Author Archive: Christopher Waldrop

The Mirror Trick. (Part 2 of 2.)

Author: April 10, 2015 0 Comments

(This is Part 2 of 2 of a short story. To read Part 1 click here.)

mirrortrick1I could tell Max was teeing me up. He wasn’t looking at me but I knew it was coming. My notepad was black with marks from every time he’d said “you”. I was on the far left. He was staring at the center of the room. “I was about to ask you the same thing!” he said. Another mark and then I raised my hand. At the same time I saw something out of the corner of my eye on the other side of the room. Max looked over that way.

“Yes sir?”

I saw someone stand up and heard him speaking. “I have a degree in psychology and have worked in the field for decades…” I craned my neck to see who was talking. I didn’t want to stand up. It looked like a bald guy, like me, but that was all I could tell. I looked at Max. He wasn’t giving anything away.

“Thank you sir. I did learn this from a psychologist, and I know it’s a way to build rapport and trust with a potential customer.” Then he started his wrap-up. He pointed to the product cases and binders he had stacked in the back. The starter kit. All for one low fee. I got in line and pulled out my checkbook.

I took the kit with me and loaded it into my rental car in the hotel parking lot like a lot of the real customers. Then I took a drive out to the boonies. Signs pointed to a zoo that wasn’t there anymore, and a campsite. I had a bacon cheeseburger and a beer at a place on the edge of town called Shylock’s. Shylock. That’s another name I’ve forgotten since school. Then I went back to my hotel room and took a nap in front of a cop show marathon. Every other episode in these shows there’s a guy who looks like me. Bald, maybe a little white beard, hunched over. At least I think he looks like me. I don’t spend a lot of time looking in the mirror. Sometimes he gets mugged, but he’s got these special cop moves he uses to protect himself. Maybe that’s why I never get mugged. I look like that guy. Maybe it’s because I don’t go out in the streets at night.

Quarter to eleven I went two floors up. Maybe it was the cop shows, I thought, when I thought I saw a guy coming out of Max’s room who looked like me. Same shirt, same slacks. His head was bent down. I wondered if this was the guy who stole my speech earlier. I gave the door our special knock. It opened and there was Max unbuttoning his shirt.

“Oh, Mike, was there something else? I thought we got all your expenses covered.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Oh, no,” I stumbled. “I just remembered what it was.”

“Yeah, good night then.” He closed the door. I looked at my watch. How was it eleven thirty already?

The room was full. Bigger turnout than usual for a weekday. I was in the back corner with the exit just to my right. Max was getting to the end. I could feel my blood pressure going up. Heart pumping in my ears. The whole room felt hot to me. He was wrapping up, and I froze. It was my job to raise my hand, but all I did was sit there with my palms on my thighs. Max pointed out into the middle of the room, not at me.

“Yes sir?”

Someone stood up. I couldn’t get a good look. I heard them saying, “I have a degree in psychology and worked…”

“Who is that?” I muttered. I tried to stand up, but some guy next to me shushed me. I looked over at him and it was like looking in a mirror. He looked just like me. If I didn’t know better I would say he was me. “Who are you?”

He looked over at me. “Are you gonna shut up or do we need to step outside?”

Yeah, I would have said that too. Something was up here. I looked around. Every person in the room was me. It was a damn hall of mirrors.

I stood up and yelled. “Who are you? Who are all of you?” A hundred pairs of my own eyes looked back at me. Then the room rumbled with a hundred identical voices saying, “I was about to ask you the same thing!”

Max was up there on the stage grinning at me. He held out his hand.

I backed out of the room. Something funny going on here. Maybe I needed a doctor, but I thought I’d better lay down instead. I went out to the elevators in the hall and pushed the button for my floor. Then I changed my mind and punched the button to make the doors open. I walked to the lobby, brushing the wall with my hand as I went.

The lounge was a dark enclosed room just off the lobby. The bartender looked at me.

“Haven’t I seen you before?”

I didn’t know if he was being cute. If I thought he was in on it I’d have taken a swipe but instead I just asked for a Scotch. There was a buzzing in my ear, like bugs or something. I reached up to swat it away. Nothing doing. I decided to let it be.

“Are you all right?”

The bartender was looking right at me.

“You can sit here as long as you want, sir, I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I looked down at my scotch. Half melted ice cubes were floating in the glass. I pulled out a twenty and pushed it over to him.

“Keep the change.”

It took me about ten minutes to get everything packed. Then I got a taxi. No fooling with the bus this time. Max could take his whole cloak-and-dagger bit and shove it. At the airport I dropped off my rental car. Whoever got it next could have the case of Silverskin products in the back. On the house. I cashed in a wad of miles to get an earlier flight. With layovers it would be about the same, but I didn’t care. I wanted to be on the move.

The taxi dropped me off at the end of the driveway and I hoofed it to the door. The lock was sticky. Sometimes it does that. Humidity I guess. I jammed it and nearly broke my key. Inside everything looked the same. I hit the code for the burglar alarm. That was reassuring. Nothing had been touched, nothing had been moved. All my stuff was where it was supposed to be. Okay. I locked the door and took a nap.

I woke up in the dark. Max hadn’t called. I checked the caller ID to make sure, but nothing. I had expected him to call, but then I didn’t expect him to call.

A week later I knew he wasn’t going to call.

Sometimes I see someone who looks like me coming down the street from the opposite direction. I cross to the other side. Sometimes when Max is in town I go see him. The timing has to be just right. Too early he won’t open the door, even if I use the special knock. Too late and I’ve already been there. There don’t seem to be that many of me in the area. That makes it easier. Max doesn’t look at the dates on the receipts so he doesn’t notice I’m handing him the same ones over and over. Expenses plus the fee, just like always. It’s a little added income. In the spring I plant flowers. It’s good being me.

rays

Not Non-Fiction

A Laugh From Our Sponsors.

Author: April 9, 2015 0 Comments

Pete Puma

Copyright: Warner Brothers

Commercials aren’t supposed to be funny. If people laugh they’re not paying attention to the product. That was the conventional thinking until Stan Freberg, who’d been writing commercial parodies, started writing real commercials that were funny. The funny commercial isn’t his only legacy, though. He was also the voice of numerous cartoon characters, including Pete Puma in the Looney Tunes cartoon Rabbit’s Kin.

He also did countless parodies and influenced a whole generation of comedians. He passed away April 7th, 2015. Hail and farewell Stan Freberg.

Hail & Farewell.

Drive By Friendships.

Author: April 8, 2015 5 Comments

tardiscarHave you ever seen a car that just looks like it’s driven by someone you’d really like to know? For me it’s usually the collection of bumper stickers that’s so large they extend well above and beyond the bumper that makes me say, “Hey, I’m into all of those things too!” And I’m tempted to follow that car even if it veers off in the opposite direction of where I’m going.

Once when I was driving home but not in any real hurry a group of antique cars pulled up around me at a red light. Then they turned left while I was going straight ahead. I still regret not following them. I’m not really a car guy, but I think old automobiles are really cool. Once in a museum I saw a limousine that I think was from around the 1920’s. An old woman came up to me and said, “This is the car I dreamt of as a little girl.” I said, “This is the car I dream of now.” In retrospect she may have thought I was making fun of her; really I was making a dreamcarconnection.

Yes, I know they were gas-guzzling deathtraps and even if one could be retro-fitted with a hybrid engine and seat belts and airbags the insurance alone would drive me to bankruptcy and it would be unsellable. It’s like the statue of Hatshepsut kneeling at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It would be completely impractical to own but a guy can dream, can’t he?

And sometimes I dream of following a cool car, but then I dream of how it will turn out. Instead of going to a pizza place or bookstore they’ll be headed home, and I’ll end up parked in front of it. If I can overcome the intense shyness that sometimes overwhelms me I’ll probably sputter out something like, “Hi, nice car. Yeah, I was just driving around. Thought I’d park here. That’s a nice house. Oh, it’s yours? Hey, you’re a Doctor Who fan too, eh? Cool. It looks like you’re trying to get your mail and go inside. Mind if I come with you? Well, this is awkward.”

What I really want to do is send them a message that says, “I really dig your flivver, and it seems to me like we might be simpatico. At a convenient time would you like to meet at a hopsonmaltcoffee place and have a couple of pantoccinos, or maybe somewhere else for something a little stronger made with my old friend Hopson Malt?”

Yes I know it would come across as pushy and possibly even disturbing, but maybe, just maybe, that would work. Hey, a guy can dream, right?

Submitted For Your Approval.

Snail Call.

Author: April 7, 2015 4 Comments

Source: SpongeBobPedia

Crack. I’ve stepped on a snail. I really try to avoid this, but accidents happen. I feel guilty because I like snails. I’ve always liked snails. When I was a kid I kept them as pets sometimes. I drove librarians nuts asking for books about snails, and I was disappointed in the lack of attention given to snails on the shows I watched, except for this one short Sesame Street cartoon:

Sesame Street was supposed to be educational so it bugged me when they tried to pass off blatantly false information. And I knew almost everything about this short snail poem was wrong:

Snails come out when it’s damp, especially when it’s rainy. And at night. They don’t go out for a “walk” on “fine sunny days”. If they did they’d end up  snaildried snails.

At least the last part about a snail not having to go back was correct based on my observations: snails would venture a long way from where they started and wouldn’t necessarily go back.

The problem is snails don’t carry their homes on their backs. One of the reasons they come out when it’s raining is because the nooks and crannies and little holes where they live get flooded. That shell is not a home. It’s a protective cover and part of their bodies. Snails must look at us and say, “Wait, your shell is inside your body? Under your skin? That’s weird.” Or at least they would if they looked at us and thought about us. I can’t fault Sesame Street for passing taffy when I’m anthropomorphizing snails.

snailAnother thing I learned about snails just by watching is that if you put two in a terrarium sooner or later they’ll start riding around on each others’ shells, and then you’ll have a cluster of tiny pearlescent eggs in a little hole in the dirt.

Later  very patient librarian would find me a book and I’d read that snails are hermaphrodites. This didn’t really bother me, and I even thought it would make life easier if humans were too. On fine sunny days when couples went out for a trek at the end of the date they’d both pick up the check.

snail1

 

 

Ramble With Me.

The Mirror Trick. (Part 1 of 2)

Author: April 3, 2015 0 Comments

The following is a work of fiction, unlike some of the other things I write which are no more than 70-75% made up.

mikeAnother day another crappy hotel. I didn’t even know if it was Illinois or Iowa. Maybe I’d make a note of it when I got back to the airport. Never did before. Same thin olive carpet underfoot, same conference room at the end of the hall past the lobby. The location of the lounge, pool, and restaurant were the only things that changed. Not even that much, except when we stayed in that medieval themed hotel in Kentucky. I remember we met in the Grendel room. Who was Grendel? Somebody I forgot since school. I’d done this two dozen times, and what did I have to show? Seven thousand two hundred dollars and a shitload of frequent flier miles I’d never use. Oh, I mean crap load. Sorry Lucy.

I didn’t take it because it was an easy job, but it was. I filed in with the other potential customers. Max gave his selling pitch, and I’d try to stay awake. Sometimes I’d carry a notebook and make a note every time he said “Silverskin”. Or if I was really knocked every time he said “and”. Or every time he walked back and forth on the stage.

“I’m not here to sell Silverskin skincare products!” was part of the start. “I’m here to get you started Silverskin skincare products! And if you do what I say every one of you could earn a thousand dollars a month. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” And off he’d go. I could tell by looking at the faces around me that he didn’t need to do much to sell them the stuff. That’s what he was doing even if he thought he was really in the business of making middlemen. Maybe he even believed that “I make people rich!” button he wore on his jacket. And the stuff wasn’t too bad. Same as the expensive stuff, I guess, but not made by a company big enough to make it famous. Max always told me that wasn’t why he was selling it to regular people. “These people aren’t chumps,” he told me in one of our private meetings. Maybe he really believed that. And like I say the stuff wasn’t too bad. At my age I don’t give a rat’s…I don’t care what I look like but I dipped into the free samples he gave me. The exfoliant was weird, like oily sandpaper. I don’t know what that was supposed to do. The wrinkle cream seemed like it helped the bags under my eyes. None of it smelled bad either. That’s what made me put it up. It reminded me of Lucy. I wish she’d been around to try it. She was sensitive to smells and things like that. Allergies even though she worked in the yard every day she could. Maybe it was just the synthetic stuff that made her break out. I watched her pull poison ivy with her bare hands. I didn’t think I could do that but I thought I’d help her out when I retired. Plant whatever flowers she liked. She only bought annuals because she liked the planting. Then just after I retired the cancer came. Her friends and even our kids told me she was lucky it was quick. I wanted to tell them they didn’t know jack shit, but Lucy wouldn’t have liked that. “Keep it clean, Mike,” she would tell me. So I didn’t say it. I have more respect for her than they do. And I cut them some slack. They don’t know what it was like to sit in an empty house. It’s why I started working for Max.

He liked to be very cloak and dagger about the whole thing. We traveled in separate cars, mapped out different routes to the hotels. We never arrived at the same time and always stayed on separate floors. If I wanted to eat I had to go out. The farther from the hotel the better. Or get room service. The day of the meeting I had to leave early, take a cab to the bus station, then bum around and take a bus back to the hotel. Camouflage. Max wanted me to look local. I didn’t see the point but I played along. He was paying the piper, and it tickled me a little.

Once he sold them the idea of Silverskin skin care products he really started in on what they wanted to hear. He sold how to sell. How to greet, how to get invited in, never put your foot in the door. Standard tips that would be in the manual too, but he wouldn’t tell them that. Then once he got the basics he started in on the psychology angle. “It’s called the mirror trick. If the person you’re talking to crosses their legs you cross your legs. If they scratch their nose you scratch yours. Not right away, but within thirty seconds. And keep it subtle. You want to avoid them thinking you’re copying them if you can. And if they say ‘Are you doing what I’m doing?’ or ‘Are you mimicking me?” don’t panic. Do not panic. Laugh. Laugh and say ‘I was about to ask you the same thing!’”

Sometimes this would get a laugh. Sometimes it didn’t. It was what he said that was my signal. I raised my hand. He’d be looking the other way then he’d look at me. And he’d look confused. Did it really well. Between you and me I still don’t think he’s too bright. He would say, “Yes sir?” and I’d stand up.

“I have a degree in psychology and I’ve worked in the field for more than forty years, and what you’re saying is one of the best kept secrets there is. Psychologists know about these techniques and they don’t want regular folks to know them. Thank you for sharing them.” Max would look impressed and he’d thank me as I sat down.

“Thank you sir,” he’d say. “I learned these tricks from a psychologist. They’re a proven way to build up trust with a new customer, and I’m sharing them because I want every person in this room to succeed.”

I had a degree in psychology from a state school. The “field” I’d worked in was sales, just like Max. Takes one to know one. I just sold lumber instead of skin cream, and worked one on one instead of big rooms. I never did know where Max got the mirror trick. He told me he read it in a psychology book. Maybe he made it up. All that mattered is he got the whole room to line up and spend two hundred bucks on a case of Silverskin skin care products and a manual of the whole sales talk he’d just given. Minus the mirror trick. He kept that for himself. Most he would never hear from again. Selling is harder than they wanted it to be.

Around eleven that night I’d go to Max’s room, give a special knock, and he’d let me in. We’d total up my expenses and tack on my fee. That’s how it went. That’s how it always went.

Part 2 will be published April 10th, 2015.

Not Non-Fiction, The Weekly Essay

Happy Birthday To…

Author: April 1, 2015 2 Comments

saltIt all started with salt.

So it was 1995, and the place where I worked had just started using e-mail. We had a program called Pegasus, which I’m tickled to see, is still going. It was supposed to be a work tool, but its real purpose quickly became clear: to share jokes. A short time later I discovered I could create email groups and have the names hidden so the recipients wouldn’t see each other’s addresses. So I created a group.

Guess what it was called.

It wasn’t long before I tried writing some stuff of my own. The first thing I remember writing that got a tremendous response was about the instructions on the packets of salt you get at fast food restaurants. The thrill of feedback was intoxicating, and addictive.

Twenty years have gone by in a flash. I’ve read somewhere that the average blog only lasts three years. If you never come here again drop by on April 1, 2025. I intend to destroy the average.

In the meantime…there will be the book. I have no idea when, but it will be a collection of humorous pieces and short stories, because there’s nothing publishers love more as you can tell by the fact that such books always end up in the three-for-a-dollar remainder pile.

I do at least have a title, which is a good start.

bookcover

Subtitles include:

Never pick apart a golf ball or it will explode and other lies our parents told us.

The true story of a boy and his aardvark.

Don’t pick up this book—you don’t know where it’s been.

Chuffed, Naff, Barmy, Wanker, Git, Bollocks, And Other Words I’d Use Constantly If I Were British.

Contains Material Not Included In Previous Editions.

A shoe, a canoe, and a didgeridoo.

Or It Will Be If I Ever Get Around To Writing It

A post-Freudian analysis of Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood as examined through a Barthesian dialectical lens.

A helpful guide to just read the damn book already.

I don’t know if it really started on April 1, 1995—I don’t remember the exact date, frankly—but it’s close enough. And I always wanted to have a birthday in the spring. My real birthday is December 20, date. And I have to give full credit to my mother who always made sure my birthday was celebrated as its own event in spite of its proximity to Christmas. There were advantages to having a birthday at that time of year—including being a Sagittarius. I remember the first time I read the description of a Sagittarius. Three things stood out:crush

-Loves the outdoors

-Loves to dress up in costumes

-Scatterbrained

Check, check, and mate. I’ve spent the rest of my life avoiding reading anything about astrology because I suspect the description of a Leo is completely different but would fit me just as well.

April 1st is also the birthday of Lon Chaney. Apparently loving to dress up in costumes is an Aries thing as well.

Thanks to Scott MacLean who created the original website, and Jeff Goebel of Frogstar, both of whom put an incredible amount of work into rebuilding this site as a blog I could call home. They created a fantastic design which I immediately tore to pieces. This was not an editorial comment. It’s just that I’ve lived with dogs long enough to know that the only way to make the yard yours is to pee on every tree.illustrative1And now…let loose the tarantulas of foolishness! Here are videos I’ve made on my real birthday for the past three years.

And now back to the usual foolishness.

Happy Birthday., Not Non-Fiction, Ramble With Me., Submitted For Your Approval., The Vault, The Weekly Essay

Hop On Board.

Author: March 30, 2015

So have I mentioned that I ride the bus? Not every day, but regularly. If you’re not a bus rider yourself there are some important rules to remember. Fortunately most buses have helpful signs to make them clear.

The signs are self-explanatory, but I’ve provided notes.

eatingRule 1: Chew with your mouth closed, use a cup with a lid, and give that chemo patient his hat back.

smokingRule 2: Smoking on the bus makes Hedorah The Smog Monster very angry.

musicRule 3: It’s Nashville, Jake. If Clare Bowen wants to sit next to you and sing into a hair brush consider yourself lucky. At least it takes your mind off the cracked windows.

Remembering these rules will make your bus ride safer, more pleasant, and, most importantly, weird. Hey, my ride’s here!

myrideishere

Adventures In Busing.

March On.

Author: March 28, 2015 0 Comments

dogwood1We’re experiencing a dogwood winter which is strange this late in March. As the old saying goes March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb–at least in this part of the world.

In central Europe March comes in like a wolf and goes out like a weasel.

In Patagonia March comes in like a penguin and goes out like a puma.penguin1

In South Africa March comes in like a leopard and goes out like an ostrich.

In Siberia March comes in like a bear and goes out like a bear. Not much happens there until June.

In Central America March comes in like  a chameleon and goes out like a capybara.

In Sri Lanka March comes in like a sloth and goes out like an Indian skipper frog.

In Australia March comes in like a jumbuck and goes out like a dingo.

In Morocco March comes in like Humphrey Bogart and goes out like Ingrid Bergman.

casablanca

 

Submitted For Your Approval.

A Life In The Day.

Author: March 27, 2015 2 Comments

“What would you do if you had only one day left to live?”

It was a spring day in first grade and this was the question my teacher Ms. Blaureiter gave us to write about. One day left to live. That was a lot to think about, but I didn’t give it much thought. I wrote that I would lie on the couch with the dog and watch ZOOM, my favorite show at the time, and then I’d get up and go outside and play with my friends. And I’d hope it would happen on a Friday, because we always had fish on Friday.

scubaThen I looked back on that answer and felt guilty. It seemed like a terrible waste. One day left to live and I’d use it doing what I did most days when I wasn’t in school. What did that say about me as a person? Maybe at seven I’d intuitively realized there were some things that I wanted to do that one day just wouldn’t leave time for. I wanted to try scuba diving in a tropical ocean, for instance, but that would mean at least a couple of days of training, and I didn’t have time for that. I could have done something like feed the homeless, or at least give a homeless person my spot on the couch so they could watch ZOOM, which would be a nice unselfish way to use my final hours, but would I be doing enough to leave the world a better place than I found it? Would one day even be enough for that?

Then I thought about it some more. One day left to live. What would you do? Think about the time restraints. I dream of someday being able to visit Easter easterislandIsland, to stand in the presence of the moai and reflect on the long departed people who carved these astounding monuments. With just one day left to live, though, I don’t think I’d make it. Easter Island is eight thousand miles away. Even if all the travel arrangements were made it’s a really long trip. If I were lucky I’d probably die somewhere over Peru. Maybe I could skip over the International Date Line and get an extra day, but I don’t know if that would give me enough time. I am certain I’d splurge on first class, though.

What kind of question was this, anyway? I’d barely started to live and had no experience that would allow me to wrap my young head around something as big as death. I’d been lucky. I hadn’t really been confronted with anyone else’s mortality, let alone my own. My maternal grandmother had passed away, but my memories of her were so vague I couldn’t process the loss, and it would be another year before I’d lose my maternal grandfather.

What was my teacher thinking? Maybe she heard her own biological clock ticking and wanted to turn up the volume on ours. They were still being wound. We knew she wasn’t married because she told us about the dates she’d been on. She didn’t kiss and tell, really, but she did tell us the names of the guys she was going out with, and—this is absolutely true—she was dating a different guy every night of the week. On school nights. I don’t think any of us had any idea what adults did on dates. If we had we might have looked at her a lot differently, but that’s another story.

I realize we live in a complex world where seven year olds, and even those who are younger, are forced to face their own or others’ mortality, or are exposed to some of the most horrific things human beings can do to each other. I know how lucky I was that neither I nor any of my classmates, as far as I knew, had been exposed to any of that. So it was hard to contemplate death when I’d barely begun to live. If my life had flashed before my eyes it would have been over in about ten seconds. And this was decades before anyone coined the term “bucket list”—an expression I hate because it sounds too much like a checklist that reminds you with every tick that you’re getting closer to pushing up dandelions.

As I thought even more about the question it became even more disturbing. I realized there were only two circumstances under which someone would know they’d have twenty four hours left to live. The first would be a serious illness, although biology doesn’t always follow a strict timetable, so maybe it would be more than a day, or maybe it would be less. More predictable would be the knowledge of execution, assuming there’s no call from the governor. Years later I’d feel a pang of recognition when I read Samuel Johnson’s line “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” The question my teacher put out there did concentrate my mind most wonderfully. I’d call 9-1-1.

“Hello, police? My teacher is planning to kill me tomorrow!”

telephone1

The Weekly Essay