daneallred

Spare Change

Spare Change

I have a different sense of humor. Sometimes it takes a while for people to understand just what I am saying, and realize I’m joking. Teaching high school means some students come to school not feeling their best. Either mom or dad or both work, and they can’t stay home. Sometimes their folks make them go to school even when they are sick. So I get to deal with some unhappy kids at times.

It’s not hard to see who is suffering. They are not their usual selves, and when I go up and ask them how they are feeling, they usually try to put on a smile and say they are okay. If they are really feeling sick, they sometimes admit it and say something like, “I don’t feel good.” To try to lighten up the moment, I will usually put my hand on their shoulder and tell them, “You feel all right to me.”

So it does take a minute for them to think about it; remember, they are feeling sick. So when they finally get it, I usually get a smile from them. They look at me and sometimes shake their heads; remember, Dad humor is really not funny, it’s mostly stupid. But it is stupid enough to make you laugh.

I sometimes take it a little far. I really should only use this kind of humor with people I know. But most of you know by now if you’ve been paying attention that I really don’t pay attention all that well. The first time I tried my smart-aleck Dad humor on a total stranger was in Washington, D.C. as my wife and I were walking on the street.

I really don’t like it when people on the street beg from me. I know there are programs and places available to everyone who is willing to try to get help.

So with my bad sense of humor and my general lack of common sense, the following scenario probably was unavoidable.

We were walking along and there were several people begging on the street. After saying no a few times, one guy we passed leaned out and pointed his cup at me. He said, “Spare change?”

My mind works pretty fast, and my wife often has to point out most people have a hard time keeping up sometimes. So when I looked at him and said, “No thanks, I have some.”

He looked at me with a kind of dumbfounded stare for a minute and processed what I had just said. We kept walking, and from behind me I heard him laugh a bit and say, “No, I want your change.” But we were already too far away, and I just sort of chuckled.

My wife was furious, and told me to “knock it off”. She was worried I might have made him angry, and didn’t want a confrontation. She’s usually right. I’m just not smart enough to keep my mouth shut sometimes. But when someone offers a great opening like that, my brain goes on automatic and my mouth starts talking without thinking first.

My daughter was in the car with us recently and we saw a guy begging at WalMart. She’s worked in homeless shelters and knows the programs available to the needy. She started rattling off the different things someone who really needed help could do, and started talking about how angry it made her when people begged. I asked her if she wanted me to roll down the window and let him know. Before she could answer I said I didn’t think that was the kind of help he was looking for.

One of my former students was an aide to Senator Orrin Hatch. She has a great story about people begging from when she was back in Washington, D.C. She and her husband are successful lawyers now and actually named a son after me. Back in D.C. she used to give some of her lunch money to this same beggar every day. Then one day she was at a hot dog stand, and there was this same guy paying for his lunch with a wad of bills she described as almost too big to hold in his hand.

She was indignant, and Regina was not one to hold her tongue. She was an award-winning debate and public speaker, so she spoke right up and demanded her money back.

He turned to her, probably recognized her and simply said, “I fooled you, didn’t I?” This story only confirmed what I had always thought. There must be some good money in begging if you don’t care about the hit your self-esteem takes.

Last spring I did it again, and I even had two witnesses.

Try it. Just remember.

“Spare change?”

“No thanks, got some.”

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Three Car Pileup

Three Car Pile-up

I drive the speed limit. I didn’t always. I used to drive a Mazda RX-7. My mom sold it to me after she had driven it a few years. I talked my wife into buying it. She was dubious until we pulled up and she remembered what the car looked like. As we pulled into my mom’s driveway, my wife turned to me and said, “Can I have it?”

She drove the car for a while until she had cancer. She’s fine now, but after chemotherapy she decided the car smell like chemo, and we bought her a new car. I loved driving that sports car. It could take corners at just about any speed, which isn’t good for your driving point total. I don’t know how many tickets I got, but eventually I had enough points to endanger my driver’s license. I could get the points reduced in half by going to traffic school, and so I did.

Eventually the car wouldn’t pass inspections, so I sold it. I got older and started going the speed limit. It’s just not as fun unless you are in a sports car, so I rarely get tickets anymore. The contradiction to this statement happened when I decided to leave the slow lane on the freeway.

There is a place on the freeway where every day there seemed to be a slow down at a particular part of the road. All of the cars were going around a slight corner, and for some reason, no one was able to keep going the speed limit. So everyone slows to a crawl.

I decided to leave the safe, slow right lane where I am nearly always found these days. I went to the middle lane, and it was slowing down, too. So I moved to the fast lane, and I was still going way too fast. The cars in the fast lane were stopped. The car in front of me was stopped. I didn’t think I was going to be able to stop.

I was right. I skidded a bit and hit the car in front of me going about 5 miles per hour. It was really more of a soft tap so I doubted there was even going to be a dent. But then I looked in the mirror. The guy behind me was not slowing down. He was going about 35 to 40 miles per hour, and he rammed my car hard enough to bounce me into the car in front of me again, and this time I hit the guy in front of me hard enough to knock his hat off.

So now I had been in a three car pile-up. We were the only three who had an accident. Everyone else was cautious enough to not hit someone else. So we checked out our damage and pulled off the side of the road. The police officer had us pull to the next exit to clear the freeway, and I was supposed to be teaching in about an hour. Here’s the problem. I got a ticket for hitting the guy in front of me. The guy behind me got a ticket for hitting me. So writing the tickets took longer than I thought it might. I had to call one of the students in my class and tell them to go home.

The guy in front of me had an old junker like me. He checked for damage on his car, and decided there really wasn’t a reason to file a claim. He was just glad he wasn’t carrying big pieces of metal in the back of his car like he usually did. My car also didn’t seem to be damaged at all, and I attribute that to the spare tire which hangs on the back of my Jeep type car. The guy behind me had hit right into the tire. I later saw that the tire and the door were moved a bit forward, and the door wouldn’t open any more but I usually don’t use that door anyway.

So the two of us in the front had little or no damage. Who I really felt sorry for was the guy who hit me. He was driving a fairly new pickup truck, and the tire on the back of my car had demolished his front end. The hood was bent up, the fender was crushed, and the headlights had fallen to the ground. There must have been thousands of dollars in damage. He had no one to blame but himself.

Of the three cars involved, he was driving the nicest. Of the three cars, he had the most damage. Is there a moral to this story?

It may be ‘drive a junker, and stay in the slow lane’.

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Twas the Night Before Christmas

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The Night Before Christmas

by Clement Clark Moore

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled down for a long winter's nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below, When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name; "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too. And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose; He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

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Burned Rice Twice

Burned Rice Twice

I may be the world’s laziest cook. I do know how to make an omelet, and I even took a cooking class in high school called “Bachelor Survival”. The only think I remember cooking was chocolate mousse, and since no one in my group liked how it tasted, I ate five or six servings. I broke out in hives and had to stay home for a couple of days.

I am also cheap. I don’t like to spend a lot for breakfast or lunch. Since I eat lunch at school, I tried cooking potatoes for a while. It was just a plain potato cooked in a microwave, but after a while it got kind of boring.

About this time I realized I probably needed to start eating breakfast more regularly. So here’s the routine I find myself in nearly every day. I like to cook some oatmeal before school since it only takes a couple of minutes. I don’t really like milk, so I only put some maple syrup on it. Oatmeal is supposed to be good for lowering cholesterol and it also counts as roughage, so I’ve done two good things as the day begins.

Continuing in the single food category, I cook brown rice at school. Brown rice take a while for some reason, so this may be the extent of my culinary skills. Five minutes on high, forty-five on medium, and I have a very filling lunch which can be topped with a little salt or a little sugar. That’s right. Nothing else on the rice; no milk, no spices, no nothing.

The rice is another serving or two of roughage, and the argument I offer for rice everyday for lunch is: 3 billion people who eat rice for every meal can’t be too wrong. Here’s the really strange part of the breakfast and lunch scenario. I’ve gotten used to eating this every day, as in I’ve been eating oatmeal and rice everyday for three or four years now. I ought to do a commercial.

Some people make fun of the fact I eat the same thing every breakfast and lunch. But the good news about rice for lunch is it seems to keep me more awake in the afternoon, where I used to fade before I started the routine.

The only problem with being so regular is that the habit sometimes overtakes the logic of what goes into such a simple meal. The following problem happened not just once, but twice. I thought it happened again the other day, but someone else was responsible that time.

Here’s what happened.

Rice is simple. Shake in the hundreds of grains, fill up with water, maybe add some salt and start cooking. But remember, brown rice cooks for 50 minutes; forty-five minutes at medium after five minutes on high. The only time I really have problems with this simple recipe is when I get distracted. Usually, I am talking with someone else, or I have something else on my mind. So I’m trying to do two things at once, and since I don’t want to be rude, somewhere in the conversation I forget one of the steps. There really is no excuse, but at least twice I have tried to cook rice without any water.

If you have never been blessed to smell rice cooked without water for fifty minutes, I can give you a few details to help you understand the smell. Think about toast burned completely through, with some hints of coffee. I don’t think there was smoke, but everyone on that side of the building was sure there was a fire somewhere, but they just couldn’t figure out where.

It’s the worst inside the microwave. I’m just glad it didn’t start on fire. I could see the fire department pulling out my plastic bowl of smoking rice and trying to identify who was the idiot who decided to fry rice in the microwave.

Needless to say, the first time I burned the rice there was a general uproar about the fire which was burning somewhere in the building. Imagine my surprise when I opened the microwave and saw a pile of dark brown burned something. I wasn’t smart enough to keep quiet about it, so everyone made fun of the fact I couldn’t even cook plain rice.

They really enjoyed teasing me the second time I burned the rice. Now I am paranoid. Sometimes I go back and double-check to make sure the bowl has rice and water. A couple of weeks ago I smelled what I thought was burning rice and rushed to the microwave. I had remembered to add water, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Someone somewhere was burning toast. That’s okay.

As long as I didn’t get blamed for it.

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I Am Grateful

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Dents in the Van

Dents in the Van

I used to deliver flowers. It was a great job for someone who needed some extra money but can’t work all day. After school I would run by the flower shop to pick up the deliveries, and after thinking about the best route, I would be paid to drive around the city, listen to the radio and have happy people greet me when I showed up with flowers.

It really is a cool thing to have people thank you for doing your job. It’s like I sent them the flowers, and everyone is so excited when they get them. It’s not like I paid for them – I’m just the messenger. I guess the saying about don’t shoot the messenger also works in reverse. Why do they thank the messenger?

In this state, people really don’t tip well. I don’t know why we are so cheap, but this is a complaint I often hear from those who are paid poorly, using the excuse of tips to pay someone way below minimum wage. Waiters, waitresses, or do you call them waitpersons, delivery people like the pizza man, and yes, the flower delivery person are usually short-changed around here. I delivered thousands of beautiful bouquets, and I got tipped once. What was the grand tip? A quarter.

I understand being parsimonious, but a quarter? It was really an insult, and the contradiction here is I think I would rather have not received a tip. I often feel this way about being paid poorly; sometimes I would rather be volunteering my time than receiving a ridiculously low payment for something. Again, it doesn’t seem to make much sense, but that’s the way I feel.

The scariest delivery ever was at a really nice house. This may have been where I got the quarter. I was a little distracted though, since the owners had a Doberman pincer. This dog was very interested in protecting the property, but I usually get along well with dogs. I can proudly say I have never been bit by a strange dog – just my own pets. This dog barked fiercely as I approached the door, and as I rang the doorbell, the Doberman began trying to bit my leg. Two things saved me here; I was wearing incredibly tight jeans, and the dog was trying to bite my thigh. Luckily his teeth just kept slipping off the tight denim, and the owner answered before blood was drawn.

I liked delivering flowers so much during my high school years that I applied for the same job when I went to college. Again it really worked well with my schedule. The only problem with this job is the little old lady who owned the flower shop also liked her grandkids to help out. So when I get the job of washing and vacuuming out the van, guess who gets to come along and help?

The twelve-year old grandson thought it would be great to help clean the van, but I wasn’t very excited to be baby-sitting. There really wasn’t anything he could do to help, which gave him a little time to hatch a plan. While he watched me wash the outside, he decided it would be a really good idea to let him pull the van up to the vacuums.

When I finished the wash, I opened the door and saw him sitting in the driver’s seat. He begged me to let him pull the van up to the vacuums. So here’s the choice; I tell him no, and he complains to his grandma, or I let him drive 15 feet and make him ecstatic.

I should have remembered something that happened to me when I was a junior in high school. At a summer workshop, I ran out of gas, and had my girlfriend drive the car as we pushed the truck up to the pumps. We were going pretty fast when we got to the station, and she was pulling on the wrong side of the pump. So as I gave her directions, she ended up plowing right into the gas pump. We were lucky there wasn’t a giant fire – it just knocked the pump off the foundation. Whose insurance jumped the next quarter, even though he wasn’t driving at the time of the accident? You guessed it.

But I guess I chose to forget this earlier lesson, and I let him drive up to the vacuums. Don’t ask me how he did it, but he pulled too close to the vacuums, which were on the passenger side. He didn’t slow down, and he didn’t stop when the crunching started.

One giant gash in the side door later, I had another choice.

I told the old lady I did it.

The kid never blinked an eyelash.

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Craft Services

Craft Services

I’ve acted in over 30 commercial and about 20 films. Most of the parts aren’t huge, so I get to spend a lot of time at craft services. If you watch you’ll see craft services listed as the credit roll in most movies, and I want to tell you how important a part they play. It has to do with the long hours shooting commercials or movies, and the tendency of actors to wander.

Let’s talk about the hours. A regular contract day is twelve hours. This means you work for about five or six hours before eating lunch, and dinner is usually about four hours later. If you end up working longer than twelve hours, then everyone starts getting overtime pay, which is time and a half.

The longest shooting day I’ve ever done was 18 hours. We showed up for a combined episode of “Touched by an Angel” and “Promised Land”. This means all of the stars have to be filmed and released earliest since they get twelve hours before they can be called to the set again. So after I showed up and got my cop costume, my fake ID badge and had my face powdered and hair approved, I sat with the other extras for twelve hours.

That’s right. We were ready, but they weren’t ready for us, and we are the least well paid actors on the set. I had lunch and dinner before shooting one scene. Since I had shown up at eight a.m., I started getting overtime at eight p.m. I finally finished my last scene at two in the morning, and the worst news of all is I don’t think any of the scenes I was in was used. It doesn’t matter; I still got paid.

But more important, I got to spend most of the day at the craft services table. As actors, we aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, and we tend to think of ourselves as the most important person on the set. So when we get hungry or thirsty, we start to wander, looking for something to eat or drink. We may wander off just because we are bored.

Enter craft services. Think of all the different kinds of food you may want to snack on. Add a variety of delicious drinks. The best part? Everything at craft services is FREE! That’s right. Lunch and dinner are free, too, but here is a collection of incredibly delicious snacks and you can have as much as you want of anything. Don’t tell the directors, but I would act in some parts just for the craft services.

Sometimes the people who are providing the craft services get a little creative. They try to serve healthy foods. I don’t like that as well. When a free chocolate donut is staring me in the face, who wants some hummus? But don’t get me wrong. I haven’t preserved my girlish figure by passing up free food. If all there is available is hummus, I’ll be eating all the free hummus I can get.

Now let me tell you about the best food I have ever had on a movie set. Henry Winkler and Ricky Schroeder were starring in a movie being shot at the old Jordan High School. I was playing the vice-principal, and again, I don’t think my scenes got used. Again, it’s okay. I still got paid.

But the best news is we were in the final days of shooting. When a film is done it’s called “a wrap”, and the food on the day a film is wrapped is amazing. Here are actors who have been working together for weeks on a film, and as it ends, a real celebration is necessary. The bad news is extras eat last. The crew eats first, so they can be back at the camera first. The stars eat next, so they can be ready for their close-ups. Extras are last, but on this very important wrap day, I had heard a rumor about what was being served. Again, this is free food, because no one wants actors wandering off to Wendy’s.

When lunch was called, I made sure I was at the front of the end of the line. That is, I was the first extra in line. We were being served the largest lobster tails I have ever seen. I can still taste how delicious it was. It may surprise you to hear that the caterers at these events are very, very good. I always look forward to the food at lunch, and if we are lucky, dinner.

Surprisingly, after getting used to the free food available at craft services and from the caterers, I have started to cut back.

After all, there are fewer parts available for hefty actors.

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Evil Banker Audition

Evil Banker Audition

I have a commercial running on television right now, and I have been in several local and national commercials. It sounds like it would be a glamorous thing to do, but being an actor is anything but glamorous. The pay is poor, the hours are terrible, and usually it really doesn’t matter if you have any talent.

Since I act in a “right to work” state, minimum wage is usually the standard for acting work. Actually, you can end up getting paid less than minimum if you agree to the terms, and sometimes I have taken terrible pay for the chance to do some work. Here’s an example. I was asked to be the teacher for an ITT technical college ad about 15 years ago. Apparently the director and the cinematographer were from Cuba, and were a father and son combination. The dad didn’t speak any English, and my one line was “Now I want you to evaluate the network”, or something like that. I heard later that most of the film shot that day was useless, and the ad agency ended up using whatever wasn’t horrible. I worked about 12 hours that day and earned one hundred dollars. That’s a bit more than minimum wage, but this was a commercial which ran nationwide for at least a couple of years.

Again, since we do things differently here, I didn’t receive residuals no matter how many times they used it. They could still use it today. This is called a buyout. You get one payment and never see another cent.

Sometimes the contract is negotiated a little better. But no one I know in our state makes a living working as an actor in television, film or commercials. But again, this is one of the reasons people like to shoot here. We have very good quality here. So we are inexpensive – but not cheap.

I’ve played a Jerry Springer look-alike in a weight-loss commercial which was shot here and shown in Bakersfield, California. I went to Elko one day and shot a gambling commercial which is only shown there. The best I’ve ever been paid was to be one of the telegraph pole sitters in an MTI commercial which was only shown in three cities, and at the stockholders meeting. Go figure.

You really don’t need talent to do most of this work. I don’t get everything I audition for, and that’s okay. I still go audition, and sometimes I get the part. I’ve tried to sell Kevin Eubank a white jacket, and been the boss wearing a cheese hat in a diamond commercial. I’ll talk about the strange hours in another episode. Don’t get me started now.

But the strangest audition I ever did was for a part I call “evil banker”. Since most agencies are an hour away, I drive up, audition and drive back. Sometimes I only say a sentence or two. But for this part all I had to do was make a motion like I was directing a crane to put a big sign on a wall. So delving into my vast crane direction experience, I moved my hands up and down, and maybe a little sideways.

I got the part, and I was excited. I must have been brilliant. But the real news is this commercial was shot for the state credit unions. The point of the commercial was that banks go in and out of business while the credit union stays put. So my part was to direct the changing signs while the credit union guy shook his head at all the change.

I was even more deflated when I learned there would be no close-ups. Think of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, where she says, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. De Mille.” It’s an actor’s favorite part, since everyone and anyone will be able to recognize them. The camera would be set up down the street on a scaffold, and only get long shots of the credit union guy and me. The changing signs were the most important part of the ad.

To add insult to injury, I was taking a day off work to do the commercial and only being paid one hundred dollars, so I was probably losing money. To help save money, actors are sometimes asked to bring their own clothes for costumes. Think about it. They fit, and if I bring four or five different things for the costume person to choose, they don’t have to buy clothes.

So let’s summarize this commercial. I didn’t speak; I got the part because I gestured well; I lost money and I wouldn’t be seen. Even when I told people I was the guy in the commercial, they looked at with skepticism.

Who says acting isn’t glamorous?

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Jerry Springer Hair

Jerry Springer Commercial

I like acting in cheesy commercials. There seems to be a demand for this kind of acting here. One time I was cast in a commercial because the back of my head looked like Jerry Springer’s. It’s not very exciting to know you have been cast because the hair on the back of your head looks like someone else’s. I don’t even know what the hair on the back of my head looks like. It could be a mess.

So this is another bargain basement commercial and I’m getting one hundred dollars since I don’t have any lines. I have taken another day off work; so basically, I’m probably not making any money. But shooting a commercial can be fun, so I take my chances and show up as Jerry Springer’s hair.

This was a weight loss commercial where two huge women are fighting over a skinny man. I will never understand what all that means, but that’s what the client wanted. There was the typical Jerry crowd, boisterous and ill-mannered. The set looked great, and guess what happened when I showed up?

I was given some lines. Now this may sound like something to be excited about, but I have been hired not to say lines. It’s not that I don’t want lines, but when an actor speaks, the pay is supposed to go up. Like four times as much.

So here’s what I think happened. They didn’t want to spend a lot on the commercial, so the bait and switch is to get me there thinking I won’t have to learn lines, and then tell me when I show up to start studying.

Trying to make the best of a bad situation, I start memorizing the few lines I’ve been given.

The commercial was really convincing. If I was an overweight woman fighting another overweight woman over a skinny guy, I would take the product. They even had a “Jerry Cam” shot where the two women fought on the floor while the camera shot the scene from above. The crowd was great, but I stunk.

No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get the few words out in the correct order. I think it may have been a mental block. After all, how could I give a great performance on poor pay? The only good news from the day is the shooting didn’t take a full 12 hours, but I still got paid for twelve. I even had enough time that afternoon to go complain to my agent. They know the rules and they were upset, or excited to get a bigger commission. Nothing ever happened.

This brings me to why I like to be positive about stuff like this. Sure I’m complaining, but I wasn’t really upset since I know these things tend to work out in the wash. I could spend time worrying about the money I missed, or go on a be positive about the next chance I get to act. It really does work for me, since there have been some really lucrative parts mixed in with the small change.

It reminds me of the time I was a marketing director for a private company. I helped write copy and coordinated printing, which my boss could have done without me. But since he wanted to work on other stuff, I did a great job if I do say so myself. We made a grundle of money, and I was set to get a bonus. I was excited, and wondered what it would be like to get a bonus. As a school teacher I never got a bonus.

The company had made hundreds of thousands of dollars, and my boss made a good profit for himself on another project. I got a $1000 bonus.

I was furious and quit the next week. Looking back, it seems like a strange thing to do since I am a school teacher again, I don’t get bonuses. I never will get more than a ham or turkey at the end of the year.

So what did my temper tantrum accomplish? Who knows? I might have made much more money later, but it really doesn’t matter. It made me understand sometimes it’s not about the money, and throwing a tantrum didn’t help.

So when I get cheated now, I try to keep a good perspective on the outcome. I know there will be other times I’ll be ahead. So when I take a deep breath and get on with life, I know being positive is helping me balance out the highs and lows in life.

It seems kind of silly now. I was showing up to play Jerry Springer’s hair, and I got to say some lines!

Asking an actor to perform – what a terrible thing!

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They're Not Mad At Us

They’re Not Mad At Us

We were vacationing in Washington D.C. with our children, who were probably eight and eleven at the time. They were pretty young to be being dragged around all of the National Galleries, but my wife was determined to see all she could since we were there.

I was at meetings most of the time, and besides not being able to help her convince two small children the Rembrandt’s in the next room really were interesting, I tried to save some money by putting them up outside of town.

They were riding the subway into town, seeing the sights and then going back to the hotel, which wasn’t in the most upscale part of town. I, of course, had a rental car so I could get about town, and eventually my meetings were over and we were able to spend some time together as a family.

I enjoyed seeing the national monuments, but I think in our minds they are always more grand than they appear in real life. For some reason, I had imagined the Lincoln Memorial to be much larger than it is, so when we walked up the steps and saw President Lincoln, I was kind of underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong; I was impressed with the grandeur of our nation’s capital, but I’m just a poor country boy from Utah, and I guess I expected more.

The collection of things to see in Washington D.C. is really endless. I could spend a month in the various Smithsonian museums, and though my wife is more of an art lover than I, we did get to see some great works of art. We went to the Kennedy Center and watched a show called “Once on This Island”. I liked it so much I directed it at my high school a few years later.

I enjoy seeing all the tourist souvenirs available when I travel, and D.C. was no different. My favorite was the Washington D.C. Polo club shirts. They may have had a polo club, but I doubted it, and I thought the satire was fun. Some of the area really is blighted, and you would think there would be a better economic plan to stimulate D.C., but I don’t think a polo club would really help much.

There were lots of fun things to do and see, but a small family has a pretty regular feeding schedule. Most of our vacations are planned around where we will be when we want to eat, and both of our daughters were very picky eaters. They weren’t the regular McDonald’s kids who wanted a Happy Meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We would go to Wendy’s and they would order the baked potato. They liked soup when we went to a fancy restaurant. So finding places in our nation’s capital which they would like turned into a scavenger hunt.

I had heard there was a very good Chinese restaurant a few blocks from where we were doing our tourist stuff one morning. Again, this restaurant wasn’t in the nicest part of town, but that seems to be the case with many great restaurants. As we pulled our two girls along with us, we noticed a small crowd was on the street just ahead.

For those who haven’t had the chance to visit the inner city of one of our major metropolitan areas, let me describe the scene. There is trash strewn about, and a general lack of care about yards and business buildings. There was lots of graffiti, but you get used to that after a while. But the sight ahead of us was not one my small town Utah wife had seen very often.

A large group of African-Americans were gathered around three people who were about to have a fight. There were two large women who were fighting over a skinny man. The rest of the people were either there for moral support, or just to watch the fight. As we crossed the street, only half a block from the restaurant, the shouting had reached maximum decibels, and the fight would be starting any second.

My wife hesitated and said she thought maybe we should go somewhere else to eat. I was determined, and we were only yards away from the restaurant and had already built up some good momentum as we walked.

“They’re not mad at us”, I assured her. And it was true. The agitated crowd ignored the four of us as we went in and had a great lunch.

When we came back out, the streets were empty.

I turned to my wife and smugly said, “I told you they weren’t mad at us.”

She gave me the “you are lucky this turned out all right” look.

She’s right. I am a lucky guy.

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