Tag Archives: comedy parenting

It Came From Mars

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The other night, I wandered out onto our south deck only to be confronted by a little creature with bug eyes, and long fuzzy arms. It looked at me and started talking some strange gibberish.

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Something about stars, planets, and Gummi Bears.

I wasn’t sure if I should be afraid of the creature, of if I should ask it into the house to wash its dirty feet. It looked up at me with its coal black eyes and said it wanted to sleep out on the porch.

Then it started doing the “Pee Pee Dance”.

So I picked it up, carried it to the porta potty and sat it down. I hauled it into our house, gave it a toothbrush, and talked with my wife.

We decided to keep the little creature, and it has been a delight to have around ever since; not the least of which was, last night showing up with charcoal all over its face, painted to look like a beard.

Watch out for little aliens showing up at your house. They will suck the heart right out of your chest.

Dopes at the Grocery

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Is our local grocery store now run by aliens?

Last night Caleb my son said “Dad, get the green peppers. They’re only 99 cents per pound.”

“No, that can’t be right,” I retorted. “They’re supposed to be 99 cents each.”

“Well, the cardboard sign above says 99 cents per pound, even though the plastic sign on the rack says 99 cents each, so get ‘em,” Caleb insisted.

I looked at him and smiled. We had a situation similar to this with Wheaties a year ago (See my blog “How to Leverage Wheaties”). So I let him get a bag full.

We went to the self checkout where you can have the most fun, because people don’t expect you to move fast, have a clue what you are doing, or put 19 dollars worth of nickels in the “Money Sucker” machine.

When the computer rang up 99 cents each, I brought it to the attendant’s attention. She said “They’re 99 cents each.”

“The sign on the produce rack says 99 cents per pound,” I responded innocently.

She called for a “price check” and after a bit of discussion, the guy came back with “They’re 99 cents each.”

With feigned disgust (I was beginning to have fun playing with the system) I insisted that he accompany me to the produce rack where I pointed to the sign that said 99 cents per pound.

“I was going by this,” he said, as he pointed to the tiny 1 inch sign on the produce rack at the bottom.

“I was going by this,” I said as I pointed to the 8X10 inch colored sign above the produce.

The “price checker” guy told the attendant to give us the cheaper of the two prices. After whispered exchanges between employees, frustrated looks, and an apology or two, City Market in Carbondale gave us the peppers for free. They didn’t have a store manager who could override the computer. A wise choice on their part.

“Shrink” comes in all forms at a grocery store. The one that apparently isn’t  addressed at all is “stupidity.”

They should’ve hired me last year when I applied for the manager position in the produce department.

When My Joke Backfired

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Many years ago, our family went to the World’s Fair in Montreal, Canada. I was a semi-little guy, but a budding young smartaleck  nonetheless.

My mom had a genius: Have shirts custom made for the family, so that all eight of us would walk around the World’s Fair looking alike. There might have been a safety side to the plan, but I never knew.

So mom had eight shirts made by the Dutch Made company. All of the shirts were an itchy short sleeve with cuffs. The women folk all had red and white checkers and the men all had blue and white checkers. This was a highly embarrassing way to cruise around the world’s most prestigious fair.

Being the frugal truck driver-type family we were, mom and dad decided we should save money by taking our lunch in with us. But the days being what they were, mom had no way for us to carry the sandwiches around with us. No picnic basket. No backpack.

Finding an opportunity to insert a smart comment I piped up with “We could put it in Dad’s suitcase!”

Mom looked at dad and they both smiled. Dad raised his eyebrows. I knew we were about to enter a new era of family embarrassment.

The sandwiches, carrots, and pudding were loaded into dad’s metal truck driver suitcase (the one that had seen “one million miles”), and off we went for the entrance gates.

If we had done this in 2012, our entire family would have been suspected of being terrorists, detained in a dank little side room, and our suitcase blown up in the “bomb bin”.

As it turned out, we turned a blind eye to the show stopping presence of the Begly family in Montreal, and had a great visit.

I think it’s time to pass on the “embarrassment”  torch to my children…

How to Sleep When You’re Tired

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If you are tired enough you can sleep under almost any situation.

Take my son Joshua, for example. I went to tuck him in one night, and found him laying in bed with a 2×4 board on top of him. It was no small board either. The thing was almost 5 feet long.

“Whose 2×4 is that?” I asked.

“What 2×4?” he replied.

“The one on top of you,” I said.

“I don’t know,” he yawned as he drifted off to sleep. I kissed him goodnight, and left the 2×4 on him, thinking that the next day he would say to himself, “Wow, I slept with a 2×4 on top of me last night!”

The next night I went to tuck him in and say good night, and what did I find? He was almost asleep with that same 2×4 laying on top of him.

“Why do you still have that 2×4 laying on top of you?” I asked.

“Is there a 2×4 still on top of me?” he replied as he drifted off to sleep.

I guess if you are tired enough, you can sleep under ANY situation. That is if you are a kid…and you haven’t had an 18 hour layover in Istanbul, Turkey.

How to Leverage Wheaties at the Grocery Store

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Leveraging Wheaties is a lost art form.

One evening Caleb and I stopped  by the store for a few groceries.  We noticed that there was a pallet of the new Wheaties “Fuel” cereal on sale, at a substantial discount. We grabbed two boxes, and a few other items and proceeded to the self checkout. When we scanned the boxes of Wheaties, an automatic coupon popped out. “$2.00 off on your next grocery store purchase” read the coupon.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty good.”

“You know if you hit the ‘BACKSPACE’ button on the screen now, you could use that coupon, Caleb said.”

“That can’t be right,” I replied. “You could forget these other groceries, and buy a $4.27 box of Wheaties for only 87 cents.”

“Correct,” said Caleb.

We stared at each other for a moment. Then we tested the system. Sure enough, Caleb could buy one box of Wheaties, use the store discount, manufacturer’s coupon, plus the auto coupon, and buy a box of Wheaties Fuel for only 87 cents. The catch? You had to buy exactly 5 boxes at a time.

Being 8:30 at night, not having anything else to do, and having a pocket full of cash, we began a very strange process: Caleb brought 5 boxes of Wheaties to the self checkout, performed the weird purchase, and I took the cart out to the Subaru, and loaded it up. I was running carts as fast as I could.

As first, we tried to be discreet. But cashiers being who they are, they noticed me on about the 3rd or 4th trip I took out the door. After answering their question about the quantity of purchases with “We really like Wheaties,” we decided to go into overdrive and pretty much clear out the store as fast as possible.

Caleb was loading up carts as fast as he could, and I was running them out the door.

Did I mention that blueberries were on sale at a substantial discount, too? We pretty much cleaned out the blueberry section. I believe I commented to the store clerk how much we like blueberries on our Wheaties Fuel.

Then the store Manager showed up.

Caleb heard the clerk ask a distressed looking manager, “Can they do this?” The store manager wasn’t exactly sure at that moment. Meanwhile Caleb  smiled at him while I ran Wheaties out the front door like a squirrel tearing across the lawn with a wad of nuts in my mouth.

When it was over, we had collected 100 boxes of Wheaties. And cases of blueberries.

We set the Wheaties up like dominos at home and played with them. The blueberries ended up on cereal, and a thousand smoothies.

Next time we might try Snickers bars…