I was listening to public radio in the car the other morning, not because I don’t like music, but because the fancy navigation system befuddles me with its array of options and endless data feeds.

“Hello, Master, are you sure you want to listen to rap music? It’s not on your favorites list. May I suggest a caffeine-free caramel latte while I locate an appropriate channel? Remember to slow down for the school zone ahead.”

The radio host was interviewing the author of a book titled, Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. Of course I was intrigued—it had the word “naked” in it. The naked truth is, middle age has little affect on certain Pavlovian effects. I’m conditioned. The hook worked. I listened.

I always loved statistics (except for my .025 Little League batting average). It was high school algebra I dreaded. When asked, for example, which of two trains traveling in different directions at different speeds would reach the station first, I was more interested in knowing which one carried the long-legged Borah High School dance team. Who cares if it arrived a little late? Team or no team, those classes that required a slide rule were dreadfully intimidating.

Anyway, statistics were cool, as in, on average, “How many Bonneville High School students does it take to screw in a light bulb?” (I went to the other school.) The answer of course was zero. Those farm kids didn’t have electricity. You see, you need the important facts. Continue reading →

My wife drove my truck for a month or so this fall while we were between cars. It became mine again in January. I filled a grocery sack full of wifey paraphernalia from the center console, the door pockets, and under the seat, and carried it into the house. Admittedly, I may have made a comment.

My wife’s measured response was something like, “Get over it, you married a woman.” I couldn’t argue with that as I skipped out the door and ran a long and unnecessary errand—in my truck.

“Like it or lump it,” is of course what she said, or meant to say—what in my youth, my brothers and I said to each other several times each day, before the phrase was lost to this generation.
As in, “I don’t like shredded wheat.”

“Like it or lump it,” my brother would say. “It’s all there is. I ate the sugar puffs before you woke up.”

Not an early a riser, I learned to like shredded wheat.

I’ve had my truck back for a month or so. Her things keep turning up, rising to the top like escaping dinner burps. I stopped at a fast food window, dug into the center console for change, and came up with a dry cleaner’s receipt, bank lollipops and fabric swatches.
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I am grateful for a new year. The presidential debates made me feel I was watching identical twins wrestle, grasping for ways to look different from each other.

The too-long campaign season and its hyperbolic rhetoric were exhausting and disappointing. Oddly, it all reminded me of a day in my world, long ago.

On a summer afternoon, my Longfellow Elementary sandlot team ventured from the familiar confines of Tautphaus Park in Idaho Falls and “our” ball diamond near the zoo. We had heard that some punks from the other side of the canal were publicly sissifying our game and hence our manhood.

With mitts slung through handlebars and bats wedged under spring-hinged book racks, creating stubby wings, our convoy of five-speeds, cruisers, and Sting-Rays moved south along the canal, through the graveyard, down Rose Hill Drive, crossing the Seventeenth “Parallel,” into the unfamiliar territory of Hawthorne Elementary.

Men that we were, no obstacle would deter us from proving our game. We negotiated the narrow trail along the canal bank, allowing for brief rests to peek through fence knotholes for bikinied sunbathers. The sun shone brightly—we knew our game was better than, smarter than, those Hawthorne Hooligans. Continue reading →