Missing

A man missing a finger is still a man.  A finger missing a man, though, is really creepy.

—Mitchell Hegman

An Expert Expert

I met an expert.

Wait.

Not merely an expert…rather, an expert expert.  This man glittered twice the brightness of a regular expert.

Within a minute of meeting the man, I was fortunate enough to witness him offhandedly dispute the well-investigated and widely accepted cause of a recent catastrophic electrical system failure.  He went on, only a few minutes later, to deride a well-respected electrical industry leader.  And, following that, he still had enough knowledge remaining to “correct” me twice in a more private two-minute conversation.

You cannot imagine how much this expert impressed me.       

—Mitchell Hegman

Mistakes

The other day, I heard someone say, “Everybody makes mistakes.”

This is a common maxim and an absolute truth.   

But my mistakes are different.  They usually have a multiplier of some sort attached to them.

—Mitchell Hegman

Notable, and Not Entirely Unpleasant

A seven-year-old insult comic from Australia was featured on America’s Got Talent last night.  He trashed the four judges.  I must admit, being insulted by a kid with an Australian accent is appealing in a weird way.

The uniqueness of that reminded me of the time I changed-out the failing ballast for a fluorescent light inside the cash vault at the Federal Reserve.

The cash vault is serious business.  You have to check-in directly with the main guard station and then you are escorted through a series of locked doors by an armed guard.  Cameras are trained on you at all times.  The guard must never let anyone working there out of sight.

The guards at the Federal Reserve are not your candy-eating, comic book-reading variety; they take their work seriously.  They practice marksmanship in their own private shooting range on a regular basis.  After being escorted inside the vault (my handtools and pouch carried in my arms) the guard pointed out a light up on the concrete ceiling that needed a ballast replacement.  “I’m going to have to have to go out and get a ladder to reach that,” I remarked, thinking about the hassle of dragging a ladder back and forth through all of the security doors.

The guard pointed at a pallet stacked about five-foot-tall and wrapped tightly with dark paper.  I could not tell what was under the wrapping.  “You can reach it if you stand on that,” he suggested.

“I think so.”

Using a pallet jack enclosed within the vault, we jockeyed the pallet in place under the light.  I belted on my tools, climbed onto the stack on the pallet, and tore into the fixture.  Having nothing better to do, the guard watched me with a fair level of interest as I removed the ballast compartment cover and snipped at the nest of wires inside.  I know the guard’s brother a little, so we talked about him as I worked.

“Guess what?” the guard said as I handed the old ballast down to him.

“What?”

“You are standing on eleven-million dollars.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

Obviously, I have not forgotten that experience.

In my mind, standing atop an eleven-million dollar “ladder” to replace a twenty-dollar ballast is the same is being insulted by a kid with an Australian accent.

Notable, and not entirely unpleasant.

Final note: The kid did not earn the golden buzzer.

—Mitchell Hegman

The End

I think I had a near-death experience the other day.  Well, technically, I simply misplaced my smarter-than-me-phone for a couple hours.  I am assuming that’s what death is like.

—Mitchell Hegman

More Random Observations

—My cat’s skull feels like the shape of a fancy perfume bottle when I close my eyes and pet him.

—If I am ever going to accurately count the number of times the Zombies sing “no” in their song Tell Her No, I am going to need to use hashmarks on a sheet of paper.

—Judging by the number of red smudges and spots I leave on my kitchen counter and on the carpet when I simply drink a glass or two of wine, I would not be an efficient murderer.

—Rod Argent, the founder of The Zombies later went on to create the harder-edged group Argent.

—Apparently, my house is not going to clean itself.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4nmxz5bQhk

A Salad Fork

Why is there such thing as a “salad” fork?

Better yet, why is there not a pasta fork?  Maybe, a Jell-O fork?  Jell-O is righteously difficult to eat.  For that, I am envisioning a fork with some manner of clamping mechanism.

Curious about salad forks, I conducted some internet research.

Salad forks are (I don’t know why) approximately six inches long.  They sport shorter and flatter tines than dinner forks.

Dinner forks, by the way, are seven inches long.

When setting the table, placement of the salad fork depends on the sequence of courses. If salads are served after an entrée, the salad fork will be second on the left. For salads served as an entrée, the salad fork will be first on the left.

Bad news.  As I sloshed around on the internet, I found more and more forks.  Turns out there are all kinds of forks.  I have listed a few for you here:

Dinner Fork

Fish Fork

Salad Fork

Dessert Fork

Seafood Fork

Strawberry Fork (Seriously?)

Lobster Fork

Ice Cream Fork (Wait?   What?  A fork for ice cream?)

Pastry Fork

Snail Fork

Oyster Fork

First thought: What’s the deal with all the forks for foods from the water?

Second thought: What if you had to use chopsticks for eating ice cream?

Third thought: Would it be appropriate to have a second and third glass of Scotch today?

—Mitchell Hegman

Sources:  www.etiquettescholar.com, https://difference.guru, www.hunker.com

Cold Enough to Rain Iguana Lizards

I only rarely heard my father curse.  But, when I was a kid, he did commonly use one curious expression that seemed on the verge of swearing.  When the winter weather here in Montana turned bitterly cold, he would say: “It’s colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra.”

I had no idea exactly what he meant.  Cold, for certain.

Apparently, Florida also has a quirky way to express cold weather: “Cold enough for iguanas to fall from the trees.”

A couple days ago, the National Weather Service office in Miami tweeted: “Don’t be surprised if you see Iguanas falling from the trees tonight.”  This tweet preceded nighttime temperatures dropping into the 30s and 40s.

Here in Montana, we would love to see ourselves rising into the 30s and 40s this time of year.   That said, we are not cold-blooded reptiles.  Most of us, I mean.

As temperatures drop into the thirties, the lizards in Florida lapse into a kind of shock and become entirely immobile.  Soon, they begin falling from the trees.  Most will survive the temperatures and the fall.  They will resume normal ways once the morning sun warms them adequately.

Posted is a video of iguanas impacted by Florida’s recent cold snap.

—Mitchell Hegman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1siOo-PCAg

An Expression of Humanity

If commissioned to produce a single and simple illustration to express the mark of humanity to date, what might you suggest?

Might you use a skyscraper constructed of composite materials and glass to represent our accomplishments to date?

A computer?

Perhaps a spacecraft lifting itself through a layer of clouds?

Something as modest as a single lightbulb?

Or might you express the other side of what we do?

Maybe a missile dropping in against a city?

An atomic mushroom cloud above blue ocean waters?

A bloody handprint?

—Mitchell Hegman

A Throw Rug, a Shovel, and Rosemary

At the age of twenty, I purchased a throw rug.  That purchase devastated me.  To this day, I recall begrudgingly flopping the rug and some cash on the cashier’s counter at the store where I bought the rug.

Spending my own money on a rug I needed at my shared bachelor pad bothered me.  I could appreciate buying a concert ticket, or beer, or maybe something for my car.  Not a rug.

A while after I purchased the throw rug, I needed to buy a shovel.  The shovel added a new (unappreciated) dimension to the use of money I worked actual hours of time to earn.

A shovel.  Did I want to spend more money to buy a good one?

No.

Up until that stage of my life, items of utility, including rugs and shovels, were provided by either my parents or grandparents.  I took them for granted.

The shovel marked a kind of point of no return.  I soon found myself purchasing my own furnishings, cooking utensils, bedding, and—of all things—spices for cooking.

So, now here we are.

I am sitting inside an entire house I purchased and constructed.  I recently purchased two new throw rugs for my house and a very good shovel for my cabin.

I presently have on my kitchen counter a list of items I need to purchase on my next trip to town.  “Rosemary” is atop that list.  Not the girl.  The spice.

I might add: spices are expensive.

Weirdly enough, I really want to buy rosemary.

—Mitchell Hegman

Nut or Fruit?

I have nothing firm scheduled for today.   Last night, I finished the jigsaw puzzle I started a couple weeks ago.  I swiffered the dust from the bookshelves in my den just yesterday.   No dishes await washing in my kitchen sink.

Sitting here on my sofa in the ear-ringing sort of silence that is the predawn of a midwinter morning, I did what any other normal person would do: I jumped on the internet to determine if cashews are a nut or a fruit.

Now it is your turn.

—Mitchell Hegman

Progress

While I shrug off most clichés, I think it’s accurate to say, “You can’t stop progress.”

At the same time, you can slow stuff down quite a bit.  I proved this more than once with mistakes I made on construction sites during my career.

—Mitchell Hegman

A Laundry Moment

I had a freaky moment the other day.  A laundry moment.  For some reason, I was struck by the thought I might separate my laundry into three separate washer loads: whites, lights, and darks.

I have seen this done by others.

After dropping a few items into three piles, the realization I would literally be doing my laundry three times occurred to me.

I paused there, considering.

“What would my cat do in this instance?” I wondered.

I scooped all my clothes together and stuffed them in my washer.

—Mitchell Hegman

Passwords

The more electronic devices, apps, online accounts, and online services I get, the more attractive I find the password “123456789.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Sylvia Plath’s Arrow

I thought, again, about what Sylvia Plath wrote in The Bell Jar—just that little bit of conversation between characters where Esther claims a man “is an arrow into the future” and a woman “is the place the arrow shoots off from.”

I think about this often.

I have never been able to fully grasp Plath’s meaning.  For that reason, I cannot cast aside the arrow.

—Mitchell Hegman

Scotch Regulation

We all understand how the government, on both the federal and state level, regulates alcohol.  Scotch Whiskey, included.  Sales and distribution are strictly controlled.  Taxes are imposed.

I think most of us agree, regulating Scotch is disturbing.

Well, a super-localized form of Scotch regulation is threatening my brother-in-law.

Spousal regulation.

Apparently, my sister has threatened to limit both the quantity and quality of Scotch my brother-in-law is accustomed to imbibing.

I stopped by my brother-in-law’s house yesterday afternoon to drop off a pair of sunglasses he had forgotten in my truck.  Both of us fought back tears as we discussed the proposed regulation of Scotch he is confronting.

“So, what’s the deal with that?” I asked.  “I mean, why?”

“I don’t know…some stuff about needing money for cars and the house and that kind of thing.”

“Seriously,” I sipped at the Scotch he had just poured for me.  “Are we really going to have to put a house or an automobile ahead of Scotch.”  I shook my head.  “I don’t know how to occupy that space.  Aayyyy!   Maybe you can negotiate a compromise.”

“Maybe.  I just did the dishes.  That should be worth something.”

“That’s a good start.  Whatever happens, you can’t go below 12 years of maturing on the Scotch.  You just can’t.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Journal: A Man and His Cat

—Strange. As I watched, my cat entered the living room, jumped up onto my coffee table, gave me a sour look, then batted my ink pen and a small eye dropper bottle to the floor.

—I let my cat out.  I let my cat in.  I let my cat out.  I let my cat in.  I let my cat out. I let my cat in.

—My cat cautiously watched me in my back and forth to the utility room as I cleaned out his litter box.  Almost the instant I sat down from finishing that chore, he sauntered off to the utility room to use the litter box.

—Is there something wrong with me?  Why does my cat keep staring at me?

—I could be mistaken, but as time goes on, I become more and more convinced my cat only tolerates me because I have the cat food.

—Just spent an hour on my sofa with my cat sprawled across my lap.  Is there anything better?

—Mitchell Hegman

The Question

A well-written multiple-choice question will stump the best of us.  Such a question will provide one correct answer, but also a set of plausible distractors.

Sometimes, a question will include distractors which are partially correct or might actually be correct, but are not as fully correct as the answer sought.  Such a question will have the phrase “choose the best answer” tagged at the end of the stem.

I have never been a good test taker.  I am a second-guesser.  I grind away and over-think.  I sweat profusely.

Following is my nightmare (unanswerable) question:

Which of the following accurately describes you?  (Choose the best answer)

1.     ____ Inability to cruise the potato chip aisle without making a purchase   

2.     ____ Can speak Pig Latin fluently

3.     ____ Desire to hypnotize hamsters and force them to do dance on YouTube

4.     ____ Dislike of “squishy” foods

—Mitchell Hegman

Language Barriers

I have had my share of skirmishes with the English language.  Grammar.  Mispronunciation.  Word abuse.  You name it.

In one example, I considered myself a human “bean” until I was old enough to read “being.”

Well into my forties I added my own flare to rotisserie chicken.  Where everyone else pronounced this as “row-ti-sr-ee,” I adopted the more unusual (and somewhat loftier) “row-tis-er-rare-ee.”

My pronunciation rather rolled from the tongue like a roller coaster, which, by the way, was “rollee” coaster in early Mitch speak.

Not long after the passing of my grandmother, I was asked by someone if we had made funeral arrangements for her.  “Yes,” I assured them, “she will be incinerated.”

Not cremated.  Incinerated.

The other day, I got a little twisted-up about using “who” or “whom” in a sentence.  I even went so far as to watch a 14-minute video on the matter.  Finally, in the end, I found my answer—I restructured my sentence so I did not need to use either. 

Either: pronounced “ee-ther” or “eye-ther?”

This English stuff is, as my buddy Rodney would say, “ungood.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Trapped

I am going to just come right out and say this: getting trapped inside a clothing donation bin is weird.  I am also of a mind that getting stuck inside such a bin requires some level of effort.

Earlier this month, a 38-year-old woman in Paterson, New Jersey, was rescued from a clothing donation bin located behind an apartment building.  The unnamed woman was found in the bin after a passerby, walking near the building, heard calls for help.

The trapped woman said she had been inside the bin for close to three days.  According to the woman’s rescuers, once a person is inside the bin, it is nearly impossible to escape through the sliding deposit door.

Once rescued, the woman explained she had been reaching inside the bin and fell inside because someone pushed her from behind.

Authorities, however, found the woman’s story unlikely.  Police records indicated the woman had been rescued from clothing bins on two previous occasions.

Here in my home town of East Helena, Montana, we call donating yourself in clothing bins three times a pattern.  A strange one.

—Mitchell Hegman

Two Dead Fish

In my dream, someone gave me two dead fish: a perch and a small ling.  The fish were in a plastic sandwich bag and not yet eviscerated.

You might think I would recognize who gave me the fish, but I did not.  My dreams are always strange and disjointed and comprised of only a few conspicuous details in an otherwise nebulous environment.

For no outward reason, I carried these dead fish with me throughout the day, the pair of them squishing around within a plastic bag inside my coat pocket.

I kept checking on the fish throughout the day.  A day devoid of feature beyond the fish.

Having the dead fish in my coat pocket did not strike me as particularly unusual or unpleasant.  By the end of the day, however, the pretty silk and butter skins on the fish had turned dark and papery.  The eyes of the fish had glazed-over and turned a pale gray.

I woke from this dream feeling calm and rested.

Apparently, carrying around two dead fish suits me just fine.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Copy Cowboy

If you have lived around cowboys all of your life, as I have, you can pick one out even if they are wearing a baseball cap instead of a cowboy hat.  Especially an old cowboy. 

Old cowboys have a certain air about them.  They stand solid wherever they are standing. They look straight ahead.  Their jackets wear vague scars.

While picking up some printing from a copy center the other day, I stepped in line behind a couple other customers, including an old cowboy I would place in his mid-seventies.

I listened as the cowboy talked with the employee behind the counter. The cowboy wanted to pay 13 cents cash for a single copy, but the machine he had chosen had taken his credit card.  He quickly came to realize he was stuck with using the credit card.  The clerk could not covert to a simple cash transaction.   

The man caught my eyes as he stepped away after finishing with the clerk.  “Technology,” he grinned.  “Not sure it’s helping.”

“Not always,” I agreed.

He eagerly flashed his copy in front of me. It was a photograph of a rodeo cowboy diving head first from his horse to bulldog a steer at a rodeo.  “This is my old steer wrestling partner from up in Stanford.  This was take in nineteen-seventy-two.”

“That’s a great photograph,” I told him.  The photo was taken head on with a long lens and was part of an old newspaper article.

“That’s a beautiful horse there.” the cowboy added.  “Fast and strong.  He brought it up here from Oklahoma in the middle of the winter.”

“Takes a good horse for that job,” I said.  “And that is a tough racket.”

“Had more than a few friends hauled away.”  The cowboy agreed.  “But you know, I was never seriously injured.  Took a few horns to the chest, but nothing that crippled me up.”

“Lucky!” I said.

“Yep.” He smiled again and tucked his copy and original under his arm.  “Lucky, for sure.  Well, you have yourself a good day.”

“Have a good day yourself, sir.”

I watched him walked away.

That certain cowboy swagger.

—Mitchell Hegman

The Name of Things

To become an electrician, you have to learn a lot of stuff.  Here in Montana, 8000 hours of on-the-job training is required to complete an apprenticeship.  Just learning the name of the various parts and tools used is daunting.  For me, learning the names of conduit fittings proved particularly difficult when I worked with a particular journeymen.  Every conduit fitting sized ½ inch through 1½ inch was referred to as a “do-hickey.”

—Mitchell Hegman

Walking

I walked a little yesterday.

I find comfort in walking the empty roads cutting through the sage and mixed grass near my house.  I admire a sun—like the one often standing above me here—that is not afraid to cast a hard shadow.

I don’t need much.  On most days, a single eagle slowly spiraling up into the sky within an updraft is enough.

Both essential and exquisite, that.  

I have found a certain beauty in everyplace I have been so far in my life.  But give me first the open land.  Give me the long expanse of unchecked prairie aspiring to become foothills, and then snow-capped mountains.  That is exactly where I want to walk.

—Mitchell Hegman

On the Ice

I can walk on water.

It’s not a miracle.  The deal is, the lake below my house has frozen over.  On any given day you can look out to the lake from the back door of my house and see ice fishermen, ice skaters, maybe even a four-wheeler scooting across the lake ice.

I think it’s fair to say we take walking across the ice on a lake for granted.  Fact is, there exists a good portion of people populating this planet who are unable to fathom such a thing.  Back in 1993, Uyen and I invited a family—recently transplanted from Florida—out to our house for Christmas dinner.

Following is my journal entry from December 26, 1993:

We invited a couple and their teenage son out for Christmas dinner yesterday.  Uyen works with the husband at the Post Office.   They don’t know anybody in the state, having just moved here from Tallahassee, Florida—a town that strikes me as somewhat self-indulgent and redundant in the use of our alphabet.

"We want to die in the mountains," Barbara, the wife (who is, incidentally, pretty in a chipped tooth, bossy way) remarked as we ate our dinner.

 I almost told her I wasn't terribly interested in croaking at all, but instead I listened to her say, "We love the mountains.  Real mountains.  We've always wanted to live in the West.  Colorado.  Utah.  Nevada.  Montana.  Wyoming.  Idaho. The West!"

“West”, she said, as if it were the very savings account holding the family fortune.

After dinner, we took them down to the frozen lake.  The surface remained utterly still and perfectly flat.  A dusting of fresh snow covered the ice.  They'd never before seen a frozen lake.  Gingerly, the three of them stepped onto the lake.

Mother.  Father.  Son.

They tested the surface by swishing their boots around.  They bounced.  “Oooohing,” all three of them padded around in baby circles.

"I can't believe this," Barbara said.  "I've got to write back to my friends.  This is pretty!  I'm walking on a lake!"

And the rest of us watched her spin, handsome in her grinning, dyed-red-hair, shivering way.

On Sunday, I walked down to visit friends out fishing on the ice.  The ice there is presently eight inches thick.  I sent some photos to Desiree in Manila.  She has never seen snow.  The thought of walking on water is more than a little intriguing to her.

Fishermen on the Open Ice

Ice Houses

Inside an Ice House

—Mitchell Hegman

To Eat Beautifully

“You don’t eat beautifully,” said the woman sitting across the table from me.

“What?” I asked.

Let’s stop here for a moment.

I grew up in East Helena, Montana.  I, and most of my friends, learned what I would consider decent table manners.  Naturally, a few of us became outliers in the realm of good manners.  I know a few slurpers.  I have also been exposed to my share of double-dippers, finger-lickers, and (cringe) two fellas not opposed to pulling a plate up to their face and licking it.

But I am no outlier.

So…let’s start over.

Several years ago, while at dinner in a quiet restaurant, the woman sitting across the table from me said: “You don’t eat beautifully.”

“What?” I asked.  I was a bit stunned.

“You should learn to eat beautifully.  You make noise.  Sometimes, I can hear the fork click against your teeth.”

“That’s a problem?”

“It’s not beautiful.”

“Okay.  Thank you.”

As I mentioned, this conversation occurred many years ago.

I must admit, beyond that night I have not made efforts to eat beautifully.

—Mitchell Hegman