Slightly Off the Mark

With mixed feelings I say goodbye to my first writing home, in the same week my column appears for the first time in Kendallville Mall. I’m going from a weekly to a monthly, but otherwise you’ll get pretty much the same stuff in the new “Slightly Off The Mark” … like it or not.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

When I started this column I was a green, snot-nosed kid, which was probably just allergies. Maybe a virus. Today I take medicine and always have Kleenex nearby, so I think I’m a better person, or at least more hygienic.

            Today it’s twenty-three years later, and this is my last humor column in the New Era, Churubusco News, and Northwest News. It’s the end of what was once a—ahem—new era, and I’m poorer for it.

            I’m also grateful that the papers’ new owners have allowed me this chance to say farewell to you, the readers, the people who shared my ride of child-rearing, home maintenance, misbehaving pets, and exploding lawn mowers. This has been my best job ever, and if I’d had a choice I’d probably have gone on doing it until they pried my cold fingers from the keyboard.

            This is my love letter to you, the readers, and a thank you to the crews of the three newspapers that made me feel wanted all those years. Love letter is just an expression, by the way, so don’t expect chocolate … or jewelry. Definitely not jewelry.

            I sent articles to the New Era for a quarter of a century, everything from accident reports to features to movie reviews. In February, 1991, they began printing my humor column, and later it also appeared in the Churubusco News and Northwest News. Back then I had more hair, less weight, and no gray.

Let me grab a calculator … taking into consideration the occasional reprints and my poor math skills, we published over 50 columns a year. That’s 1,150 columns, each up to 1,000 words long, although they were getting shorter. That’s one million, one hundred fifty thousand words.

            My last novel clocked in at around 60,000 words. So I wrote 19 books worth of “Slightly Off The Mark” … 14 of them good books. Including the five actual books I’ve written, that’s more words than J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Myer combined. Not that I’d combine them.           

Well, it appears I’m now a former newspaper writer, and my humor column is an orphan. Ironically, I didn’t find out KPC News bought the papers I wrote for until I read it in the paper. But while I considered the possibility that they might use their own reporters to gather local news, I held out hope that they might like my humor column, and maybe even use it elsewhere.

Instead, my first official contact was a phone call informing me I had become a “duplication of effort”. On the one hand, it seemed kind of abrupt after 23 years of writing Slightly Off The Mark and close to 25 years of doing news articles and features; on the other hand, the people making these decisions aren’t the same ones I’ve been working with. It’s business. You can storm the newspaper office to protest (and I kinda wish you would, just to make me feel better), but it’s probably pointless. I am upset that I didn’t get a chance to write a farewell column, though. Instead of going out like M*A*S*H, I went out like “Alf”.  (Oh, just look it up.)

            In addition to being the end of the best job I’ve ever had, it’s a huge hit to us financially. I still have my full time job, but this is the equivalent of taking a ten percent pay cut. I’d like to find someone else to print my column, but everyone wants to be a humor columnist and nobody wants to print one. My very funny friend Barry Parham, after trying to sell his column to literally thousands of publications, titled one of his books after the response he got from one editor:  “Sorry, We Can’t Use Funny”.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

            I made a promise that I would attempt to go back to humor when I wrote my September 11^th column. The reasoning: This is a humor column.

            Still, it’s hard to forget that we’re at war.

            Ha, see what I did there? I made a joke already! Lots of people have forgotten we’re at war. Extremists are cutting a swath across the Arab world, gaining power by the second and threatening pretty much everyone, yet we’ve somehow managed to convince ourselves that it has nothing to do with the rest of the world. If Americans had this much self-denial in other areas, we’d all be well within our body mass index goals. And I’d be off the M&M’s.

            Still, it occurs to me that humor is needed during bad times, even more than during good times. Over in Iraq, the ISIS people hold a weekly comic open mike night, every Wednesday at seven if they’re not busy beheading infidels.

            On a related note, if you go on the comedy stage over there, I suggest you be well rehearsed. Believe me; it’s not a good idea to bomb.

            Anyway, I was thinking maybe I could start making fun of the Muslim extremists who want to convert or kill every human being on the planet, because how funny is that? Plenty of room for belly laughs, there.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

            My wife has a lot of good qualities. Of  course, if she had bad qualities I wouldn’t write about them here, would I? That’s called “preserving the evidence”. I didn’t read all those mysteries for nothin’, bub.

            I, on the other hand … well, my qualities are only so-so.

            Which leaves me here, in the doghouse, which I guarantee the dog doesn’t appreciate at all. You see, in May Emily became a college graduate, one of the first ever in either of our families, and I didn’t throw her a party.

            Oh, I meant to. But I also meant to write a bestseller and have a beach house in Maui, and that hasn’t happened so far, either.

            What threw me is that, after a great deal of thought, she elected not to go to the actual graduation ceremony. When I was younger I thought that kind of thing was a requirement, but turns out they’ll still give you your diploma even if you don’t slap on the cap and gown. That being the case, I assume my sneaking into Purdue’s graduation with a stolen cap and gown thirty years ago would have gotten me nowhere.

            I returned the gown, by the way. Kept the cap.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

            Last week, I described how preparing to fix my home’s only toilet turned into a half day ordeal. The rest of the day went pretty much the way you’d expect:

            After staring at the instructions for half an hour and muttering to myself, I figured out how to get the new piece of toilet innards in. (At about that point my wife popped her head in, and I went on a ten minute diatribe that basically consisted of “Easy! They said it was easy!” along with some hysterical laughter.)

            The new piece had to be reconnected to the water line, and the instructions gave four different ways to do that, depending on the incoming line. Flared? Flanged? Screwed? Something was screwed, all right. (Later I would mispronounce the word “flanged” to the guy at the hardware store, even though I knew how to pronounce it. My head was that screwed—and nailed—by then.) My setup, I determined, was flanged.

            That took the “already installed” washer, which I’d thrown aside because it had deteriorated to a little ring of black pond scum. The rubber washer that came with the new parts, which took me ten minutes to separate from the other washer that came with the new parts, wouldn’t be necessary. Really?

            With the old washer back in, everything was complete. Right? By then I’d skipped over steps fourteen through seventeen and was desperately craving a beer, even though I hate beer. I headed downstairs to turn the water back on. Instantly the sound of the tank filling could be heard upstairs.

            At least, that was hopefully what the sound was. Running upstairs revealed that the toilet was indeed filling, and it even stopped when it was supposed to. I’d saved the day!

            Of course, there was also that water spraying out from under the toilet.

            It may seem like a good idea: Constantly cleaning your bathroom floor with a good, steady spray of water. In reality, I’ve learned that water spraying all over a room tends to end badly. I ran back downstairs to shut off the water. Then back upstairs to tighten the nut. Then back downstairs to turn on the water. Then back upstairs to get sprayed in the face, and tighten the nut more.

            The old rubber washer, built by Korean kids who are now Korean elders, just couldn’t handle the strain of being taken out, then put back in again.

            I ran back downstairs and turned off the valves, which also turned off the supply of water to my home’s heating system. One of the valves sprayed me in the face.

This was new.

            Apparently that fixture also had a rubber washer that couldn’t take the strain.

            By now I’d run up and down the stairs often enough to prepare for a marathon, my back was screaming in agony, and I’d started to wonder where that half bottle of vodka had gotten to that I stashed away somewhere after New Year’s, 2008. But I persevered, because when you gotta go, you gotta go, and my property’s outhouse disappeared a long time ago. I tried to tighten the nut again, and when that didn’t work I started going through the steps, one by one. Again.

            The dog, by then, had retreated into the living room and was lying on the couch, trying to be invisible. He began casting fearful looks in my direction when I wandered into the room, compulsively folding and unfolding the directions, clothes soaked and eyes wild.

            “I have to start over from scratch. Heh. It must be the washer inside. I gotta start all over. Ha. Ha ha. Hahahahahaha!!!!!!!”

            At which point the dog wisely left for wherever my wife was hiding.

            At the hardware store, the hardware guy patiently listened to my explanation of what I needed, which was peppered with a lot of “little round thing”, and “goes on the other thing for the stuff”, and a few words I can’t relate here. Finally I demonstrated on an actual model of a toilet, which I discovered was bolted to the wall when I tried to lift it to show him the bottom. It occurred to me later that an awfully lot of people must come in there, trying to describe the things they need for their stuff.

            But finally he understood. “We don’t have that.”

            Uh huh.

            What he did have was a little package of plastic pipe connector whatsits, which included a little plastic washer, which might or might not do the trick. “I’ll try it – why not? Also, do you have any whiskey?”

            Looks like I picked a bad decade to give up drinking.

            I completely disassembled the assembled assembly, reassembled it, added the new washer, and tromped downstairs, where the water spray soaked me until, ironically, I turned the water back on. Then the leak there stopped, and since that valve has to be on to supply the furnace, I figured it should be called even.

I heard the sound of rushing water. Edgar Allen Poe never wrote a more suspenseful moment.

            Upstairs, I discovered the toilet was working perfectly. Also, a little stream of water was wandering its way down the water line behind the toilet, onto a pile of wet towels. Absolutely nothing had changed since before the job started.

            The instructions say the connections holding all that goshdarnit inside the toilet, and hooking it to the water line, should be hand tightened only. I got a wrench. Crawling under the toilet, I cranked that water line as tight as it would go.

            The stream stopped. The dripping started. Drip. Drip. Drip. Right down the water line, in a way that made it impossible to catch in a container.

            And that’s why, if you should visit my home and have the unfortunate need for a bathroom run, you’ll find a towel wrapped around the line under my toilet, a towel that has to be replaced daily. Hey, it’s a lot less water than was going down the drain before I started.

            Besides, I know when I’m beaten.

            Note: The toilet has since been replaced … but not by me.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

            I’ve been seen recently with my arm in a sling, and whenever asked I just explained it was for sympathy. My wife put a stop to that when she realized some people thought I was serious. Worse, the people who thought I was really hurt didn’t give me much sympathy, anyway.

            It is true that I didn’t have to use the sling: I’m trying to heal up my tendonitis, otherwise known as lateral epicondylitis. That’s the term I usually use, because it makes people feel bad for me, until they look it up. I got the condition by throwing bricks off to one side, which sounds manly until you realize I was only throwing them a few feet.

            The irony’s not lost on me that demolishing a chimney by hand only got me injured after it was all on the ground.

            The thing is, if I don’t move my arm it’s not all that painful, usually. But I’m right handed, and it’s my right elbow. You don’t realize how much you use an elbow until you’re not supposed to, so I put the sling on as a way to remind me not to use it.

            That only works some, because I cheat. The cheating makes it hurt, then I get angry because I can’t blame anyone else.

            So when I went to the doctor, I asked him how soon this would go away. He replied: “You might die with it.”

            Which is bad enough by itself, but my mind interpreted his words as “You might die from it”, which cause exactly the reaction you can imagine it caused.

            It turns out one of the things that can worsen tendonitis is keyboarding, which in the olden days was called typing, which I do a lot. Now, at work there are three keyboards and three mouses … mice? … um, hand control devices around my work station, and two of my six computer screens are touch screens. There are no duties that don’t involve keyboarding or reaching.

            Then there’s my part time job, which is … well, you’re reading it. I could try handwriting my newspaper stuff, but considering I can’t write with my left hand, that’s kind of pointless.

            Can you imagine the editor trying to transcribe my left hand cursive? “I think he wrote ‘All mimsy were ye borogoves’ … stealing from Lewis Carroll is very odd in a column about home maintenance. Did he get another concussion?”

            I could cut down on my fiction writing, which at the moment is bringing in just enough money to pay for the tea I drink while writing fiction. Have I cut down? Well, I’ve got one book coming out in about a month and another in October, I’m well into the rough draft of a new novel, and I just started working on a collection based on my early columns. That last will probably be called: “They Amputated My Elbow, And Other Tales From A Guy Who Doesn’t Know When To Quit”.

            Or maybe something shorter.

            It’s go through some pain or don’t write at all, and I’d rather give up on chocolate and Mountain Dew than not write, although it would be a close call. So I learned, as people do when a body part hurts, that I use it for a whole lot more than I thought I did. For instance:

            Opening a bottle of Mountain Dew, which takes two hands. I miss that more than anything.

            Tearing open a plastic bag of anything. Yes, I’m thinking chocolate, although it also hurts to open less important things, like food and first aid supplies. I actually have to track down scissors, although my wife would rather I have her do it because, hey – scissors.

            Basically, grasping for anything or reaching for anything hurts, which isn’t a big deal if it’s something small enough to get with my left hand. But I don’t use my left hand, because I haven’t led with my left since my brother beat me up in fourth grade, and that hurt too. Thus the sling, which is there simply to remind me to lead with the left again. I’ve also had some success with anchoring my right hand in a jacket or sweatshirt pocket.

            But that doesn’t get me as much sympathy.

            So that’s my explanation for now, although I’m working on a story that involves something a bit more interesting. Maybe I hurt it rescuing a kitten from a tree, climbing Mount Everest (which is silly, because it’s cold up there), or fighting off whatever female celebrity is popular right now. Whatever else I have to do to get healed up, I’m not going to give up the writing.

            Although if I have to go left handed for my next book signing, I might rethink that.

For those of you who might be around northeast Indiana, I should have a short story in the Christmas insert for this week's Albion New Era, Churubusco News, and Northwest News. The story features characters from three of my works: Storm Chaser, Storm Chaser Shorts, and The Notorious Ian Grant, although it's not directly connected.

In "Another Family", Indiana State Trooper Chance Hamlin and Police Detective Fran Vargas are headed home for the holidays when they encounter a snowstorm ... and inside it, something -- or someone -- much more unexpected.