It’s hard to have fun when someone loves you

When we first met, Sweet Annie didn’t seem to care much what I did, what I ate, where I went. That was nearly four years ago. These days, she cares about all that stuff. A lot.

I first noticed the change a couple summers ago, during a backyard barbecue. I was telling my daughter about my plans to try skydiving, something that’s been on my bucket list for more than ten years. I’m not typically a thrill-seeker type, but skydiving just looks like SO much fun.

My grandfather was a paratrooper during both WWII and Korea. He made dozens of “drops” through fusillades of Japanese and Korean bullets. My own skydiving experience, as I planned it, would not involve anybody shooting at me with anything scarier than a camcorder.

Even so, Annie gently suggested my best skydiving years are probably behind me and that — even without enemy combatants trying to pick me off — I could still land myself (so to speak) in intensive care.

She made similar comments when she caught me a few months later perusing hang gliders on Ebay. I didn’t actually have my credit card out, but I was thinking about it.

I live on top of a hill overlooking Baldwin Lake; I figured I could get a running start and cast myself out over the waves, maybe dropping water balloons on swimmers at the beach. Again, hang gliding is one of my bucket list items.

But every time I bring up the topic around Annie, she goes all quiet and introspective, a sure sign of feminine disapproval. 

She seems to have similar, unfavorable, opinions regarding my desire to one day compete in a real demolition derby; about sleeping with a pistol next to the bed (“You’ll shoot your own toe off” was the actual comment); about … well, you get the idea.

She never actually comes out and tells me I CAN’T do something; she knows me better than that. Instead, she lets me know how worried she would be IF I did this or that. In other words, if I love her, I won’t engage in potentially life-threatening activities.

Considering all the aggravation I cause her, you’d think she would be less determined to keep me alive indefinitely. But women are mysterious creatures and I gave up long ago trying to figure them out. 

I know I should be flattered by her concern.

But just lately, this “looking out for me” thing has begun to get entirely out of hand. Whenever we dine together, she goes out of her way to push the vegetables. Seriously, you’d think the woman owns stock in a carrot company.

Then the other day, she came over to my place with vitamins. Vitamins! I’ve never taken a vitamin in my life, and now at this late date, Sweet Annie decides I need ‘em? Adding insult to injury, she purchased the kind with the word “Mature” on the label. This despite the fact she frequently claims I am anything but!

That’s OK. I’m pretty crazy about Annie, and I know she’s only looking out for me because she loves me, too.

But I swear, if she tries to get me to wear galoshes next fall, I’m buying a hang glider and a handgun.

Contact Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com or mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com.

When it comes to Barbies or zombies, we must remain armed and vigilant

I recently covered a story about an ammo shortage that has affected not just this area, but the entire nation. Apparently, folks are stocking up big time on shells, mostly in .22 and 9mm calibers.

Why? Reasons vary. Most of those reasons are predicated on Internet rumors, like:

• Homeland Security has purchased 62 billion rounds in preparation for an upcoming class war in which guns will be taken away from ordinary citizens.

• The government is hiding the fact an asteroid is headed toward the Earth and after (pick a date and time) our planet is going to be a zombie-laden wasteland in which only the strong (and those with lots of ammo) will survive.

• Obama is evil and where is that birth certificate, anyway?!

• The government (insert conspiracy theory here).

In most of these rumors, the government fills the roll of Darth Vader, the nefarious, dark force against which we common men must remain ever vigilant and — more importantly — heavily armed.

Now, before you go blathering on about that whole “liberal media” thing, let me just say, I own guns; yes, handguns. Granted, they are of the cheap “Saturday Night Special” variety, but they do shoot bullets and are for most part accurate to within four or five feet.

My guns are far better suited to zombie apocalypse purposes than, say, hunting squirrels. I bought them years ago to go plinking with my son and stepson.

We used to take my daughter’s discarded Barbie dolls out to the shooting range and blast away until the ammo was gone. Dumb fun, man fun, but fun none the less.

Since the boys grew up and moved out, I haven’t had the guns out of the lock box. But I know where they are, should I ever have to face down a horde of deranged, killer Barbie dolls. God knows those Barbies have reason enough to lust for revenge, and quite possibly, long memories.

Problem is, because of those stupid Internet rumors, I can no longer get ammo. So I’m helpless to protect myself from rampaging 12-inch action figures.

And personally, I think problems with zombies or killer Barbie dolls are every bit as likely as is the government suddenly showing an inordinate interest in my inaccurate firearms. Frankly, I just don’t think the government — as an entity — is nearly smart enough to pull off something like the disarming of gun-totin’ America.

Sure, there are some very bright folks working jobs in the public sector. But somehow, when you put them all together in Washington, they are quickly absorbed by the lumbering, clueless, bureaucratic blob that is our federal government and become every bit as ineffectual and incapable of any real action as is the rest of the administration.

In short, there aren’t enough wingtip-wearing nerds in Washington to cause me to lose any sleep about what they might do. For the most part, I believe they’ll probably continue to do what they’ve done for decades: nothing.

They will make a lot of noise, blame each other for their inaction, and then vote themselves a juicy pay raise. The world will go on pretty much as it has for a generation, the ammo shortage will abate, and I will be able to re-arm myself for the coming Barbie/Zombie apocalypse. 

Mike’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available in eBook format at Amazon.com and in paperback at Robbins Book List in Greenville. Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Honesty is difficult on a self-evaluation form

Can’t believe it’s been a year since I started what I continue to think of as my “new” job. I’m still loving every minute of it. Most days, I actually look forward to getting to the office.

Sure, I’d rather be fishing. Or having hot wings and domestic beer at a sports bar. Or even sitting in my back yard watching the geese fly onto the lake. But as both Ecclesiastes and The Byrds have noted, to everything, there is a season.

If one must work, it should be at a job one loves.

Still, every so often I’m charged with a task I’d rather avoid. This happened last week, when the managing editor sent me the dreaded one-year “self-evaluation review” form.

I hate these things. 

I’m basically an honest person. Yes, really. But when faced with a self-evaluation form — one which might one day be a determining factor in future raises or even employment — I’m tempted to lie like Satan in the Garden of Eden.

Then I worry … what if the form is meant to determine whether I’m honest? Won’t all that lying just confirm what management must already suspect? But maybe a willingness to lie just to hang on to my job is exactly the sort of “go get ‘em” attitude the boss is looking for.

There’s no way to know for sure.

Still, when faced with one of these things, I usually just tell the truth and hope for the best.

This is probably not a brilliant strategy; but I am not a brilliant guy (though I typically say I am on self-evaluation forms).

Some of the questions are easy, like: “How knowledgeable is the employee of the principal areas of their position?” I assume this means, do I know how to check my voice mail and write an article.

The answer, happily, is yes. Yes, I DO know how to do these things.

However, when answering the next question: “How knowledgeable is the employee of operations and/or practices in other areas of the company?” all I can come up with is, “There are other areas? Who knew?”

I’m guessing this is not the response they’re looking for. But honestly, as long as the paper gets printed, the website gets webbed, the Facebook page gets faced, the Twitter account gets twitted and payroll manages to locate me on payday, how much do I need to know about these other departments?

The next section of the form deals with judgment and whether mine is the good kind. Do I show good judgment? I have four ex-wives. What do you think?

Then there’s the section that wants to know how decisive I am. I can’t even decide whether to lie on the self-evaluation form. Again, the answer seems self-evident.

The form also asks how I manage “delegation of duties.” I think they’re asking how often I try to push my work off on others. The answer is: Always. Sadly, my coworkers are generally too smart to allow this to happen.

Then there’s all the baloney about “cooperation” and “teamwork” and “conscientiousness” and so on. Basically, all the stuff I had to lie about a year ago to get the job in the first place.

Finally, at the end of the questionnaire there’s a formula for figuring your overall rating. The instructions read as follows: “Following the completion of all the ratings in section II, the manager should total the ratings and divide that total by the number of items rated. This becomes the Outputs Score. This score is then weighted by a factor of 7, for the Section Summary Rating.”

If I had 100 years and unlimited access to a Cray supercomputer, I still couldn’t figure this out. As I’ve mentioned here before, I hate math, and frankly, this formula sounds suspiciously like a “story problem,” which as you probably know, is all they have on the shelves of the library in Hell.

At any rate, on the actual evaluation form I did my best to be honest and I hope that doesn’t cost me my job. I really like it here. My coworkers rock, the boss is nice and the work is genuinely interesting.

I would hate to get canned. 

After being a respected columnist, there’s no way I could go back to stripping.

Mike’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full” is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and in eBook format at Amazon.com. Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com or from his blog at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com.