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I went grocery shopping yesterday and saved $29.75.

I know I did because it says so right on the bottom of the receipt just above the place where I am urged to take a customer survey online and become eligible to win $100. (That’s a package of hot dogs and a six pack of Pepsi these days.)

When did grocery stores become so damned chummy? A little small talk with the checker is nice but I don’t need to have an ongoing personal relationship with corporate Albertsons, Vons and Ralphs.

It really irks me to have to carry a special card identifying me as a Preferred Customer. In fact, I would be quite happy to be an Undesirable Customer and remain totally anonymous if I wouldn’t get hosed at the checkstand for refusing to become a subject of their marketing database.

Once I went shopping at a foreign grocery store in a different city.

“Do you have our rewards card?” the checker asked sweetly.

“No. Just go ahead and give me the ‘screw-you’ price,” I replied. I really did. I said it with a smile but I think it unnerved her a bit. Felt kinda bad about it. Kinda.

When I signed up for the coerced honor of being a Preferred Customer of our neighborhood Albertsons I lied.

That’s what these annoying, albeit minor, intrusions do. They force us to lie. I didn’t want the store to have my phone number so I made one up. It gave me a great feeling of smug satisfaction until the day I arrived at the checkstand without the card and was told, “That’s okay. I’ll look it up. What’s your phone number?” I told her I didn’t know it. Then, I broke down and admitted my rebellious perjury. I looked at my shoes as I did it. I half expected to hear an announcement a moment later on the p.a. system, “Manager to checkstand four…we have a liar at checkstand four!”

Not long after that I was back at the same store. When I told the checker (a different one, thank God,) I didn’t have my card she asked for my phone number and for some reason I don’t quite understand I told her my actual home phone number. I knew it wouldn’t work in the system but I just felt ashamed and wanted to purge myself of my well-deserved reputation as a known charlatan in Albertsons. Guess what? It worked!

My actual phone number was accepted and I was back in the good graces of the Albertsons Corporation! I was, again, a Preferred Customer, praise the Lord!

A moment later I realized why my phone number worked. Somebody else had fabricated a phone number and it just happened to be mine!

Now the checkstand clerks have taken to thanking us by name as a result of their marketing scheme database and as I turned to leave the store that sunny afternoon, awash in the warm renewal of smug satisfaction for having beaten the system the nice lady at the checkstand said, “Thank you and have a nice day, Mr. Martinez!”

Life is good.

3:12. Must sleep. Can’t.

Must.

It’s hot. Throw off the bedspread. Can’t feel the fan.

Such a pretty sound. But it’s so loud.

How can it go on like that all night? And so loud? Most birds don’t make any noise at night. None. Sun goes down, they shut up. This one’s different.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about anything. Think about something else.

I forgot to clean the porch, the front door. And the light globe, too. And the pine cones in the basket. Need to hose them off. Need to get the truck into the shop. Hope it’s not expensive. Can’t afford it. Don’t think about money problems in bed, don’t ever do that. Think of something else. Anything.

Damn, that bird is loud!

“Dammit!”

“I know, Honey. Try to go to sleep.”

That was lame. Try to go to sleep?

3:14. Relax. Let your mind relax. Stop looking at the clock. Don’t think at all. Wait for the weird thoughts, the weird semi-dreams that morph into REM sleep. Don’t clench. Relax.

How many different types of birds is it mocking? How many different songs is it singing? Fascinating, actually. But so loud! Louder than the party and the fight on the street the other night when we called the cops. The bird is actually louder than a bunch of fighting drunks!

Still, it’s such a pretty sound. I’ll probably miss it when it’s gone. Won’t be able to sleep. LOL.

Wish I could call the cops on the bird. Wish I had a pellet gun. No, I don’t. Of course I don’t. Wouldn’t shoot it. Couldn’t find it anyway. It’s in a tree outside, hidden by moonshadows. It’s everywhere. Sounds like it’s right here in the bedroom. It’s out there.

3:46. What? Must have dozed off. But I don’t remember, so it doesn’t count. The bird is still singing. Carolann is thrashing and moaning.

It’s cold. The fan is cold.

Pull up the bedspread.

Relax.

Nearly sixty years ago my dad did something that seems pretty goofy now, but at the time we were all amazed and impressed. He was very proud of himself.

This was back in the fifties when TV was black-and-white, we only had two or three channels and a huge number of American households didn’t even have a TV yet. Nobody had more than one. That would have been as silly and pointless as having two cars!

TV commercials in those days seem quaintly funny in retrospect. Some seem flat-out unbelievable. Click here and check this out:

“More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette!”

The commercials annoyed my dad. Not the messages themselves, just the fact that there were any. He thought all TV programs should be absolutely free. I don’t know if he ever considered why anybody would bother to create them if they were.

I don’t think it bothered him much that his favorite program, The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, was presented by the Gillette Safety Razor company. Boxing was purely formatted and made sense: three minutes of two guys trying to kill each other followed by a one minute commercial and then back to the fight.

I think Dad felt that having us watch a commercial in that situation was more a matter of respecting the fighters’ private dignity than commercialism. I think he also figured — as an afterthought — it was better that his six-year-old son watch an Old Spice commercial rather than be subjected to the between-rounds visuals of two guys sweating, bleeding and spitting teeth into a bucket while receiving one minute of facial reconstructive surgery as fat men yelled at them before they go back out to resume the effort to kill or be killed.

Dad was sensitive like that.

Incongruous as it seems now, any of these commercials might have popped up between fight rounds. I remember them all:

“Bosco gives me iron, and sunshine vitamin D!”

But Dad seemed to think that TV commercials were essentially the same thing as somebody intruding on our private home life. It was almost as if John Cameron Swayze or George Fenneman were making a habit of walking right into our living room every few minutes and interrupting our evening’s family entertainment.

So, what did he do?

My dad invented the MUTE switch!

I kid you, not.

Decades before the invention of TiVo and the insufferable mysteries of universal remote control units, my dad attached a long cord to one end of our TV’s speaker through the rear of the console. The other end was attached to a simple two-position plastic switch that allowed him to click the sound on and off at will!

Sure, we still had to watch and wait for the commercials to end but we didn’t have to actually listen to stuff like this…

“That’s a woman for ya! I ask her to get my shirts whiter… “

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

It’s the pause in our week. It’s the moment we put down our worries, responsibilities and busy thoughts.

Just for a moment.

— My hummingbird is sipping nectar from the backyard feeder I filled last week. He goes away and comes back for seconds.

— The barbecue smoker stands proud and manly on its pad, ready for the lovely babyback ribs it will soon receive and slowly perfect over the long, busy day.

— Over breakfast as my wife is hurrying off to work she has this conversation with the seven-year-old:

“That’s a nice outfit you’re wearing, Nana!”

“Thank you, Sweetie!”

“It looks really old!”

— I drive to the newspaper stand outside the donut shop on Route 66. The usual crowd is there, old men with their coffee and cigarettes enjoying the chilly morning air, the rising sun and each other’s company. Some read newspapers. One has a racing form. They all sit alone at separate tables while talking to each other from the privacy of their individual space.

A similar scene is going on at the nearby Starbucks but it’s an entirely different crowd. They have lattes and laptops. No smoke; less conversation.

The sun is fully up. Yard sales are underway.

I have things that need doing and it’s time.

Saturday morning is fleetingly sweet and perfect. I pray for another one next week.

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

Did you ever have a nickname? Did you ever want one?

I’m betting the answer is yes to at least one of those questions, although most people never have a nickname that sticks and is used more or less by everybody they know. For the sake of the discussion here I’m not talking about diminutive forms of your actual given name like Rosie for Rosemary or Dick for Richard. (Now, there’s a discussion we need to have some day.)

No, I’m talking about nicknames that have absolutely nothing to do with anything.

People with… shall we say unusual first names often have a nickname like Bud. I don’t think any little boy was ever called Bud or Buddy on his birth certificate but the world is full of guys called Bud.  When you get to know them better you learn the truth.  These guys typically have real names so weird even their own parents wouldn’t use them.  I have two friends everybody calls Bud though their given names are Harley and Clerin.  No disrespect intended but those are odd names.  My own father dodged a bullet because his middle name, like John Wayne’s real first name, was Marion.  It was apparently a fashionable name in the 1920s but please, who is going to name his son Marion these days without also teaching him martial arts so he can defend himself?

Girls typically acquire nicknames that begin as simple endearments: Kitty, Angel, Candy, Missy, Boots, Peaches.

Seriously, one of my dearest friends in the world is a woman named Ruth but almost nobody knows that. She is called Boots by everybody. And even though I have asked her why I can’t remember her answer. She’s just Boots, that’s all.

I also really knew an adult woman called Peaches though I never heard of anybody called Plums or Apricots.  Academy Award-winning Actress Gwyneth Paltrow has a daughter whose legal given name is Apple but that’s a Hollywood affectation that we can shrug off even if the poor little girl never will.

Don’t get me started on what became of Chastity Bono. We all saw that coming forty years ago.

I had a high school baseball coach who called me Ted. That was because I was a left-handed power hitting outfielder like the real Ted whose last name was also Williams.  I thought that was cool but nobody else used it. No surprise there. You can’t use a real name for a nickname. If your name is Mark but one guy calls you Ralph you think everybody else will pick up on that? Nah. I don’t think so.

For the past twenty years I’ve gone on regular camping trips with a bunch of guys I used to work with. One of them started calling me Hoss ten or fifteen years ago because I am large and have a beard and always wear a cowboy hat. It seemed kind of fitting and I’m fond of it but only from these guys. I don’t want my son’s in-laws or my wife or my mom calling me Hoss.

I guess no matter how you look at it a nickname is a term of endearment even if the name is something less than flattering like Shorty or  Bug.  My wife and her first husband used to call their premie son Bug because he weighed only four pounds when he was born. He lives with us now. He’s about to turn thirty and looks nothing at all like a bug. I’ll just leave it at that.

Nicknames are interesting. What’s yours? Or what would you like to be called?

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

I went to the dentist yesterday.

As long as I can remember I have had lousy teeth. As a child in the fifties and sixties I developed multiple tooth cavities by the time I was ten. In those days the only solution was a terrifyingly slow belt-driven drill that splashed pieces of enamel everywhere and literally caused smoke to waft from your mouth.

The dentist had to stop every so often to let the drill cool down so he could continue to torture me, unavoidably.

He said hopelessly soothing, sympathetic things. All I remember is that the shots of Novocaine were excrutiatingly painful and seemed useless in the long run. The pain of having my teeth drilled shot like a volley of needles through every nerve of my rigid body. The antiseptic smell, swathed in wisps of tooth smoke, was nauseating.

We didn’t have air conditioning. The doctor, his assistant and I all sweated profusely.

This went on for hours.

I was a child. I cried piteously before, during and after each visit.

State of the art dental science fifty years ago was arguably worse than fifty years prior when all a dentist could do was give you a stiff shot of whiskey and yank a tooth out of your head. That, at least, was quick.

They also did shaves and haircuts.

Yesterday I received two root canals.

The room was cool, my mouth was numb and my head was clear. Fearlessly and without a single flash of pain I chatted amiably before and after the procedures with the dentist and his assistant.

The only moment of discomfort I felt was when the assistant leaned into me as I was supine before her. Her right boob accidentally mashed against my arm which I was unable to extricate for fear that any movement might be misconstrued as something inappropriate.

Fifty years ago Dr. Clifford would have never filled my mouth with tools. He needed to get his hands in there.

Yesterday my mouth was propped open by a rubber block the size of a PT Cruiser spare tire. I had a wire bracket framing my mouth. Stretched across that was a thin, stretchy sheet of rubber which allowed the dentist to isolate the tooth he was working on and not forget where he was.

That seems like a good idea to me.

I also had a saliva-sucking vacuum hose in my mouth, constantly on the move and under the impeccable direction and guidance of the booby assistant.

There were clamps and odd-looking gadgets, a pair of pliers, I believe, and I’m not positive but pretty sure he also hung a rearview mirror and a rubber-bulbed bicycle horn on my mouth.

“Feeling comfortable?” he asked.

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved