Inklings

Category: memories

  • Moving

    I’m thankful that I haven’t had to move much in my life. I helped my cousin and his family pack for their move a little today and it’s a lot of work!

    I remember vaguely moving to North Dakota in the middle of January when I was five years old. I didn’t have to do any of the packing but I can still remember how cramped the car was (I remember one of our bigger plants on the floor of the front seat). The weather was terrible and at times seeing the moving truck ahead of us was difficult.

    The next move I experienced was going to college. I packed my life at that point into every open space of my car and relied on my parents to help with the rest. Just when I swore I’d never go through the process of moving again I packed it all back up to move to a new place about a year later. After finishing college I took a job back “home”, so again I packed up my belongings and made the move back. In less than three years I had moved three times. I was ready to settle down.

    Looking back, those moves were easy. The thought of moving now is a lot more stressful. Fourteen years ago I moved into our current home as an engaged bachelor with a lot of the same possessions I had in college: a bed, a desk, a lamp, some mismatched flatware, and some basic kitchen utensils. The house seemed huge then but that was two kids and a wedding ago. Needless to say we’ve acquired just a few things in that amount of time – all of which I don’t wish to move anytime soon.

  • Practical Jokes

    Who doesn’t like a good laugh now and again? Practical joking has always been a creatively effective way to make someone laugh – providing no one gets hurt. A lot depends on who you’re pranking, too. I’ve been the victim of a few practical jokes – some unknowingly (much to the chagrin of the pranksters) – but most of the time I can appreciate the humor of the situation.

    One of the traditions of the building I work in was an initiation of sorts. One of the old wooden signs outside our building was replaced years ago with a more modern metal sign. As a memento of the old sign, one of my former colleagues kept a 2 foot section of a 4×4 post. Whenever a new instructor was hired my former colleague and his cronies would lodge said post under the back tire, just out of sight, of the victim’s vehicle. Around quitting time they would all lag behind and congregate around the windows of the shop garage door that overlook the parking lot. As you can imagine, they had a good hearty laugh watching the poor fellow trying to leave after checking his parking brake repeatedly.

    When my colleague retired, I inherited that post. We’ve since hired some new people in this building… hmmmm. April Fool’s is coming up.

  • Sledding

    They sure don’t make sleds like they used to. I still remember the old Flexible Flyer sled we had growing up. The powder-coated steel runners elevated the treated birch body off the snow high enough to ensure that there was minimal friction to slow you down. Combine this simple engineering with ideally packed snow and you had yourself a sixty inch snow torpedo. That flexible wooden steering plank mounted on the front gave the lead rider little, if any, serious control of a four-person team once they reached terminal velocity. As if this sled wasn’t dangerous enough, I can recall riding it down the middle of our steeply sloped street. Thankfully there wasn’t a lot of traffic.

  • Bullies

    Every once in a while my oldest comes home with a story. “‘So-and-so’ kept pushing me down today for no reason.” As a parent, playground injustice really lights my torch. Memories of my own childhood bullies come to life and I can empathize easily with what he’s going through.

    Whenever I got picked on I would internalize the anger and later fantasize about getting wantonly violent on their faces. I fear my kid suffers the same condition. There is a part of me that would love to come to his rescue like a paid bodyguard, but then I think about all the collateral damage that would cause. Not only would he be incessantly teased for having his dad fight for him, he would never learn how to deal with ‘difficult people’ later in life.

    Once I stop seeing red, I simply tell him to take the high road by “Turning the other cheek” – though part of me still wants to teach him how to squash the other kid.

  • Come Back in Five Months!

    I couldn’t help but notice the Schwan’s catalog this morning on the kitchen table. My wife flatly stated that he was coming tomorrow and began leafing through it. She wasn’t frantic, but I still detected a slight tone of purchase obligation; like we owed the Schwan’s man some business because we asked to be on his route. I realize that Schwan’s sells more than frozen treats, but part of me doesn’t exactly think “let’s get Schwan’s” when it’s -35˚ outside (the goods are probably warmer in the truck).

    Getting something from Schwan’s was a premium purchase that happened occasionally when we were kids. In fact, rather than deal with the guilt of turning down the Schwan’s man, we chose to hide behind the couch when he drove by. It’s like the Schwan’s man was some kind of professional beggar. A beggar who forewarned of his panhandling with a slick full-color brochure and handy bright yellow calendar sticker announcing his visits.

    Not much has changed, though this routine is a little too fresh to effectively teach the kids how to make it look like no one’s home. Hey, the stuff’s expensive and we live only blocks from a grocery store, so if we did buy something it would only be to help the poor guy having to drive around in this cold, going door-to-door peddling the Schwan’s processed food line. I’d just as soon see him when it warms up a little, but if I come home tomorrow to ice cream drum sticks or orange push-ups I won’t complain.

  • Praying for Victory

    I hate to admit it, but I’ll be cheering for the Purple and Gold today. Deep down inside there’s the boyhood Viking fan who grew up disillusioned and disappointed with the team he claimed to love. A victory today would consummate and appease that part of me that always dreamed of seeing the Vikes go to the Super Bowl. The last time I had these feelings was in ’98 right before Gary Anderson missed that 38 yard field goal attempt against the Falcons. I couldn’t say that I was as torn up as my friend Doug (a die-hard fan) that day we left the Cinebar but I can tell you that moment pretty much defined the Vikings’ season performance ever since. I’ve been saying it all season long (and not just because I’m a Favre fan): if there was ever a year that the Vikings could make it all the way, this is the one. This is your chance, Minnesota, don’t blow it!

  • The Pen Was a Weapon

    The old saying ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ had more literal meaning to the graphic designer 25 years ago. The Mac computer was new on the scene so analog tools like the technical pen (T-pen) were standard issue. Maintaining this integral piece of equipment was a high priority, so it didn’t take long before you had memorized its anatomy. Cleaning the T-pen was a ritual of sorts that varied little. Disassemble. Soak nib parts in alcohol. Reassemble.

    Loading the cartridge with ink was its own art form and coaxing the ink into the nib required gentle lateral wrist movements (if you heard the nib click in its housing you had good ink flow). If the ink ever stopped flowing, only the prescribed lateral wrist agitation was recommended. Any violent vertical pumping almost guaranteed that ink was sprayed everywhere. If you were lucky it wasn’t all over the illustration you’d slaved over for days. As if maintaining one of these ‘weapons’ wasn’t enough, we were armed with seven of them! To this day, every time I choose a stroke thickness in an Adobe application I can’t help but think of the wretched T-pen.

  • Where the Wild Things Were

    Whenever my boys act up in public, I feel like the karma train has hit me. My younger brother and I were often “wild” when the family took an outing and were always scolded by my mother to stop whatever it was we were doing (which was usually just picking on each other). In department stores we would hide in the clothes racks or loiter in the toy aisles long enough to get lost. In supermarkets we’d fight over who got to squeeze into the cart’s bottom shelf or play hide-and-seek. One time we took turns in a restaurant nonchalantly pacing the floor while selectively stamping on a ketchup packet. We finally succeeded and exploded that thing all over the walls and whoever had walked by. Yes, my parents (and my two sisters) were saints for putting up with us boys. At least I know what to expect.

  • Days of Vinyl

    I remember my first “record player”. My siblings and I shared two suitcase box-type turntables: my younger brother and I claimed one that had an orange leatherette finish and my older sister had a patriotic red, white and blue-striped one.

    Between my brother and I, our vinyl library consisted of maybe four records – no music, just stories. We spun our little 45s so often that it didn’t take long for those cheap turntables to really show their age.

    Like most inexperienced spinners, we were taping pennies to the head of the play arm just so the needle would stay in the track. It wasn’t long before you heard more of the static and popping from dust and scratches than the actual recording. The fun officially ended when the record player my brother and I shared slid off the bed and smashed to pieces on the floor.

  • Video Gaming

    It’s astonishing how ubiquitous video games have become in today’s society. My boys frequently remind us how we are the only family in the civilized world that does NOT own a game system. Before you shed a tear for them, please know that they are not suffering. They do have supervised access to two computers and play video games on a somewhat regular basis.

    The graphic cards required by most games today are nothing short of miraculous in how they mimic reality. In spite of these advances, I have to laugh when I think of the good old Atari 2600 we grew up with. Commanding a blob of pixels to move orthogonally through a multi-colored lego-like universe, with paddle or some-time functioning joystick, was impressive to us. We could play Combat, Asteroids, Missile Command, Pitfall and Breakout for hours at a time. I doubt that the crude compilation of chunky pixels that comprised most game graphics of the early 80s would hold a kid’s attention for more than 2 nanoseconds today. It would be interesting to see the sales demographics for the re-release of some of those classic games I grew up with. I have a suspicion that most were sold to “kids” my age.