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Pocket Rocket

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My pockets weigh something in the neighborhood of six metric tons.  This is neither a result of gold plating, nor is it a by-product of knocking over an arcade and/or a particularly successful laundromat.  In fact, before someone concludes that my dead body in some dark alley might yield a healthy R.O.I., I feel compelled to point out that the amount of weight on my person allocated to currency, coin, and gold bullion is somewhere in the neighborhood of three ounces, which equals approximately one dollar and forty-three cents.  I’m an English major, remember.  Regardless, the vast majority of the mass in my pants, and I tip my hat to those of you who made it through the clause without snickering, is dedicated to the large array of portable multi-tools I carry with me at all times.  For those who might be wondering about the remaining three percent, it is a fairly even distribution between guitar picks, pocket lint, and items that I found on the floor and fully intend to eat at some point in the indefinite future.  But, as is my want, I digress.

Fruits, vegetable, dairy, grains, and stuff found in the couch – the five basic food groups.

Fruits, vegetable, dairy, grains, and stuff found in the couch – the five basic food groups.

It is my assumption that the ability of the average man to turn his trousers into a scaled down version of an Ace Hardware is a somewhat recent phenomenon.  In times long ago, a more primitive man’s toolbox was both clunky and stationary, consisting primarily of sticks of varying sizes and a large rock.  Advances in manufacturing and ISO certification, however, have brought to us newer, lighter, smaller multi-purpose tools that seem to boast enough potential functionality to delay a modern man nearly sixty seconds before he retreats to the garage in order to forage for sticks of varying sizes and a hammer.  Yes, look how far we’ve come.  Indeed, thanks to the modern, pocket-sized multi-tools, men no longer have to wait until they get home to act on the often felt yet rarely spoken urge to disassemble unoffending and completely functional devices that they know nothing about.  Courtesy of alcohol and cheap foreign labor, your husband now has the ability to disassemble your best friend’s VCR using only the contents of his pockets, and let me be the first to assure you that said device will never eat another tape again.  Granted, it will never play another tape again, but at least the time-keeping function still works… sometimes… if you hit it.

Because portable tools are by necessity somewhat bulky, even if considerably less so than their larger and more useful toolbox brethren, it goes without saying that one can have too much of a good thing.  This becomes very apparent when one examines what I used to run with as a standard operational payload.  I had, at one point, all of the following at my disposal and on my person: four knife blades, three can openers, one bottle opener, one corkscrew, pliers, a 2-½” ruler, two Phillips screwdrivers, three flathead screwdrivers, a tiny (and useless) hacksaw, a pocket-watch, and a flashlight.  In retrospect, that was a little much – I really only needed three knives.

No masonry bit? Sheesh, what a joke.

There are other arguments for restraint in preparing for situations that, for most normal individuals, should not happen on a daily basis.  For example, the more tools one has, the more one is exposed to certain hazards.  Finding one’s car keys, particularly when they share a pocket with a Swiss Army knife and forty-three cents in change, would be a challenge for a team of Army Rangers.  Furthermore, as a consequence of your average convenience store employee expecting to take a bullet or a shiv in the line of duty, producing half a dozen knives of varying sizes before you are able to produce a wallet tends to have a negative effect on the level of customer service you can expect.  Couple all this with the nefarious corkscrew attachment – which will inevitably (and unbeknownst to you) snag your pocket material, swing out, and nearly perform some awkward exploratory surgery – and a good argument can be made for taking only what one needs to survive through the day.

This is, of course, a sentiment echoed by my wife, who really has no reason to talk.  According to her, pockets exist solely for the purpose of fashion; therefore, due to the possibility for unsightly bulges, said pockets are not to be used for anything that can be said to have mass and take up space.  Of course, she carries a purse of such diameter that I am seriously considering having myself buried in it, but to do that, it would have to be emptied.  This would be no simple feat, as it is presently serving as a sort of Noah’s ark for hygiene products.  Within her purse, by my approximation, there is at least two of every cleaning, scenting, and moisturizing product ever created.  Given some of the miscellany we occasionally find within, I have a strong reason to suspect there is a tiny, indigenous people that live in her handbag and make occasional offerings to their kiwi-scented goddess – usually Tic Tacs.

We offer this mint to the Goddess Halitosis.

Ultimately, I suppose, one complements the other.  Friends are often appreciative when one can clean his own blood off the DVD player before sheepishly returning to his seat.  And suffice it to say, I am not equipped to do that on my own.  Simultaneously, were my wife left to her own devices in the opening of clam-shell packaging, I’m fairly certain her only recourse would be filing her teeth to cannibal-esque points and attempting to gnaw her way through.  Either way, I’m eagerly awaiting power versions of the pocket-sized hand tool – provided they refrain from automating the corkscrew attachment.  Nothing good could come of that.

Emily Post Part III: The Taming of the Chauffeur

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Allow us to return, for a fleeting moment, to a more genteel era: When mustachioed butlers were burned at the stake of public ridicule (Emily Post Part I).  When the color of a footman’s livery was not generally described as “cirrhosis” (Emily Post Part II).  When one minded one’s Ps and Qs rather than burped them.  Yes, dear gentlefolk, it is time once more to allow Mrs. Emily Post to conduct us to that bygone era via her 1942 Blue Book of etiquette.  In this chapter, we learn how to attempt domestication of the most elusive, feral servant breed of all – the savage chauffeur.

First off, how can the chauffeur be discerned from other servant species?  Mrs. Post helpfully distinguishes their behavioral tendencies, “The position of the chauffeur differs from that of the other servants in two respects.  The first is that he has no regular days out.”

(This accounts for the particularly dour, loathing, hostile tendencies of chauffeurs throughout the world.  The real mark of a great lady of the house is channeling this burning, homicidal rage into efficient, obsessive car polishing.)

The chauffeur’s habitat also sets the breed apart: “Second, he usually finds (and pays for) his own board and lodging.”

(This accounts for all those fellows with signs standing outside Wal-Mart advertising their requests rather than walking inside said department store to procure a job application.  Having already procured a position, they must at least pretend they do not chug Jim Beam and slumber in their masters’ cars while off duty.)

As to the chauffeur’s eating habits: “Sometimes a single man eats with the servants in the kitchen, but this is not usual.”

This is not usual, as chauffeurs are social creatures who gather for communal readings of Motor Trend magazine and feast in large packs on the flesh of puppies and virgins.  If maintained singly in captivity, the chauffeur should be confined to the outdoors and held in check by chains applied to the hands and feet, taking care that the chains coordinate with the livery of the outside footmen.

Though with that said, let it never be uttered that Mrs. Post is heartless: “Sometimes, too, there may be a room over the garage or perhaps a whole apartment – especially above a garage that has been converted from a stable – in which he and his family may live.”

We say “especially above a garage that has been converted from a stable” since it reminds the chauffeur and his genetic derivatives of the level of esteem in which they are held by the lady and gentleman of the house.  Specifically, it is the level of esteem that is shared only with the dung of the master’s and mistress’s late horses.  Remember the golden rule of the well-appointed house: An ounce of bourgeoisie suppression is worth a pound of proletariat uprising.

(There is presently a spirited disagreement among the well-to-do as to whether the chauffer should be taught to read.  On the one hand, it will not do for a menial servant to start getting ideas in his little head – ideas like “minimum wage” and “women’s suffrage.”  But on the other hand, while there is little difference between a Rolls Royce and the U.S.S. Monitor, it’s considered poor form to batter one’s way through a four-way stop because the chauffer hasn’t the foggiest idea what the red hexagon is trying to convey.)

The Red October of automobiles

Mrs. Post continues, “His duties are irregular, sometimes extremely so.  In a large family, particularly where there are half-grown or grown daughters, a chauffeur’s life can be inhumanly strenuous.”

The footman bet the butler five bucks that the chauffeur is one late night pick-up of the grown daughter from parking that Rolls on her foot.

Of course, “certain humane as well as very rich employers have two chauffeurs who drive in alternate shifts.”

But the majority of good society knows that this practice is very silly indeed, as it implies chauffeurs are real people.  Though, perhaps there is some value to it in the ability to take one chauffeur out back and humanely dispose of him should his performance not be up to par.  For example, if he forgets the following:

“No chauffer ever carries a robe on his arm as a footman does when waiting at the door for his employer.  Properly, the lap robe is laid in deep full-length folds on the far side of the seat.  As soon as the occupants have taken their places the chauffeur reaches across and, holding the edge of the fold, draws it toward him across their laps.”

Wait…you can pay someone to do that?

Never trust a man who can slam off your head in a car door. Repeatedly.

Possum Lodge

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Before we go any further, there is something I must make abundantly clear:

Raging at me will not bring the possum back.

Anyway, when the time comes to have a few words with my maker, I hope to have a frank discussion about neighbors and the edict to love them.  Such is problematic.  Be it the neighbor of my in-laws, scandalized at their want of raking, who violates the sanctity of their lawn and rakes their leaves.  Or my own, who have sworn blood libel against me for having the audacity to tear down a fence…on my property…and which, frankly, looked less like it was erected than excreted.

(They have since erected their own fence – a chintzy affair trying mightily to look like gothic wrought iron.  I’ve been fighting the urge to buy a legion of rake wielding garden gnomes, place them at three foot intervals facing their fence, and put up a couple signs reading “GNOME KOREA” and “DE-GNOMEITERIZED ZONE” respectively.  Those without a sense of humor deserve to be punished.)

Of course, beyond petty property tyrants, there’s another variety of dubiously loveable neighbor, and that would be the too helpful kind.  My parents have one of these.  And he, singlehandedly, has led to a revision of the occasionally cited friendship test – the one that goes something to the effect of:

I’m sure we all know it well.  Regardless, my family’s version has an addendum to the effect of:  And a truly incredible person will, without being asked, bludgeon a possum to death in your front yard.

As one might imagine, there is a story to go with this – a story I must relate secondhand as I was not there.  My brother was, I’m told, and before anyone gets the idea to arrest him as an accomplice to second degree possumcide, I’m fairly certain that when this incident went down he was ineligible to be tried as an adult.

Given the possibility of an insanity plea, perhaps the adult in question was ineligible, too.  Though, to his credit, I don’t think he explicitly knocked on my parents’ door with the intention of murdering a marsupial.  That part just sort of…well…happened.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Regarding what moved him to knock, this is a subject of some debate.  He might have made some mention about the possibility of it, the late possum, being rabid.  The evidence presented was that it was just sort of wandering aimlessly through the neighborhood.  Personally, I associate “wandering aimlessly through the neighborhood” with “being a possum” as well as with “being a political pollster.”  For whatever reason, the latter has never met the fate of the former on my stoop, but that is not for want of desire.

Returning to our resident Strictly Marginal Samaritan, I understand he was originally seeking a box.  I think he thought the possum, which was playing possum at this point, would go in the box.  The rather glaring flaw in this plan is what precisely one does with a box containing one (1) possibly rabid possum.  Liven up Christmas at the in-laws?  December is still months away.

Anyway, I think a box was procured, but by then, yet another flaw had manifested in Pete Possumpunter’s grand plan, which can be expressed in the form of a rhetorical question: Do you want to pick up a possibly rabid possum with your bare hands, put it into a box, and not have a clear plan for what happens next?

Here kitty, kitty, kitty…

I think this is when he asked for the 2×4.

Tip: If your neighbor requests a 2×4 and doesn’t tell you what he or she is going to do with it, don’t give it to them.

Now, to reiterate, I wasn’t there.  This narrative I’m stitching together is my own cobbled together version from multiple accounts.  And like any good car wreck – and make no mistake, this is a car wreck – each actor tells it a little differently.

Like, as an example, one party might say the 2×4 was going to be used to gently leverage the possum into the box.  (Problems of what to do with the box afterwards notwithstanding.)  I, and several members of my family, would like to believe this was going to culminate in a safe and humane disposal of the critter in question.

As opposed to, say, Pete smiting the possum like it was Job.  Repeatedly.

All witnesses are in agreement that a possum stands up to a remarkable amount of smiting.

Now, I know, some read the above with understandable shock and horror.  The possum, only possibly rabid, should have been treated as innocent until proven guilty.  Someone should have wrested the 2×4 from our…sort of hero and gone all Dr. Quinn on the animal in question.  But in all seriousness, what in the world was my younger kin, or even my older sire, really supposed to do in this situation?  Call the police?

“Yeah… Car 9… We have a call about a man beating a possum to death with a 2×4.”

“This is Car 9… My radio’s acting up.  I heard you say ‘a man beating a possum with a 2×4.’”

“Your radio is working fine.”

“I…  So…  You want me to…issue a citation?”

“We aren’t really sure.”

“Can I even do that?  Do you need a license to hunt possum?”

“Well…no, but it’s generally discouraged to beat them to death in broad daylight on property you don’t own.”

“So…trespassing?”

“Dunno.  I hear the owner’s kid is helping him put it in a box.”

“Disturbing the peace?”

“I think the possum is beyond pressing charges.”

“Look… I’m going to wait twenty minutes and do a drive-by.  Provided nothing else is being actively beaten with a 2×4, we’re just going to let this one go.”

“10-4.”

“I thought you said 2×4.”

“… We’re done here.”