The Writer's Poke

Panera Bread likes to know its customer. So when you place an order, they ask for your name. The local Panera still asks for your name even though they now hand out those coaster-size buzzers that let you know when your order is ready for pick up. And they still ask you for your name even if you hand them a credit card that has your name clearly imprinted on the front of it. When I go there, I always give my name, and then I spell it out for them, just in case my tongue is overly lazy that day, or just in case the ever-attentive employee taking my order has pieces of cheese stuck in her ears. My name is a one-syllable, four letter word. And this is what I say when they ask me my name: “Bret: B-R-E-T.” When I pick up my order, I like to look at the receipt to see what they’ve heard me say. If they happen to spell Brett or Brent or even Brad, that’s no big deal. People often mistake a Bret for any one of those. But here’s the kicker: on multiple occasions, the name written on my receipt ...

Human beings are a funny lot. For most of our history, we believed that we were the center of the universe, and that everything revolved around us. Guess what? Even though now we seemingly know better -- that the Earth revolves around the sun, that our sun is just one of billions of suns in billions of galaxies -- we don't. Most people simply don't sit around and contemplate how small and insignificant we -- and our planet, and our place in the universe -- really are. What we lack, in other words, is perspective. And maybe that's a built-in defense mechanism. In fact, I'm sure it is. Growing up, we all experience the same thing on an individual level, right? We all start out in life believing that we are the center of the universe. We are the protagonist in our own play, and everyone around us simply shares our stage. It's hard to think that with a planet of 7 billion people, even if we were "one in a million," that still means that there are thousands of...

I haven't always been conformable in this skin. Back in junior high and high school, specifically, I would leaf through pictures in the yearbook and compare myself to the other guys. What does this guy have that I don't have, I'd ask? One guy in particular was everyone's darling. But why the girls were ga-ga over him and not me, I never understood. I'm sure that there were times when I would have been glad to trade lives with him. But during our senior year, the girl he was dating -- the girl that I, of course, wanted to be dating -- ended up pregnant. And when that happened, that pretty quickly put an end to me wishing to be him. Then, I was very thankful that I was me. Virgin, yes. But father, no. Have you ever wanted to trade lives with someone? Why do you imagine that their life is so much better than your own? "Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another." -- Marquis Condorcet

One lucky African child gets to drink Salma's milk. Yummy.

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed in rain water beside the white chickens. -- "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams You know, I've taught "The Red Wheelbarrow" as a serious poem to my writing students for years and years. And I've told them that they could analyze it for a full 3-to-5 page essay. So, yes, I appreciate that poem. But as I was brushing my hair this morning, I looked into the bathtub, saw some of Octavia's toys, and this "parody" just came to me. Then I wiped away a tear, knowing that I'll never be as widely anthologized for my stunning, impressionistic brilliance as W.C. Williams is. Truth be told, I spent less than five minutes "composing" my poem, which is just about as long as it took Williams to write his. So why is Williams' poem famous and mine never will be? Is it just because he wrote his first? Is it because his objects are better than mine, somehow more essential to a symbolic u...

"Sometimes you tell the truth Like you're pulling taffy." -- from "Taffy" by Lisa Loeb How in the world is pulling taffy related to telling the truth? According to http://www.exploratorium.edu/ , pulling taffy " aerates it, or incorporates many tiny air bubbles throughout the candy. This makes it lighter and chewier." The process itself can be quite strenuous to the one doing the pulling, because it requires "stretching it out and folding it in half, then stretching and folding again, over and over, until you may reach the point of exhaustion." Now imagine telling the truth like this. But then remember the pay off -- a "lighter and chewier" truth. Develop another metaphor for telling the truth that is as innovative and as descriptive as Lisa Loeb's "Taffy." "If you're going to tell the truth, be funny of they'll kill you." -- Billy Wilder

Some contestants on American Idol know they suck. They just want their fifteen minutes of fame, and if that means that they have to make asses of themselves, then that's exactly what they're willing to do. Why we watch, though, and I admit it's a bit sad, is to see the hopes and dreams smashed to bits of those that genuinely believe they have Kelly Clarkson's voice. When they sing, they don't hear themselves as being capable of making dogs cry. Quite the opposite; these people think they're superstars. What's even more scary is that some people are "tone deaf" in much more profound ways. Take the political party you love to hate, the religious leader that has the direct hotline to God, or the smirking boss at work that never asks for your advice. Describe the attitude that makes people "tone deaf" to different ideas and alternative points of view. "It's like Randy went deaf this year. I don't know what happened." -- S...

The florescent light in the bathroom worked fine, as long as you didn't switch it off. Doing so caused it to twitch and flicker. Sometimes it would come on full strength, but other times it wouldn't. Our solution was a piece of grey tape. We put the grey tape over the light switch, and the light stayed on for six solid months. The nearest Home Depot is only 3 miles away, and replacement bulbs cost less than $7. Swapping out a pair of florescent bulbs is not a major home improvement project, either. It takes about 5 minutes to unscrew the cover, take out the bulbs, and pop in the replacements. Yet, no one wanted to go through the minor inconvenience of changing the light. What's the most simple thing you've put off doing? For how long, and why? "How soon 'not now' becomes 'never'." -- Martin Luther

As my parents continue to grow older, I often wonder what it will be like to live without them. My assumption is that I will, in fact, outlive them, although stranger things have happened. We live a few hundred miles apart, and so each visit is important. They could live for years more, but I can measure their lives in the number of days that we'll actually be together physically. Some of my friends have already experienced the loss of a mother or father, or both. What's even more amazing to me, though, is that some have cut off all ties with a living parent. In other words, their parents have became the living dead. What will they feel when their parents actually die? Will they regret the years of life lost, or will they stand by their decision? To the best of my knowledge, none of my friends who have stopped talking to their parents were sexually abused, but all would claim a never-ending mental abuse. One of the toughest transitions for parents is to recognize when a son or ...

Empty your mind of all thought and belief. Do you believe in God? Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not against the idea of God. In fact, I would side with Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan, who believed that we have no way of knowing whether God exists or not, but to make the leap of faith and live as though He does is highly illogical. In no other realm are people allowed to make such illogical leaps of faith. Rather than giving in and believing, why not withhold judgement and live a life of curious inquiry? Other God critics, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens come to mind, seem to have more at stake in proving God's non-existence. Perhaps this is a natural knee-jerk reaction to a world that just overwhelming assumes that an Old Man in the Sky exists. To be neutral, then -- to be agnostic -- is not an option, because the voices of the believers are too loud. Recently, someone tried to use the line on me that it doesn't matter if God exists or not; we should simply li...

How much is virginity worth? Almost all of us probably gave it away for nothing, but one twenty-two year old Women's Studies graduate student decided to auction hers off to the highest bidder. Somewhat incredibly, the bidding has risen to 3.7 million dollars. Are there really no more twenty-two year old virgins left in the world? The student admitted that she found the bidding war funny, as virginity isn't even valued anymore. Apparently it is, and the irony is that it took something like this stunt to prove it. Explain the value of virginity. OR What would you do for 3.7 million dollars? "It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue ." -- Voltaire

I was one of those people who never took care of their car. Why bother? I thought. First, the repair would cost more than the 1978 Oldsmobile Delta 88 was worth. And second, I didn't have the time to sit around waiting for a mechanic to fix my car. I had to live, damn it. When the muffler finally fell off, though, I knew that I would have to buy a new one. So I took it to Midas, and five hours later, I had a new $400 muffler on my less than $400 car. And I thought to myself, "Great. That's the last muffler I will ever need to buy." Yes, I was naive, but then again, in a literal sense, that was the truth. Midas guarantees all mufflers for the life of the car, and if I had decided to drive that car until the rust had totally disintegrated it down to the tires, maybe I wouldn't have ever had to buy another muffler. The real point is, though, that no matter how many times you go to the mechanic, the doctor, the dentist, the grocery store, the mall, the post office, th...

This may not be a new idea, but it's a new experience that I'm now living with. Everyone knows that I'm a father, and it's a great conversation starter. "How old is Octavia now?" they might ask. And I tell them, following the baby protocol by giving her age in months. What I've discovered is that Octavia is my walking, breathing calendar. My wife and I have been together for ten years, for example, but the passage of married time isn't that noticeable. On the other hand, I've been with Octavia from the very beginning. And even "before" the beginning, for that matter. When she turned 15 months old, it struck me. Not only is she 15 months old, but I'm 15 months older than I was when she was born! Maybe that's not an earth-shaking realization, but she will always be my age-marker, and as she grows older, I will see in her my own aging. How do you feel about aging? What reminds you that you're growing older? "Thirty-five is a...

Every week he would come over for an hour, and we would work through one of the Watchtower publications. We did this my entire senior year in high school. These sessions were interesting to me, but I was never converted. In a Watchtower publication, you read through an "argument" that's always heavily documented with Bible verses. Then at the end of the article, you're asked to review questions that direct you back to the verses you've read, or to points made in the article's argument. I found this frustrating, as there was no incentive to think outside of scripture, or beyond what the article said. For example, one article talked about the idea of the Watchmaker. I didn't know that this metaphor had actually been around for 200 years. And unfortunately at that time I didn't know that Richard Dawkins had recently written an entire book refuting the idea. All I knew was that according to the article, I was supposed to see the logic that humans must have...

As I'm writing this, a virus is spreading across Facebook. It's called "25 Things about Me." The idea is to brainstorm a list of 25 things about yourself, and then post it for your friends to read. When you post it, you "tag" 25 of your friends, asking them to post 25 things about themselves. And so on. And most people, if they're bored and have nothing better to do, are pretty considerate about complying with the request. If you care about the people doing the posting, then the lists can be somewhat revealing, and at least mildly interesting. If nothing else, the lists show you which of your friends are creative, and which ones are willing to reveal real secrets. What 25 things did I post about myself? To find out, you'll just have to join my friends list. Try this activity yourself. Brainstorm a list of 25 things about yourself. Did any of the items surprise you? Are there any items on this list that you wouldn't want people to know? "Onl...

Once you hit your mid-30s, it's probably common to wonder: "Where do I fit in? Am I young? Am I old? Most likely, I'm somewhere in between, but what does that mean?" My daughter is still a toddler, but I have friends my age who have kids in high school. Are we really the same age? In all likelihood, they will be grandparents in just a few years. Can I really be the same age as potential grandparents? Such thoughts make the mind shut down. Just this morning someone my age said, "We're young enough," and the idea really struck me. There will come a point when I might not be able to say that. What age is that I wonder? When I reach that age, will I automatically know it? One thing for certain: I plan to age the way nature intends. When I start to go bald, I will shave my head -- no comb-overs for me, thank you. No tummy-tucks, no face-lifts, no fancy hair dyes to cover the gray (sorry Emmit Smith). No pretending that I'm not getting older, and that at ...

If you ever watch House Hunters , you know that most people have very limited vocabularies. Q: "So, John, what do you think of the kitchen?" A: "It's nice ." Q: "And how did your lobotomy go?" A: "It turned out very nicely ." Sure, it makes a great drinking game, but why can't the average person be more descriptive? Why is it that everything is "nice," or if we're even more jazzed by what we see, we think that "very nice" adequately expresses the idea? Doesn't that mean that there are various levels of "nice," and if so, why are we so opposed to using a more specific word to more vividly describe what we're seeing. And more importantly, what we're feeling. In contrast, some MTV "reality shows," such as Parental Control and Next seem horribly scripted. While watching, you just know that the people involved in the shows would never talk that way or that they would even be capable of ...

One of the little things I like to do when I stay in a hotel is check out the number of escort services listed in the town's yellow pages. Any city that's moderately big has at least a few, but probably no place has more than Las Vegas. Hell, if the phone company was smart, they'd create a whole separate directory -- maybe instead of the yellow pages they could call it the black book (or the red-light book?). Las Vegas is one of the few places where such matters are not just hidden in phone books and industrial areas. Skin is advertised right on the Strip. Of course I've noticed that the farther north on the Strip you go, up around the Stratosphere, for example, the more likely you are to find Mexican-Americans handing out baseball-cards of Veronica and Amy, and maybe the twins -- Misty and Sarah.  Most people tend to walk on by, ignoring the outstretched offerings of the smut peddlers. But the last time my wife and I hit the Strip, we collected all the cards we could...

Denny's used its Super Bowl ad to invite America to a free Grand Slam breakfast, and families with litters of children responded. The offer was good from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., and when I headed to my local Denny's at 1 p.m., the parking lot was still completely full, and cars were parked down the street. Even the adjacent vacant lot was half-full. All this for a free Grand Slam that retails for four bucks on weekdays. People were standing in a line that extended out the door, patiently waiting in 10 degree weather for up to half an hour. For Denny's. Was this an advertising stunt gone wrong? "I'd hate to be a waitress working at Denny's today," I heard one Nascar -jacket wearing gentleman say and then spit three feet from me. At that point, I decided a free meal wasn't worth the hassle. After tax, a coke, and a tip, I was planning on it costing me at least five dollars anyway, and so I headed down the street to Culvers .  Did Denny's really lose any mo...

If I were somehow granted three wishes, my initial reaction would be to wish for health, wealth, and happiness. But why wish for things that are within my power to control? That is, at least to some extent, I control the power to be healthy, wealthy, and happy. To "wish" for these things seems to indicate that they must be given to me by a power greater than myself. And I reject that. So what's worth wishing for? What about something like World Peace? That's something that a lot of people would like to see happen, but is it worth wishing for? What I'm working through in my own mind is: when does the wish eliminate a person's willingness to work for it? If we can work for world peace, then why sit around wishing for it? Save the wishes for the impossible. If it's possible, you don't need a Genie. Just the willingness to believe and work hard. So, if you had three wishes, what would you wish for? And more importantly, knowing there's no one around to...