The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I seem to be always warning you good folks out there in your thermostatically controlled world about the perils of plumbing, the horrors of auto repair, the nightmares of everything from carpentry to toaster fixes, fully knowing you probably think I’m a complete anachronistic moron to throw myself at these endeavors when all I have to do is pick up my cellphone and call for help and a repairman would be at our doorstep in half an hour. Of course you don’t live on the South End. Number one, I don’t have a cellphone and #2, no repairman is going to come out that day, not that week and probably not even within the remainder of the year. At least not while the economy is humming and the tradesfolks are back to work after that long recession. Thanks to Trump. Thank him too for getting us out of the Great Depression, all his doing, making us great again. Good job, Brownie.

But I digress. I’m afraid I have to speak to you about something we all, well, most of us, take for granted, something that really hasn’t been around too much longer than our lifetimes, mine anyway, and that rarely gives us much trouble. I’m talking about electricity. Rural electrification in my case. Alternating current, thanks to Tommy Edison, and brought to me by my quasi-socialized utility, the PUD. Unlike most of you, I do not take electricity for granted. Winter storms knock out our power for days on end and while the neighbors power back up with generators that sound like a lawnmower marching squad, we just go without, a small reminder of how the folks a couple generations ago lived. Yeah, like cavemen.

I have a shack —what was my old abode for 17 years, now my glass studio — that started exhibiting strange behavior nearly a year ago. Lights would flicker erratically, grow constant again, then kick out the breaker. I would walk out to the breaker box outdoors, throw the switch, then … nothing. Next day, the power would return. I replaced breakers, I tried troubleshooting, I googled, I prayed, I started replacing every switch, outlet and light in the place. Sometimes, actually many times, I thought I had found the glitch. But inevitably the following day, or the next few hours, same damn thing.

Sure I worried about fires from electrical shorts. I even broke down and called some electricans. One actually called back. He didn’t have a clue any more than I did. He said work my way down the circuit and change everything. Which I’ve been doing. Now … understand … my wiring in that shack is not what you would call exactly code. Not by the book. It is, if I can be honest with you, kind of seat of the pants. Probably dangerous, definitely illegal. And maybe you’re thinking I’m getting what I deserve. But before you judge me harshly, if fairly, let me say in my defense that I was desperately poor when I did most of this. And okay, ignorant too. And yeah, I know, ignorance of the law is no excuse.

But what I’m getting at is the Law of Electrons, at least the little buggers down in my shack, aren’t playing by the rules. So we’re equal, I guess. All my life people have explained to me, patiently, that electricity is like water, it flows where you allow it and stops where you block it. It is, in other words, like plumbing. And if you have been paying attention the past few years, you know I think plumbing is faux science. I think it is more akin to voodoo than it is rational. Now I see that electricity belongs to a creepy underworld unbeholden to logic as well. At least the electricity in my haunted house of a shack. Don’t think, though, that I have admitted defeat. I intend to fight on, outlet by outlet, switch by switch, light by light. And if I have to work by lantern, by god, I’ll work by lantern. No tiny little electrons are going to break my spirit. No sir, tomorrow I’m going back down to that dark place and may the best man win. Or particles….

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In these twilight years of mine where most of life is in the rearview fading into an increasingly foggy memory, I find myself waxing nostalgic more and more often, sometimes happily so, sometimes regretfully. It’s my movie, I suppose, and I hate to lose too many of the early scenes to haphazard editing that’s the result of cobweb saturation. This morning I woke up thinking about my ex-wife’s friend back in my Seattle days, the year I decided to pick up stakes and make a fresh start on the Left Coast, probably the hardest year of my life, certainly the darkest.

Maybe you’ve had periods of your own life where the past seems like a dead end, the future seems bleak and the present, well, you’d just as soon stay in bed with the covers pulled up over your head. Me, I had no job, a busted marriage, an empty calendar, a house full of crazy ass roommates and no direction home or anywhere else. I felt like I was treading water and running out of steam. Sinking wasn’t a good option, but it seemed like the only option. At 26 years of age I felt like I’d screwed up my life. Irreparably, maybe.

So when I get introduced to my then wife’s friend who had worked with Edward R. Murrow for CBS back in TV’s heyday, a woman who had traveled the world and been a part of those exciting television days of journalism in its infancy, she embodied a version of what life could be if a person such as myself had a goal and maybe some directed energy. After meeting me she tells my X that I’m one of those sorry souls who has a fear of success. She ascertains this from a half hour conversation over a cup of coffee. I’m apparently an open book. The title: Loser. Her advice to my wife: ditch the slacker and move on with that new lover she’s taken, the one with ambition and drive who wants to sell real estate and make a million by the time he’s 30. She knows a losing horse when she looks one in the mouth. Or over a cup of joe.

Of course she was probably right. I wasn’t going to make a million, not in a dozen lifetimes. I didn’t even like the idea of being rich, that’s how much of a loser I was. My wife, on the other hand, liked the idea very much. That’s how much of a winner she and her boyfriend were. They went to seminars on how to ‘visualize’ success. They were on their way. Me, I was little boy lost.

But even now, some 40 odd years later, it grates on me this notion of being afraid of success. In America, success is the goal. Doesn’t really matter what kind of success, just something that smacks of winning. American Idol, retirement at 35, prom queen, yo-yo champion of the South End, something to hang your hat on, doesn’t matter what. My problem, of course, was finding something worth giving my time and my interest to, something I could be passionate about. The thought of working some brain draining job was horrific to me. But I didn’t see much option other than NOT working some brain draining job. Maybe you see my dilemma. It wasn’t fear of success, it was fear of accepting a life spent pursuing a goal without passion. Sure, who wouldn’t want to be yo-yo king of the island, but c’mon, that’s kind of thin gruel.

So to the woman who worked with Edward R. Murrow who is probably dead now and her signed photos distributed to her progeny like trophies, I say you should have kept your advice to yourself. We all have to find our way in this tangled mixed up world and the last thing any of us need is unsolicited criticism, just one more obstacle on the hard paths most of us have to travel. And as for my ex … well, I hope she made a few million.

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So I’ve been thinking this morning maybe I ought to consider designing a kid. After all, I’m an artist, so-called, and now that this Chinese Dr. Moreau has violated all pretenses of genetic restraint and introduced altered genes into a human embryo that was born a week ago, we might as well accept the future Right Now. The lid is off, the genie is out, all wishes are granted. Designer babies are here and why not embrace the future instead of fearing it?

I’m thinking a boy, big fella with quarterback physical talents and an IQ to match Einstein. Blond hair, blue eyes, Aryan. No, maybe not, too Nazi. Make it brown hair, hazel eyes, maybe a bit Eurasian, nothing you could definitively say was ethnic this or ethnic that. The New Man. Or Boy. Although, maybe that’s too overtly sexist, almost 3rd world to want a male child. Kill the opportunity for the girls to come into existence. Okay, make mine a female. Tall, not too sexy, not too smart. Smart women do fine but some feel the societal curse too greatly to be happy. And sexy, I don’t want a cheerleader daughter. Prom queen. Stuck up and all too aware of her powers over men. End up some Aryan asshole’s trophy wife.

Course, I want her to be highly intelligent, curse be damned. Then again, everybody will design kids to be highly intelligent and breathtakingly good looking. Sure don’t want my kid to be just like everyone else. Maybe I’ll add some attractive flaws, you know, something to set my daughter apart from the Ken and Barbie crowd. Design in a nose that crooks oh so slightly off center, maybe add a sarcastic sense of humor, give the kid a hitch in its stride. If everybody’s child is a superb athlete, make mine disdainful of sports. Wait, that’s me. Maybe go for some niche quality, the perfect proportion for rollerblading or ping pong, shoot for a gymnast’s balance.

Tough call. Maybe I’ll focus on the intellect. A creative gene combined with an engineer’s focus. A sensible but imaginative kid. Although … I don’t have an engineer’s bone in my body, much less a bunch of genes. I probably wouldn’t like her. Better skip that trait or tone it way down. And if I make her artistic, aren’t I just dooming her to a life of poverty and probably depression? The New World won’t need artists, it’ll have Artificial Intelligence for that. So business acumen, that might be what we go for. But geez, does the world need another MBA? And would making a pile of pesos make my progeny happy? Course, how would I know unless I get a GoFundMe so I could find out.

I suppose all those folks working on Artificial Intelligence have the same problem as me. What traits do you want your Replicant to have? Too human, too mechanical, too this, too that? Too complicated, that’s for sure. I see I’m going to have to give this way more thought, maybe just let nature shake the dice. So many variables, too little time. To paraphrase the President, Who’d have thought this gene stuff would be so hard?

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A Wisconsin glass making company that specializes in drinking glasses with an actual bullet imbedded in their sides has forgone the usual Christmas bonus and offered each employee, instead, a handgun. I personally am all IN on this as THE perfect holiday gift, especially in Wisconsin, my old hunting ground where the Packers and deerslaying are the unofficial state pastimes. And really, what says Christmas more eloquently than a pistol? What was it Jesus said, turn the other cheek but carry a concealed weapon? Something like that, if memory serves me.

I suppose if you’re the type of holiday shopper who might enjoy the humor in a wine glass with a .45 slug sticking out the flute, you probably aren’t troubled by Glock Christmas bonuses. And if you work at the factory, well, all the merrier. Now you can take out your co-worker issues with something more than spit and curses. Although the boss declared that he was pretty happy about a fully armed workforce. You want to go postal on that factory floor, you might want to think twice. Or get an AR-15 with a bump stock to even the odds. Maybe next year’s bonus.

I got a few friends who blow glass for a living. Art glass, they call it. The bullet drinking glass company probably calls theirs art too. Martial arts, anyway. And if you look up their product line like I did, you’d have to admit there’s a statement in their work that might qualify as artistic if they wanted to promote it that way. It’s a free country, so they tell me, and if a company wants to sell beer mugs with a slug poking through their sides, who am I to object. We’re a violent society, we all know that, so what’s wrong with making Christmas less about yuletide carols and a little more, oh, stand your ground. Something about a warm gun that just speaks Christmas these days.

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