Minor Update

Light posting this week. I've been juggling between two fairly major meetings involving Sam, and after last weekend, returning to my empty nest.

The Busy Weekend

I'm not going to say a lot about the weekend- even though I had a great time. I'm not going to talk about how nice it was to have the entire family together, and how a few short years ago, something like that was an everyday. It was special then, as it is now.

A friend at work asked me how the weekend was. I told him that I had a great time, and he asked me what I did. I went down the list. I told him about how I picked up Rachael on Thursday evening and took her grocery shopping and how, on Friday, we ran errands, including closing a pesky old bank account.

I told him about Jake and Lauren coming home and spending the night, both Friday and Saturday. I told him about Helaina being home on Saturday and Sunday and I ran down the usual Saturday errands that I ran with Sam. And I told him about the apple picking we all did. And I mentioned swinging by Mom's a couple of times.

My friend looked at me as if to say, "And... ?". I don't know whether it was because he was waiting for the "great " part, or what he was thinking.

I realized later that I never even mentioned the birthday party or going to the comic book store or any number of other things. But the details really don't matter. What matters is we had a chance to spend some time together, and, like always, that was really what made it so great.

Unanswered Questions

This was spotted on one of my trips to Dollar General with Sam. I have a few questions about this.

First of all, how does a company decide to go into the Glow-in-the-dark poop making business. Are there a bunch of board members sitting around the conference table, brainstorming over what their next great product should be? Did the idea start off as just regular poop and then, to make it “better”, someone came up with the high-five worthy idea of having it glow in the dark?

How does this get produced? Is each one squirted out of some machine over a conveyor belt thus making each one unique- like a snowflake. Or are they made from a mold? If they're made from a mold, they must have gone through some process of having to do mock-ups- each to be evaluated by those same board members.

I feel bad for that mold maker. It’s not his idea to be doing this. He’s just following orders. I hope he earns enough to be paying off his student loans from all of those years of art school he probably attended.

Do these things ever touch human hands? However these things are made, how do they get packaged? I picture poor, Chinese laborers sitting on either side of a conveyor belt, having to grab one glow-in-the-dark poop at a time and package it up. They must have a quota they have to meet. Do they get reprimanded for not bagging enough poops per minute? And how do these workers feel when they go home at night? What do they think about? I wonder if this could this cause them to think less of us as Americans.

At some point, salespeople have to get people to buy these things.
  Salesman, opening his briefcase: “Let me show you our latest line of poop.”
  Manager: “Not interested. I already have some on the racks.”
  Salesman: “Yes, but is it Glow-In-The-Dark Poop?
  Manager: “...Well, no… actually it isn’t. This sounds like a winner! Let’s start with a thousand units!”

The sad thing is, I don’t think these are selling at all. I took the above picture several months ago. When Sam and I went to the store the other day, it looked almost exactly the same. Perhaps it is the choking warning that is scaring people off, or perhaps it’s because the manufacturer has limited their market to people above the age of three. Maybe. But I think the problem is more basic than either of these reasons. I think there’s an inherent design flaw in this product.

While making a glow-in-the-dark version of pretty much anything is almost always a good idea, it seems to me it’s counter productive in this case. The whole idea of buying fake poop is not for the poop itself- it’s for the shock value of fooling someone into thinking it’s real poop. With fake, non-glowing poop, you can leave it on the floor next to a toilet, in someone’s lunch bag- pretty much anywhere, and the reactions are almost guaranteed to be hysterical.

But with this glow-in-the-dark version, I don’t think so. And here’s why.

When I first saw this, Sam and I were browsing through the store, not really looking for anything in particular. I was strolling along, looking at the various high quality items strewn across the shelves- and then I came upon this thing. For a second or two, I was standing there thinking “What the hell is this?” Then I noticed the label.

And this is the problem. I think the same thing would happen “out in the field”- especially with no label at all. In pretty much any situation that I can think of, people might stop when they see this thing sitting somewhere, but not because there was a poop where it didn’t belong (hilarious), but because they would be trying to figure out what they were looking at (not hilarious). Jokes are never funny if you have to explain them.

This, to me, is a giant faux pas by the fake poop industry. I’m guessing that all of this could have been avoided if the manufacturer had gone through a rigorous research & development process- like one of those tests where scientists and engineers sit in a darkened room on one side of a one-way mirror, while on the other side, a test subject is led into a sterile looking, white room- containing nothing but a table and a chair- and a lump of glow-in the-dark poop. I’m guessing that something like this never happened.

I feel kind of bad about it. There are a lot of people who put a lot of effort into getting this lump of glow-in-the-dark poop onto store shelves. And sadly, there are a lot of people whose livelihood depends on producing vast quantities of fake poop every day. But these things aren’t selling.

I picture this thing surviving long after mankind has disappeared.

---

The planet is desolate - long since ravaged by war and pollution. An alien probe lands and scratches at the dusty brown earth - digging through the rubble - searching for signs of life. Eventually, this is what it finds.

The specimen is gingerly picked up by the probe’s claw, and then bagged and taken to the alien home world, where it is probed and tested.

What happened to the specie that produced this? Were these beings intelligent? Were they killed by war? Perhaps it was it their diet. The questions remain unanswered.

Eventually, the specimen is sent to a museum where it is placed on a shelf, protected by a glass case. Accent lights shine down on the case and velvet ropes separate the artifact from the curious visitors. One by one the aliens shuffle by and study the foreign object. And one by one the aliens ask themselves, “What the hell am I looking at?”

A Touching Thing

When I sit on my couch, I can look to my left and see the computer, and I can look to the right and see the tv. In the evenings, while I’m on the couch, Sam is usually on the computer, with headphones on, watching anything from Disney cartoons to Loony Tunes to video game run-throughs.

I’m watching tv last night and Sam is watching his videos and a commercial comes on the TV. It’s a Geico Insurance commercial, the one where Kenny Rogers is sitting around playing cards and annoying the others by singing “The Gambler”.

“That’s a nice song”, Sam says from the other side of the room. He was turned around in his chair, facing the tv, with his headphone half off. “He’s a good singer”, he says.

“Yeah? You like that song?” I ask. And I tell him who it is and what the song was and Sam says, “Hmm, I might look that up.” But he goes upstairs and takes his shower.

A little while later, Sam’s back downstairs, in his bathrobe, back on the computer, eating some grapes. And I look over and I see that he’s watching “The Gambler” music video by Kenny Rogers and he’s kind of tapping his foot along with it as he’s popping grapes in his mouth. A few minutes later, I glance over again and I see he’s watching another Kenny Rogers video. A few minutes more go by and I hear Sam say, “Huh, I guess Kenny Rogers is retiring.”

I tell Sam that I had heard the same thing too, and I ask him where he heard it. Sam points at the computer and says, “I watched this video… and he said a touching thing.”

---

Epilogue

Sam's Videos:

Question of the Day

Why is Sam walking around the house wearing a sweatshirt that says, "Bong"?

Under the Moon

I got a text from Jake just after 9:00 last night. I was reminding me of the eclipse. Sam was already upstairs brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed. I had him put on his slippers and bathrobe and together we went out in the back yard and watched together.

After a bit, we went back in. Sam climbed into bed and as the eclipse progressed, I went back upstairs and peeked into his room. Not sure of whether he was asleep or not, I whispered quietly into the darkness of his room and said, "It's almost full. Want to look again?"

Sam threw his covers off and leapt out of bed. "Sure!", he said. He put on his slippers and we went outside together again, where we watched the moon and talked in whispers- until it was time for us to both go to bed.

Going for a Ride

Somewhere, buried way back in here, I mentioned how I never see any of those coin operated kiddie rides around anymore. Well, as luck would have it (luck?), I spotted one of them on my way into a supermarket the other day.

When I passed the ride, it didn’t hit me and I almost walked right by it. I did a double take and went back to take the photo. I was thinking at the time that it was too bad that there wasn’t some little kid riding it- so I could get a shot of the thing in action. In hindsight, I’m thinking it was probably better that there wasn’t some kid on it. A weirdo standing around, taking pictures of little kids they don’t know, probably isn't the greatest idea.

Here's a photo I took of Helaina and Rachael riding one of these kinds of rides. This little merry-go-round was one of several of these kinds of rides which stood in front of the mini-golf which in turn stood forever in the center of Hyannis. I remember taking this picture, but even more clearly, I remember the feelings of that moment.

Even without the photo, I can still feel the enjoyment of watching them have fun on this ride. And I remember wondering if they would still be interested if were were able to come back a year later. And I remember wondering what events might take place in the time in between.

Going on these rides was a little bit different down at the mall or at a nearby store. I didn't really think about those things. I guess that was because the rides were nearby and that made them more a part of everyday life- and everyday life evolves a page at a time. But annual events, like vacations and holidays- they change by chapters and volumes.

The girl’s interest in this ride lasted another year or so beyond when the photo was taken. Jake’s interest was only slightly longer and Sam was only interested in these kinds of things when they weren’t moving at all.

Their changing interests in things like this happened so gradually that it was hard to notice at the time. Other interests washed on shore and took their place as older interests drifted away, never even leaving a void- at least never leaving one that was apparent at the time.