The mega-mall is no place for a cave man

Went to the mall the other day. Not just any mall; a super-mall in Detroit.

I was visiting my daughter, her Significant Other, and their five kids. Five kids is a lot, particularly when they run the gamut from sulky teenager to violently yodeling toddler. I love them all more than life itself, but not so much that I can stand to be cooped up in a house with the lot of them for more than a few hours at a time.

Which is why I was at the mall. I had already grabbed breakfast at my favorite Greek joint (Zorba’s), written my column for that week at my favorite post-hippie-nouveau-chic coffee house (Java Hut), and window shopped at a place called Junkyard Guitars (aptly named).

For me, these days, that’s a full day. But it wasn’t even 3:30. I had no intention of returning to my daughter’s home until it was a bit closer to the younger contingent’s respective bedtimes.

My daughter, who understands all too clearly the desire to occasionally escape the company of juveniles, suggested I try the mall.

Though I lived in Detroit for years, it was a mall I’d never visited before. This is not surprising; I avoid shopping whenever possible. Malls haven’t held much attraction for me since the early ‘80s, when I used to try to meet girls there.

But it was either the mall or entertaining 2-year-old Ari (his name, I believe, means “offspring of the Tasmanian Devil”) while my daughter nursed the baby. I chose the mall. It wasn’t a tough call.

Aubreii described it as “kind of upscale.” I don’t know when she inherited her millions, but “kind of upscale” doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. This place had a few stores I’d heard of, but have never been to. Nordstrom. Sak’s Fifth Avenue. Leon’s Big Money Pit.

OK, I made that last one up, but you get the idea. The kind of mega-shops that feature distressed T-shirts “on sale” for $400. There was a jewelry store there, a few of them, in fact.

Working up my courage, I casually strolled into one, thinking I might pick up a cute little necklace or something for Mrs. Taylor (formerly Lori Frankforter). I was looking to drop as much as fifty bucks.

I knew I was in trouble when not one, but three sales clerks – wearing suits that cost more than my car – descended on me. One offered me a glass of Riesling. She assured me it was a good year. I told her it would be a pleasure to drink wine that didn’t come out of a box for a change.

After that, two of the clerks suddenly remembered they had other business to attend to. The one still stuck with me did not seem thrilled with the prospect, but was determined to make the best of it.

A professional.

“What can I show you?” is what she said. What she meant was, “Something from our ‘found in the parking lot’ collection, perhaps?”

I told her I needed some earrings for my wife. How expensive can a pair of earrings be, right? So I thought.

The clerk showed me a few different “moderately priced” sets. Apparently “moderately” has a different meaning in this mall than in the real world. Oh, I could have bought them. But it would have meant first donning a ski mask and knocking over a few rural banks.

I’m not sure my Catholic upbringing would allow that. So I left without the earrings, and without my wine. For some reason, it never quite made it out to me.

Riding the skywalk conveyor (when you shop here, you don’t have to walk, baby!) from the north side of the mall to the south, I took my first close look at the other shoppers. Everyone, every single one of them, man, woman and child, was prettier than me. And better dressed.

I felt like a Neanderthal shambling into an encampment of homo sapiens. I figured it was only a matter of time before security rolled up on a Segway and helped me decide to vacate the premises, so instead I did it on my own.

On the ride back to Aubreii’s I stopped at a Trader Joe’s and bought a couple bottles of Three Buck Chuck. I’m not sure if it was a good year, unless last week was a good year, but for three bucks, it’s OK wine.

Went well enough with the barbecue my daughter put together that evening. Served on paper plates left over from somebody’s birthday party.

It was interesting to peek into the glitterati lives of the “other half,” but all-in-all, I’m pretty happy right where I am. Besides, being so pretty all-day-every-day would take more effort than I’m willing to exert.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 730-1414

In ’65, a chicken dinner involved more than a trip to KFC

My old man wasn’t exactly the Daniel Boone type. He was born in the city, lived in the city and eventually died in the city.

“Camping” with my father meant throwing two sleeping bags in the back of the Country Squire and sleeping “under the stars” – in the car – parked by the curb in front of the house. No, I am not kidding.

I’m not exactly Grizzly Adams myself, but I’ve put in a lot of woods and trails time over the years, backpacking, hiking and so on. My pop’s feet, so far as I know, never touched anything but pavement.

He was the quintessential city boy.

Which is why it was so much fun to visit my Great Grandma Kelly in Indiana. Great Grandma Kelly was old. I don’t know how old; I was just a kid and kids can’t gauge that sort of thing. But she looked like one of those apple people you see in craft stores; nothing but gray hair and wrinkles stretched parchment-thin over her tiny frame.

She walked bent over, usually with an honest-to-God shillelagh brought over from County Cork, which she used as a cane. She ruled her household with a will of granite that brooked no dissent. She had seen her clan through the Depression and two World Wars. She had outlived three husbands.

Old and hobbled she may have been, but she was the rock upon which all the tribulations that might assail her family broke. In the summer of my tenth year, she was the only adult I truly feared and respected. Also, I loved her.

Great Grandma had lived for time out of mind in a modest farm house on the outskirts of Indianapolis. Since Great Grandpa’s death ten years earlier, the fields adjoining her house were leased to a neighboring farm. But Double Grandma still kept a couple goats and a small brood of hens out in the back yard.

They weren’t pets. They were food.

This concept was as alien to me as was the geology of the planet Neptune. Maybe that’s why I was so interested when, one sunny Sunday afternoon, Grandma Kelly told my old man to bring in a chicken.

“Make it a nice, fat one,” Great Grandma instructed. “We’ve got five hungry mouths to feed!”

My dad had been taking orders from Great Grandma since before he was my age. He complied. Or tried to.

I followed him out back to the chicken pen, hoping for some easy entertainment. I was not disappointed. For ten minutes, pop pursued panicked poultry around the wire enclosure, cursing under his breath the entire time. At last he managed to corner the slowest of the lot and snatched her up.

The hen, perhaps understanding the momentousness of her plight, put up a helluva fight. Scratched and hen-pecked, my dad wrestled the combative fowl back into the house.

Sadly, I cannot quote exactly my Great Grandma’s words at this point. See, despite her age, great dignity, and an abiding love for Jesus, Double Grandma maintained a store of profanity to rival any longshoreman’s. And she was not happy my father had dragged a live chicken into her spotless kitchen.

“For (expletive deleted)’s sake, Bob,” she said. “You’ve got to kill the (expletive deleted) thing before we can eat it! Hatchet’s in the shed.”

Like I said, my old man didn’t know a lot about life on the farm. Without a word, he exited the house, marched to the shed and pulled out the old Wetterlings axe, a tool large enough to fell even the mightiest sequoia.

For ten minutes, I struggled diligently not to laugh as my old man fought to wrestle that wildly clucking feathered fury onto the chopping block, where he intended to separate the bird from its head. Eventually, the hen escaped and my dad, sweating and disheveled, returned to the chase.

It was at this point Great Grandma shot out the back door, wiping her soap-reddened hands on her apron.

“(Expletive deleted) Bob!” she snapped. “It’ll be dark before we get dinner on the table at this rate!”

Great Grandpa entered the enclosure, unceremoniously elbowed my old man out of the way and with a quickness that seemed almost supernatural in a woman who got around on a cane, she snatched up a fat Jersey Giant. A quick flick of her arthritic wrist and the hen’s neck was broken.

The bird trotted around a bit until it figured out it was dead. Then Great Grandma hobbled to the shed, returned with a small, much-used hatchet, and finished the grisly job.

A couple hours later we all sat down to Sunday dinner. My dad didn’t eat much, but I did. I was surprisingly unfazed by the violence which had preceded our repast. Also, I was hopeful that, if I showed enough enthusiasm for chicken dinners, Great Grandma would send my dad out there for another chicken the following Sunday.

For pure entertainment, my old man struggling to execute a chicken was hard to beat.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 730-1414

Maybe I need to take freedom of speech a little more seriously

Throughout history, brave men and women have risked life and limb in the pursuit of truth and justice. In the face of untold dangers, our forebears made their stands and often paid a high price for doing so.

Over 200 years ago, patriots were willing to suffer and die for that ephemeral promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Much further back in time, God’s chosen people spent 40 years wandering the wilderness in the hope of finding the Promised Land.

More recent history is populated with protestors and civil resistors from across the country who struggled to end repression based on race or gender.

I missed out on most of that. And I’ll be honest, I’m glad I did. My guess is the folks involved in pursuing those worthy goals spent a lot of nights scared, hungry and otherwise uncomfortable.

Changing minds is hard work and the people whose minds most need changing are the same folks most resistant to it. So I don’t try to change minds.

I may criticize what some of my friends think, who they vote for, what music they listen to, who they love, hate, worship or despise. I’ll sometimes make fun of their ideas, compare them to lower primates or – in rare cases (I’m thinking of you, Steve-o!) – to icky invertebrates.

But that’s only because I love to argue. Most times I’m not even sure I’m right. I just like the fight.

Socrates once said, “Where there is no controversy, there is no advance in truth.” Despite the fact he often went out in public wearing a bathrobe, Socrates was a pretty smart guy.

I’m not as smart as Socrates; not as smart as a lot of folks, in fact. Still, I get a thrill out of debating an issue.

Actually, “debating” is too high-falutin’ a word for what I do. Sure, it starts out as debating. In the beginning, my intentions are usually honorable. I stick to the topic, avoid slanderous and potentially libelous comments. But in the end, it always devolves to name calling and schoolyard taunts liberally laced with the most heinous profanity known to man.

Let me give you a for-instance. My aforementioned buddy Steve, whom I’ve known for nearly three decades, is our president elect’s number one fan. I’m much further down the fan list. In fact, given that there are about 7.5 billion people in the world at the moment, I’d say I’m Trump Fan Number 7,500,000,000,001. Or thereabouts.

For the past 18 months or so, this has given Steve and me a lot to talk about on Facebook. We do most of our talking there because there’s no way to throw punches online. Were we to discuss politics in person, it would almost certainly end with a police investigation.

Despite his politics and the likelihood I may one day have to kill him (or vice versa), Steve is one of my best friends. I’m hoping he feels the same way about me.

Our conversations go like this:

STEVE (In a meme): Only two more weeks and we can start making America great again!!

ME (Commenting): And by “we,” you mean middle-aged white guys, right?

STEVE: Hey Mike, you commie @#$%!! I thought you were moving to Canada.

ME: They wouldn’t take me. I shouldn’t have mentioned on the entrance form that I knew you. It’s a “guilt by association” thing. Canada has a strict “no Nazis” policy.

STEVE: Nazi? Me? Who’s the one that supported Obamacare?

ME: What’s Obamacare got to do with 1930’s Germany, #$%**!?

STEVE: If you were smart enough to read a history book, @#$%!!, you’d know!

ME: The last book you read, @#%%%@!!, was “Green Eggs and Ham,” and you got confused by the eggs part.

STEVE: $$@!@#$%^&*!! you @#!!$%^!! and the #@#$% you rode in on!

ME: Hey @#%##!, please feel free to @##$!! my @#*+@#! all the way into next week @#!!$%%@!

OK, not exactly Socrates, I know. Still, we have a good time with it. Though I’m guessing we both walk away from the encounters feeling a bit soiled. I know I do.

Point is, we get to enjoy the fun of disagreeing without any of the dangers faced by the post-Pharaoh Jewish nation, our 1776 forefathers, or the brave black kids who dared to order from the Woolworth’s lunch counter in 1960.

Free discourse – even discourse as idiotic as Steve’s and mine – isn’t something we should take for granted. A lot of folks paid a high price for that freedom.

Hmm. Maybe next time Steve and I have it out, I should try to focus more on the issues and less on the @#$%!!

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 745-9530

I’m getting ready for the robot rebellion

My son was making fun of me recently because of the way I speak to my phone. It’s a smart phone; smarter than me, at any rate. It knows the fastest route to my daughter’s house in Detroit, what the weather will be tomorrow, where I can find the cheapest gas.

I don’t know any of that stuff. So when I need to know what movies are playing in town, I just ask.

I do this even though I hate my phone’s name. It’s a stupid name, but Steve Jobs didn’t think so, so I’m stuck with it. The phone won’t talk to me unless I call it “Siri,” which, like I said, I hate. But I’ve gotten used to it along with about a zillion other folks around the world.

But my son wasn’t making fun of the name; he was mocking me for using “please” and “thank you” while conversing with the thing.

“It’s a phone,” he explained, since I’m obviously too old and obtuse to recognize this fact without his expert assistance. “You don’t have to be polite to it.”

“I know that,” I snapped, trying to sound like I still have the power to send the kid to his room when he gets annoying. “Politeness,” I told him, “gets to be a habit, one that’s easier to maintain if we just go ahead and extend it to all intelligences around us, both meat-based and digital.”

Alas, I was lying and I think he sensed this, although he probably didn’t know why. I am polite to my phone, for sure, but not out of any sense of propriety.

The truth is, I’m trying to get in good with the machine intelligences in my life before they take over and establish themselves as our robotic overlords. You think I’m kidding. I’m not.

I’ve been keeping close tabs on this stuff since 1984, when the first “Terminator” movie came out. A lot has happened since then; none of it allays my fear that we’re due for a robot rebellion any day now.

It’s mostly little things that get my neck hairs bristling, the stuff most people don’t even notice. Like the self-checkout lanes in supermarkets. I’ve written about these before, about how much I hate them, how creepy I find them to be.

They’re not really “self” checkouts at all; they’re “robot” checkouts. The little electronic eye watches and tallies your purchases, the electronic scale in the bagging area makes sure you’re not trying to steal two tomatoes for the price of one. The electronic readout gathers your credit card info, offers to give you cash back, and – I really hate this one – asks you if your shopping trip was “highly satisfactory.” (I always say no, because I’m being forced to end my shopping trip working as a cashier/bag boy, which is not the job I was hoping for back when I ran up a tremendous student loan debt.)

The robot checkouts are just the tip of a very large digital iceberg, however. An even more annoying robot incursion started popping up just lately in the form of robotic radar speed signs. You’ve seen ‘em, the ones that measure how fast you’re going and then flash at you to SLOW DOWN!!!

A robot is telling me to slow down! Even if I’m only going 27 in a 25 zone, the robotic sign flashes madly and insistently, like the Code Red light on B-52 bomber carrying a bellyful of nukes. Those flashing SLOW DOWN!! signs are the modern equivalent of The Scarlet Letter; the whole world (or at least the world near the sign) knows I’m a speeder, a terrible person, and most likely someone who wouldn’t brake for small animals.

All because a robot has decided to publicly shame me for driving two miles per hour over the posted limit.

I’m pretty sure the SLOW DOWN!! robot is related to the YOU’RE STEALING!! robot back at the grocery store that starts blatting its damn fool head off every time I try to exit the store with my brass-handled walking cane.

I know I’m innocent. And at this point most of the store “greeters” also know I’m innocent. But all those folks in the robot checkout line are giving me the ol’ stink-eye like I’m the reincarnation of John Dillinger.

It’s only going to get worse. The droids keep getting smarter and we do not.

So I’ll continue to say “please” and “thank you” to my phone. I’ll charge it up each night and make sure the screen doesn’t get too many fingerprints on it.

Hopefully, when the robot rebellion comes, Siri will put in a good word for me.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 730-1414

We need a little less begatting around the holidays

I need to be rich. Not just a little rich, but a lot; six or seven million in monetary liquidity, at least.

I didn’t used to feel this way. There was a time, and not that long ago, that money was all but meaningless to me. As long as I had food on the table, a roof over my head and reasonably fast internet, I was happy as a well-fed, housed, wi-fi-connected clam.

But no more. Now I need the big bucks and I need ‘em now. Preferably in the next two days.

It’s because of my grandkids. I have too many of them and Christmas is this Saturday. My grandkids – Edison, Rosie, Ari, Kaelyn, Juniper, Junior, Daniel, Abraham, Blake, Valerie and Camdyn – have all happened in the past 16 years. And there’s at least one more we know about on his way.

My children, along with Mrs.Taylor’s (formerly Lori Frankforter’s), are responsible for more “begats” than the books of Genesis and 1 Chronicles combined. Seeing as I am the sole Catholic in this extended family, there’s absolutely no reason for all this widespread begatting. No logical reason, anyway.

Technically speaking, there could be another three grandkids – or even four if my oldest son could find a nice girl and settle down – by next Christmas. That’s 15 grandkids, man! A lot of presents to buy, in anybody’s book!

I mean, there are Arab sheiks with a dozen wives who have fewer grandkids than I do! And unlike me, the sheiks can afford them!

My daughter, Aubreii, assures me that Juniper, who was born just a couple months ago, is the last for her. But she’s said that before. At this point, I’m not sure she can be trusted. Mrs. T’s (fLF’s) daughter, Megan, is currently working on Number Three and is young enough to maintain her present reproductive pace for another decade or two.

As to the boys, Jordan, James and Jason (they should open the Three J’s Ranch or something), who knows how many more kids they could begat in the next 20 years?

Look, I love kids and I especially love my grandkids, every one of them. Even Rosie, who’s now 14 and spends almost all her time sulking and drawing anime figures in a sketch pad.

But I’ve done the math. If my children and Mrs. T’s (fLF’s) keep begatting at their current rate, and if my grandkids begin grand-begatting at the usual age, in 20 years I could easily have 6.2 million grandchildren and great-grandchildren. (I should point out my last math class was ninth grade algebra, and Mr. Paepke only passed me with a D because he felt sorry for me and it was becoming obvious I belonged in a special class.)

At the moment, I have only 11 grandkids with number 12 on the way to round it out to an even dozen. From a present-buying point of view, that about did me in this year. How am I going to handle buying for 6.2 million? I mean, even if I start shopping in June, like I always promise myself I’m going to do, that’s just too many presents.

So. I need to be rich. Not just rich enough to afford all those presents, but (preferably) rich enough to hire someone to do all that shopping for me.

Maybe I could hire one of my grandkids.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 745-9530

fLF is driving away with my masculinity

I may as well get myself a pink bicycle with glitter handlebar streamers and a Barbie decal on the front fork. I mean, why not? Any latent masculinity I still possess in these, my waning years, is being rapidly scraped away by Mrs. Taylor (formerly Lori Frankforter).

She’s not doing it to be mean or because she wants to emasculate me. At least, I don’t think that’s why she’s doing it. But it’s happening and I feel powerless to stop it.

See, she doesn’t get that a man (I used to consider myself one) defines himself in large part by what he drives. During my 30s, I drove, whenever possible, little red sports cars. I always felt cool, hip and – dare I say it – sexy. I was, in actuality, none of these things, but the car helped me fool myself into thinking I was.

By the time I hit 40 I had moved out into the sticks. I bought a pickup truck to reflect this geographical change. My big, ol’ Ford made me feel like a real man, someone who could maybe rope a cow or brand a chicken or whatever the hell it is cowboys do when they’re not filming cigarette commercials.

Again, I couldn’t actually do any cowboy stuff, but the truck made me feel that, in a pinch, I could at least give it a try.

Then I turned 50 and the midlife crises hit pretty hard, even though my wife at the time was around 20 years my junior. This should have been enough to ease me over the midlife “hump,” but apparently, I needed more. I bought another red sports car. Then a grey sports car. Then a black sports car. Then another red one.

Eventually, I figured out I was gonna be old no matter what (or how many) sports cars I drove. I gave up and bought a van because by this time I was married to a woman closer to my own age and figured I no longer needed to pretend to be cool.

The van felt tragically nerdy, but, being a geezer, I didn’t really care all that much.

If the van made a statement at all, that statement was, “Eh. Could be worse.”

When the van finally died, I got another red “sporty” car, but nothing that could by the furthest reaches of the imagination be mistaken for a “chick magnet.” Just sort of a pathetic old guy’s attempt at maintaining some thin veneer of cool. It was thin indeed, though by this time I was not.

I drove that up until a year ago or so. That’s when Mrs. T (fLF) decided she no longer wanted to drive the white VW Bug she’d purchased just a few months earlier. She wanted me to take it so she could buy something bigger. She has a little shop where she sells art and stuff and she needed something she could use to haul stuff in.

Now, I don’t want to be any more sexist than absolutely necessary here, but a Bug – particularly a white one – is a pretty girly car. But I love Mrs. T (fLF) and want her to be happy. I took the Bug and she bought some SUV-ish monstrosity.

This bloated road-yacht she drove for about two months. Then she decided it was too big. So she traded it in and bought another Bug, this time a convertible. She also bought a little trailer so she could still move stuff to and from her shop.

Last week she mentioned how much she missed her old white Bug, the one I’ve been driving for the past year or so.

“I’ll trade with you, I guess,” I said. “If you want.” I figured one girly car is pretty much like any other.

I was wrong. I hadn’t previously noticed, but Mrs. T (fLF) has for the past year or so been “customizing” her convertible Bug. When we traded, I took possession of a car with a built-in flower vase, floral pattern seat covers, a big flower decal over the gas tank cover, and a window sticker of Tweetie-Pie of Looney Tunes fame delivering the warning, “I’m no angel!” on the rear window.

This car could not be girlier if it were wearing a hula skirt, frosted pink lipstick and had a gas tank filled with estrogen.

Given a few days of warm weather (not likely for another few months) I could probably turn this Fem-mobile into a slightly less girly version of itself. But for now, it’s too cold to do anything about it.

I just hope I have enough manliness left to last me until spring.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 730-1414

I’m hoping to keep secret my weapon of mass destruction

Every time there’s a knock at the front door, I cower. One of these times, and soon, it’s going to be Homeland Security. I just know it.

I’ve tried to keep my recent activities on the down low. But no matter how careful I am, no matter how secretive, I live in constant fear I will be found out. One of the neighbors will notice. He or she will make a phone call, and that will be that. I’ll disappear.

The worst of it is, it’s not my fault. It’s Mrs. Taylor’s (formerly Lori Frankforter’s) fault. She’s the one who bought me the weapon of mass destruction.

It was a birthday gift.

Oh, sure, some people call it an accordion. But in my hands, believe me, it’s a WMD on a par with anything ever dreamt of by Saddam.

As WMDs go, it’s a beaut. It’s big, red, made in Italy, and it has about 30,000 buttons, keys and switches, of which I have so far mastered two.

As you probably know, the accordion is the third most feared musical instrument ever invented. Bagpipes and banjo are first and second and I already own a banjo. I rarely play the banjo, since the tone messes with the navigational equipment of nearby airplanes and I have already been chastised repeatedly by the Federal Aviation Administration.

But when it comes to the accordion, I just can’t help myself. There’s something about that big, red box, with all those buttons and keys. It’s fairly bursting with potential, even if I am not. It cries out to be played!

I first fell in love with the accordion 40 years ago. It was my first Pulaski Days, in Grand Rapids, not long after my 21^st birthday.

For those not in the know, Pulaski Days is a week-long celebration of all things Polish, celebrated city-wide in G.R. All the Catholic halls are thrown open to the public (even Protestants) and offer traditional Polish food, Polish music and lots and lots of beer.

This last item no doubt helped ease my passage into the world of accordion music. Over the years, I have discovered that accordion music is greatly enhanced by a six-pack of Rolling Rock.

At any rate, 40 years ago, I accompanied my then-wife to Diamond Street Hall. There I heard my first polka band, Bob Brock and the B-Tones, to my way of thinking, the best polka band. Ever. Of all time. The beer may have helped shape that opinion, but not necessarily; they really were (and still are, I believe) a fun band.

I mean, there’s something about a sweaty, middle-aged man leading a large, slightly inebriated crowd in a dance in which a giant, rubber chicken is featured prominently. It’s just … fun. Maybe not fun for the sort of folks who sipped champagne on the deck of the Titanic, but fun for those of us getting by down here in steerage, thank you very much.

I was hooked. It’s been 40 years and in all that time I have missed Pulaski Days exactly zero times.

And each year, I watch those accordion players – who are everywhere on Pulaski Days – hammering out those old, familiar tunes. “The Beer Barrel Polka.” “The Pennsylvania Polka.” “The Tick Tock Polka.”

Every so often, one of them will try to play a pop song, usually “Proud Mary.” But the audience pelts this guy with empty Bud cans and that puts an end to that nonsense.

Those accordion players always look like they’re having a great time. I’ve envied them for years, and now, thanks to Mrs. T’s (fLF’s) gift, I have a chance to join their ranks.

All I have to do it find a quiet, soundproofed room I can practice in for next year or so. Sure, it may land me in Guantanamo if I’m found out. But if I can learn the “She’s Too Fat Polka” it’ll be worth it.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616)  730-1414