bit out, while a man just buys a new bottle of shampoo.  You know what?  I always put a little bit of water in the bottle and shake it up to get the last bit out.

So, is frugality the stuff of boys?  I don’t know.  I’ve always thought that timing the sales—having a hunch about when Rosarita refried beans will finally go on sale, or what the latest windfall discount from the Great Premium Jarred Spaghetti Sauce Price Wars will be—was kind of like playing the stock market, which has always seemed like a manly activity.  But in light of Mindy Kaling’s opinion, I suppose shopping sales is really more of a “Hints From Heloise” kind of thing.  I guess I should be ashamed.

In this case I was totally torn because four of my favorite beers were on sale, meaning they were discounted from Totally Scandalous Disgustingly Venal Daylight Robbery down to mere Ripoff, and I couldn’t decide which to get.  The beer I really wanted was Stone IPA, but even on sale it’s really, really expensive.  I think it was marked down to like $10 or something.  For a freakin’ six-pack!

So I told myself, “Sometimes a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do,” and bought all four brands of beer.  That’s pretty bold, innit?  Isn’t that what a man would do?  I mean, a boy is usually broke and digs through the sofa cushions for enough change to go buy Bud, right?  Well, I couldn’t exactly bask in this idea, because I couldn’t help wondering if the Stone IPA is just another macho affectation.  My wife has suggested as much.  She calls it “the Emperor’s New Beer.”  She has suggested that IPAs in general are just one big pissing contest.

You could probably win a pissing contest by drinking enough IPA, actually.  At least, so long as the basis of the contest is urination duration, which seems to me like the right one.  But of course duration is not what my wife meant by pissing contest.  She means that we males are forcing ourselves to drink something really bitter just to show how masculine we are.

Look, I honestly enjoy IPAs.  I really do.  No, I didn’t take to them right away, I’ll concede that they’re an acquired taste, but I do like many of them.  And if I were only pretending to like IPAs, of course I wouldn’t like one more than another, which I do.  And it’s not like I only drink an IPA when another guy is watching.  But now there’s a voice in my head that says “Thou doth protest too much!”  What kind of a wussy voice is that?  “Thou doth”?  Quoting Shakespeare?  Shut up, voice-in-my-head!  Who are you to second-guess my taste in beer, and/or my masculine dignity?

Well, the scary thing is, I’m starting to develop a taste for something far more bitter than an IPA.  Before a bike ride, I like to have NoDoz.  I crush the tablet with a meat tenderizing mallet (a man’s tool, which every time I use it reminds me that I should get a grill and learn how to barbecue), and dissolve the powder in water so it’ll kick in faster.  That caffeine-water makes a double or triple IPA taste like the sweetest nectar. 

And this caffeine-water is growing on me, its taste symbolizing the suffering I’m about to do on the bike.  It’s a pleasure similar to how, after a hard ride, my legs burn when I come down the stairs.  What I’m saying is, I guess I could probably develop a taste for anything.  Which could mean that my learned appreciation of IPAs actually is the affectation of somebody trying to be more manly than he really is.  As in: “I have to develop a taste for something; I’ll develop a taste for that bitter beer that only real men like!”

In truth, I don’t feel insecure about my masculinity.  This guy vs. man thing is more complicated, and may be based on that divide I felt as a kid, acknowledging that my dad was of a different generation than I, always on the higher tier.  My friends and brothers seem like guys to me, too.

There’s no single societal consensus about what a man even is.  I’m sure it’s not just somebody who wastes shampoo, wears cologne, and has a mortgage, which are Mindy’s criteria—but whatever manhood is, I’m not at all sure I’m there yet.  What’s it going to take?  Grey hair?  I hope not … then I’ll go from guy to old man without ever enjoying a proper manhood in between.

I asked my younger daughter, who is still of the age before tact, and so can always be counted on to give a brutally straight answer, “Would you say I’m a man?”  She thought about it.  “Not really.  You’re kind of just a big daddy guy.”  Fair enough.  My older daughter says, “Your behavior doesn’t always seem very adult.  But I’m glad—that would be boring.”

Is it time to just jettison this “Man’s gotta do” quote?  It is kind of antiquated, after all; most people associate it with John Wayne (and the 1939 movie “Stagecoach”) though it first appeared in The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (click here).  But I kind of like the quote.  It reminds me to try to be a man, to live up to that (albeit vague) standard, which is a lot better than shamelessly embracing the arrested development that has become fashionable, like billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg with his hoodies and sneakers.

I first heard “man’s gotta do” from my brother, when he described a wild night of babysitting.  What made it wild was that the kids’ dad, Mr. K—, a miner, a real dyed-in-the-wool blue-collar guy who spoke in an irreverent snarl and always grinned at you with a hint of menace, like he was going to slap you upside the head because it’s what you deserved, decided to see if he was getting his money’s worth with the babysitter (i.e., my then twelve-year-old brother).  To Mr. K—, babysitting wasn’t about getting the kids to bed on time with their teeth brushed; it was about protecting them from intruders.

So when he and his wife got home, pretty late, he started hammering on the door and then burst it open and stormed into the room.  My brother, instead of running for cover, put up his dukes and assumed a prizefighter’s stance.  (This was during the ‘70s when people said things like “Put up your dukes!”)  Mr. K—, needless to say, was delighted.  “That’s what I wanna see!” he yelled.  “Somebody who’s not afraid to protect my kids!”  His wife said something less enthusiastic, probably along the lines of “I’m not sure that was actually the right reaction,” to which Mr. K— replied, “Hey, sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!”  So there it is:  Max was a man at age twelve.  And I’m still reaching for it.  Sweet.

Epilogue

Check out this postcard Max sent my daughter, which arrived the very day I finished this blog post:

In case you’re having trouble with the small print, here’s what it says: 

It’s a beautiful day.  In a minute I’m going to go get my hair trimmed.  After that, I’m going to go swimming.  This is not the kind of day I get to enjoy very often, but I worked very hard to make it happen.  That’s the thing about life.  In order to have time and space for yourself, you have got to do what needs to be done.  I have long said “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, when a man’s gotta do what it is a man does when he does what he’s gotta do.”  I believe this is true for everyone, even pets and children.

He might as well have added “and my brother” or “and your dad.”  You see?  My brother employs the caveat, too!

I phoned Max up and described the amazing coincidence.  Sure enough, the origin of his quotation was Mr. K— having quoted it.  Max still remembers that babysitting episode the same way he’d described it to me, all those years ago.  “It’s been a running joke ever since,” he said, “but usually one I keep to myself.”