It’s not good taste, it’s what tastes good

“One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.” So wrote German playwright and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Goethe had a point. To a child, every taste is a new, exhilarating experience, made more so by the fact that kids actually taste better than adults do (depending on how they’re cooked). Kidding. What I mean is, kids have the ability – due to their greater number of taste buds – to taste things adults simply cannot.

As we age, our taste receptors diminish, until at last we’re left with the ability to detect only the strongest flavors; sweet, sour, bitter. The degree to which this occurs differs with each individual, but take my word for it, if you’re over 40, things don’t taste as wonderful to you as they once did.

In my case, this “detastification” (a scientific term I just made up) has rendered my food all but flavorless. I see proof of this every day, as evinced by my dining choices.

When I was a kid, a hot dog with ketchup virtually exploded on my palate, producing a cornucopia of flavors and sending me into paroxysms of gastronomical ecstasy. These days I add onions, jalapenos, brown mustard and horseradish to my dogs, just so I can taste ‘em.

In fact, I add onions, jalapenos, brown mustard and horseradish to just about everything I eat. (I’m keeping the people who manufacture Listerine in business.)

But it’s not just this excessive use of condiments that’s telling me my taste buds are on their last legs. It’s also those foods – previously considered repulsive – that suddenly taste good to me.

Liver. There was time I couldn’t be in the same room with a liver, not one that was cooking, anyway. Now … well, pass the pate, baby! Add some onions and jalapenos to it, you’ve got a meal!

Then there are sardines; those little fishies packed together in a tin, soaking in a gelatinous goo reminiscent of something you might find leaking from your Volvo’s loose head gasket. Sardines are disgusting. I know this, and not just because The Lovely Mrs. Taylor tells me they are. I mean, let’s be real – sardines are bait, man, not food!

Yet every so often, I’ll sit down in front of the television with a box of Saltines and eat a whole can of them, sometimes sharing with the cat, who at these times miraculously discovers he can tolerate my presence after all.

In recent months I’ve also eaten pickled eggs, like you find floating in big jars in the sort of West side taverns that still serve boilermakers. I’ve eaten pickled herring, smoked herring, tripe (which is made from a cow’s – gack! – stomach), and deep-fried pigskin.

Any of these things would have sent my ten-year-old self screaming from the dining room in horror. Yet now, they all taste darn good.

And it’s only getting worse. Last week at the grocery, I caught myself seriously considering a jar full of pickled pig’s feet. I’ve seen what pigs walk in and it ain’t good. But those feet looked pretty tasty.

Where will it end? I get older every day and the taste buds keep dying. Will I one day be walking along a beach and suddenly decide to snack on the decomposing carcass of a grounded mackerel? Will I catch myself slowing down when passing week-old road kill along county route 91?

Can cannibalism be far behind?

I think I’d better settle down and treat myself to a pint of “Chubby Hubby” or “Moose Tracks.” Ice cream doesn’t taste as good as it used to, but it’s not bad. Especially if you add onions and jalapenos.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or road kill recipes, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.

There’s a good reason dogs can’t talk

Somebody’s trying to teach my dog Kipper to talk and it’s got me worried.

I swear I’m not making this up. Hungarian scientists in Budapest are working on computer software that will, when perfected, analyze a dog’s bark and translate it into English. Or Budapestian. Or Hungarian. Whatever language they speak there.

The point is, software could be written to convert Kipper’s woofs and yawps into words anyone could understand.

Csaba Molnar, the head scientist working on the project, says it’s only a matter of time before a commercially available device is marketed that will allow for dog-human communication. I, for one, won’t be buying one.

Why not? you may ask. My reasons are twofold.

First off, not to be a species-ist, but I don’t think Kipper really has that much to say. I’ve had him for about 12 years, and in all that time he’s never shown much interest in anything other than food, the sofa and “marking” every tree and fire plug within walking distance.

If he could talk, I’m pretty sure those are the only things he would want to talk about. And really, how much time would you want to devote to a discussion on the finer points of tree-peeing? I’m guessing Kipper could talk about it for hours without getting bored. Not me. Ten minutes of chitchat on the merits of outdoor whizzing and I’m ready to move on to another topic.

Secondly, there’s the privacy factor. As things stand now, Kipper is the one person – or critter, to be more precise – to whom I can tell anything. When The Lovely Mrs. Taylor and I have one of our rare disagreements, Kipper is my confidante. The things I say to him about Mrs. T in those heated moments are not things I want repeated, especially to the missus.

Also, there’s stuff I do during the day while Mrs. Taylor’s at the office, that I wouldn’t want her to find out about. Nothing terrible, but things that qualify as marital transgressions just the same.

And the dog would rat me out, of this I have no doubt. Mrs. T is the one who feeds him. He knows where his loyalties lie.

I can picture the conversation:

MRS. T: (walking in the door) So, did everyone have a nice day?

ME: Yep.

KIPPER: Daddy sat his coffee on the end table without using a coaster. I barked at him about it, but what can I do? I would have moved it myself, but, well, you know, no opposable thumbs… It left a ring.

MRS. T: Really…

ME: Gimme a break. I’ve had a long day.

KIPPER: You call sitting in an easy chair in your underwear writing your stupid column a “hard day?”

ME: I wasn’t in my underwear!

KIPPER: You were until noon.

ME: (removing Kipper’s “translation collar”) Bad dog!

KIPPER: Bark, bark, yap, yap, bark!

ME: That’s more like it.

I’m hoping the scientists in Budapest come to their senses before they take their research any further. Some of them must have dogs and wives of their own, right?

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or other breaking science news, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429. Miss a week? More Reality Check online at http://realitycheck.shoutpost.com.

The day the still exploded

The other night while working my weekend job (bullfighter) a fellow came up to me and asked if I was the same guy who writes “that newspaper column.”

I am, so I said, “Yes.”

“My wife gets a real kick out of it,” he said. “Are those stories true?”

“Absolutely,” I lied.

Then he asked a question I hear a lot: “Where do you come up with that stuff?”

I’ve never had a good answer for this, but the question got me thinking, which I do from time to time, despite a significant body of evidence to the contrary. The ideas I get from living day to day, like everybody else. But the ability to put them down every week in 650 words or less … that I get from my Grandpa Seeley, “Milt” to his contemporaries.

My grandfather died several years back and he was never a writer, but he could tell a story better than anyone I’ve known before or since. Having lived an amazing life, he had many good stories to tell.

However, my favorite, by far, is the story I came to think of as…“The Day the Still Exploded.”

Milt was a young man, not long out of his teens, and working as a “shanty boy” in Michigan’s then-untrammeled north woods. It was the height of the logging era, and many a young man with a strong back and a desire to make a buck spent months out of every year deep in the state’s northern forests, sawing trees and moving them via waterways and rail to mills farther south.

My grandfather was a popular guy in camp; even back then he could tell a story, and times being what they were, this was a skill of some importance.

Conditions were at best rugged, and the weeks and months living in tents and shanties took their toll on even the hardiest logger. Little heat, no women, no entertainment, bad food and bunkmates unafraid to express themselves through excessive flatulence … these factors and more made for a hard, hard life.

The only bright spot in an otherwise dark forest was the little shed located just north of the logging camp. Inside that shed was a small fire. Small, but to the loggers, very important. For directly over that fire perched a still, which manufactured whiskey - very bad whiskey - 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The men took shifts tending the fire, day and night. The job was a simple one; add wood to the fire when needed, occasionally sample the whiskey to make sure the network of tubes and vials were in working order, stay awake.

My grandfather’s turn in the rotation came ‘round on a particularly cold late-November day. A muscular west wind sheared the last leaves from the oaks as the season’s first real snow peppered the shanties.

Sitting there, alone in the semi-darkness of the still shack, Milt added bits of wood to the fire, sampled the product, checked the still’s pressure gauge, added more wood, sat, sampled the product, added more wood.

As the day drew on and the cold increased, Milt found himself sampling the product with increasing regularity and adding more wood than was strictly necessary, in an effort to warm the interior of the shack.

He was working so hard at the job, especially the “sampling” part, that he soon grew tired and dozed off. If he’d been awake, he might have noticed the still’s pressure gauge slowly creeping into the red.

His fellow loggers were just returning to camp when the shed exploded. Splintered wood, shards of metal, twisted copper tubing and my grandfather all flew through the air with equal velocity.

When he came to, hours later, Milt found he was missing his right index finger, and was no longer the most popular man in camp.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or moonshine recipes, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429. Miss a week? More Reality Check online at http://realitycheck.shoutpost.com.

Live at Five: Answers from Jake

I don’t know how many folks watch those afternoon talk shows—those programs which feature first-name hosts like Phil, Geraldo and Jerry. I suppose they must generate a fair-sized audience, though. They’re on year after year after year.

If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never understand it. At what point in our sociological evolution did Former U.S. Ambassadors Who’ve Been Abducted by UFOs and Forced to Watch Reruns of “The Waltons” become news? But I’m not writing here today to criticize the fluff these programs attempt to pass off as “critical issues.” I’m not even here to gripe about the simplistic answers these hosts dispense in response to complex questions.

I’m here to deliver a warning—a warning to Phil, Geraldo and Ophra. And Sally, too, I suppose: There’s an usurper in your midst.

It’s true. I met him recently at a tavern not far from my house.

He was standing at the bar ordering a shot and Coke when he first spoke to me. I was watching football on the bar’s big screen TV at the time.

“Got any money on the game?” he asked.

It took a moment before I realized he was talking to me. “What?” I asked.

“Any money,” he replied. “on the game?”

“No,” I said. He was a big guy, sporting a Carhart jacket and John Deere seed cap. He seemed friendly enough, but I had the distinct impression he could crush my little skull like an aluminum Bud can in one of his calloused, working-man’s hands. I’ve discovered through years of painful experience it’s best not to share too many of my condescending, city-bred opinions on sports, politics or religion with gentlemen of this particular genus, and size.

And I sure wasn’t going to make the unmanly admission that the only reason I was watching the game was that the bartender wouldn’t change the channel to Star Trek.

“I got ten bucks on Buffalo myself,” he said.

“Um.”

“You think they’re going to go all the way?”

If John Deere here had ten bucks riding on them, you can bet I thought so. “Seems like they could,” I said, even though I had no idea if “going all the way” meant Buffalo would play in the Superbowl or lose their collective virginity.

“Darn right,” he said. “Hey! I’m Jake. Lemme buy you a beer.”

Now, I’ve never been adverse to free beer and I had some time to kill, so I accepted. During the next few hours, the conversation between Jake and me rolled freely between sports, women, religion, gays in the military and Washington politics. And on every topic, Jake had an opinion—a strong opinion. More than that, he had the same thing all talk show hosts seem to have: answers.

Sure, they were for the most part answers that made little real sense, but when you’re 6’4” and weigh in at about 330 pounds, you don’t have to be a talk show host to share your opinions with whomever you please. Little folk—like me—tend to nod and smile a lot, which is—for the most part—exactly what I did.

By the time I left the bar, however, I had gained a genuine respect for Jake and his simple answers. Here in my hometown was a man who—with but the addition of an expensive haircut and wire-rimmed glasses—could easily be hosting a talk show of his very own. After all, Jake seemed to have every bit as good a grasp on the world and its problems as do Phil, Geraldo, Jerry and Sally.

Let me give you some examples of our dialogue:



• ISSUE: OIL SHORTAGE

JAKE: Shoot! Now that we’re not fighting with the commies anymore, we should just get together with the Ruskies and take the oil we want.

ME: But wouldn’t that go against many of the basic philosophical doctrines upon which America was founded?

JAKE: (A glowering stare.)

ME: No, I suppose it wouldn’t at that. Good idea Jake.



• ISSUE: GAYS IN THE MILITARY

JAKE: They’d be okay if somebody just bought ’em a subscription to Playboy or something.

ME: (laughing) Do you honestly believe that reading a girly magazine is going to change an individual’s sexual orientation?

JAKE: (Slams beer down on table, looks into it menacingly.)

ME: Um, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s certainly how I feel.



• ISSUE: NATIONAL HEALTH CARE

JAKE: If people wouldn’t get sick in the first place, we wouldn’t need national health care.

ME: Are you implying people wind up in the hospital because they want to be there?

JAKE: Do you want to be there?


Once again, I was forced to admit Jake had a valid point, forced being the operative word. Anyway, you get the idea.

Although I spent several tense moments during our conversation fearing for my life, I came away from the encounter liking Jake, and I still maintain he would make a great talk show host. I bet he would get better ratings than Phil, Geraldo and Jerry, too. I, for one, would definitely tune in just for the chance to see a Danahue-esque triple-axe-murderer parolee bemoan the fact that the “system” has failed to rehabilitate him. Like all talk show hosts, Jake would have a solution. Sometimes the simplest answers are the best.

Christmas and acrophobia do not mix

I’ve mentioned previously in this column that I suffer from acrophobia, a fear of heights. I can’t step onto a high curb without little, black spots swimming before my eyes.

As a kid, I would force myself to spend hours at a time in my tree house, located about 20 feet up in a backyard chestnut tree.

I built the thing myself with scrap lumber scrounged from around the neighborhood. No one familiar with my construction skills will be surprised to hear that tree house was dangerously unstable. Every time the wind blew, parts of it worked loose and dropped to the ground.

Still, I sat up there every day, all summer long, reading Superman and Magnus the Robot Fighter comics, my knees knocking, my breath rasping in and out in short, desperate gasps.

It didn’t help me overcome my fear of heights.

Decades later, the phobia is still with me. To this day, I can actually make myself dizzy even while standing on level ground; all I have to do is look up and pretend I’m elevated. The mere illusion of height is enough to give me a serious case of the heebee-jeebees (from the Latin, heebus-jeebus, aka “the willies”).

So is it any wonder the idea of hanging Christmas lights fills me with such dread?

Each October I start thinking about it, about rooflines and ladders and staple-guns and tangled strings of twinkle lights and strong, November winds. And how they all conspire to send me to an early grave. By the time The Lovely Mrs. Taylor actually brings the decoration-filled boxes up from the basement, I’ve worked myself into a tizzy not unlike the one experienced by Jimmy Stewart in “Vertigo.”

But I’m the man, and it is the man’s sacred duty to brave November winds, ladders and so on to get those lights hung before the kids arrive for the holidays.

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that most of the roofline of my house – at least the parts to which we attach Christmas lights – is only about eight feet off the ground. I can hang lights in these places while standing on the ladder’s second rung. Even that small elevation makes me a little queasy, but if I don’t think about it too much, I can cope.

The peak over the front porch, however … that is high. I’m not sure how high, because I’m lousy at estimating distances, but it’s high enough that a fall from that height would probably land me in the hospital, if I was lucky enough to survive at all.

Nevertheless, there I was last weekend, working my way around the front of the house, ever closer to that peak. Every time I hung a light and moved the ladder one spot to the left, I was forced to step onto the next highest rung in order to reach the roofline.

Three, four, five, six … my ladder has only nine rungs, which is more than enough for my tastes, lemme tell ya.

Nearing the peak, I had to place both feet on step number seven, the one that has printed on it in police-tape-yellow the legend: DO NOT STAND ABOVE THIS STEP! Swaying precariously in the frigid, late-November gusts, I stapled the string of lights to the roof and shakily descended.

I moved the ladder three feet to the left, directly beneath the peak. I glanced up. The peak was already slightly obscured by the black dots dancing before my eyes. Before I could chicken out, I grabbed the end of the string of lights and scurried back up.

Step five, six, seven … then step number eight. I was above the DO NOT STAND ABOVE THIS STEP rung. The only place to go from here was the flat top platform where the two halves of the ladder come together.

The police-tape-yellow printing on the platform read: DO NOT STAND HERE! ARE YOU NUTS? DIDN’T YOU READ THE MESSAGE ON STEP NUMBER SEVEN?!

Reaching up, I grasped the roofline and eased onto the platform. I slowly moved the light-string into place, positioned the staple gun and – thwap – fired home a staple.

The ladder trembled. I trembled. I discovered, to my surprise, that I still know all the words to the Rosary. I was on my fifth Hail Mary when my feet again made contact with the ground.

The lights look great, which is a good thing, since they’re going to be up there until the wind knocks ‘em down in April.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or offers of free psychological counseling, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429. Miss a week? More Reality Check online at http://realitycheck.shoutpost.com.

There is such a thing as too much nature

The other day I got talking with friends about the state’s sex offender registry, the online listing of people convicted of a sex crime. Some folks think it’s an indispensable tool for keeping neighborhoods safe, others consider it a violation of the offender’s civil liberties.

Personally – as is the case with abortion, evolution, creationism, politics and gun control – I think exactly what you think, so let’s keep those letters friendly, folks.

My only real concern is that the registry doesn’t list the nature of the crimes committed. The child molester is listed right alongside the guy who had the misfortune to get caught relieving himself behind a bar at closing time. These two crimes, I feel, are not the same.

But maybe I only feel that way because of something that happened to me over 30 years ago.

It was Easter vacation, and I was hiking the Bruce Trail, a rugged tract of land that begins in Queenston, Ontario and follows the Niagara Escarpment for hundreds of miles. As was often the case in those days, I was hiking alone, unmindful of bears, skunks, potential broken legs. I was young and indestructible. Nothing bad would happen to me.

This early in the year, the trail was all but deserted. I’d been hiking for three days and had not seen another living soul. My mind was in that Zen-like, tranquil place that comes only with extended periods of solitude or large quantities of good beer.

The only sounds were those of the wind shushing through the treetops and the gentle, steady susurration of Lake Huron marking its timeless rhythm against the cliffs below. I was alone in the world, an island of humanity in a vast, untrammeled wilderness.

God was in his Heaven, and all manner of things were right with the world.

Even the weather was perfect; unseasonably warm temperatures had followed me every step of the way. It was springtime in Eden, Shangri-la, Valhalla … faultless.

The only flaw in all nature’s Grand Design was, well, me. Rather, the way I smelled. After several days hiking without benefit of soap and water, I stank. Bad. Real bad. The kind of bad usually associated with the spitting, burping, unwashed, foul-mouthed, drunken cowboy who gets killed early on by the Indians in every western made since “Dances With Wolves.”

I wasn’t spitting or swearing, but I did stink to high heaven.

That’s probably why the waterfall looked so inviting. It was a picturesque, storybook waterfall, cascading 50 feet down a tiered wall of rock and collecting in a small pool before continuing on its winding way to Lake Huron.

A heavy layer of green loam surrounded the falls, like the softest carpet imaginable. Sunlight slanted in through the treetops, dappling the scene in a diffused, golden glow.

Backpack and clothing in a pile, soap in hand, I ventured into the frigid water. Making quick work of the process, I managed to scrub away most of the trail grime before dashing back to my pack and toweling off.

I spread the towel on the loam and lay there, letting the sun finish the drying process, wearing only the clothes I was born in. The sun warmed my puckered skin. Honeybees buzzed lazily nearby. The waves continued to roll gently against the beach. I breathed in. I breathed out. Time passed.

Something was nudging my left foot.

“I think he’s alive,” a voice said.

I opened my eyes. I was looking at a young guy about my age, standing over me, concern beetling his brows.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

“Yeah … sure,” I said, sleepily pushing myself into a sitting position.

A middle-aged woman walked up. She was fit, grey-haired, wearing a backpack and Vibram-soled boots.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she said, smiling. The young guy was also smiling.

I was missing something, but couldn’t quite put my finger on what it might be. Then it came to me. I grabbed the towel and gathered it around me, covering what I could as fast as I could.

The woman turned her head long enough to allow me to climb back into my jeans and sweatshirt. Turns out she was a professor at Michigan State University, backpacking with her son. We wound up cooking and eating a lunch together, sharing stories of trails we’d hiked and places we’d seen.

Then we said goodbye, the prof and her son heading north, I south.

That was the last time I showered outdoors, so don’t bother looking for me on the registry.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or incriminating stories of your own, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429. Miss a week? More Reality Check online at http://realitycheck.shoutpost.com.

If you speak Klingon, chances are you’re a nerd

Nobody wants to be a nerd. And nobody, not even a slide-rule-using-electrical-tape-on-the-glasses-plaid-pants-white-shoes-wearing goofball, wants to think of himself as a nerd.

I’m not sure how nerds got such a bad rap. Sure, in high school they didn’t get to date the hot cheerleaders, but so what? Most guys don’t. Nerds are – traditionally – bad in sports. Again, so what? The captain of my high school’s football team – circa 1976 – went on to play a little college ball, dropped out, and spent the rest of his adult life driving a waste pickup truck.

Bill Gates, on the other hand, owns Microsoft. Who got the last laugh there?

If not for nerds, there would be no personal computers, no cell phones, no graphing calculators (which supplanted slide rules in the pockets of nerds everywhere), no sci-fi conventions, no “Revenge of the Nerds” movies (which, after the first one, might not be such a bad thing, actually), no Scientific American magazine, no Al Gore … you get the idea. The world’s a richer place for nerds.

Yet nobody seems to want to be one, myself included.

This makes it all the harder to admit, that I am, in fact, a nerd. I know, I know … I seem to be the veritable embodiment of cool, right? Right? Anyway, it turns out I’m not. I’m a nerd.

I came by this realization a few weeks back during a conversation with a co-worker. The topic was, not surprisingly, that unassailable touchstone of nerd-dom, epitome of spazzishness, the geek Bible … I’m talking, of course, about Star Trek. The original television series, with Captain James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy.

I’ve been watching Star Trek since I was a kid, when I would sprint all the way home from St. Isadore’s Catholic School to catch re-runs on my parents black-and-white TV. In the years since, I have seen every episode about a million times.

At this point, I’m pretty sure I could perform a Vulcan mind meld, if I really had to. (If you have no idea what a Vulcan mind meld is, congratulations! Chances are you are not a nerd. Feel free to go to the back of the class and play cards while we geeks figure out a way to map the human genome using only pocket calculators.)

Anyway, the aforementioned co-worker and I shared bits from our favorite episodes, series trivia (The “T” in James T. Kirk stands for “Tiberius,” but everybody knows that) and discussed the ramifications of warp drive from a physics perspective. It was while we were arguing over the possibility – or impossibility – of traveling faster than light that I experienced my “nerd epiphany.”

The Lovely Mrs. Taylor – who has never seen an episode of Star Trek, never used a slide rule, and never worn a Hawaiian shirt – has for years been trying to tell me, gently, that I am, in fact, a nerd. I never believed her.

But here was the proof. In addition to knowing that “T” is for “Tiberius,” I know that the first Vulcan mind meld was performed by Mr. Spock on a “Horta.” I know that Martin Landou (Mission Impossible) was originally offered the role of Mr. Spock. I know that Captain Kirk never actually said, “Beam me up, Scotty,” not in any episode.

In short, I know far too much about Star Trek not to be a nerd.

Driving home from the office, I got thinking about other things I enjoy, things that might verify or, better yet, disprove my nerd stature. The list was not encouraging.

I read Scientific American and Discover magazines. I own every book ever written by Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov. I go to the planetarium at least once a year, and don’t get stoned beforehand. I have a Bluetooth headset for my cell phone and I sometimes use it in public.

I guess I wouldn’t so much mind being a nerd, if I were better at it. But I’m strictly a plebe nerd. Prod it though I may, my brain refuses to understand any math more complicated than a checkbook register, and even that sometimes hurts my head. I’ve read Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time,” but everything from Newton on might as well have been written in Sanskrit, for all the understanding I got out of it. My last real math class was ninth grade algebra, and I only passed that because Mr. Papke felt sorry for me.

So, not only am I a nerd, I’m the lowest kind of nerd, the “not smart” kind. I’m the nerd who’s enthralled by the realization that “God” spelled backwards is “Dog.”

I wonder if it’s too late for me to get on the football team.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or arguments in favor of using a shuttlecraft instead of a transporter when visiting alien worlds, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429. Miss a week? More Reality Check online at http://realitycheck.shoutpost.com.

The Lovely Mrs. Taylor and me – a love story for the ages? Nah

Got a letter from a reader the other day – a Ms. C. Wymerotte of New York City, NY – inquiring after The Lovely Mrs. Taylor. I get a lot of mail like this; folks wanting to know if she’s real (yes), how long we’ve been married (15 years, last July), and whether she reads my column and thinks it’s funny (no, on both counts).

Ms. Wymerotte wanted to know how Mrs. T and I met.

Since Big Apple residents live life in the fast lane, and I hate to disappoint, I originally considered making something up; something interesting, romantic, exciting. But real life is rarely like that. Real life – as John Lennon put it – is what happens while we’re busy making other plans.

I was making other plans the night I met The Lovely Mrs. Taylor, who at the time was still known as “Julie.”

It was a Saturday night, and my little weekend band was playing a gig at a roadhouse north of Grand Rapids, the kind of place that smelled of old beer, Walmart perfume and deep fried chicken. The air was redolent with cigarette smoke; from the stage, I could barely make out the other side of the room.

Good ol’ boys in worn denim and girls with frosted pink lips jostled elbow-to-elbow on the dance floor, the girls dashing back to their warm Bud Lites and fuzzy navels whenever we threatened to play a slow tune.

We wrapped second set with a James Brown cover, clicked on the taped break music and worked our way through the crowd to the bar.

My buds grabbed their drinks and bee-lined to the band table, where waited bored wives and excited girlfriends.

I was solo, so I stood at the bar chatting with Danny the bartender, stirring my gin and tonic, trying to look cool, failing, and hoping against hope that some sweet young thang would mosey my way and say hello.

I’d had my eye on a cute redhead who had spent most of the previous set dancing in front of the stage, always a good sign. The redhead, however, now seemed to have her eye (and most of the rest of her) on a pumped-up dude in a cowboy hat and wife-beater T-shirt. I had to admit the shirt, hat and redhead all looked good on him.

I was turning back to the bar when a tall, willowy girl appeared at my side. It might have been the first time in my life I noticed the color of a woman’s eyes. Pale blue fading to grey, a November sky. Wavy chestnut hair spilled over her shoulders like water running downhill.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey,” I said, stirring my drink, shooting for nonchalance, resolutely ignoring the sudden weakness in my knees.

“You guys are good,” she said.

We were not, but I said “Thanks” anyway.

“Do you know any AC/DC?” she asked.

We didn’t. Nobody in the band could sing the high notes. But I figured a girl this young and naïve wouldn’t know squat about AC/DC; she was just trying to make conversation a guy my age might be able to relate to.

“Now, how could we do any AC/DC?” I said, as if explaining one-digit addition to a third-grader. “We don’t even have a keyboard player.”

Neither does AC/DC, but I figured she wouldn’t know that.

She did. She looked at me as if she’d found me stuck to the bottom of her shoe upon leaving the restroom. Then without a word, she turned and walked back to her table. She was sitting with her older sister. She leaned over and said something to her sister and they both laughed.

Years later, I learned what that “something” was: “That guy is the biggest (expletive deleted) I’ve ever met.”

What can I say? Mrs. Taylor was an excellent judge of character even then.

For my part, I thought she was an effete, stuck-up little princess. But that didn’t make my knees any less weak or her eyes any less blue.

A week later, we were dating. Opposites and all that. It took a long time to get past our initial impressions of each other, which were partly right, mostly wrong.

And as the years passed, our rough edges wore away, like two pieces of cracked marble colliding in a rock tumbler, until at last nothing much remains but smooth, beautiful stone.

Oh, we’re still opposites, I suppose, but lordy, how we do attract.

That’s my “how we met” story. Now, you tell me yours. Send your tales of courtship to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429 or via e-mail to mtaylor325@gmail.com. I’ll include the best of them in a future column! More Reality Check online at http://realitycheck.shoutpost.com.