mere meanderings

ok, i've had enough of the michael jackson garbage. yes, he made some good music. twenty or more years ago. since then he's mostly been a total freak. and a pervert. of course, he denies that he's a pervert. he just likes sleeping with little children.

not sold on that, however. i saw an old interview on tv last nite (not that i was watching anything michael jackson, it just came on during some magazine type program while i really wasn't paying attention) where he denied having any cosmetic surgery work on anything but his nose. hello? you want us to believe you only "sleep" with the little children, then tell us you haven't had anything done with your chin? your cheek bones? and how did that skin really turn so white?

so in addition to being a freak and a perv, he's also a liar. enough, already.

and suddenly the much reverend jesse jackson and the revered reverend al sharpton show up in la la land and jockey for position against each other to determine who is the family's best friend. and minister.

come to think of it, where have these guys really ever ministered? i'm not sure about sharpton, but i'm pretty darn sure jesse jackson has never had a church to minister to. but any time there is a death in the circle of black celebrities, these guys show up on camera to be spiritual support for the family. and grab as much of the spotlight as they can get. funny how they're never visably present due to the death of celebrities that aren't black. is that discrimination?

speaking of discrimination . . . the supreme court reversed sonia sotomayor's decision on a discrimination lawsuit. somewhere in new jersey, was it? because non-minority firemen who applied for a position were denied the job because no minorities had applied. and sweet sonia supported the action of the community in not filling the position, thwarting the lawsuit filed by the non-minority applicants. somehow i fear that if sonia is installed as a supreme court justice we're gonna be subjected to severe reverse-discrimination. what happened to truth, justice, fairness?

i hate painting. hon's been dabbling at painting the kitchen cabinets for a couple of months now. and seems like she's never gonna finish it. so i decided to lend a hand. took her to home depot, bought paint, clear acrylic, and came home and we both started sloshing it on. she's much more careful than i. i tend to put a lot of paint down in one pass. and i drip and splash a good bit. but it's water based and easy to clean up. and my side got covered much more quickly than hers. and i don' t think it looks bad, overall. still don't have the clear coat on, but it's shaping up nicely. first painting project i've been involved in in ages that may really work.

lastly, i'm envying scooter today. his company paid for tickets for their entire sales crew to attend a motivational seminar. lots of big shots. guliani, forbes, stoops (for those not from oklahoma, bob stoops is the sooners football coach - that's the top big shot in this area.), and he even shook hands with joe montana and colin powell. i don't swoon over montana. wasn't a 49er fan. but i do think a lot of colin powell. would love to see him. wonder if he likes sonia sotomayor.

farrah and michael - a stark contrast

ironic that both should die on the same day.

i don't remember just exactly when farrah fawcett came to prominence. mid seventies, i suppose.

michael was a star before her. but i think that was mostly as the cute little boy singer with the jackson five. i think he went off on his own, becoming his own success, about the same time farrah became one of charlie's angels and adorned what must be the best selling t-shirt of all time.

so while i was strutting around in my farrah t-shirt and bell bottoms, others, primarily younger girls, were strutting around with thriller t-shirts and leg warmers. both farrah and michael were icons to different sectors of our society.

both seemed to fall from grace in later years. both for very different reasons. michael because he became reclusive. what some felt was freakish. (i'm included in that group.) farrah became sickly. fighting cancer for a number of years and finally succombing to the dreaded disease just weeks after releasing a privately filmed documentary displaying her grace to the end.

both had their fans. both had their detractors. but both left behind great numbers of fans, family, suppporters.

rest in peace to both.

thoughts on branson, missouri, u s of a

i've been wanting to visit branson for a long time. land of the ozarks. and the entertainment capital of the midwest. so when tori and family moved here, well, now we have a real reason to visit.

branson's about 5 hours from oklahoma city. for most people. first trip here, however, we made a wrong turn, no, we failed to make a turn, and were nearly in kansas before we realized we'd aimed away from tulsa. for those of you who don't know, tulsa's on the route to branson. trip took 6 1/2 hours.

next trip, well, didn't make any wrong turns, and turns out branson's only about 5 hours from home. not such a bad trip. pretty much like the one we used to make from flagstaff to yuma. only much more interesting scenery. trees instead cactus. grass instead of sand.

so here we are now on our third visit. hon has a hard time staying away from our newest grandson. and while i think he's a pretty neat kid, he's not yet able to hold a baseball bat, so i'm more entertained by the older two boys. games of checkers, chess, and a trip over to one of the local go-cart tracks. that's a lot of fun.

now we're here for father's day weekend. boog sent me a gift card for father's day with instructions to go out and have some fun in branson. that should be easy. branson - the entertainment capital of the midwest.

i chose the beatles. i know we all thought the beatles were long gone. in fact, two have died. but like elvis, they're always somewhere. i caught a glimpse of them once at disneyland. but other than that, i'd never seen the beatles up close and personal.

my expectation was that the live show would cost about forty bucks a person, and we'd be able to see the fellas on stage clearly if we took binoculars. wrong on both counts. tickets cost a whopping ten bucks each. ten bucks each! that was with the discount that the branson show places give locals. i don't know what the cost would be without locals. but with tori living here, ten bucks each! wow.

then when we got to the theater, maybe i should spell that "theatre", since the show had a bit of a british flair, and got our tickets, we found we were seated in row "h". row "h", for those not familiar with the english alphabet, is eight rows off the stage, with row "a" being first, "b" being second, "c" third, and so forth. row "h". eight rows off the stage. close enough to see really well, but no so close the loud amps vibrate your earlobes.

now this show was put together by louise harrison. louise harrison is the older sister of a guy named george harrison. and if i have to spell it out for you, george harrison was one of the four guys that comprised "the beatles". and louise was there backstage when the fab four first appeared on the ed sullivan show. and she knew them really well.

so she put together this show. she hand picked the performers (who, truth be told, are not really the beatles. rather, they term themselves the "liverpool legends".) and let me tell you, while they really wouldn't fool you into thinking they were the original beatles, if you squinted just right you could imagine that they are. and if you just close your eyes and listen you'd swear they were. for they really sang beatles songs well. very well, indeed.

and from a different prospective than you normally see. because louise harrison put this show together, they actually made george music more a part of the show than most would. in fact, george songs pretty much equalled those sung by paul and john. ringo only had three, but that was pretty much true to form.

all told, this could have been the most entertaining musical performance i've ever seen. it was nice to know the songs, the words. to be able to sing along if we wanted. and a nice, intimate setting. up close and personal with the boys from liverpool. and then afterwards they came to the lobby, along with louise harrison, and mingled with the crowd. signed autographs. chatted amicably. and actually made you feel they appreciated the fact that you came to see their show. and surprisingly, during the social hour louise harrison was the only one with a hint of a british accent. the boys spoke very clear american english. and in all of our visits to branson i've seen these yellow vw bugs running around (the new version) with advertising for this show on them. well, these yellow "beetles" are driven around town by the "beatles" of the liverpool legends. clever.

so what i really have to say is, if you're coming to branson, see these guys. excellent show. probably some of the other shows are excellent as well. but the summertime weather - not so much. bring air conditioning.

yesterday's saga continues . . .

i'm not one to believe in jinxes or hoaxes or mercury being in retrograde and causing us all kinds of woes. yeah, yesterday was a rather bad day. but today is shiny and bright and, ah, 92.7 degrees. with 49 percent humidityityity. your deoderant starts to fade the minute you stand up. inside.

but it's a pleasant day. scooter's cheered up some. i'm over the failure i had making hon's computer print. i'll revisit that when we get back from branson. and yeah, we're going to branson for a long weekend. looking forward to seeing tori and the boys. maybe even take in a show. i'm up for some good, clean fun.

so at about 10 o'clock i set out for walmart to pick up some stuff to take to branson. drinks, snack stuff, razor blades, etc. on the way i figured i'd drive thru the car wash. the fancy one on northwest expressway where you just sit in your car and some chain drive mechanism tows you through sprayers and brushes and swipers and blowers and more sprayers and more brushes and colorful, swirly, twisty sprayers, and then more rinsers before passing you under some humongous hair dryers and back out into the bright sunlight. twelve bucks for the jim dandy wash. only ten for the plain dandy. but i figure if it's good enough for jim, it's good enough for me.

half-way through the maze of sprayers and blasters and brushes and . . . the brushes stopped swirling and the shakers stopped shaking and the blowers stopped blowing. i exited the wash with suds added to the grime that was on the car to begin with.

drove back to the front and told the little guy i'd been ripped off. he had me line up again. this time they stopped the tow chain half-way thru so they could reset the parts that didn't work the first time. didn't work. now i've added more suds on top of the suds and grime i had to start with.

so the little fella said he had placed a call to the service dude and he would be there in 20 minutes or so. i said just give me my money back. he suggested he give me a card for a free wash instead, cause they don't keep cash, it goes in the machine out front. i suggested that perhaps since i'd been so amazingly patient, which was a reach for me after yesterday, he should probably give me two car wash cards. reluctantly he agreed to do just that.

so i set out for wally world once again. and on the way in i notice k-mart has one of them little mickey mouse car washes that you just park in and the machinery drives from the front to the back of your car, then again and again until it's gotten the job done.

i pull up to their machine, select the 7 dollar super-wash, not the 8 buck super-duper-wash, and insert a 10 dollar bill. well, i try to insert a 10 dollar bill. machine won't take it. in fact, the bill accepter doesn't even make any noise. obviously, it's broken.

well, now i'm pretty perturbed. figure i'll go on to wally world and worry about the car wash later. but between circle k and walmart i see another car wash. this one has the do-it-yourself coin-op bays as well as the drive into and watch it work bays. i went to the drive int and let the machine do it's thing. 8 bucks here for the super duper. 10 for the all you can eat. i opted for the super duper and drove in.

i have to admit that i was skeptical throughout the duration of the wash/rinse/wax/rinse/dry cycles, but ultimately we got the job done. finally, something worked.

a blog about nothing

maybe it's just me, but seems like if you start a blog you're obligated to make periodic posts to it. think it's covered in the terms and conditions fine print. like all that stuff no one reads when they install new software. or it may be written in the eighteenth edition of amy vanderbilt's book of modern etiquette. start a blog, best be prepared to write frequent and informative or creative posts. otherwise, you don't deserve to have your very own blog in the first place.

and that puts you under more than just a little bit of pressure. pressure to perform. and it can get worse. you can feel pressure to perform up to a certain standard. that's where it really gets tough.

i have some inane curiosity about people from my past. for no particular reason i wanna know what and how my old friends, old classmates, old co-workers are doing. i'm a real sucker for social sites like classmates dot com and facebook. and probably there are more like them, but i haven't stumbled into them as yet.

but just the other day i had a note from an old high school classmate. well, not old in the sense of age, old in the sense of "long time ago". and she said that she remembered me and she'd read somewhere that i was very funny. ok. i'm flattered. at times i try to be funny. but responding to her message (which is a distinct requirement in both the terms and conditions and amy's book) i found myself trying to be humorous and failed miserably. too much pressure. i just couldn't come up with anything witty to write. so i wrote something rather foolish and didn't even think to ask her where she'd heard, or read, that i was funny. funny, she said she didn't remember me as being funny. and now since i wrote back a really lame message, she's sure i'm not.

so this is all coursing through my mind at the same time as i'm feeling like i need to post something on this blog, when it occurs to me that i could write a blog about nothing. after all, seinfeld did a tv show about nothing and it was a hit for nine years or so. and i still watch it two or three times a day.

people have bad days. fortunately, mostly when a person has a bad day he, or she, has the rest of his, or her, network of friends or family to help him, or her, get over it. not always.

i've had a bad day. i'm semi computer literate. hon - not so much. at least that's the way she feels. and as her laptop wouldn't print to our family printing machine, she asked me to fix it. and of course i'm up for the challenge. i'm a man. men fix things.

i actually started last nite. i dinked with this option, tweaked that one. ultimately removed and re-installed the printer driver. that's gotta work. or not. and last nite it was "not".

so i started anew this morning. refreshed. slurping some really good coffee. and i uninstalled and installed some more. then i realized i was in deeper than the depth of my computer literacy. so then i did what any red-blooded american man would do in a similar situation . . . i called india. for technical support. and the people who you talk to in tech support are really nice and they want to be so helpful and they just can't thank you enough for selecting their product in the first place. and they're very careful to spell each word with letter and, what's the term, what the army uses to clarify a letter. a, apple, b, boy, c, charlie, etc. but have you ever had a tech support say y, yankee? that's hard to grasp. and j as in jury doesn't ring real true either.

but they are helpful. and they started out by having me do all the things i did last nite. and then we uninstall and re-install. hmmm, think i've seen this somewhere before. and after that we power down, re-boot, run some other routine, test, still no work, uninstall, re-install, re-boot, run some other routine, then, well, you get the drift. i think it was mark twain, or maybe winston churchill, who said idiocy is doing the same thing, the same way, over and over again and expecting a different result. well, that's pretty much how i felt.

after two hours i bid farewell to kodak tech support. or more honestly, they said goodbye to me. they were done with me. your problem is either the computer or microsoft.

i'll try to shorten this somewhat: i called microsoft, they said call gateway, gateway tech support said we could fix it, but back up files first because we have to re-format the hard drive, or something to that effect. i told em i didn't have the equipment to do that. they said hire a third party. i said i thought that's why i bought this extended warranty, so i wouldn't have any support expense. they said . . . . well, they win. but he did give me a secret phone number to microsoft where they'd offer free support. so i called them. and the fella from india must have been sadly mis-informed. microsoft denied that they would help me without charge, and they may or may not be able to correct the problem without re-formatting. so i can pay them to not fix the problem, or pay them to fix the problem and lose the files, or pay the third party then pay them, or, crap, too many options, none of which i like.

so about six hours into this project i give up. we'll worry about it after we have a nice trip to branson over the weekend. meanwhile, i've had a bad day, i'm looking for sympathy.

and scooter comes over. and he's had a bad day, too. and he's looking for sympathy, too. he's no help in me getting over my bad day. and i'm no help to him getting over his bad day. and hon's been around me all day while i'm trying to deal with tech suppport, so i know her day's been really trying. the dogs run and hide when i walk into the room they're in. and at one point i called jim-bob to see if he could help with the computer issue, cause, after all, he is a systems engineer and i.t. expert and all that. but he's had a bad day, too, so he's no help. well, he was reassuring, and that was nice. but it was really no help.

so we've all had a bad day. and we're all gonna go to bed and hope to sleep well and wake up with a new and refreshed outlook tomorrow. and this may be the wordiest blog post i've ever written. all about nothing.

thank you

henryetta, oklahoma - small town, america. even worse, declining, small town america. population just north of three thousand, of which, i'm told, over 70 percent survive on some type of government funded income - social security, unemployment, welfare.

at one time, back in the 30's, i believe, henryetta was a thriving metropolis comprised of some 10 thousand folks. coal mining and glass manufacturing were the major economic contributors, with hundreds of family run farms easily within a 10 mile radius. then the coal mine went dry. the glass plant shut down. the town started a downhill slide.

my sister and i went to henryetta today. still dealing with dad's house out there. we met with a realtor to list the house. we were disappointed that the initial realtor we'd contracted didn't sell the house quickly, as they indicated they felt they could do. so we changed. and that was our primary reason for being there. to enlist the aid of a new realtor.

the average house in henryetta will sell for somewhere between thirty and forty thousand dollars. that seems incredibly low. particularly considering prices i've been used to seeing in flagstaff. and even far lower than what you'd find here in oklahoma city.

dad's house is well above average for henryetta. at roughly 1600 square feet, this three bedroom, two bath home, built in the 50's, we think will sell somewhere between 50 and 60 thousand bucks. and that's partly because the lot is just over a half-acre. that house in flagstaff would sell, depending on the exact area, somewhere between 150 and 200 grand. henryetta's declining.

you wouldn't expect you'd learn much in henryetta. we walked into the bank as we still have dad's accounts there. we were stunned to find that the largest bank in henryetta (yes, there are more than one) doesn't use computers at each and every desk. in fact, the young lady that assisted us had a typewriter on her desk - no computer terminal. how much can you learn from someone who doesn't even use a computer in a bank?

well, a lot. fundamentally, care and feeding of the customer. she didn't know us when we walked in. but she essentially came out into the lobby to invite us into her office and ask us what she might do for us. we explained what we needed to do. then the exceptional service started. rather than directing us to the teller line, as i suspect most bank employees would do, she filled out deposit slips for us, withdrawal slips for us (even typed them up on her ibm wheelwriter), told us to sign here, initial there, then asked that we'd simply take the documents she'd completed on our behalf to the teller.

my sister and i both felt this lady had gone far and beyond the call of duty. and she was, oh, twenty something, i'd guess. the age where you would normally expect curt treatment. but she did a great job on our behalf. and we really lavished her with thank yous. and her response was the best i've ever heard. not "no problem". not "uh-huh". not "yep". not even "you're welcome". and i doubt very seriously if she's ever read the blurbs i've written on this subject in my blogs. but she's better than me, cause she said . . . "thank y'all (it is oklahoma, you know) for allowing me to help you."

henryetta, oklahoma. learn from it.

one day out west

i've never told this story before. i'm not even really sure i'm gonna tell it now. hon's told it a few times. her way. but her way is awfully slanted. and when she tells the story and i'm around, i try to correct her. after all, i was there, she wasn't. but she likes to humiliate me to the extreme. i, on the other hand, try to minimize the humiliation and embarrassment. so i'm gonna give this a shot. please understand, this a very personal story.

i'm not a musician. well, i played trumpet from sixth grade til my second year of high school. hardly an accomplished trumpet player. but i was in the band. as a high school sophomore i was forth trumpet. there were the three lead guys - they were all good - then they had a couple of us mediocre types, we played the harmony spots, then the few others sat somewhere to my right. i don't even know what they played.

but that gives you an idea that i do have a scosh of a musical background. still, i hardly think that hardly qualifies me to consider myself a musician. or musically inclined.

while still in high school, around the time the beatles landed on u.s. soil and dazzled all of america, particularly us influential teens, i began to develop interest in guitar. actually, i wanted to play guitar. but i didn't have any desire to put forth the time and effort that it would take to learn to play the damned thing.

my best friend played guitar. even took lessons. and another friend played somewhat. and when i was around them i frequently grabbed one of their guitars and plucked and tweaked a bit. even learned a tune or two. very primary stuff.

but when us guys got together we always envisioned ourselves as rock stars. we'd sing at the top of our lungs along with the radio (in the privacy of our own homes only). and to us, we sounded every bit as good as john, paul, george, and probably better than ringo. we just didn't have the good fortune of being discovered. yet.

i grew up a bit in college. several guys around the dorm had guitars. some played them well. some plunked and picked. i learned to plunk and pick a little more. no chords, mind you, just picking the melody of some great rock song that i liked. it was fun, but i never did get serious about it.

then i got married, and grew up a bit more. and my first wife played guitar. she'd sung in a duo with a friend of hers in high school and college. and she got me more interested in the instrument. i learned some chords. and then for my birthday one year she actually gave me my very own guitar. wow. suddenly i'm a guitar player.

i learned the basic chords. c, d, g - you can play most any song with some combination of those chords. f was a bit more challenging. a soon followed, then e. never did master b, but g7's a cool chord. e minor, d7. so the wife and i would sorta jam together, again, in the privacy of our own home.

she ultimately joined a band, country and western back then. everything was country and western in the mid seventies. (my friend buford apple and i were driving somewhere once in my car. buford's from kentucky, liked different music than me. since i was the host - it was my car - i asked him what kind of music he liked to listen to. his answer . . . "i like two kinds of music - country AND western.") anyhow, she's in a garage band with some pretty good guitar players and drummers and all that. and i was envious. but knew i lacked the talent to join in. i just listened.

i never gave up guitar playing. to say i've gotten better over the years would be somewhat accurate. but i've never undertaken the task of really learning anything much. i play the chords, strum somewhat in accordance with the rythm of the song. even finger pick a little now and again. along the way i've dabbled with banjo. it's a little different. but still simple when you keep it simple.

but my guitar playing has never left the house. and one of my diversions has long been to lock myself in my room with my big, thick notebook full of music lyrics and chords, and strum my guitar/banjo and sing along to my little heart's content. my family hears me. and they ridicule me about it. (i'm told that contrary to the way i felt about my singing back in high school, i really don't sound a bit like paul mccartney. on a positive note, though, i might just sound vocally better than dylan. but that's not saying much, is it?)

ok, that's the background. now on to the story.

our last home in flagstaff, in university heights, was a two story. upstairs was a large master bedroom adjoined by a huge master bathroom. the room was probably 10 x 10 and had a large vanity. hon always kept a chair there as it was built to double as a dressing table. and it occurred to me that this was a great place for me to sit and play guitar and sing to my heart's content without the whole neighborhood being subjected to my gawd-awful music. i could spread out my music on the vanity/dressing table, i had a chair there, and the lighting was excellent. perfect spot.

back then hon worked in a retail shop. and she frequently worked mid-afternoon until closing - 9 pm. so some evenings when i'd get home from work, and scooter was in the college dorm back then, home alone i'd find myself bored and grab my trusty guitar and head for the master bath. and sing and play. in private.

well, as luck would have it, on one of these evenings hon was at work and decided to call me about something. at this point i should interject this: hon would frequently begin a phone conversation on the cordless phone in the bedroom upstairs and end the call in, oh, the living room, the spare room, the kitchen, all downstairs. which was the case on this particular evening. hence, when she tried to call me, i didn't hear a phone ringing.

and i'm sure i had my cell phone on vibrate, cause when she tried calling it, i didn't answer either.

so she figured i'd either stopped for a beer on the way home, had maybe decided to go out and get a burger, or maybe i was outside or in the garage doing something. she waited a while. then tried calling me again. and i still didn't answer. i still didn't hear a phone ring.

then she did something really silly. she called cathy, our neighbor, and told her she'd been trying to reach me but i wasn't answering. a good wife, she was a little worried and asked cathy if she'd go over and check on me.

now i'm upstairs having a great time, all alone, in total privacy, pounding on my guitar strings and singing loud as i please. sounding absolutely great. to me. but in total privacy. nobody outside the immediately family hears me play AND sing. i'm just way too self-conscious about that. not to mention that i've come to understand that i'm really not very good.

and that house, for some stupid reason, didn't have a doorbell on the front door. and for some stupid reason i hadn't locked the door either. and i guess cathy knocked on the door a bit. then opened it, stuck her head inside and called out to me.

now even if i'd been completely quiet upstairs i wouldn't have heard cathy's voice. she wasn't really a loud talker. and i was upstairs at the extreme opposite side of the house. additionally, i was strumming and singing. strumming and singing. dylan, garfunkel, jagger, and even waylon. i was lost in my very own, very private, music.

and i guess that as cathy entered the house and maybe heard the music a little bit, it wouldn't have been clearly evident that some painfully horrid singer and very basic three chord charlie guitar player was making the music she was hearing. she probably just recognized that there was music coming from upstairs, and that would probably where she'd need to go to look for me.

and i guess she continued to call out to me as she ascended the stairs. but i'm making music, or at least noise, so i don't hear her. but just about the time she reached the bedroom door i finished the final chorus of donavan's "catch the wind", and i grew silent. and that's when i heard cathy call out. and imagine my humiliation. here i am making this horrible music, and even though she can't see into the bathroom, i'm making this music in the bathroom! and lord knows what else she may have considered i'd be doing in that bathroom. i know my face turned as red as my shirt when i heard her call out and i ran into the bedroom to intercept her before she had to come al the way into the bathroom. i don't even wanna think about what she may be telling as she relates this story to her friends. but that day i learned to always make sure all doors and windows are locked when i drag out the ol' guitar. and i have a phone close by. god, that was embarrassing.

you're welcome - again

had a few comments after my, well, i'll call it a "rant", about people replying to my "thank you" with "no problem".

my friend, xxxxx, said i'm just being a grumpy ol' fuddy-duddy. i say that it takes a grumpy ol' fuddy-duddy to even understand what she meant with that term. but i guess she really had a point.

her point was simply that it's good to mix up a bit. that way a person's response doesn't sound "canned" or robotic. i'll concede that. and it wasn't my intent to claim that a simple "you're welcome" is the only acceptable response to a sincere "thank you". fact is, i try to vary that type of thing myself. thinking back, i realize that at times i've replied to a thanks with a hearty "you betcha!". probably others. and i think that's fine. no problem has two problems. first of all, yes, it sounds very insincere. secondly, well, back to my last post, i know that you're doing the job you're paid to do it isn't a problem. enough said about that.

but there are other stupid things people get into the habit of saying (or doing) that can be equally as bad as "no problem".

yesterday hon and i went to walmart. she'd just been to physical therapy for treatment of her ever on-going neck problem, and the physical therapist recommend she spend some of her time wearing a cervical collar. those foam neck-brace things that keep your head propped up on your shoulders. and since there were a couple of other items we needed, we figured wally world would be the best option for "one stop shopping".

we found the body brace area. finger splints, wrist supports, elbow wraps, waist/back supporters, athletic supporters, knee stabilizers, ankle braces, arch supports, toe wraps, the whole gamut. except for cervical collars. neck supporters.

so there was a lady close by who was stocking shelves. and you know how walmart is - they don't really spend a lot of time training their folks in the area of customer service. she was doing a great job of ignoring us as shoppers who obviously were in need of assistance. so i asked "do you know if you carry cervical collars?" she responded by shaking her head "no". then i had to ask "no, you don't stock them? or no, you don't know if you stock them?" finally she claimed that they didn't stock them. don't know why she couldn't have verbalized that in the first place. again, walmart doesn't place a good deal of import on excellent customer service.

when we finally find the neck brace, cvs drug store, we actually had two pharmacy employees come around the counter to locate them. and when i thanked them, the little fella simply said "uh huh". but he sounded good about it. it wasn't mechanical. it wasn't robotic. it wasn't "you're welcome", but it wasn't bad.

so there are other forms of recognizing "thank you" than you're welcome. as clearly pointed out to me by my friend xxxxx. but in doing so, she brought up another habitual response that bugs her. namely, "have a good one". talk about sounding mechanical and insincere. that's one of the worst.

i have a very good friend who ends every phone conversation with "have a good one". and every time i see him, as either he is leaving or i am leaving, it's "have a good one". i know he doesn't even realize he says that. and he certainly doesn't realize how utterly canned it sounds. but he says it at the end of each and every conversation he has. and he's not alone.

so xxxxx points out that "have a good one" is more irritating to her than "no problem". and we both feel that, in response to "have a good one", we should ask "have a good what?" a good bowel movement? a good lunch? a good sneeze? come on. give some bit of thought to what you're saying.

then after friend xxxxx explains how "have a good one" is grating, she tells me of an ordeal she had with one of her customers. the customer, who was unknown to her, asked her a question that she felt was a little bit out of line. and she responded with a bit of blatant sarcasm. i didn't think it was bad. apparently mister customer did. based on what he asked xxxxx, i wouldn't have cared if he liked the sarcasm or not. anyhow, he walked away telling xxxxx to "go to hell". (that wouldn't be a good response to "thank you" either.)

xxxxx was stunned. and i think she actually felt bad. for at least half a minute or so. she asked me if i felt she was wrong in using such sarcasm. and i told her i thought she'd done great. thinking about it now, i wish she'd had the presence of mind to tell the jerk who told her to "go to hell" to "have a good one".