What I Learned From Selfies

I don't like my picture to be taken because I have what is called a "dad's body" which really means "fat gut." My doctor told me to accept it. It's the result of gravity, and no amount of sit ups is going to overcome the same force that keeps the moon orbiting the earth. Still yet, I could suck in my dad's body every time I take a selfie, but I just don't think that fast anymore. Life can be cruel.

I've taken one selfie. Here it is:

Apart from holding my phone up side down and shaking it like a bottle of salad dressing, it's not that bad. My best friend's daughter, a clear expert in selfies, said,

"Wow! Your glasses are thick."

Yeah, thick like my waist. I found it hard to hold the phone until my youngest, William, showed me the "mirror button" which reverses the camera, making it easier to snap a picture of yourself. The first thing I learned from selfies is that the best are taken by people who are already good looking. Nobody wants to look at a picture of Mick Jagger, and he's a rich and famous rock star.

Another thing about selfies is that women take more than men. Research shows that when women look at pictures of women, they compare the people in the picture to themselves. When men look at pictures of women they wonder aloud what their breasts might look like. Nature wired us that way to ensure the propagation of the species even if it is done through shallow assholes. Today men are also more likely to use a selfie stick. My generation used to politely ask someone to take a picture for us. Now, with the invention of the selfie stick, you don't have to be polite. You just shove a stick with an attached camera in someone's face when you want a picture of yourself.

Younger woman take the most selfies. Once on a plane a teenager seated next to me positioned a MacBook on her tray then proceeded to shoot a thousand pictures of herself. I wasn't sure why she needed so many photos of her face. She shot more pictures during that one flight than was taken of me since birth. As she reviewed her work, she noticed that part of my shoulder occasionally appeared in the edge of the frame. She deleted all the pictures with bits of me in them.

Food

Women often take pictures of food. When someone posts a picture of chow to social media, I always think it will be captioned with,

"I'm eating this, and you're not."

Men don't photograph a meal in front of them. In a restaurant when our food comes, we immediately begin feasting as if at any moment we'll have to defend this food against a cackle of hungry hyenas.

Women also take the girl group picture when out partying. Guys never scrunch together to maximize the number bff's in the shot. When men see these group pictures of women, they count the heads then multiple by two to determine the number of in shot boobs, then they mentally note who has the best rack. Its nature way of ensuring that babies will be adequately fed, guaranteeing that the human race will flourish.



Waiting for the Band
to Play Single Ladies

I don't understand the infatuation with nude selfies. Most people avoid an on camera wardrobe malfunction at all costs. Yet, they upload nude pictures to their social media site. What I've learned from nude selfies is that many people need to pick up after themselves more regularly. A bit of advice. If you're inclined to take a nude picture of yourself in the bathroom, clean the toothpaste splatter off the mirror first.

My generation always believed that one should never put anything in email they didn't want to share with the rest of the world. Today, people feel that it's poor netiquette to copy a photo from a publically accessible social media site. Doing so is clearly a copyright violation, something anyone using photos in a blog is readily aware of, but if you upload a picture, someone is likely to download it.

I read a blog post written by a woman who was irate with her grandmother for downloading a picture of her from her Facebook page. Her grandmother printed and framed the picture for display. She reasoned,

"If I wanted her to have that picture, I would've given it to her myself."

I don't get it. Grandmother's normally want pictures of their grandkids. The author carried on extensively calling this a "blatant violation of privacy." Some of the commenters were sympathetic to her plight while others disagreed.

So that's what I know about selfies. I have one which is plenty for me. I'm not going to take another. Oh, there's one other thing selfies taught me.

This world. It's full of narcissists.

Editor's Note: Originally published on March 21, 2017.

Saving Daylight Savings Time

The Senate recently approved a bill which will make Daylight Saving Time (DST) permanent in the country. The Sunshine Protection Act, introduced by Florida Senator Marco Rubio, received wide bipartisan support. If passed by Congress the official time the sun reaches its highest point in the sky will be 11:00 am in lieu of noon starting in November 2023. The bill ensures the benefits of daylight will be enjoyed by every American all year long and not just in the summer. It also shows that legislators can come together and do the right thing for the American people. Senators across the nation followed the science and unanimously passed the bill. If it gets through Congress and past the President’s desk, Daylight Savings Time will be saved for future generations.

Too bad it's a completely bad idea.

Most Americans have a vague notion of what Daylight Savings Time is. They know it involves adjusting the clocks by an hour but are unsure when we are on it and when we're off it. In a nutshell, the clocks are pushed ahead in the spring so that the sun will set later in the day. The best way to understand why we do this is to note that the sun would rise at around 4:15 am in June at mid latitudes if we didn't have DST. By pushing the clocks ahead the sun rises at 5:15 am and sets one hour later. DST gives us an hour of sunlight after most of us are done with work. It's a great idea. 

Some people believe that DST "makes more daylight in the evening," but that's not the case. The amount of daylight each day changes during the year depending on your latitude and can't be altered by legislation. The closer to the equator you are the more equal the day and night are in duration and the less variation there is in the time the sun rises and sets. For example, in Ecuador there is about 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night all year long, and the sunrise varies only by 8 minutes. So DST is not employed in countries near the equator. It's also not used in countries near the poles either because the variation in sun set and rise and the length of day and night is so great that DST has little affect. In countries like the United States Daylight Savings Time is quite affective.

Historically, the only downside to DST was having to change the clock on a video cassette recorder (VCR). Most people gave up setting their clocks as it was quite common to see the clock on a VCR blinking. Some people even advertised back in the day "clock adjusting services." For $25 they would come to your house in the spring and fall for DST or after a power outage and set all the clocks to the proper tine. Today most electronics are bluetooth enable allowing them to pick up the time from the internet. So altering the times on electronic devices is not a problem anymore even though Rubio said that he wanted Daylight Savings Time to be permeant so "we don't have to do this stupidity anymore."

Many senators voted for the bill because they believe that shifting the day saves energy since our morning routines are generally shorter than our evening activities. The only issue I have with this idea is that lights use very little electricity especially now with LED lightbulbs. The big expense in the morning is in the hot water we use when taking a shower, and that's not going to change no matter when the sun rises and sets.

Contrary to popular belief, Ben Franklin did not propose Daylight Savings Time. While in France, he wrote a satirical letter to a French newspaper suggesting that Parisians should get up with the sun in lieu of their normal time of noon; thus, saving on candles in the evening. Daylight Savings Time was first suggested in 1895 by an entomolgist from New Zealand, George Hudson, who wanted more time in the evening to collect insects. Hudson suggestion adjusting the clocks by two hours instead of just one. In 1907 a British citizen, William Willett, published a pamphlet entitled "The Waste of Daylight" in which he promoted the idea of "British Summer Time," that is, advancing the clocks by an hour in the summer. Willett’s main reason he wanted the clocks adjusted was so he could play golf later in the evening. Apparently collecting bugs takes twice as long as golf.

To deal with the varying amount of daylight throughout the year, the romans chose to divide the daylight during the season into 12 equal hours resulting in a 75 minute hour in the summer and 44 minutes in the winter. Roman numerals lack placeholder value and as such appear cumbersome, but they actually make adding easier because there is no need to carry a one. Roman accountants strung strings of letters together then replaced groupings with simplifications to sum the total. Since DST causes so much confusion, it is unlikely that the concept of variable length hours and a number system with no value on position would be embraced today.

Back in 1974 when I was in fourth grade the government instituted Daylight Savings Time in the winter in response to the "energy crisis" caused when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided to sell less oil to any nation that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Now the important thing to remember about DST is that it makes it darker in the morning. Just for fun, guess what time the sun rises in December in a mid latitude state?

7:00 am.

So that means when DST is instituted in the winter, the sun will rise at 8:00 am and kids will be getting onto buses in total darkness. That's what happened to me in grade school. It lasted for just one year when people commuting to work at night collectively said,

"Screw this!"

Marco Rubio was still in diapers in 1974 so it's doubtful he recalls how much winter DST sucked. Other countries tried it too and came to the same conclusion that having it pitch black in the morning during the cold of winter is unsafe for children riding buses and people commuting to work. Not to mention it's downright depressing. Just ask anyone who lives in Norway.

So the Sunshine Protection Act will likely pass in the House which leaves a veto from President Biden as the only way that this nonsense will come to an end. The President is certainly old enough to know that permeant DST just doesn't work. If he shoots it down, both sides and the media will attack him, but if goes along with it in a year everyone will say that it was just another thing he screwed up.

Come on man! Veto this thing.

My Uncle Bob

Recently, a relative of mine asked me if I was named after my uncle. Well, the story goes like this. My dad had my mom call up my aunt asking to speak to my uncle. You see, my dad didn’t know how to use the telephone. When my mom got my uncle on the line she said,

“Raymond wants to ask you something,” then she handed the phone to my dad who said,

“Are you gonna use the name 'Robert'?”

Uncle Bob said, “No.”

Them my father hung up. And that’s how I was named after my uncle.

For my whole life I referred to my dad's brother as my uncle. Growing up I didn’t know it was possible to have more than one uncle because I knew only one, and he was from Massachusetts. I also thought Massachusetts was very far away from Rhode Island for the same reason.

My uncle was my godfather and as such he often was a father figure in my life. When our oldest, Aidan, was in grade school, my aunt and uncle each year attended Grandparent’s Day. Often parents came up to me afterwards and said,

“My father and your father had such a wonderful conversation. He said your father is so interesting.”

My uncle was very engaging. When he met someone for the first time, he would ask them about themselves, and he would listen. I didn’t bother to tell the other parents that he wasn’t my father.

Back in 2001, my uncle stood in for my father when I wanted to go to Long Island to visit my grandfather's grave. Maybe it was because he was a WWI veteran, or because we shared the same last name or the mysterious circumstances of his death, my grandfather always intrigued me. Not my father though. He hated his dad, and I heard it many times growing up. His father had abandoned my dad and his brothers, Robert and Ronnie. He deserted my grandmother, Nativa, in the middle of the Great Depression leaving her to raise three boys on her own. My dad always said his father was a drunk who never sent any money home, which caused the boys and their mom to move around a lot because, as my father used to say, "they had to stay one step ahead of the landlord."

So I cooked up this well intentioned, stupid idea to find out where my grandfather was buried then take my dad there so he could "experience closure." Two days before we were to leave he called to say that he wasn't going. Back in 1938 after my grandfather was pulled from the Hudson River in New York City, my dad was on his way to the service in a car driven by my cousin's father in the middle of a hurricane. There wasn't enough room for Bob so he and his little brother stayed with their maternal grandmother who spoke only French. When the power went out, Bob was sent to the corner store to buy kerosene. His grandmother gave him two mason jars to carry the flammable liquid back to their house. Bob struggled to hold the jars until one fell to the ground. My uncle told me that story a few years ago, the disappointment still in his voice for being incapable of steading the jars in his eight year old hands during a Category 3 hurricane.

My father was more excited to go on a trip to New York than upset over his father's death. His callous attitude angered his mother who exclaimed,

"That's your father!"

Now my dad was reliving that event. He told me that he initially agreed to go because he wanted to go on a trip. The wounds of abandonment were so deep that he refused to join me, his only son, on a pilgrimage to honor my grandfather. I was bitter even though I knew it was a very rare thing for my dad to choose himself over one of his children. The next day, my uncle called to say that he would like to go. He had never been to his dad's grave. The following day Uncle Bob stayed with us in a house we were renting in Groton, Connecticut. The next morning we got on the ferry to Long Island.

On the trip over my uncle was very animated. He told stories about going to parks and the beach with his dad and mother and brothers. They were happy stories. Stories I never heard before. My uncle explained that back then during the depression there were no stimulus checks. The government expected families to pull together and lift the country out of the economic crisis brought on by the Great Depression. He told me that his father joined the Works Progress Administration (WPA) which required him to leave his family to build roads and bridges in other parts of the country.

Being on a ship even as a passenger reminded my uncle of his days in the navy. He talked of his adventures in the military when he was a younger man. The ferry's engines droned on as we crossed the sound on our journey to honor a soldier in our family. My grandfather was so proud of his military service that he always kept his honorable discharge papers in his pocket. My father showed me the documents when I was a kid. As he pointed to the water stains, he told me that the police used these papers to identify his father's body after he was pulled from the river. 

When the ferry docked in Montauk, we offloaded my car then drove to a train station to pick up my uncle's oldest son, Ron. After we all ate lunch, we made our way to the cemetery. Being three men, we didn't ask for directions. Using a folded map, we eventually found the cemetery. We didn't ask anyone how to get to the section of the cemetery we sought either. After a bit of wandering we located my grandfather's grave. I read on the marker that he was a cook in the army during World War I. After some time my uncle told us to go for a walk so he could be alone. We strolled a short distance away while admiring the grounds. When I looked back at my uncle, he was standing before his father's gravestone and saying something. I couldn't hear him, but I assumed he was reciting the Lord's Prayer. As I watched, my uncle came to attention and saluted his father.

We returned to the car, got Ron back on the train then drove to Montauk to board the ferry. On the way back, gone was the man full of stories. My uncle stared stoically out the window as the ferry plowed the sound. I wondered what he was thinking about. Was he remembering his life with his father and his mother and brothers? Or perhaps he was recalling his wife, Corinne, and their four boys they raised in Massachusetts. Maybe he was reminiscing about his lifelong friend, Don Verrier, who he met in kindergarten. Still yet, he might have been musing about his navy buddy, Bob Zimmerman, who served with him on the USS Missouri during the Korean War. My uncle looked to me and said,

"You know, I have to tell you something. Of all the people in our family, you were the only one interested in finding your grandfather."

My uncle was thinking about me. He continued,

"Family is important. You know, you''ll do a lot of dumb things in your life, and all you can hope for is that your family will forgive you."

My uncle did not live a life of less hardship, struggle or disappointment than my father. The difference is he forgave his dad, and that was his lesson to me.

Editor's Note: Robert's uncle passed away on March 8, 2022. He lived a full life of 92 years.

Fake Data?

Back in 2017 my youngest and I were in a children's museum when a woman approached asking if William could participate in the research she was conducting. I agreed and after signing a bunch of consent forms, the two of us were ushered into a small room. On the table was a few shapes of different colors and a wooden box. The woman mixed the shapes up like a shell game. William was instructed to select a shape and put it atop the box. He chose a yellow circle. The woman said,

"Ding!"

She shuffled the shapes, then he selected a blue circle. The woman made a buzzer sound. In between selections, she fervently shuffled the shapes. She administered the test so rapidly that I didn't immediately pick up what she wanted, a shape or a color. Then she said, as she produced a new box,

"The first box is pretend. This new box is real."

She shuffled the pieces, and William selected a blue square. When he put it on the box, a real buzzer sounded. William selected a red circle, and the buzzer sounded again. Eventually he stumbled upon a yellow triangle and was rewarded with a bell. The woman shuffled the shapes, then William selected a blue rectangle. The researcher looked to me and exclaimed,

"It happens every time!"

Still unsure, I asked, "What happens?"

"They select the wrong color during pretend and real."

I didn't pick up what she was looking for due to the speed at which she executed the test so it was doubtful that William did either. She added,

"It's to prove that play is a poor way to learn."

Now, if you are doing research, ideally you want to break new ground, refute long standing beliefs, espouse something controversial. We've heard for years that kids learn through play, but this research refuted this.

When we got home I fashioned a "pretend" and "real" box along with an assortment of colored shapes. I had William select a shape. I used the pretend bell sounds for blue shapes and the buzzer in response to William selecting any other colored shape. I reinforced this through three runs with the pretend box because, while I'm no child education specialist, I do know that you have to reinforce behavior with multiple examples at his age. Any parent who is teaching their child to say "thank you," and "please," knows this. When I exchanged the pretend box with the real box which used the sound effects from my smart phone, William selected the blue shapes right off. Imagine that, reinforcement during play did, in fact, teach William what he needed to do in the real world.

In the early 80's, I read my first article that suggested pets make people live longer. The health benefits were deduced from a study that showed on average the blood pressure of pet owners was six points lower than for non pet owners. Although the authors declared the result "statistically significant," average alone is a poor measure from which to draw conclusions. Depending on the sample size, all you need is a few outliers to skew the results. My wife's blood pressure is low almost all the time without Dinckes the Dog in her lap. Mine reads like a basketball score. It would be easy to bias an average by giving people like Christine a pet and letting me fly solo.

Some of the subsequent studies that drew the favorable pet conclusion were performed in such a way that researchers knew which subjects were exposed to pets and which were not. In some cases, the blood pressure was taken with the pet in the subject's lap. Non blind studies are ripe with skewed data. Since the researchers are likely pet owners themselves, they sought favorable result. Many of these pet studies were funded by advocacy groups like the Pet Food Institute (PFI), which clearly has a vested interest in more pet ownership.

There are some blind, longitudinal studies performed in Australia that garnished medical information from surveys and usage of health services based on information from medical insurance companies. The results showed that pet owners reported more depression, poorer physical health and higher rates of pain medication usage. There was also a higher level of psychoticism asscioated with pet ownership.

For years, doctors have been telling me that my sinus problems are due to limited exposure to pets although my family had cats throughout my childhood. About half the research says that exposure to pet dander and fur helps with allergies and half says it exasperates them. With such diametric results, how does anyone know what is real research and what is fake data?

A relative of mine returned from a company sponsored seminar on diversity in the workplace. She reported,

"They presented results that concluded companies with a diverse workforce make more money."

I tend to believe that diverse companies give opportunities to the most qualified people, leading to a more innovative workforce. It got me thinking though. What if the data showed that the most profitable companies were staffed by a specific ethnic group? Would they publish this result?

Back in 1994, psychologist Richard J. Hernstien and political scientist Charles Murray published, The Bell Curve, in which they tried to explain the differences in intelligence in American society. The authors claimed that inherited and environmental factors were more important than socioeconomic status when predicting success. They garnished their findings from a study conducted by the Department of Labor called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth as well as the Armed Services Vocabulary Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), which comprises ten tests taken by military applicants.

The book was controversial because the authors stated that a possible reason for low test scores among certain minority groups might be genetics. The authors did not say that minority groups who performed poorly on standardized test were genetically inferior. They said that as scientists they were obliged to study every hypothesis to systematically rule out those that were incorrect. The book was widely criticized in the media, and it's likely that most of us wouldn't even known about it today, let alone have read it, without all the negative publicity it received. Some of the criticism of the time claimed that the authors cherry picked the data that supported their hypothesis. Even so, it was published. I doubt that today such a book would ever make it into print.

In March of 2017, Charles Murray was invited to speak at Middlebury College in Vermont on his latest book, Coming Apart, and how it corresponded to the 2016 presidential election. He was shouted down by protesters. One student, described the protest as,

"Democracy in action."

Unfortunately, he was wrong. Censorship due to disagreement is not democracy. People today are fond of saying that they "follow the science," but when societal pressure cancels an idea, we are no longer subscribing to the rigors of science. Instead, we're following the mob.

I was once discussing a discrepancy between an analytic solution and the data with a professor I worked with at an engineering firm. I was certain that my analysis was correct. The professor, a brilliant educator who taught a graduate level class in fluid mechanics said,

"The data is always right."

Given the set of conditions under which the data was taken that assertion is most definitely true. If we reject a hypothesis based on how it makes us feel, we can't possibly draw any meaningful conclusions, and as such we won't solve any real problems.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on March 23, 2017.

Knives Out for Christmas

This past Christmas my wife, Christine, wanted a new set of kitchen knives. The knives we had were a wedding present. That was 24 years ago, so needless to say, our kitchen knives were rather dull. Our youngest, William, wanted to get something for his mother for Christmas so I steered him away from the Lego Death Star he thought she would love and towards a new, shiny, sharp set of kitchen knives.

Christine is a fantastic cook. The kitchen is hers, and she'll let you know that. I have an outbuilding in which I store all my shit and build birdhouses. I haven't actually built one yet, but I'm gonna real soon. Cooking for Christine is relaxing, and we all are grateful for it. I cook a little. Well, more precisely, I can make one thing. Ravioli. Even more accurately, I don't make ravioli, I thaw it. So my skills in the kitchen involve boiling water. If it wasn't for Christine, we'd all hate ravioli by now.

So Christine and I swung by a local kitchen supply store so she could pick out the knives she wanted. It was my job to bring William by and steer him in the direction of the knives which Christine selected. I even told the sales clerk of my plan to ensure our Christmas ruse would play out without a hitch; after all, that's what Christmas is all about, presents and lying.

When I was a kid I convinced my father to buy my mother a zebra bamboo handle knife set for Christmas which I thought was the best knives money could buy. Little did I know that "carbon steel" does not mean"stainless steel." They rusted terribly after one use. My mother tried to clean them with steel wool which could've killed us all. They disappeared just before Mother's Day when my mom picked out a set of knives she wanted then wrapped them up for herself. So I figured I would just skip the youthful enthusiasm for something that looks good on the surface to a ten year old and go straight to the source.

When I brought William into the store, he gravitated to an oak wood handle, pitted knife called a Damascus blade. Now, I'm sure this is a good set of knives made out of the finest steel, but there's no way Christine would wield in her kitchen for the next two decades a knife that looked like it was used on Julius Caesar. They were expensive too so we weren't going to dump them before Mother's Day.

"Oh, those knives are not good for cutting chicken," I exclaimed.

I gently steered William away from his selection, knowing full well that chicken is his main food item. Once I got William to choose the right set, he picked a variety of knives. When we got home, we snuck them into the house. He wrapped them himself then put each under the Christmas tree. Our Christmas bait and switch played out perfectly. On Christmas Day, Christine acted very surprised when she unwrapped William's knives.

As the pandemic subsided, Christine thought we should return to going on family vacations. I didn't miss our family trips because I hate flying, and somehow I always end up shlepping everyone's luggage. Now that our oldest, Aidan, is in college and bigger than me, he can tote his own shit. William is pretty independent so its likely I can get him to do the same. That just leaves flying as the only obstacle.

Flying has always been miserable, but ever since people started blowing up their shoes, air travel has gotten barbaric. I don't miss waiting in line to remove articles of clothing or get a full body scan just so you can insert yourself into a seat next to someone's service dog that will likely vomit in the aisle mid-flight. There's no where on this planet I want to go so badly that I would put up with that anymore.

"We'll get TSA precheck and global entry," Christine reasoned.

Not wanting to give in so easily, I agreed if we could fly first class. I have never flown first class in my life even for work. Other than the extra room and early boarding, I'm not sure what first class gets you, but whatever it is, I want it. If I am going to have to cram into some aircraft and risk an embolism, I want to get a full can of soda and an extra bag of beer nuts.

So Christine initiated the extensive process of prescreening all of us in order to attain "trusted traveller" status. After submitting the lengthly paperwork and paying the fees, she waited for our interviews to be scheduled. She forked over $29 for access to an app that allows one to reschedule their appointment sooner and to a nearby location. Christine monitored the app daily as slots opened and filled in a matter of minutes. Optimizing the process with the utmost precision and efficiency, she successfully moved my appointment and Aidan's up by months and to a local airport. 

"Just go to your appointment and don't piss off the interviewer, and everything will be fine," she reassured.

I read an article about the interviews with TSA. You're not supposed to make small talk or joke around with them. The processes of ensuring I won't blow up my own balls and my family by detonating my underwear is no laughing matter. It’s serious business. So serious that they take your fingerprints and send them to the FBI to ensure you don't have a criminal record. I learned that if they ask you,

"Have you ever been arrested?"

And you say, "no" because all the charges were dropped that time you were busted for disturbing the peace after that punk rock concert you attended in college just because you wanted to get close to a girl in your Decision Making Theory class, they'll reject your application for lying. You see, you have to know the legal difference between being arrested and being charged. I'm not a lawyer so by law I'm not allowed to dispense legal advice, but a good rule of thumb is if the police put you in handcuffs and read your Miranda rights, then take you for a ride in a squad car, then you've been arrested. You'll know you've been charged if in order to go home you have to put up said home as bond to ensure that you come back and sit court side later.

Everything was going according to Christine's plan, that is, until I decided to cut a bagel with her new Christmas knives. Now I've been slicing bagels for over two decades with our dull wedding present knives. These new knives were well balanced, exquisitely crafted in Germany and sharp as fuck. I mean, I didn't even feel the blade slice through my finger. In fact it went through the nail before it even touched my bagel. Immediately I applied pressure to the wound, then turned to Christine and said,

"I just cut myself."

When I showed her my finger, she sprang into Mom Mode Defcon 1. She bolted away returning with an array of bandages, tourniquets, bacitracin, gauze, medical tape, band-aids, even a bottle mercurochrome.

"Apply pressure," she instructed.

After Florence Wifengale patched me up, we both noticed that I was bleeding through the bandage. Since I had shaved a deep layer of skin off my finger, the medical tape was not strong enough to compress the wound sufficiently to stop the bleeding so I wrapped the bandage with electrical tape then called my buddy, Roger. Roger is a Yale educated emergency room physician. He told me to get clotting bandages and liquid skin. Roger is the kind of guy you want around in these circumstances because he can tell you just what to do without using any latin. After several hours we checked my finger. Since it was still bleeding heavily, we wrapped it back up with a blood be-gone bandage and electrical tape. The next day it looked like this.

At this point with my TSA interview a mere three days away, Christine pointed out that I needed to stop the bleeding so they could take my fingerprints. Even though the damage was on the top of my finger, the bandage and tape covered my print. She checked online. They required all ten. Thinking quickly, I had Christine swap my appointment with Aidan's which bought me an extra day.

Now, Christine worked hard on all this paperwork to ensure we had the easiest time flying as humanly possible. The fact that I almost lopped off my finger was bad in itself, but if I screwed up my TSA interview because of an inaccessible fingerprint, I might never hear the end of it. Compounding matters was the fact that Christine's interview wasn't yet scheduled. Apparently the TSA deep dives on every fourth applicant and since Aidan, William and I all made it through to the interview phase, Christine paperwork was being held up. I knew she never should have joined the Daughters of the American Revolution.

The plan was on the morning of my interview I was to carefully remove my clotting bandage then apply liquid skin to the wound. This would give the TSA access to my fingerprint. Roger told me to run the bandage under the faucet. Don't just rip it off otherwise I would be starting all over again. It took about an hour to get the cloth free. I dabbed on the liquid skin, let it dry, then drove to my appointment while holding my hand above my heart. I arrived 45 minutes early.

The armed TSA agent, Mitch, asked if I was "Steve." When I told him, "no" he checked his list.

"Kevin?" Mitch asked.

"No," I replied.

Even though I know you're not supposed to say anything unless asked, I blurted, 

"I'm Robert and early."

Mitch found me way down the list.

"I guess so," he responded, "Let's go."

Mitch brought me to a small room in which I would be okay as long as he didn't want me to do anything that required me to put my hand below my heart like tie a shoe or something. He looked through my paperwork then asked,

"And your middle name is?"

"Michael," I answered, holding back the urge to launch into a diatribe about how my parents gave me two first names, and how I wished my middle name was 'Machiavelli." Shit, I'd take "Milhouse" over my middle name.

"And you were born in West Warwick, Rhode Island?" Mitch queried.

"Warwick," I answered, fighting back my desire to explain that I grew up in West Warwick while the hospital I was born in was in Warwick.

"And your mother's maiden name is?" Mitch continue.

"Bianco," I answered, knowing full well that most people from my generation haven't a clue what a maiden name is.

Mitch looked pleased.

"That's it?" I thought. Your middle name, where you were born and your mother's maiden name is all they need to determine if you're a domestic threat?

"Now put you fingers on this pad," Mitch instructed.

I did my right hand first to get an idea as to what this was going to entail. Mitch rolled my fingers to get an adequate reading. A small light on the reader changed from red to green followed by an audible "Ding" signifying a successful scan. My thumb was next. Ding. When we moved to my hand with the injured, glued up finger, I was hesitant, but I didn't want to object and potentially lose my slot in the investigative screening process. I placed my fingers on the reader. When the red light shone green, I yelled,

"Fuck yeah!" before the machine got out the reassuring "Ding."

Mitch stared at me suspiciously. After my thumb scan, he said,

"Ok, Bob. Take a seat while I wait for the FBI report."

I scooped up my finger and got out of there. A few minutes later, Mitch returned and called another name then informed me that my results weren't back yet. This happened three more times. I figured that the FBI database had millions of entries and that a scan of my fingerprints would require several matching points to register a hit so it might take some time. I imagined Mitch returning with,

"Bob, there's a problem."

"What?" I ask.

"The FBI report," Mitch says.

"What about it?" I ask.

"Tell me about Blog of One."

That didn't happen though. The next time Mitch came back he gave me the thumbs up and told me I was done. I thanked him, and off I went. Christine still hasn't gotten approval for her interview yet, but when she does we all know the drill. Go early. Don't joke around. No chit-chat and...

No bagels.