“Sometimes stuff is free for a reason.” I had someone say that to me a few weeks back. It’s a cliché, but probably a cliché because it resonates. I hadn’t thought of the phrase much before I heard the words uttered. It came out of the mouth of a guy I was refereeing a set of basketball games with. A power drink mix I’d gotten for free tasted like crap. Left you gagging when you downed it. That bad. Over the course of several weeks, I’d dutifully mixed the concoction and brought a bottle to games where I refereed basketball. During game breaks, halftime, between games, I’d knock back a few gulps. The first batch, if memory serves correctly, was chocolate. That’s right, a chocolate sports hydration drink. Not so sure that is a good idea, but I was willing to have a go. Chugging down that first mixture, my eyeballs enlarged and my throat swelled. Whew. As the overwhelming mixture percolated down my throat (barely), it felt like it should rise right back up and eject out of my mouth. Somehow, I kept it down. Picture this: an overly salty slimy chocolate taste. Not something you want to try for fun, but okay, if it’s supposed to be good for my body to reclaim nutrients while working out, I’ll try another flavor. Next up was lemon lime. This was no better, perhaps worse, because the lemon lime taste didn’t come through. Instead, it was like guzzling ocean water. Pure salt going down the hatch. After two batches like that, you have to wonder about me. I began complaining to my referee partners at games. “Man, I got these free sports drinks packets and they taste horrible. I can’t believe they can sell them.” Most of my referee partners shrugged at the rant. But, finally, one of them hit me with the line, “There’s a reason some things are free.” I had to nod my head. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Once it was put to me, I thought about how crummy the product was, and said to myself, “He’s probably right. They have to give this away. No one would buy it.” Sports drinks are a saturated market. Everyone tries to get into the game. They sell it in packets, plastic bottles, pre-prepared squeezable pouches. Anything to try and be different and get your dwindling attention. When all else fails, give it away free. Make it part of that “special free promotion.” That almost guarantees you will try the product. Which, of course, I did. It doesn’t mean you’ll continue drinking it though. How many flavors will you try before saying to yourself, “I’m tossing the rest of these in the trash.” That’s where I am now. You get these free promotions for sports drinks and power bars (another market where tasteless products abound). “Try this new cardboard-tasting power bar folks. It’s horrible, but it’s free.” Take one bite and send it to the trash heap. At some point, you think I’d learn, but that “free” label still sucks you in. You’ll give it a shot. Once, twice, maybe three times. If you get that far, don’t kid yourself. It’s time to remember, “There’s a reason they’re giving it away free.” |
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In the past, I’ve written about some of the great inventions in the course of history, including electricity and the bicycle. Given the current frigid temperatures in our part of Wisconsin, I’d like to add another one – the hooded sweatshirt. Under-sung, the benefits of the hooded sweatshirt sneak up on you. The default description is “something you throw on to wear in the fall or winter.” The reality is much deeper. This past week, for example, we have had multiple mornings and full days where the temperature did not rise above zero. You could see your breath in our basement for three days (heating vents don’t do a great job down there). That tells you a bit about what it was like walking around the house. Frigid. In those circumstances, you don’t hang around in flip flops, shorts and a tee shirt. In fact, you really don’t hang around in a flannel shirt and jeans. You require more. When temps dip this low, and the indoor quality of your house is affected, you react by layering, and pulling out all your hooded sweatshirts. Why is it so perfect? Several reasons, including, first, your head. With age, and the elimination of hair from your scalp, heat escapes more quickly. The top of your head gets cold. Your ears get cold. When this type of brutal weather hits, your face and nose get cold. The hooded sweatshirt is the quick, easy solution. Pull it on, flip the hood up. Bam, your head, neck and ears settle in for a more comfortable ride. Similarly, it helps with your hands. Hooded sweatshirts all have that front pocket to deposit your hands. During these low temperature periods, having that pocket as a quick hand warmer is essential. Coming in from taking the garbage outside, your hands go numb, so a quick warmup is provided by inserting your hands in the pocket upon returning to your indoor cave. This also allows you to keep your hands together for added friction and warmth. A slightly less compelling reason the hooded sweatshirt is such a great creation is its convenience. Who cares what color it is? Who cares what types of pants you have on? Pull it out of your clothes drawer and yank it on. Ah. Comfort. Simplicity. Feels good. If you’re going outside, you’re going to put on a winter jacket anyway, so who cares how you look around the house? Stains on the sweatshirt? So what? That just shows you’ve been working. You can wear it for days. Just make sure to change your undershirt and take a shower. Want to sleep with it on, and pull that hoodie up over your head? Go ahead. Who’s there to stop you? Who’s going to comment? Your spouse? Unlikely. Wearing the hooded sweatshirt is perfect for a nap. Curl up on the couch while watching something monotonous on TV, pull a comforter on, pull up the hood and stick your hands in the pouch and zonk out. Very neanderthal. Let’s salute the inventor of the hooded sweatshirt, whoever that person is, probably hiding somewhere staying warm with their head covered and hands clasped in front of them. How long will you (or do you) go before you face reality? Most people, it seems to me, go way down the path of their fantasy world or their “I’ll get to that tomorrow” attitude before they confront themselves and honestly recognize they’re not going to do something that they keep telling themselves they’re going to do. That’s an observation on human behavior. And, it incorporates the shows I record on TV. Let me explain. Given today’s technology, when something comes on television that I think might be worth watching at some point, I hit the “record” button. Whammo, got it saved for future viewing. Someday when boredom overwhelms me, I’ll click that show on, settle on the couch with a thick blanket and zonk out. Until then, it sits in the “saved” column of shows. And sits and sits and sits. I tell myself I will watch the show at some point, then then a month has gone by, three months, six, even a year. Still, the show waits, lonely, waiting for that tap on the remote to open up and give me a spark of humor, intrigue, fear or athletic excellence. As a University of Illinois graduate, I continue to root for the basketball team. Mostly I record the games so I can forward through the commercials, timeouts and video replays. I also occasionally see a special program about the team, and record that for future reference. A case in point is the 1989 team, which went to the Final Four and lost to Michigan. That semi-final game to head to the national championship came on TV on the Big Ten Network probably 2-3 years ago. I recorded it. I watched part of the first half, then stopped because something else intervened. It continues to sit in my “saved” shows. I will probably never watch it. Do I delete it? No. The question is, “Why not?” Some vague section of my brain says that I will pull it up one day and watch the rest of the game. This is where we get to: “How long before you face reality?” With minor situations like this, that is easily reconciled by MAKING A VERY SIMPLE DECISION, you would think I’d delete the recording. Something holds me back. Some small crumb of desire that I want to see that game. It won’t let me go. All of us face these reality choices in our daily lives in multiple ways. Not making that decision is why people hoard. They won’t face the reality that those baby clothes of your 37-year-old son will never be worn by anyone in your family again and should be donated to the Salvation Amy. Another personal example: When television shows I like lose their steam, I continue to let the recording device do its thing until six, seven, eight, even more episodes pile up before recognizing that the series became a piece of crap months ago and I’ll never watch it again. Why does it take me so long to come to that conclusion? There’s something in our brains that makes us want to hold onto things, hold onto beliefs. We’re not quite ready to say goodbye. “The Equalizer” (the TV show, not the movies with Denzel Washington) started off extremely promising, then quickly devolved into formulaic oatmeal. I kept thinking it would improve. It didn’t. My recorder is still adding episodes I will never watch. Some day I’ll go into the controls and stop recording it. That’s when I’ll fully face reality. Early last year, I read a story about creating a “jar of positivity.” This, as the story pointed out, was to combat the negativity of news and the ease with which bad things affect our general mental outlook. I thought, “Hmmmmm, could prove interesting.” The article pointed out that you should write them down, then pull them out at the end of the year and read them. This would help you gain a better perspective on the personal events that shaped your life in a positive joyous way. It would also help you mentally, spiritually, psychologically, and probably physically fight bad events that tend to bring you down. Looking for something new, I latched onto the idea and wrote down good news as the year unfolded. I pulled them out, scratched on pink, green, yellow and blue 3-by-5 cards and read them. Here they are, with some explanations (I will point out that there were 30 in total):
One of the few conspiracy theories I believe is that book reviewers are in cahoots with authors to sell books. They write positive reviews in general because there is a battle for the attention spans of readers. So, they hype, making the mediocre or bad appear better than it really is. Recently, based on those types of positive reviews, I picked up a book, planning on being blown away, absorbed from page one. That was not the case. Instead, I slogged away, reading closely, attempting to find what was so damn interesting that all these other people had found in the plot and characters. In fact, I read more intently and slowly than usual for that very reason – to TRY and make the book hold my interest. Ultimately, I put it down and gave up. This is unusual for me. But, over the past two years or so I’ve made the decision to not continue reading when something doesn’t move me in some way. In this most recent case, that came after 60 pages. I hoped to make it to 100 pages at a minimum, but when the slog began after the initial early hype (around page 20), by the time I reached page 60, it was time to give it up. This particular book received particularly positive reviews. The style of the author was praised. The uniqueness of the plot line stood out to reviewers. “A fresh new voice” was the tag line, something that seems to get used a lot to urge you pick up (purchase) a new book. Even more telling was the buddies of the author. This is another technique to suck you in. The author has fellow writers pen 3-5 paragraphs that go on the back jacket. Of course, these writers want to help their friend out because they are all part of a reciprocal back-scratching society. You write something good for me. I write something good for you. In the case of this novel, there were five friends saying halleluiah on the back cover. I’d never heard of any of them, and when I looked at what each of them had written, I’d never heard of any of their books either. That should have been the red flag, right? Nope, I tried to give it a chance and believe what they had to say. When reading, I wanted the book to come across well and keep me turning the pages, wondering what happens next – a key criteria that must be met by a successful author. The concept was unusual, the subject matter a bit different. It lined up like it had huge potential. Sigh. It wasn’t to be. The plot was boring. No tension. Hard to care about the characters. No sense that the story was going anywhere. I kept hoping and hoping, and finally said, “Why are you still reading this?” Put it down and picked up the next book in the pile. Scintillating reviews mean nothing. Exclamation !!!!!!!!!!!! points at the end of sentences prove nothing. Friends and other authors audaciously endorsing the book say nothing. When you put the book down after 60 pages, that says something. I’m too old to keep reading when boredom sets in. There are too many other books out there worth reading. Every once in awhile it’s a good idea to take stock about the various objects you have in your life. Do you need them? Are they useful? Do they perform a necessary function? I apply this concept to clothes -- getting rid of shirts and pants regularly. Shoes go to Goodwill as they wear out. Getting rid of the bigger stuff is a more interesting issue to pose. What, for example, can you do without? We’re not talking about underwear. Something that we’ve grown to love in our modern lives and accept as a necessity. An appliance, for example. What appliance would you eliminate from your life if you were asked to do so? This implies many things. First, you have to determine it is NOT a necessity. You can live without it and function quite nicely, thank you. Second, the inconvenience to your life would need to be minimal. You know you can survive without it, but how many complications would it cause if the appliance went missing. We lived in Texas for 12 years, and during that time we knew a minister who gave up showering or using his bathtub for Lent every year. He went into his backyard each morning and washed himself off with a garden hose. Granted, it was not northern climate cold at that time of year, but it still was chilly in the morning, and I’m sure he had his share of goose bumps and the bathing didn’t last long. Still, the point is, he went without a hot shower. It was inconvenient. He survived. But, I doubt he’d want to bathe that way the rest of his life. Would you eliminate your microwave? I’ve often thought if given an option and forced to choose, I would select a microwave to toss out of our home. No more warming up coffee or cooking more quickly. It could easily be done, but it wouldn’t be my choice. The second one that always comes to mind for me is the dryer. Growing up, our neighbor used a clothesline even in the winter, hanging clothes in their basement during the cold months. It can be done. You don’t need to tumble the clothes in warm air. Hanging the clothes does the job, you just have to be patient since it takes longer. Maybe that’s the key thing about appliances – they save time so we use them. They typically consume electricity. They tend to make things easier. So we invest money and buy them. The appliance I would reject is the dishwasher. I actually like washing dishes (up to a point). Sure, the dishwasher gets the dishes cleaner. But, it takes forever to run, and consumes way too much electricity and water. Wasting resources. Yes, that’s the one I’d get rid of. Plates might be a bit filmy without it. My hands might get a little dried out soaking in the soapy water day after day, night after night. That would be okay. I’d quick-wash glasses, cups, pots and pans on a more regular basis. Stop letting them sit in the dishwasher for days before running it. Removing an appliance from your life would connect you to the basics, the nuts and bolts of your daily life. What would you give up? Big-time sports should get a “delay of game” penalty. That includes football and basketball for the pros and Division I college games. Advertisements and video replay have destroyed the feel of these contests. Even a mere 8-10 years ago, things were different. Ads weren’t as long. Video replay wasn’t ubiquitous. I don’t know the exact number of minutes and seconds allowed for timeouts back then vs. now, but the change feels titanic. And, it’s in a bad direction – slowing down play, changing momentum, destroying the texture of the game. I clearly remember the first time I understood how slow game play was when you attend in person. Five of us who graduated from the University of Illinois returned for a reunion football game at Soldier Field in Chicago. We were pumped. Good to see each other. There was excitement about the team that year. We get to the game, probably down a beer or two, do some early chants as the crowd shows its energy. Then, timeout a few minutes into the first quarter and it lasts over four minutes. Several minutes later, a player is injured and it takes seven minutes to get him off the field. Wait, now it’s a TV timeout, and again, that’s another four minutes, maybe more (who’s checking? Seems like forever.). The offense can’t get it together so they call a timeout. Then another injury and who knows how long that took. All I remember is that we looked up at the scoreboard and there was still a minute or so left in THE FIRST QUARTER and 55 minutes had elapsed since the opening kick. Do the math. There are four quarters in a game. If you multiply an hour by four, that’s four hours, then add halftime and the time between quarters and we were likely facing a four-and-a-half hour+ ballgame. Not acceptable. You can’t sit through crap like that. Boredom sets in. You drink too much. You don’t pay attention to play. Your mind wanders. You wonder what traffic is going to be like getting out of the parking lot. And, fans head for the exits (if they chose to show up in the first place). The amazing thing to me is how many people still choose to go to live pro or DI sporting events. I include myself in this number, though my willingness to attend is tempered more intensely with each ensuing year. Basketball, highly dependent on momentum, loses much of its mystery and chemistry as long timeouts stop a team in its tracks better than a tight defense. Just this past week, I watched a few minutes of an NBA game that turned an easy replay into a seven-minute extravaganza, as all three officials got called into view and comment on a fairly straight forward situation. Play on. Time for limits. Allow officials three replay looks, then make a decision. Or set a time limit: 30 seconds to make your review, then decide. Ultimately, officiating reviews STILL REQUIRE A JUDGMENT. And, ultimately, there are still going to be coaches, players, fans and announcers who disagree with what the officials do. Head back to high school, folks. The games are shorter, the kids play hard and there are no replays or television commercials. Collegiate Division III games are similar. There’s great intensity. The players and coaches get into it. And you can still get home in time for a good night’s sleep. Sometimes you’re not going to make some journey that you thought you would. That’s the reality. It might be a big vacation you planned. Or, it might be something small, like going swimming in some lake that you’ve driven by for 23 years and it looks so placid and beautiful that you want to stop the car and jump in for a dip. But, because you don’t happen to drive by that lake at exactly the right time, your plans won’t come to fruition. It’s the way life is. We miss out on some opportunities. Other times, the vagaries of where you are and when, combined with an odd impulse makes you stop and climb a forest trail where a rainbow reveals itself at the summit. You never expected it, you didn’t plan it, but there it was, and your life was enriched. I keep a host of news clippings regarding places to see, trips to take. This past year, I narrowed down the pile. Sifting through each review or ad, I looked and considered how much I really wanted to visit the location, what the probability honestly was that I would ever go there, and how much I still cared after the information had been sitting in the folder for years. My wife and I take regular dates to eat at local restaurants. I keep a list for this, too. It’s another reminder to make the effort to go to places that you have an interest in, while also forcing you to make choices on one restaurant or another. If you head to this one tonight, you won’t be going to that one. You’re not going to make it to certain restaurants. You aren’t going to make it to certain vacation locations. There’s a sadness – a “letting go” feeling – that occurs as you make considerations about the places you want to visit, but come to understand shouldn’t remain on your bucket list of things to do in the years ahead. Based on your stage of life, letting go could be a decision based on the reality of costs vs. how much money you earn. It could be you let go because you had an interest in some activity that no longer engages you. Or, as you go through a new stage of life, you realize there’s something different that is more important to you. Years ago, for example, I enjoyed body surfing in the ocean. That urge has not gone away. But, 1) we don’t live near an ocean, and 2) not wanting to sit on a beach for extended periods absorbing solar radiation are both reasons that urge is not as strong as it used to be. The rush of riding a wave to shore is outweighed by logistics. If the ocean came to me, I’d be there. If, remarkably, we drove near the Atlantic or Pacific during the right of time year, I’d pull the car over and take a dip, swim out, time the wave, paddle forcibly towards the shore to capture a burst of adrenaline. The rush and joy would be there. It’s good to keep spontaneity open. Don’t throw all those news clips away. Cull the list, add to it, keep it up to date, and leave room for the sudden urge. The impulse joy usually stays in your memory banks. Working my way through invasive buckthorn recently, I came across trash history. Our property heads down a hill to the Bark River, where the buckthorn multiplies. The low-lying earth where the river overflows is where I was cutting down the brush and came across living history. The term “trash history” is literal, not figurative. As I slashed, yanked, pulled and piled the various bushes and small trees, history was unearthed as well. An overturned stump held a broken glass bottle nestled in its root system. Underneath a pile of leaves, the front bumper of a car emerged. Stuck in the dirt was the top of an old, rusted paint can, which slowly emerged with digging, and partially crumbled in my hands during the process. A small local dump on our property. Oh, joy. How long had these artifacts slept there? The answer to that question slowly emerged with each new discovery. First to test my personal knowledge based on my lifespan was a pop-top beer can. The style told me everything. It was from the 1960s. Next was a beer bottle. The style gave it away. Again, from the 1960s. Probably was a Schlitz, but the label had disappeared. The level of decomposition was another telling factor. I’m no archeologist. At the same time, when you see the rusted remnants of a cooking pot and look at the other refuse, you put two and two together to come up with your prediction on how long ago someone decided to let their crap fly. How long does it take glass to decompose? How about an aluminum can or a cooking skillet? Plastic jar? Barbed wire? A discarded tire? Clearly, none of them in 50+ years, which is pretty scary. All of these items were intact in the scattered rubbish. Carbon dating is a scientific method that can accurately determine the age of organic materials as old as approximately 60,000 years. I didn’t need that to help recognize the leftovers from my own personal life. Do people think about decomposition when they toss their refuse in the woods? Highly unlikely. In the 1960s, as is often still the case today in 2023, too many people don’t care what they throw in the woods or out the car window. Sadly, the world is their dump. We grew up on a dead-end street in northern New Jersey. There was a dump at the end of our street. Random cars and trucks would stop and throw old television sets, toilets, tree limbs, leaves, lumber, shingles, and who the heck knows what else into the ever-burgeoning pile. I wonder now if those materials are buried, have been removed or still sit on the surface providing a certain historical perspective of those years. We played in that dump, never thinking twice about smashing things, throwing something over the ledge. The trash depositors created a new world for us kids. Future generations might unearth artifacts from that dump in the years ahead. What will they find? If it’s similar to the junk I’ve found during my buckthorn destruction, the throw-aways will tell a story, like most things left behind. Making accommodations for cold weather (and increasingly colder weather in the months ahead) seems to engage more decision-making than years past. Hard to say if this is something you over-think or over-complicate. Whatever the reason, I find that clearing the summer clothes out of the closet and depositing the winter ones in their place causes me to pause more so the past couple of years than it did 5-10 years ago. Last week, we got some temperatures into the 20’s at night. That’s a signal. Time to air out the winter jacket. Check and see where the stocking caps are. Find those lost winter gloves. See if anything needs to be washed because they remain stale or dirty from the previous winter. The past two years, rather than making a massive transition in one day, emptying my closet of short-sleeve shirts and filling the area with long-sleeved ones, I’ve incrementally made these changes. One week, I shift over three shirts, particularly ones I know I’ll wear in the colder weather. A week later, I find a flannel shirt that looks good and I bring it over to the closet in our bedroom and remove a golf shirt. And so on. This goes on for several weeks. Rather than one massive evacuation, I tier the decision-making. Partly, this is tied to weather. There is no clear break when you absolutely know for sure that the next two weeks are going to stay below freezing. Instead, we get some cold nights down in the high 20’s or low 30’s and day-time temps may still hit 42 or 46. You aren’t going to sprint outside in shorts, but you also don’t need long johns. This time of year, you can’t count on consistency. After hitting the types of days noted above, you may get three days in the high 50’s. Golf beckons. You go to the supermarket in pants and a t-shirt. You whistle while you work in the yard, the blindingly blue sky filling your heart with thanks and joy. But not a winter jacket. As you shift your personal mindset from summer to fall to possibly winter, you undergo this ever-so-slight transition, like other mammals. You may find yourself starting to consume more foods, appreciating starches, preparing yourself to hibernate for three months. Sleep becomes a closer friend, one more Making accommodations for cold weather (and increasingly colder weather in the months ahead) seems to engage more decision-making than years past. Hard to say if this is something you over-think or over-complicate. Whatever the reason, I find that clearing the summer clothes out of the closet and depositing the winter ones in their place causes me to pause more so the past couple of years than it did 5-10 years ago. Last week, we got some temperatures into the 20’s at night. That’s a signal. Time to air out the winter jacket. Check and see where the stocking caps are. Find those lost winter gloves. See if anything needs to be washed because they remain stale or dirty from the previous winter. You can’t give in completely though, so rather than wearing winter gloves, I pull out the fingertip-less hand gloves to demonstrate how tough I am in the face of 37-degree temperatures while raking leaves. When my fingertips go numb in 23 minutes, I realize I’m not so tough anymore. Another gradual change involves the head gear. Warmer months, you decide which ballcap is best suited for the day. When your ears start to get cold, you know it’s time to decide on a stocking cap or one with ear flaps. Sadly, declining hair population accelerates this decision with each year. The cool breeze becomes colder on a scalp increasingly bare. As your natural protection decelerates, the artificial one must increase. And, I guess that’s what it’s all about. You figure this out and adjust in stages, bit by bit, learning, going outside and realizing, “hmmmm, better get a jacket.” There’s no nirvana moment of change; instead, you keep living and learning day-to-day. |
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