The Math Behind Lotteries

The recent billion dollar jackpots got me thinking about winning lots of money. I, myself, don't play the lottery since one is more likely to die of spontaneous human combustion than to purchase a winning lottery ticket. A friend of mine plays the numbers daily. He's the kind of guy who can look at a lottery ticket and determine in his head if the chosen numerals are likely to come in. If they are he usually says,

"Those are good numbers."

He's a man of a few words. The Theory of Good Numbers is very complex. For instance, if a train wrecks and a number like "7114" is clearly visible on part of the wreckage, then "7114" is a good number even though the passengers on the train might think differently. Many people play birthdates since such numerals are inherently good. Whenever I think about cashing in on stacks of green I'm undeserving of, I usually don't think to play my wife's birthdate nor that of my children. I also never win either. I just can't cross the chasm that would allow me to associate my love ones with money.

The lottery is most often played routinely by middle class people who watch shows like Jersey Shore. Oddly, the jackpot has to be in the multimillions before lawyers, doctors and people who watch Masterpiece Theater start scrambling for a ticket. Most people play lotteries because they can't comprehend the staggering mathematical odds against them. The math works out that lottery jackpots are statistical combinations, that is, a subset of numbers picked from a sample space such that order doesn't matter. For instance the odds of picking five different numbers from 1 to 70 and one number from 1 to 25 to win the Mega Millions lottery is 1 in 302,575,350. This number is so minuscule that you have almost the same odds if you don't have a lottery ticket at all.

Many people are sure that it is just a matter of time before they strike it rich in a way that will set themselves and their family up for life. Unfortunately, their epitaph is probably going to read,

"I was supposed to have won the lottery."

The fact is lotteries are a tax on people who are lousy at math. People say that someone has to win although this is not always true. Sometimes, no one wins, but every time many lose. Once when I purchased a lottery ticket, the cashier asked,

"Do you want to annuitize that?"

"Annuitize what?" I asked.

"Your winnings," she answered.

I wasn't aware that I was going to win. I preferred to defer my answer until I actually won because something told me that I was unlikely to have to decide, right then and there, the manner in which the state run lottery commission will distribute my winnings. She insisted that I had to answer before the drawing. In reality, I could've opted for my winnings to be paid in the Vietnamese dong. I don't think it was going to matter.

All in all, I dislike lotteries because they sell a false dream while making millionaires weekly out of people who God had no intention of having so much money. Lotteries are just another Orwellian prediction that was proven true. We all need to face the sobering thought that most of us will never win the lottery. I'm waiting for the day the first trillion dollar jackpot is farted out of the lottery commission. Maybe then, I just might buy another ticket.

But then I remember, you can't lose if you don't play.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on October 30, 2018.

Don't Try This at Home

 

I thought I've seen it all on YouTube; after all, I watched a video of a guy swing his buddy around while he dangled from a rope attached to the bucket of an excavator. That's mere child's play compare to what came up in my YouTube search recently. It's a video of a guy, called "Wheelz," doing a front flip in a wheelchair. The stunt is part of Nitro Circus, an entertainment company that markets X-Game style events. I really didn't want to watch this guy rocket down a ramp in a wheelchair and launch over a fifty foot chasm. This dude must be thinking,

"You know, I'm just not paralyzed enough."

Not only does the guy wipe out hard, he face plants, but that doesn't stop him. He keeps going, trying one more time to stick the landing. His buddies think this is great, like the dude is a hero for trying such an awesome trick.

I'm built way different than this guy. I wasn't always a responsible husband and father. As an adolescent, I jumped my bike over ramps mimicking Evel Knievel who on TV specials destroyed his body while attempting to jump a motorcycle over a bunch of buses. One time I messed up the landing and rode my bike straight into a tree. That was it for me. I never jumped my bike again.

I spent most of my adult life avoiding anything that would disrupt the use of my legs. My advice to a guy attempting to flip his wheelchair is more along the lines of,

"Take up scrimshaw."

The real odd part of the video is that the guy's mother encourages him just before he attempts the dangerous stunt. I know this is a little like trying to explain abstract art to someone who is blind, but I really don't understand daredevils. The so called "adrenaline junkies" love what they do, the feeling they get for doing whatever they do on whatever they do it on. Bear Grylls is one of these guys.

Like me, Bear is a husband and father, but unlike me, he jumps out of planes that are perfectly capable of landing. He was a fixture on survival shows on the Discovery Channel until they had a falling out over something the network wanted Bear to do which crossed the line. I would love to know what that was since I saw Bear bite the leg off a live bullfrog and wash is all down with his own urine. He also climbs up trees during educational self rescue narrations.

Bear Grylls

Now, here is where I differ with Bear Grylls. If I survived a plane crash in the jungle, I'm staying with the plane. I'm not going to try to trek out of the malaria invested jungle. I'm not climbing a rocky bluff "to get the lay of the land." I'm going to sit on the emergency beacon transponder and wait for rescue. I'll be home in a few days, comfortably sipping Mountain Dew while I watch another rerun of Who's the Boss while Bear is alone, cold and wet in the jungle, eating a cave spider, and giving himself putrid water enemas to stay hydrated.

Bear does things that is just going to get himself killed. When he gets fit for a pine box, is anyone going to be surprised? I mean I'll be sad because I like the guy, but he's asking for a dirt nap. You don't have to look any further than Steve Irwin to see Bear Grylls's future. Irwin was the Crocodile Hunter who spent most of his life annoying wildlife. In his impossibly short kaki shorts, Irwin would dive in front of the camera, inserting his mug next to some poisonous reptile then scream,

"Look how bwha-utiful she is!"

into the animal's ear canal which is likely a thousand times more acute than his. Or he would pull an animal out its hiding spot to show us all how it's done. The animal undoubtedly thinks that something is going to dispatch it's ass for dinner. You know, animals hide to avoid the food chain and Steve Irwin. I especially liked it when he pulled snakes out of holes by the tail. The snake probably thought,

"I'm screwed now!"

Irwin fed an 800 lb. alligator while holding his infant son. In his defense, he said,

Steve Irwin

"I'm a pwha-fessional."

That goes against every instinct of parenting that even wild animals understand. You don't see Tony Hawk skateboarding with his son in his arms, or Jimmie Johnson thundering around the NASCAR track with his daughter strapped into a car seat. Irwin was not an educated zoologist. He was the son of a zookeeper. That's not to say he didn't have real knowledge of animals. It's just that he got bit in the face a lot. I avoid animal bites especially to my face with the same intensity as I do paralyzing collisions.

Finally, the Animal Kingdom had enough of this loudmouth's habitual intrusion into the wild and one of them took him out. With all the times Steve Irwin inserted himself into the food chain, it was no wonder that he eventually got killed. I'll bet when the crocodiles heard this they were embarrassed that they didn't think of it first. Irwin got too close to a seemingly docile and graceful manta ray, cruising in the Great Barrier Reef. I thought those things were more chill than that, but then again, they're wild animals swimming about trying not to get eaten while looking for their next meal, and hopefully in the spring, they'll get laid.

I'm sure the dude bros out there that make that one handed sign language thing with two fingers and a thumb while sticking out their tongue just before they skateboard over a hundred foot gorge, think I'm a boring, old guy who's most thrilling stunt involves mowing the lawn. In moments like that, the sage advice of Steve Irwin comes to mind,

"Don't try this at home."

Editor's Note: Originally published on July 11, 2017.

Make Room for the Mesh

Wireless Thing

My wife, Christine, works in Information Technology for a Fortune 500 company. She’s been our family process improvement advocate and troubleshooting tech person ever since our first computer over 25 years ago. I have no patience for that kind of thing, especially waiting on the phone to talk to some dude in a country with marginal indoor plumbing about what I should try next.

Tech Guy: Ok, see the tab that says “Advanced?”
Me: Yeah.
Tech Guy: Click it. Now, see the box that says “Two's Compliment?”
Me: Yeah.
Tech Guy: Click that. Now, reboot.

As if that’s gonna do anything. Now, Christine is infinitely more patient than me when it comes to, well, everything. She actually develops a rapport with help desk personnel, often asking them about themselves or their family. By the time she arrives at a solution to her problem, she often has another Facebook friend.

New Wireless Thing

Recently, she decided to purchase a booster for our wireless network so that we could cover the far reaches of our house, namely the bonus room. I’m not sure what's needed because I hate that kind of thing, but I’m sure it involves another $500 black box with little stubby antennas and an array of LED lights that flash Morse code. We have a bin full of cables, but none of them ever work with the new piece of equipment. We’ll certainly have to buy new cords because the ones that come with the new black box will be too short. So off we went to big box, techno land.

At the store, a less than fit, pale faced, guy named “Doug,” who sported a scraggily beard and a ponytail, launched into an impromptu lecture on “mesh networks,” focusing on why they were better than Christine’s booster. I was so bored, I sat on the floor and began perusing the internet via my phone. Christine and Doug had a spirited, deep conversation focusing on the benefits of mesh technology. To me, it sounded like dolphins would get caught in the mesh network. I really wasn’t paying attention anyway while scouring the many videos of cats and images of people’s dogs. By the time Christine and Doug had reached consensus, I got a cavity from too much Imgur.

After hooking up three new electronic "towers," comprising the mesh, we waited for all the LED lights to glow green, the universal color for “go for the moon." As we readied ourselves to be blanketed by the mesh, Christine checked her phone, certain she would have three bars. Unfortunately we got "Challenger go for throttle up" as she realized that she had only one bar. She spent the next hour wandering about the house holding her phone aloft as she checked the strength of the signal.

I’m not sure how many wireless devices we already have competing for the airwaves in our house. There’s the phones attached to the landline which no one uses, the thermostat, the system that monitors the chemicals in the pool, the security system, the Bluetooth in the cars, and of course the internet which is now a mess. I mean a “mesh.”

After disappearing for quite some time as she chatted with some dude in India, Christine emerged from her techno cocoon with a partial solution. As she toiled away at optimizing our mesh, she had to unplug the cable to the TV so I wasn't able to get lost in educational shows like TLC's Doctor Pimple Popper or the many nature shows with titles like The Pronghorn: Reindeer of Peru. Instead, I had to watch a show I taped. I know "record" is the more accurate term since we no longer use tapes to save our favorite shows, thankfully. I thought I recorded a PBS documentary, The Lobworm: Natures Little Farmer, but discovered that I had a live, fundraising concert entitled Stomp instead. I was ten minutes into a bunch of theatre people beating on garbage cans when Christine emerged to explain that she got the main mesh tower working properly, but to diagnose the poor signal,

Shitload of Cable

we would need to purchase a 200 foot, Category 6 cable. I thought the whole purpose of wireless was to get rid of cables? She explained that she needed to wire up the separate towers to show that the poor performance was due to the physical separation.

A few days later, a package arrived with Christine’s wire so off she went laying her transcontinental house cable, connecting up the mesh towers. Later, while watching Disney on Ice which I taped eight years ago, she emerged.

"I know what the problem is," she explained.

"All fixed?"

"No, there are three internal walls and two external walls to the tower in the bonus room which weakens the signal. We'll need to get a cable to the third tower."

So that is how this round of internet access upgrade unfolded. I need to run a cable. We still don't have an internet signal in the far reaches of our house, but I know the new hardware is an upgrade because none of the wireless printers work, and I can't get email anymore. I did manage to get a better signal to the Xbox so I experience less network lags while playing online games with my sister, Jeannine, who recently asked,

"Have you noticed a difference with the new network?"

"Yeah, the lump on my neck is bigger," I answered.

I don't have a lump on my neck, but all these wireless electronic components sometimes worry me. What if all these gamma rays cause me to grow in size when I get angry or I start exhibiting precognitive ability to sense danger or worse yet, I discover that I can control antimatter?

I don't want to be a superhero, now that I'm getting ready to retire.

Editor's Note: Originally published on January 8, 2019. Robert installed the cable to the tower in the bonus room and underground to an outbuilding. We get five bars now everywhere.

Catfish: Beauty is in the Profile of the Beholden

Back in 2018, I started binge watching the MTV smash reality hit, Catfish. In its eight season, the show chronicles the investigation of online relationships by the two hosts, Nev and Max, who are asked to find out if a person met on the internet is real. The term, catfish, describes a person pretending to be someone else on social media. There are some overt red flags when someone is catfishing you. The biggest is when they're reluctant to appear on live video, or do so with the lights dimmed. You see, many people fake social media profiles often using a picture of a very attractive person in lieu of a real selfie.

It's no wonder that some people want to pretend to be beautiful. Studies show that attractive people are more likely to be helped, forgiven, get better jobs, make more money, and are more likely to be ascribed positive traits. People fake being a model online because they want to experience, just once, the attention that beautiful people get all the time.

The first recorded account of catfishing was when Anne of Cleves was painted by Hans Holbein. Anne was the fourth wife of Henry the VIII who had their marriage annulled on grounds that Anne was homely. The truth was Henry was catfished since Holbein painted Anne favorably, even though Henry instructed the artist to be as accurate as possible. Henry met Anne privately on New Year's Day in 1540 at Rochester Abbey after which he described her as,

"Nothing so fair as she hath been reported."

In 1993 my wife, Christine, and I were in London on a bus tour guided by an older, British woman. After explaining Holbein's painting of Anne of Cleves, the guide exclaimed,

Anne of Cleves

"When Henry met Anne in person, he thought she looked like a tram smash."

Henry married Anne to preserve a vital alliance with Germany. After exchanging vows, Henry said about his new wife,

"I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse."

As the fourth wife, Anne received a good settlement which was lucky for her since at the time, the second wife left her marriage with Henry sans her head.

Today, the hapless people catfished are often all in based on their text messages revealed on the show.

"I'm always here for you."
"You are the most important person in my life."
"I can say things to you I can't tell anyone else."

When you're in an online relationship with a smoking hot babe who listens intently, is funny and fun to talk to, you should be honest with yourself. An attractive woman doesn't need to pursue an online relationship with you unless she lives on Pitcairn Island. There is just too much opportunity for beautiful people in the real world to bother with virtual dating. When she avoids streaming because she is very shy, you naturally feel great sympathy for her because she's good-looking. You'll forgive her if it turns out she's been lying to you all along if, and only if, she looks like her profile picture.

Max and Nev do a lot of hugging each episode. They truly want both sides to heal and find happiness. The motto of the show is,

"All will be revealed."

Of course, Max and Nev are more sympathetic to the victim who is duped by the catfish, but they never state this one obvious fact,

The victim is mad because the person is really ugly.

One guy learned the woman he was pouring out his soul to for the past six months, "Trinity," was not a Victoria Secrets model after all, but instead an overweight bus driver named "Tammy." After this revelation, he responded to her inquiry if they could still regularly text by saying,

"That's not gonna happen."

Why? Because she's ugly, that's why.

One guy, Isaak, used a profile picture of a tall, chiseled-jawed, cleft chin hunk even though he was a short, dweeby, pimply-faced kid. He described himself as searching for a deep relationship with a woman. His dragnet swept up "Courtney" who was enthralled with Isaak until she found out what he really looked like. He was a great guy who was fond of giving foot massages when his attractive mug was on social media, but the minute Isaak appeared in living color, he was a scary creep with a bizarre foot fetish.

What I want to see on Catfish is a victim discover that a person is actually more attractive than their profile picture. That hasn't happened yet. Will Max and Nev focus on their deception? Or will the victim just look to the camera and say,

"Fuck yeah!"

They'll likely see them as an honest, respectable, thoughtful, human being even though they misrepresented their internet persona. Like Holbein's painting of Anne of Cleves, outrage only occurs if the person is uglier than their representation, and that's the true depth of the people featured on the show.

While beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, ugly is universal.

Editor's Note: Originally published on December 4, 2018.

Never Tattoo Sanskrit

Tattoos have been on the rise for some time now. In my day, the only people who got tats were biker dudes and prostitutes. All a tattoo artist needed to do was be able to spell "Born to Ride" and draw a small rose on someone's ankle. Today, things are more complicated.

I've been asking people about their tattoos. Not surprisingly, many have deep meanings such as lines from a Robert Frost poem to a favorite quote from one's grandmother. People undergo a painful experience to make a statement revealing something about themselves. How awful it must be to realize that tattooed words are misspelled. It's bad enough that you have to read the same phrase on your arm for the rest of your life without reliving your inability to spell as well.

I saw a picture of a tattoo on the internet that read,

"No Regerts."

The dude must hear, "You meant regrets”every time he goes to a pool party. That tattoo is worse than eczema.

Beckham's Back

David Beckham misspelled his wife's name on his arm. To his defense, he had her name tattooed in Sanskrit, and it got lost in translation. It was supposed to read "Victoria." Instead it reads, "Tammy." No, that's not true. It says "Vihctoria." Close enough.

Britney Spears had a Chinese symbol tattooed on her hip that was supposed to read "mysterious." The largest Chinese dictionary defines 23,000 distinct characters. The chances Britney was going to get this right even after emancipation wasn't very good. Britney's tattoo reads "strange." Maybe she meant that seeing how she was once sued for $10 million by a former bodyguard who claimed she frequently farted in his presence.

Recording artist and singer, Jesse J, had tattooed on her side,

"Don't loose who you are in the blur of the star!"

Jesse along with her tattoo artist both failed to see the extra "o." Lucky for Jesse her mother was good with a dictionary and pointed it out. Jesse loses on that one.

Rihanna has a lot of tattoos including wings under her breasts. That must have hurt. On her neck she attempted to tattoo "rebellious flower" in French, but the French have this annoying habit of switching the order of adjectives and nouns. They say "grange rouge" for "red barn." Rihanna got a tattoo that reads "rebelle fleur" which translates to "flower rebel." I'm sure that has meaning to hardcore gardeners.

She also took the same road as Beckham and tried to tattoo "forgiveness" in Sanskrit on her hip. Instead, she got "flatulence." No, that's not true. It's purported by a Sanskrit expert named Mark Fielden that her tattoo is "incorrectly written." I don't know who this self proclaimed expert is, but he's apparently noticed something amiss while staring at Rihanna's hip.



Johnny Depp had a tattoo that read "Winona Forever" on his right deltoid to honor his then fiancé Winona Ryder. When their relationship fell short of forever, Depp removed the last letters of her name so the tat reads "Wino Forever." Good thing her name wasn't "Peni."

You really need to know what you're doing when you get a tattoo because it's just as painful to get it removed as it is to get it in the first place. The permanence of tattoos is what makes them so special. Tattoo artists should make ample use of spellcheckers and the many online Sanskrit translators. Times change but tattoos don't which is why they sometimes lead to regerts.

Editor's Note: Originally published on May 23, 2017.

Del's Etiquette

Two things usher in the summer for me, getting our beach pass in the mail and on the car, and purchasing my first Del's for the year. The latter goes back to the 70's for me when we would chase down a Del's truck for a "35 cent small." Occasionally, my father would pull off the road on the way home from the beach when we spotted a Del's truck. We would dig into the seat cushions of the Ford Country Squire, looking for stray change to up our Del's size. Back then, the Del's trucks were staffed by long haired hippy types who were looking to make some scratch to feed their drug habit. By the 80's, the college kids took over manning the trucks. They were a lot nicer than the hippies. While the hippies often shorted us, the college kids piled it on.

Del's is a Rhode Island based frozen lemonade drink which is far more than a smoothie. Del's is ice and water in thermodynamic equilibrium. This is what separates Del's from shaved ice. Del's is made by a machine that adds just the right amount of energy to a mixture of water, lemons and sugar, cooled to the freezing point. A paddle stirs the frozen concoction to ensure that it remains a slush instead of freezing. The proper engineering term for Del's is a "saturated liquid-solid," which simply means some parts are freezing (solid) while other parts are melting (liquid). That's why Del's is much finer than shaved or crushed ice. Not even a double blend can make a drink as smooth as a Del's. And that's all the science I'm going to talk about.

Angelo DeLucia constructed the first Del's machine in 1946. In 1840, his great grandfather made frozen lemonade in Naples, Italy from snow insulated with straw and stored in caves. Today, Del's is sold worldwide. You can get it in Hawaii and Japan. The original shop is still in Cranston, Rhode Island. I used to live in an adjacent town, but I never got my Del's from the world headquarters. I thought I would pull my kids from their computers and make the short trek for our first Del's of 2017 from the original store. After the griping and moaning subsided, I got all of them, including my wife, Christine, loaded into the car. She complained the most,

"We're gonna drive a half hour for Del's when its 65 degrees outside?" Christine protested.

They all like Del's, but they acted like I was asking them to do chores or go to church. All I wanted was to see the first ever Del's store. I know, my bucket list is a bit shallow. I wasn't asking all that much, and besides there was Del's in it for all of them. Christine is from New York so I introduced her to Del's on one of our earliest dates.

"Can I have a straw?" she asked.

I quickly objected and rightly so. You don't drink Del's with a straw. It will drain the drink of all the fluid, leaving just the ice. The key to Del's is to shake the cup in your hand which melts the ice while keeping you cool. Maintaining thermodynamic equilibrium is very important for a proper Del's experience.

One time while getting Del's, my son, Aidan, asked for a plastic spoon.

"No son of mine puts a spoon in his Del's," I interjected.

I made it clear to Aidan that there would be no spoons as well as no straws. You can get a lid on your Del's if you are transporting it from one place to another, but in general a lid is frowned upon.

"How do you feel about a napkin?" Aidan asked.

A napkin is ok, I guess.

There are eight official flavors of Del's. Blueberry and cherry, peach mango. I don't care for any of these. In my day there was only one, lemon, and that was good enough for us. We were happy even though we didn't have any money or go on family vacations. We did have Del's though. Some of the flavors like blueberry leave your lips and tongue the color of the drink. The only new flavor I find palatable is grapefruit.

Grapefruit is adult Del's. Like beer grapefruit is an acquired taste. As a kid I thought grapefruit was what happened to orange juice when it went bad. My dad bought grapefruit juice because we kids hated it. We regularly polished off the orange juice whenever it was in the house. Buying grapefruit was the only way my dad could have juice with his bowl of Total.

I almost always "stop at the sign of the lemon," and I hope someday my sons will bring their children to see grandpa who will take them for a "35 cent small" which will cost twelve dollars and probably be a half caffe, latte, skim mango peach unicorn Del's. It will be purple but, change to mauve if you stir it.

And we'll be happy.

Editor's Note: Originally published on May 9, 2017.

A Glimpse into the Heavens

I recently read an article indicating that a class action lawsuit, filed by a big law firm with four names, accuses two telescope manufacturers of price fixing. According to the suit even though the companies enjoyed a 80% market share in the United States, they collaborated on a scheme to determine which products each company would manufacture and what price they would charge. The companies allegedly conspired to monopolize the consumer telescope market. The litigation affects at least a quarter of a million people. If true we've reached a new low as price gouging has finally found its way to astronomy.

Plaintiff Mr. I. Baban of Quebec bought a telescope for his son in 2016. He paid $68.97 for a FirstScope made by Celestron. According to the lawsuit, Mr. Baban paid an artificially inflated price through the defendants's anticompetitive conduct.

The problem that I have with all of this is that in 1977, after saving the money I earned from my paper route for an entire year, I purchased a telescope from the Sears Catalog for $59.99. Forty years later, telescopes went up in price by $9. Adjusting for inflation $60 in 1977 is worth $236.63 in 2016. Sounds like to me that Mr. Baban got a bargain.

This got me thinking about the telescope I had as a kid.

Not only did my telescope cost a quantum load more than Baban's it took five months to arrive by mail. Back then ordering from the Sears Catalog was like registering for a surprise. Most things took so long to come in that you often forgot you purchased something in the first place. When the package showed up, it was a complete shock.

My mother used to order everything from the Sears Catalog. When I went from a crib to a bed, the pillow my mother ordered took half a year to arrive. I slept without a pillow for so long that decades later I still wake with my head resting on the mattress.

Once she bought me dress shoes that took eight months to arrive. By then my feet grew well beyond her estimate. I still recall my mother jamming my foot into the shoe while insisting that they fit perfectly. Returning items back to Sears took longer than when they initially arrived, and more often than not, they wouldn't accept the return. My mother never sent anything back. She insisted I wear the shoes for my First Communion. After I hobbled up to the alter to receive communion then returned to the pew, Sister Ann asked me if I had to use the bathroom because I was "walking so awkward." Thanks to the Sears Catalog the first time I received the Sacrament of Holy Communion, I looked like I had to take a dump.

Most people think that the reason it took so long for our stuff we ordered by mail to arrive back then was because there were no computers, but that's not true. Computers had nothing to do with it. In the 70's the experience of consumers ordering from catalogs was so abysmal that workers had to try not to exceed our expectations. Back in the day Sears employees would leave orders for some crap at their desk for weeks. There was no incentive to clear one's inbox by the end of the day. Workers lived up to the lowest expectations because they could, not because they were incapable of processing paperwork more quickly. In the 70's we all accepted that no one gave a shit.

Not only did products ordered from Sears take months to arrive, often they reached us in an unusable state. When my telescope finally showed up, I was so excited that I assembled it straight away. After carefully following each step of the instructions, I inserted an eyepiece and looked through the scope. All I saw was a black circle. I checked the troubleshooting guide which advised me to remove the lens cap. The cap was still in the box. I checked that nothing was blocking the tube. My mother called Sears to ask them what we should do. She spoke to a guy named Ted, who informed her that,

"Telescopes are used to look at things in space, not things on earth."

My mother insisted that was the problem. My telescope could magnify the moon, but not a tree. I thought that this theory was insane, but I wanted it to be true because I knew sending my telescope back to Sears would mean I had to wait nearly another year before I could pursue the heavens. I tried lining up the moon that night but to no avail. In the end Sears took back my telescope, and after waiting months, they informed me that the model was back ordered. It final arrived two years later.

I used my telescope all through middle school. I saw the crater, Copernicus, on the moon as well as the rings of Saturn and four moons of Jupiter all with my telescope. I spent hours outside at night looking for difficult to see objects like Neptune and Pluto. My telescope wasn't powerful enough to find such faint heavenly bodies, but that didn't stop me from searching. I liked being out late into the night because it was dark, quiet, and most importantly, solitary.

Whenever I went out shortly after sunset to look at Venus, Mars or the moon, inevitably someone would stroll outside and want to take a look for themselves. Now fixed scopes like mine lacked a motor drive so you have to line up an object then watch it traverse the field. Locating something then lining it up was a cumbersome task especially under high magnification. After targeting an object, the first thing someone would always do, no matter how many times I warned them, is grab the eyepiece with their dominate hand then stick their eye up to the orifice. Touching a telescope, even minutely, knocks the target out of field. My father eventually learned this one restriction and enjoyed watching the moon drift by. I even got him interested in looking at maps of the moon to locate features with the telescope.

My oldest sister came outside once in response to my dad's detailed description of the lunar mountain range he found. She was a product of the 70's, smoking Kool cigarettes because they had the most tar. Sarcasm to her was a dialect. Unreasonableness, a way of life. She once elected not to swim in the ocean because “there’s fish in it.” When traveling by car she refused to go anywhere unless she got the front seat which allowed her access to the radio and the cigarette lighter. I lined up the quarter phase moon then told her not to touch the telescope. She watched the sattellite pass by, then scoffed,

"Hmmm."

And off she went back into her groovy, turn on, tune in, drop out world. Later after I counted over a hundred stars in the Pleiades asterism, I came in from the night. My father asked my sister,

"What did you think of the telescope?"

In the 70's we learned how to behave by watching sitcoms like Happy Days and Welcome Back Kotter. Most of the time the plots of these shows featured the cool kids ridiculing the less popular geeks. When the nerds did get revenge it usually involved insulting the alpha kids. Fonzie played by Henry Winkler would insult Potsie Weber or Ralph Malph with the often repeated comeback,

"Sit on it."

Vinnie Barbarineo played by John Travolta would tell Arnold Dingfelder Horshack,

"Up you nose with a rubber hose."

We'd laugh every time they'd repeat these signature snarky lines. Back then plots were all about being cool and not about being kind to your friends. So not surprisingly, a whole generation grew up incapable of saying anything positive.

My sister answered, "He doesn't give you enough time to look."

"You do know the moon is moving," I said.

She stared at me with a combined expression of disgust, displeasure and disbelief often employed when she was confused from both too little science and math in class and too much Alice Cooper, Frank Zappa and pot afterwards.

My interest in astronomy waned in high school as I moved to physics and eventually engineering. I hope that the telescope monopoly lawsuit is dismissed if a judge finds a lack of actual damages. Telescopes are certainly cheaper today as compared to when I was a kid. Demand is probably much lower as well. In the end, I can't help but think that this lawsuit is an effort by the cool kids to beat up on the nerds just one last time.