Coming and Going

Some time ago, my wife, Christine, and I were renting a house from an elderly couple who lived next door. The Jhertz were in their eighties and pleasant enough although a bit quirky, commensurate with their age. For example, they wanted us to put our garbage out the night before, not in the morning. Occasionally, when trash is out all night, animals prowling about scatter said garbage all over the street in search of tasty morsels. Even though the Jhertzes had to, every now and again, clean up the results of Rocky Raccoon's shopping spree, they insisted on nightly garbage positioning, so I obliged. After all, they were the landlords.

As the name implies, they were the lords of their land, and they let us know when we didn't comply with their feudal decree. One time, Mrs. Jhertz told me that when I park my car, I should back in like her. While I tried to placate her with how that was a good idea, but my car had blind spots which made backing up difficult, she was having no part of it. So now, I had to back in every night when I got home from work, and on Tuesday nights, I had to look out for the trash cans as I reversed up the short driveway.

All this irritated Christine. She wanted to tell Ole Lady Jhertz to mind her own business. She often referred to Mrs. Jhertz's decrees as "blue laws." It had nothing to do with outdated statutes. Mrs. Jhertz's hair was blue. I don't think it was intentional. I think she was colorblind or something because when she dyed her hair, it came out blue. I was drilling in the reserves during this stage of life, and my friend, Will, who was from out of town would stay with us on drill weekends. We were all in our thirties. Will had a wife and family. We caught up each month over dinner. It's not like we were up partying until the wee hours of the morn. Mrs. Jhertz stopped by one afternoon to inquire about the man who occasionally stayed with us.

"That's my friend, William. He's the Commanding Officer of my reserve unit."

I could see it on her face. Another decree was about to spew forth. I also could see Christine's expression as well. She was about to throw Old Blue out of her house.

"I talked to Mr. Jhertz, and your friend can stay only one night, not two," Mrs. Jhertz announced.

I agreed because although a monthly lease meant we could leave at a moments notice. It also meant the Jhertzes could toss us out in the same timeframe. Our rent was very inexpensive, considering we were in a two bedroom house, and we really didn't want to leave. Unfortunately, Christine was fuming. She was an up and coming executive for a Fortune 500 company with a sizable team of her own. Having to take inane orders from some old lady with blue hair was wearing thin. A few weeks later, Mrs. Jhertz was at our door again. Christine didn't let her in. They carried on their conversation through the screen. I prepared for the worst.

"You people are coming and going too much," Mrs. Jhertz informed.

"What do you mean?" Christine asked.

"All day long, you people leave then come back," she explained.

"That's because we live here," Christine reasoned.

"Well, you need to plan your day so you come and go only once."

"Plan my day?"

"Yes, if you people were better organized you would come and go only once."

I was half listening to the conversation. Christine isn't one to mince words. I figured at any moment she was going to tell the fossil at the door to try "going" herself. Instead, I heard the door quietly close.

"What did she want? Eat more fiber?" I asked.

"We're coming and going to much."

"Coming and going?"

"Yes, we now have one 'coming' and one 'going' per day."

"And you agreed to that?"

"What choice do we have?"

So for the next six months, we planned every excursion to ensure we complied with Ole Lady Smurf's "coming and going" edict or "CAG" as it came to be known. The worst part was on the weekends when we might want to go grocery shopping because we were out of food. If we spend our CAG on that, we couldn't go to the movies later in the day unless we hadn't any perishables. Or if friends dropped by and wanted us to go out, we had to inform them that we were not allowed to leave because I expended the CAG with a trip to the pharmacy earlier in the day. Sometimes, one of us was called into work on a weekend, which meant we spend our CAG on the man.

I took care not to violate any of Mrs. Jhertz 's rules. When I was coming, I backed in being careful not to run over the garbage the wildlife spread all over the driveway. It was a matter of time before I slipped up, and went out to get my car washed one Saturday morning. It was spring, and I wasn't aware that Christine had gone for a walk earlier in the morn. Technically, since she didn't actually use a car, Christine's "going" shouldn't have counted, but not being a lawyer I wasn't sure the legal precedent to invoke. When I pulled up I saw, the Blue Fairy at the door. Since I was already a real boy, I knew this wasn't going to be good.

For a moment, I thought I could just back over her as I maneuvered my car in reverse down the short driveway while dodging kitchen trash and recyclables. Mrs. Jhertz was gone when I got out of my car. Christine met me in the driveway.

"Let's go," she said.

"We can't. I already 'go-ed' today." I explained.

"We have some houses to look at," Christine noted.

Depending how you look at it, we came and went two, maybe three times that day. This was during the bull market of the 90's. Christine had taken all the money we saved, since our rent was so small, and put it in aggressive growth funds. She managed to squirrel away six figures. We bought our first house three weeks later. It was very freeing to be able to live in our own home. I pulled my car into the driveway anyway I felt. I put out the garbage in the morning. Each month, Will stayed with us for two whole days.

They say that you can't appreciate something until it's taken away. The best part of home ownership by far was the freedom to come and go as we pleased.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on December 15, 2016.

What Star Trek Got Wrong

I watched Star Trek when it originally aired on Thursday nights. I was five years old. I hadn't a clue what was going on in that show. My father, on the other hand, was transfixed by the series. I mostly ruined it for him by incessantly asking what was up with that guy's ears. Later when I learned the plots shadowed current events of the day, the warlike Klingons were sometimes said to be the North Koreans and the crafty Romulans were attributed to the former Soviets, I appreciated the edginess of Star Trek. The follow on series never matched the same intellectual level of the original which lasted only three years.

My trekie friends are always espousing what Star Trek got right. In accordance with today's mainstream journalistic standard practices, I would like to concentrate on what Star Trek got wrong.

Squelch

Kirk and Spock

Whenever Captain Kirk whipped out a communicator to hail the Enterprise, he would often twist a knob on the device. He fiddled away with the squelch while saying,

"Come in Enterprise."

Back in the late 1960s and all through to the 80s, electronic devices needed to be manually tuned. Car radios had a knob for tuning. There were a few preset buttons, but you had to acquire the station before you could set your faves.

Televisions had the UHF dial which stood for "ultra high frequency." After school, my sister and I would endlessly adjust that UHF knob trying to get a clear picture of channel 56 so we could watch Speed Racer and other lame cartoons. All the kid shows were on the UHF dial. I thought it stood for "you have fun." When VCRs first came out, you had to manually tune every station as part of the setup. Fortunately for us, we had less than twenty channels so even though it was a tedious task, it wasn't like today in which you have hundreds of stations that you never watch. Auto tuning made the set up and operation of just about any electronic device extraordinarily easy. In the 23rd century, Captain Kirk had to manually tune in the Enterprise.

Transporter

The Transporter

While the feasibility of the transporter is argued by physicists and heavy thinkers all over the globe, let's just assume it would work if they could get all the bugs worked out. The first thing never mentioned in Star Trek is the obvious medical benefits of teleportation. If they can break up your body into a bunch of elementary particles, beam them to another location, and put everything back together, then they certainly could filter out the particles you don't want like cancer, fat, or a cold virus. They could painlessly remove cataracts or a mole. Sure, traveling by teleportation would be wonderfully convenient, but it would be a great way to remove a tumor.

There was some tense scenes when Scottie almost lost crew members in the transporter. He would slide the levers up and down and press buttons trying to do something to the signal. I'm not sure what he was doing, but if that can happen, then forget teleportation. I'll just walk.

Language

It always bothered me that the aliens spoke English. How fortuitous. Imagine traveling light years, beaming down to a planet, running into some aliens, and they spoke French. Eight years of parochial school, and I wouldn't be able to communicate with them unless, of course, the aliens needed to conjugate the French word for "go."

Setting the Phasor to Stun

Crew Member
with a Phasor

Whenever an away party positioned themselves on the transporter, Captain Kirk usually announced the phasor setting. He would say,

"Set phasors to stun."

Everyone would look down at their drawn phasor and turn a little knob. That's it? That's all you have to do to change the setting from "kill" to "stun?" They should've had to pull the knob up a bit to get it on the kill setting. Maybe they should have to punch in a code. I'll bet they had a lot of incidents whereby someone had their phasor on "kill" when it should have been on "stun." Imagine Kirk and his team beaming down to a planet and encountering a menacing alien. They all shoot their phasors, thinking they're going to stun the dude, but one guy has his set incorrectly.

Kirk: "Which one of you assholes has a phasor set to kill?"

Chekov: "It was me, Cap-tin. Sorry."

Phasor Energy Requirement

Years ago, when I was taking a physics class in college, the professor was a big trekie. On a test, he had us calculate the amount of energy needed to separate two carbon atoms which was quite a lot. He then asked us to comment on the feasibility of the Star Trek phasor. The answer he was looking for was the energy requirement made the phasor impractical. My answer was along the lines that although the amount of energy required to separate two carbon atoms was significant, it's not necessary to kill someone. All you need to do is raise the surface temperature sufficiently high enough to burn a hole into their body, preferably through some vital organ or the head.

Set to "stun," the phasor knocked you on your ass. Set to "kill," and the target completely disappeared. However, tidy complete vaporization is, it's not likely that there would be sufficient energy to power a phasor set to "kill."

Everyone Was an Officer

There was 1,014 crew members on the Enterprise. Star Trek often modeled life aboard the starship like that of a sea going vessel. There was "away" parties and pipe calls when hailing someone. What the writers left out was the distinction between enlisted and officers. Chief O'Brien in Next Generation was the only enlisted dude I ever heard referenced. Sulu was a lieutenant although his job as a helmsman is typically performed by an enlisted member. Uhura was a lieutenant in the position of Chief Communication Officer. She was often the one actually running the communication equipment which likely would have been a subordinate. I also thought it was a bit sexist that the biggest roles for women on the show were a phone operator and a nurse, Christine Chapel, also an officer. She had a thing for Spock, the science officer. Even Kirk's yeoman, Janice Rand, was a Lieutenant Junior Grade.

Yeoman Duties

Yeoman Rand often brought food to Captain Kirk. She also made coffee for everyone on the bridge. In one episode, she ingeniously heats a pot of coffee with a phasor during a power outage. I wonder what phasor setting she used? Yeoman in the navy push paper, not food. The latter is the job of a mess specialist, and even so they don't fuss over the Captain's diet.

When I was pushing paper in the navy, I once needed one of those circle things used to repair the hole punched in a sheet of paper. I went into the Admin Department, and asked a first class yeoman for one. She said,

"We call those things paper assholes, sir."

Not to be outdone, I responded, "That's funny. That's what we call yeomen in the Admin Department."

Kirk's occasional interest in Yeoman Rand would have been considered fraternization, being a superior commissioned officer. Kirk got it on with aliens every so often so maybe a little human fraternization will be tolerated in the 23rd century.

Race

Star Trek was ahead of its time in the manner in which the storyline handled race. The bridge was very racially diversified. There was an African American woman, a gay Asian (although we didn't know it back then), a Russian and a Vulcan. Of course, the white male was in charge. The show even broke ground with the first on screen interracial kiss between Kirk and Uhura. If I remember the episode correctly, aliens forced them to do it, and Uhura cried. That's not my idea of racial equality, but, hey, it was 1968 so it was groundbreaking.

Combat

For all the advances in the 23rd century, there was an awful lot of hand to hand combat. You would think that superior weaponry would make it unnecessary to smack an alien on the head with something heavy, but don't underestimate the effectiveness of a big rock. Technological advancements also hadn't made much headway in the garment industry either since Kirk lost many a shirt standing his ground with aliens.

Questioning Orders

When things got tense on the bridge of the Enterprise, a lot of people second guessed the orders given by the officer in charge. Kirk commands,

"Lower the shields!"

Sulu spins around in his chair and exclaims,

"But Captain! Lowering the shield will blah, blah, blah..."

In the military, you don't question the orders given to you, especially in a combat scenario on the bridge of a fighting vessel. Sometimes when the Klingons got the upper hand, Kirk would blurt out,

"Evasive maneuvers!"

There is no order for a helmsmen to do whatever they want to get the ship out of danger. Commands are short and to the point, not open ended and subject to interpretation.

Away Teams

Away with You Team

Whenever they beam down to a hostile, alien planet, the away team always includes Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy. This is not very realistic even for the 23rd century. The captain generally stays with the ship, especially when it sinks. The First Officer doesn't leave either because he's there to take over if the Captain hands in his lunch pail. Why they would gun up "Bones" and send his crotchety ass along for a close encounter always puzzled me. The guy in the red shirt isn't long for this world or any others for that matter. He's the extra in the credits listed as "Dumbass Red Shirt Crewmember with a Phasor." He usually buys it shortly after beaming to the surface. Perhaps aliens like bulls are not fond of the color red.

Star Trek still enthralls new generations fifty years later. Movies today are often criticized for too much computer generated imagery and not enough good writing or plot elements. Considering how primitive the special effects were back then, it's a testament to the exemplary skill of the writers that Star Trek remains a relevant classic today.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on November 1, 2016.

The Secret Life of Chris

A few months ago, my wife and I were clearing out old clothing from a spare closet. We were tossing the articles we no longer wore into a pile when she encountered a maroon jacket with her name embroidered on the right side. We all know her by "Christine," but back in the day when she lived that other life, she was known as "Chris." She flung the jacket onto a chair. The writing on the back was clearly visible.

"Union Equestrian Team?" I read.

"Brings back memories," she said warmly.

"You never told me that," I exclaimed.

"It never came up."

You'd think after twenty years of marriage it would have surfaced just once. Maybe it could have come up years ago, on a date over dinner when I asked her what she liked to do.

"I was the president," she offered.

"President?" I asked.

"Yeah," she laughed.

"You never tell me anything," I issued.

"I forgot," she deflected.

If that was it, I wouldn't be so concerned, but the other day over dinner, we were talking about the small traveling circus that comes to our town when Christine said,

"I used to work for the circus."

"What?" I exclaimed.

"Yeah, years ago," she answered.

Now, there are some questions men don't ever want to ask their wives, and I was about to ask one of them.

"What did you do in the circus?"

"I don't know. Lots of things," she answered.

"Like what, the trapeze?" I asked, my voice cracking.

"No, not that," she responded.

Men are supposed to be stoic. Woman are supposed to be from Venus. I thought at any moment now, my wife was going to tell me she'd already been there.

"Well, what did you do," I resumed, "you know, in the circus?"

"I worked in the ticket booth," she explained.

She seemed evasive. During moments like these, I think I'm talking to "Chris." That night, after everyone went to bed, I googled perhaps the oddest search of my life. I queried on my wife's maiden name and "flying trapeze." I fully expected to see pictures of a younger version of Christine swinging above the crowd, being snatched from the air by a muscular dude named "Karl," dangling upside down, standing on a tiny platform with her hand raised triumphantly, waving to the crowd below. The search yielded nothing. She probably had it all expunged when she took up with the CIA. The next morning before breakfast I sat her down and asked her to tell me everything.

"There isn't anything to tell," she offered, but I wasn't buying it. Later that day, Christine announced, "There is one thing."

What NASA astronaut? Oliver North aide? Hindenburg survivor? I braced myself for the reveal.

"I used to work in a prison," she declared.

"You were in prison! What did you do?" I asked concernedly.

"No, I worked there. I interned one summer. I did pressure drop calculations for the potable water supply to the sinks," she explained.

"Is there anything else you want to tell me, because now is the time? Caused a prison riot? Helped someone escape?" I asked.


 "No, that's everything," she assured.

A woman's heart is as deep as the ocean. I learned that from watching Titanic. You can never know everything about them, but I think after over twenty years and two children, my wife finally feels secure in our relationship to reveal her deepest, darkest secrets.

And when she tells me what they are, I'll let you know.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on November 10, 2016.

"I Spy..."

A few months ago, we were all on a family car trip when my son Aidan, our middle schooler, announced,

"Let's play I Spy!"

"I want to play!" declared William, our five year old.

"Okay," I agreed.

My wife, Christine, was waking from a brief nap, but she absorbed the exchange and readied her senses.

Aidan began, "I spy something yellow."

"That yield sign," I offered.

"Yes, nice job Dad!" Aidan belted.

My turn.

"I spy something with a lot of tires," I provided.

"That big truck over there," Christine answered.

"No, that's not it," I exclaimed.

"That bridge we're coming up on," Aidan guessed.

"Yes!" I shouted.

"A bridge has a lot of tires?" Christine asked.

"On it," Aidan explained, "I spy something sharp."

"The curve in the road," Christine guessed.

"Good one, Mom, but no," Aidan said.

"The edge of the guard rail," I answered.

"Yes! Go Dad," Aidan responded.

"I spy something heavy," I suggested.

"How 'bout that truck now?" Christine questioned.

"No, not the truck," I said.

"That airplane," William offered.

"Yes, that's right!" I applauded.

"What plane? I don't see a airplane," Christine questioned.

"The one way up there," Aidan explained.

"There's no airplane up there," Christine declared.

"Yes, there is," William chimed, "I spy something green."

"The trees," Christine offered forcefully.

"No, good try Mommy," William responded.

"That guy's shirt in the car ahead of us," Aidan exclaimed.

"Yes!" William shouted.

"What?" Christine objected.

"I spy something long," Aidan offered.

"This trip, let me tell you," Christine lamented.

"The transmission on that truck," I answered.

"Yes! Another for Dad," Aidan shouted.

"I spy something..."

"The leaves on that tree," William said.

"Yes!" I exclaimed.

"I spy..."

"The bird that was in that tree this morning, but isn't there now," Aidan said.

"Yes!" William shouted.

"Wait a minute. You didn't even finish. I'm not playing anymore," Christine retorted.

"I spy something blue," Aidan said.

No one offered a suggestion. There was a long pause as the miles ticked away. A blue mini van loomed just ahead of us. I pulled close.

"That mini van?" Christine asked cautiously.

The three boys exchanged looks of confusion. William mouthed the words, "blue mini van," then shook his head.

"The pen under the visor in that mini van ahead of us," I proudly announced.

"Yes! Dad got it again," Aidan responded.

"What! How can you tell there's a pen in that car?" Christine lamented.

"You know, Mommy, you can't win all the time," William lectured.

"All the time? How about just once!" Christine objected, "I quit."

"What kind of example is that?" Aidan asked.

"Yeah, Mommy. You have to keep playing," William ordered.

"Okay, I'll play only if you're gonna be fair," Christine explained.

"Life is not fair," William declared.

Christine looked to me with a smirk.

"He's right you know," I said then offered, "I spy something round."

A jeep with a spare tire pulled in front of us. There was a long pause as we skirted down the highway in full view of a tire looming in front of the windshield.

Christine finally asked, "That spare tire?

 

"No, no, not that," I said.

"What! You have to be..." Christine shouted.

"The earth!" William offered.

"Haley's Comet!" Aidan shouted.

"I'll tell you what I spy. I spy three boys cheating!" Christine declared.

The miles fell away in silence. After some time, Aidan said,

"Let's play Twenty Questions!"

Editor's Note: Originally posted on September 8, 2016.