Alumni causes in need of community CPR, lifeblood

Spring means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But to me, springs over the past 11 years have meant, “Oh crap, it’s alumni banquet season!” While most people are exchanging winter sweaters for T-shirts, planting flower beds and praying for April showers, I’m drowning in the details of preparation for the annual scholarship awards banquet.

Why? Because I am secretary of the alumni association, as well as president of the alumni foundation, the group that handles the scholarship funds and awards process. And this time of year is when it all comes together, kinda sorta.

But the bigger answer to the why is this: BECAUSE I CARE! Some days more than others. And because I have remained local. After living in a couple somewhere elses, I returned to my hometown in 2003 and rolled up my sleeves. Actually, I became involved in alumni business 14 years ago through the officer succession process.

Those of you who actively care about our community and who have never moved away or who have moved back, and those of you who have voluntarily moved here and adopted our community, know the unwritten expectation we maintain the local sense of Mayberry nostalgia for former residents to enjoy when they return for holidays and special events. We also show hometown hospitality to visitors.

It’s similar to the movie “Funny Farm,” where Chevy Chase has the whacky residents of his town behave like Norman Rockwell picture characters come to life for the prospective buyers of the real estate he needs to unload. Everyone lives happily ever after. But my real-life scenario still has me knee-deep in questionable clover and headed to a hospital-operated funny farm, clad in a white jacket with eight-foot wraparound sleeves.

Since some of you will be too busy doing similar logic-defying feats of community service to come and visit me after my official break from reality occurs, let me give you an accurate, behind-the-scenes breakdown of my annual breakdown. For column purposes, I will remove the automatic flight-attendantlike “thank you for coming to this year’s annual alumni banquet” smile from my face long enough to show you the darker reality of my reality.

Ask any volunteer organizer who is trying to do good for the greater: it ain’t easy! Youth sports program don’t materialize out of thin air; maple trees don’t tap themselves and deliver their sap to the condenser; harvest dinners aren’t on auto-bake; blood drives don’t spring up without cultivation; parades don’t form on their own and holiday food drives require a huge amount of drive!

And it’s not like my single-parenthood, ordinarily butt-kicking life of home ownership, multiple jobs to keep the wolf from the door and other volunteer work and church responsibilities suddenly comes to a screeching halt so I can be in charge of all things alumni. Hey, maybe I should try to get that wolf to help! Surely, he could lick stamps or something.

Speaking of stamps, my alumni association role has me monitoring a post office box I can get to only on weekends. Saturday mornings begin with my doing association and foundation banking before I even think about my own banking or to-do list. I am also keeper of 10 boxes of alumni records. Yippee!

I’d complain more, but there’s not time. The most frequent refrain I hear from the armchair quarterbacks is, “Why don’t you just get someone else to help?” When I last checked, a line of volunteers wasn’t exactly forming. Those who are already doing are way too busy, while those who never do are doing just that.

Each year, alumni association members beat the bushes to get alumni from successive classes to assume officer roles and a few hours of annual work. We still don’t have representatives from the high school graduating classes of 1990, 1991 and 1992 to help. A134-year tradition is at stake due to alumni apathy.

To quote sociologist Robert Putnam, this “bowling alone” mentality is discouraging when we need a league of support. Alumni association officers are talking about opening things up to non-alumni community members to strengthen participation. Nothing funny farm about that. Lack of community caring is the real craziness.

Chocolate toothpaste targets sweet teeth

Back in January, an item in Bloomberg Businessweek caught my attention: chocolate toothpaste. Maybe because I needed to write “toothpaste” on my grocery list, or maybe because tooth-brushing remains an ongoing battle between me and my children. I see it as a big deal while they see as a big pain my harping about brushing.

I refuse to give up on encouraging better dental hygiene; however, I have far better things to do than post myself as dental sentry outside the bathroom after meals. I will be glad when they are old enough to become romantically involved with a someone who can take over my post on the plaque and breath brigade.

My fondest fantasy is to be a wall-adhered fly when the object of my son’s affection suddenly refuses to kiss him, complaining, “Dude, have you been eating dog poop?” or something similarly offensive regarding his rank breath. Hopefully that line comes from someone who tends to tell everyone everything. Having his abysmal oral hygiene outed might do my son some good in the long run. Or at least delay his denture adventure years.

Thank goodness those Proctor & Gamble (P & G) folks cited by Bloomberg reporter Kyle Stock have paired a great habit with a great flavor and come up with a sure-fire solution to the social ills of rotting teeth and rancid breath. There’s chocolate-flavored everything else, so why not toothpaste? I’m sure there’s a market for it. Just not with me.

I’m not big on chocolate. Oh, it’s okay, but what’s the point in eating or brushing with something that’s likely highly-caloric when it warrants only an “okay” within your ranking system? I’m not certain of the number of calories in chocolate toothpaste. Didn’t notice. Perhaps I was too busy quelling my revulsion at the three new chocolate-centric flavors P & G introduced: Mint Chocolate Trek, Lime Spearmint Zest and Vanilla Mint Spark.

Again, while I cannot declare this a case of my somewhat conservative, jaded opinions dipping into over-reactivity, where the heck did they come up with those flavors?! Hopefully it wasn’t while rolling and smoking the spearmint leaves.

What about Lime Spearmint Zest? That’s about as ambivalent a flavor as you could conceive. There’s a reason limes don’t grow in the same climate that produces spearmint. And then comes Vanilla Mint Spark, which smacks of people-pleasing – something for everyone. Neither vanilla nor mint has much of a kick, so the spark part of the equation had better get busy and bring the other two flavors along, to somewhere further along the dental health road less-travelled.

Revolting taste issues aside, another potential downside to the new chocolate toothpaste is if it goes the way of Dairy Queen treats, other companies will want to get into the action and candy bar flavors of toothpaste will flood the market: “Real Reese’s Pieces in every tube!” Chunks of actual candy will get stuck in teeth, which, of course, will necessitate brushing with some other, more neutral toothpaste. The solution will beget yet another problem.

I can’t rule out the non-preventive arm of the National Denture Designers Council is a silent partner in this chocolate-flavored toothpaste coup, seeing as how its membership stands to directly benefit from the fallout, literally when people’s teeth start to fall out. They may be realizing gains on both sides of the market by investing in P & G chocolate toothpaste stock. Faster than you can say “vicious cycle.”

“Chocolate toothpaste is squarely aimed at winning new customers. Maybe it can shake up the toothpaste market the way P & G’s Swiffer swept up mop sales or its Tide detergent ‘pods’ have been cleaning up in the laundry category,” wrote Stock.

My suggestion is for P & G to piggyback on those two successful ideas and develop a Swiffer toothbrush with the same cleaning potential. Why not create some time-released Tide dental detergent pods that would save the bother of squeezing out just the right amount of toothpaste? Pop one in your mouth and call it good.

Who needs chocolate when you can wash out your kids’ mouths with soap? My mom was way ahead of the curve on this one!

Musical last rites played for death row pianos

Five of society’s throw-away pianos were lined up on death row at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store. I conferred last rites by playing them each again, to assure them they were still loved. I hope they end up going to a good home and not some unsavory end.

One of my favorite haunts along the used store beat is the local Habitat for Humanity Re-Store, where donated building materials, household items and tools are sold to raise money to support the organization’s mission. You never know what you’re in store for at the Re-Store. Nowhere is the adage more true, that one man’s junk is another’s treasure. Note also, sometimes it’s universally agreed that junk is junk.

Most of the time, I don’t buy anything. But I’ve found stuff-watching to be nearly as entertaining as people-watching. And this is coming from a compulsive people-watcher. I find old stuff, even the really bad stuff useful in that it makes me think. Sometimes, those thoughts amount to, “What could the designer of that have been thinking?!” And I silently conclude that he/she obviously hadn’t been.

My children, when they are with me, have picked up my bad habit of examining objects and making judgmental pronouncements aloud, including, but not limited to “Good concept, but poor execution” and “Here’s evidence that upholsterers do more drugs than previously suspected” or “I certainly hope they fired the idiot who thought that color of paint might actually match the interior of anyone’s house.”

If you followed our family around the Habitat Re-Store, you would conclude we are fairly discerning when it comes to evaluating and purchasing used store items. This is a crucial skill for second-hand shoppers. Nothing ruins an assumed “great deal” more than later at home discovering the zipper on the jacket won’t run up the entire track, the track lights are not evenly spaced, or the space key is missing on the antique typewriter you bought for decoration.

Sometimes, I go to second-hand stores just to look because the items I find create a wave of nostalgia for simpler, albeit gaudier times. The vintage goods (and bads) remind me of proms past, math tests passed, and products made to last. Say that three times fast! It’s comforting to be among past-their-prime items; they remind me that at least duct tape is not my final solution.

While it’s nice people think to donate things for charity sale, some of their donations should have been made curbside and gone directly into the trash. I mean, really, are there people who enjoy drinking from a glass with a large, jagged piece missing from the rim? And damaged, hand-painted Christmas ornaments should be used to decorate one’s own garbage bin, not a stranger’s Christmas tree, no matter how economically unfortunate the stranger.

But somehow, I feel different with the five “Charlie Brown Christmas Tree” equivalent pianos I saw lined up just inside of the door at Habitat’s Re-Store. Too big to be thrown into the trash, they were sent to silently await their fate at the hands of a disinterested public. I felt moved to make them feel alive again. Or at least I could dispense last rites.

Seating myself at the amazingly well-preserved walnut bench of a leather-accented, spinet version of the 1940s Wurlitzer I grew up playing, I became a musical sister Helen Prejean. I presumed and indulged that piano’s silent “Dead Man Walking” request by whipping out and playing from a book of hymns I had brought just for the occasion. Someone needed to honor this aging veteran of music lessons and family sing-a-longs in its final hours. I doubted anyone would be saving Private Ryan’s piano.

By the sound of things, this one was beyond rescue. Not so for the neighboring huge, dark Grinnell Brothers upright that sang with stout-hearted cheer under my fingertips. Although senior statesman among the group, it had maintained its composure and much of its last tuning. It deserved far better than the bright orange $24.99 price tag that adorned its cabinet: a cozy home and a real family to love it.

I couldn’t imagine an offense great enough that got it sent to death row. As a further indignity, someone had taped to it a Pinterest page showing how to convert an old, scrap piano into a backyard fountain. I turned my head away in dismay. I have no trouble watching the local cable channel’s “adopt a dog that’s slated for euthanasia” pleas, but the destruction of a should-be-loved musical instrument? Well, that’s criminal.

Driven to distraction results in car kick-out

On my way to work, traffic began to slow a bit. I could see some white lights flashing. Instinctively, I knew it couldn’t be a pothole repair crew because . . . well, you know how that goes, or rather doesn’t go. So what was the holdup? Somebody hit a deer? I needed to know. You toy with making me late to work and you owe me an explanation. And it had better be a good one!

As I neared the flashing light vehicle, I noticed a body up ahead of it. Not a deer carcass, but something smaller and more mobile: an animal of the Homo Sapiens variety – a middle school boy, carrying a backpack and running ahead of the car. Hmm. There’s a story there. And no doubt a good one!

I considered pulling over up ahead of the car and getting out to take a photo and a few comments. But the expressions on the faces of the boy and driver, whom I assumed was his mother, told me to mind my own damned business, like they no doubt would have if I’d actually stopped. Neither appeared in the mood for a “media moment” courtesy of me.

So I pretended to myself I wasn’t stopping in order to get to work on time and I also didn’t want to create a secondary traffic hazard, making countless innocent others late to work. Deep down, the truth was I was afraid to deal with a mother who had just ordered her son out of the car on a Monday morning. I’d sooner wrestle a nursing mama Grizzly or a hungry alligator. I know exactly where she fell on the ferocity scale because I have been that mother, after a childhood of having been that boy.

Monday mornings stink. They serve to reinforce how little you got done on your weekend to-do list. After two days of having a little time to yourself, Mondays force you back to doing things on someone else’s to-do list. Granted, that person signs your paycheck, but it’s annoying to swap out slippers for heeled leather shoes just to prove your work ethic worth.

My Sunday goes from the nerve-wracking free-for-all of getting protesting kids out the door in one piece for church, to letting it all hang out during the afternoon, to silently cursing the way that day of unrest picks up momentum after 6 PM, with me frantically trying to accomplish all I had set forth for myself while simultaneously uncovering procrastinated homework and unsigned notes from school.

Looking back, I recognize the real reason my parents served frozen pizza and popcorn on Sunday nights was not due to a special family “Bonanza” watching tradition, but as a sanity-saving measure. With four children with unfinished homework, student papers to grade and cows to milk, the frozen pizza and popcorn was more of a football maneuver: drop back and punt.

I can still feel the cleated foot of my mother’s frustration kicking my butt into Monday morning. No penalty flags for unnecessary roughness; level of force dependent upon the size of the science project I’d been procrastinating.

Barbaric Monday mornings were continuations of a brutal Sunday night, when all that was left undone came crashing down on both perpetrators and unsuspecting victims. The only thing worse than being the sassy one kicked out of the family car was to be the witless witness to yet another Jerry Springer-style vehicular episode.

“I’m sick of your crap! I’m not driving another mile with you in my car. You’re EVIL!” my mother pronounced, slamming on the brakes. “Get out!” And I did. But instead of following me, like the good mother I witnessed following her son, my mother drove off! In retaliation, I hid behind some pine trees so she couldn’t find me when she guiltily returned to the scene of the crime.

When my mother eventually spotted me, I upped the ante by refusing to get back into her car. I made her beg until she cried, like I was doing her a favor. “You’re a terrible parent,” I chastised, back on a roll inside the vehicle. “Ben Cartwright never kicked Little Joe off his horse.”

 

This side of adulthood not very letter-worthy

Being a new teenager isn’t easy. With voices cracking, appetites growing out of control, and hair sprouting everywhere, it often seems more like demonic possession than angelic adolescence on the way to stabilized maturity, as if that pans out to be anything other than a lofty ideal for most of us.

Being the parent of a new teenager isn’t easy, either. In addition to all the other variables I haven’t been on top of for a number of years, I now have to contend with acne anguish, burgeoning grocery bills and surging hormonal behavior that pings between defiant and dependent. If my children ever had empathy for my socio-economic shortcomings, it’s been self-centrically severed, along with their spirit of helpfulness.

Even concepts as basic and predictable as math have left them. It started after my son, Connor, turned 13 last November. As of January 1, that number was verbally converted (by him) as being “almost 14” or “14 later this year,” on the days when he feels optimistic about his future. But often he isn’t.

I am partly to blame for his pessimism. It’s not as if my adult life during my son’s formative years has been something to write home about, unless you like reading tear-stained letters that serve as involuntary Dear Johns to the good life I thought was to be mine. Put into words, my dispatch from this side of adulthood would read something like this:

“Hey kids, I’m having a downright awful time here in the Adulthoodland. It’s no picnic, but more like a drive-thru with unaffordable prices, terrible service and a speaker system that’s on the fritz. They must not hear what I actually ordered because they always give me something else.

“It’s Crazy Town all the time without a weekend pass. Did I mention the other adults here speak a different language? Despite 32 straight years of being exposed to it, I still don’t understand what’s being said a lot of the time. Maybe it’s me and not the speaker system that’s on the fritz.

“Some people ask if I’m on vacation, but that assumes I’m having a good time. It’s more like being on an endless working vacation, with no time to see the sights. In recent years, the only real vacation feel of my adulthood experience has been akin to the airport losing my luggage, donating my wallet and credit cards to an amusement park ride that also made me sick, and having to use the last of my traveler’s checks in place of the missing toilet paper in an overly rustic campground bathroom. Thank God I know better than to drink the water. And it’s getting harder to refuse to drink the Kool-Aid.”

No wonder Connor is ambivalent about growing up. With glowing scouting reports like mine, it’s a wonder he hasn’t gone on a hunger strike and slathered his entire body with Oil of Olay to try and prevent further physiological forward motion.

“I don’t want to have to grow up, mom!” Connor lamented the other day. “Pretty soon I will be old enough to take driver’s training and I already know you won’t agree on the car I want to get.” This is pure conjecture, as it assumes I can afford the payments, insurance and gas for our existing vehicle.

“So just get me a cell phone, instead,” he switched subjects and down-sold. Good debate tactic, son! “That way people can get a hold of me whenever they need to.” Silly boy. Being available for others 24/7 is a bullet to be dodged. Just ask any adult who has to be.

“Why do you REALLY need a cell phone?” I asked.

“Because everyone else has one,” he said.

“Then you should have no trouble borrowing one in an emergency,” I replied.

“But what if I have a car accident while driving alone and need to call,” he countered.

“Someone who is pre-license worried about having a driving accident has no business getting a driver’s license or a car,” I checkmated his argument.

“Aargh,” he groaned. “That’s exactly why I don’t want to grow up. I’d hate to start sounding like some old, miserly fart.” Not as much as I do.