Dear Alexander Graham Bell

It’s not your fault. I’m sure you had only the best of intentions when you invented the telephone and it truly changed the world in amazing and positive ways. You could not have anticipated that it would someday also be used as an instrument of torturous harassment.

“No, listen, I said PUT ME ON YOUR DO-NOT-CALL LIST!”

We’ve all endured the telemarketing calls, of course, like robo-Jennifer, who regularly calls to warn us that the FBI has reported serious crimes in our area and offers to install a security system in our home for free.  And, in case you’re wondering, yes, we’re on the National Do Not Call List, a waste of taxpayer money which magically does absolutely nothing when you add your name and phone number to it. I’ll spare you my rant on political robocalls since we have blessedly made it through what felt like the longest presidential campaign season ever.

There is yet another insidious category of unwanted phone calls and if you’ve gone to college or have a child in college, these are probably quite familiar. For decades, my husband and I donated a paltry sum to our alma mater’s annual alumni fund drive. Now that we have a son in college (and a daughter not far behind), we have stopped this silly practice so that every spare penny can help pay for our kids’ education.

Our alma mater did not take this turn of events lightly. They stepped up their calling efforts, mailings and emails. I stopped answering their calls and ignored all other forms of communication. In an act of desperation, they sent us a “proud alumni of…” baseball cap, which is now collecting dust in a pile of stuff on a countertop.  Though they have spent more trying, in vain, to obtain our $25 check than it’s worth, they seem far more obsessed with high alumni participation in the fund drive than in the amount they reap. Oh well. By the grace of Caller ID, I will continue to ignore their pleas.

When the phone rang this past Tuesday night at eight o’clock and I saw that the call was from the university my son attends, I was pretty sure it was a fundraising call. Pretty sure, but not certain. Because there existed a remote possibility that something could have happened to my baby (if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you understand this is not all that remote), my maternal instincts commanded me to pick up the phone.

A perky student introduced herself, saying she wanted to make sure that their records were up-to-date and fill me in on all the wonderful services made possible by the school’s parent organization. Crap, a fundraising call. Mind you, this comes just a week or so after the due date for the spring semester tuition bill – a fine bit of timing, don’t you think?

I didn’t want to be rude to a student, so I tried to patiently play along until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Here’s the gist of the conversation:

Perky Student (reading from a script):  So, is your daugh….uh, son enjoying the university?

Financially Tapped-Out Mom who recently paid spring tuition bill and just finished Hanukkah/Christmas shopping: Oh yes.

PS: Has he decided what he’s going to major in?

FTOM: Computer engineering.

PS: Oh, great! I’ve talked to quite a few parents with engineering students. Isn’t that funny?

FTOM: Mm.

PS: Is this your current address?

FTOM: Yes, all our contact information is the same.

PS: Is this your current email address?

FTOM: Yes.

PS: I don’t see an employer listed for you.

FTOM: I’m self-employed.

PS: I’ve heard that from a lot of parents I’ve talked to. Isn’t that funny?

FTOM, now leaning head against the wall and deeply regretting having answered the phone: Mm.

PS: You know, our parent organization provides so many services here on campus that are not paid for by tuition, like escorts to walk students home at night from the library to their dorms and our on-campus health center. Has your daugh….uh, son, used any of these services.

FTOM: Yes, he has. [He is well acquainted with the health center from last year’s painful biking misadventures.]

PS: Then you know how important they are. I mean, you wouldn’t want your son walking down Hillsborough Street by himself at night – NOT that the campus isn’t safe, of course, but you know, Hillsborough Street isn’t the best…. [I sense PS has now broken a sweat and is veering from the script and into babble, thrown by my polite resistance to engaging in a real conversation with her.]

FTOM: Mm.

PS: So, has your son joined any clubs?

FTOM, now fearing the script is designed as a giant loop from which the only escape is $$: Listen, I don’t want to waste your time or my time, so if this is really just a fundraising call, we’re not giving any money beyond the tuition we’re already paying. [Oh, other than those large chunks of change to cover room, meal plan, books and a plethora of exorbitant fees for everything under the sun.]

PS: Oh, I understand, lots of parents say that, but any amount makes a difference. Even $125 will help fund….

FTOM: Listen, thanks for the call and have a good night. CLICK.

I expect this is not the end of the university’s fundraising calls, all of which I will be compelled to reluctantly answer on the slim chance that one of them may be something other than a fundraising call. Perhaps the university should just get it over with and send someone over to break my kneecaps with a baseball bat.

Historical footnote: According to Wikipedia, after inventing the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell considered it “an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.” Smart man. 

‘Tis

‘Tis the season. Yes, love it or hate it, it is undeniably THE season.

To those of you who are joyfully creating a Christmas display that will be clearly visible from the International Space Station;

To those who are preparing to light the menorah for Hanukkah;

To those who celebrate other special holidays this time of year and those who choose not to celebrate at all;

And to everyone else who takes the time to visit me here at The Big Sheep Blog;

I bring you the following gift of the season, courtesy of singer/songwriter Dana Parish and composer/pianist Andrew Hollander.  (Used by permission.)

Wild Thing

A journey through the T.V. channels this weekend landed me on Animal Planet, a channel that can be fascinating, bizarre, ridiculous and/or disgusting. For instance, Finding Bigfoot qualifies as both fascinating and ridiculous – fascinating because there may just be Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) out there; ridiculous because the intrepid team of researchers never ever finds any concrete evidence and the night vision filming gets old real fast. Then there’s Monsters Inside Me, a show I’ve never watched, but judging by the promos, it clearly falls into the category of disgusting.

This weekend, I stumbled onto an Animal Planet show I had never seen before, Raised Wild, in which an anthropologist named MaryAnn travels the globe in attempts to document reports of feral children who have seemingly been raised by wild animals. After watching 2 episodes back to back, I’m pleased to report that both the Dog Girl of the Ukraine and the Monkey Boy of Uganda were legit stories and both children are now healthy and relatively well-adjusted adults.

Upon further reflection, though, are feral children truly an anomaly? When you think about the kids you grew up with and the kids you know now, perhaps there is little difference between some of them and their feral counterparts. A few examples from personal experience (Note: if you read this and begin to wonder, “Is she talking about me or my kids?” the answer is “No! Of course not! Any resemblance is just a coincidence.”):

• You’ve probably encountered families, usually families with many children, whose mealtime rituals bear a remarkable resemblance to a pack of starving jackals ravenously descending upon a fresh kill. Right?
• How about families with multiple siblings, usually sisters, who relentlessly peck and scratch at each other like barnyard chickens fighting in the dirt over the last grain of corn?
• There are the families with lots of brothers who are constantly fighting and literally butting heads, not unlike hyper-testosteroned big-horned rams during mating season.
• Then there was that kid in elementary school who would eat anything from scraps of paper to balled up wads of dried up rubber cement who clearly would have felt right at home in a family of goats.

For those of us who grew up in the suburbs, running away to find a surrogate feral family was simply not practical. The choices would have been squirrels, stray cats and the occasional elusive skunk, none of which sound all that appealing. We had little choice but to remain in our human families and simply behave like animals when we felt like it. Alternatively, a few of us took solace in the knowledge that we were not authentically human, but rather extra-terrestrial visitors to Earth, who merely had to endure childhood until we could return to our home planets (mine is Jupiter, in case you were wondering).

Now’s your chance to ‘fess up – did you run away and grow up as a feral child?  Alternatively, have you personally seen a Bigfoot?  We want to know all about it…

Curse You, Facebook!

Here’s a scenario that undoubtedly plays out thousands of times a day all over the country. Perhaps this specific set of circumstances is a thinly disguised depiction of a real life situation, with names changed for obvious reasons, or perhaps it’s just a hypothetical, which I’ve cleverly devised to enable you to stretch your moral and/or parenting muscles. Either way, what would YOU do?

Just because your friends are getting arrested, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

The Teenager: Mom, I think Thomas Wexler is in jail. [Thomas is a 16 year old acquaintance.]

The Mom: What makes you think that?

The Teenager: This comment he made on Facebook. Plus, all he ever talks about on Facebook is smoking weed.

The Mom: Huh. That’s a shame.

The Mom then goes into stealth mode, attempting to check Thomas’s Facebook page for herself. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), Thomas has restricted his FB page to friends only. The Mom determines that Thomas’ Mama is not one of Thomas’ FB friends.

Hmmm. What to do? The Mom is acquainted with Thomas’ Mama, but they are not really friends. Thomas and his Mama moved away a few years ago and The Mom has not had any contact with Thomas’ Mama in quite some time. Thomas’ Mama is a very astute woman. It’s unlikely she’s oblivious to the situation. The Mom is quite sure that if Thomas is a pothead, his Mama is well aware.

Still, The Mom wonders if she should contact Thomas’ Mama and give her a heads up about the FB postings.  Is there a tactful way to pop up out of someone’s past and say, “hey, thought you’d want to know that your kid’s smoking his future away?”

Curse you, Facebook, for presenting parents everywhere with a moral dilemma. It’s bad enough that we have to feel guilty when we choose not to accept a Friend invitation from someone we know, but don’t want to connect with, and now this!

Alright, my brilliant friends, time to weigh in. What would you do?

Things that Go Bump, Scritch, Bang in the Night

Caution: this post may be disturbing to rodent-lovers.

Last year when the weather turned cold, my daughter discovered an intermittent scritchy scratchy sound coming from behind a wall in her bedroom. It’s an unfinished crawlspace area and, as you’ve probably guessed, some mice were enjoying their warm, dry, new home – at least for a little while. After a few rounds of mouse traps, the scritchy scratchies were no more, that is, until two nights ago.

Yesterday evening, my husband was once again deployed into the crawlspace on hands and knees, armed with a headlamp, mouse traps and a jar of peanut butter, to perform the manly task of ridding our home of uninvited guests.

Late last night, the current scritchy scratcher returned. But after a brief interval of scritching, there was a prolonged period of bumping, banging and dragging, a sure sign that the little guy had a limb caught in the trap and was desperately trying to free himself. It must have been frightening and painful.

At first I felt badly for him, thinking, “so sorry for the pain we’ve caused you.”

After 20 minutes, I was thinking, “really, could you please just die already?”

A guilt-ridden hour later, it was, “omg, this must be so agonizing for that poor little thing,” followed shortly thereafter by another round of, “JUST DIE ALREADY.”

After 2 long hours, silence.

Today, we are tired. We are somber and a teeny bit remorseful. We’re a little grossed out. With any luck, last night’s carnage will discourage other mice from choosing to reside in our crawlspace. If not, we have more peanut butter and we’re not afraid to use it (and by “we” I mean my manly husband, of course).

A Very Martha Halloween

Oh Martha, you crack me up. It’s not that I don’t admire your creativity, your multimillion (billion?) dollar media empire or your ubiquitous line of Martha Stewart home products, but still, you crack me up.

For decades, you have taken DIY to a whole new level, especially when it comes to celebrating holidays. Christmas? Plan ahead and plant some evergreen seedlings on your vast Connecticut property and nurture them into perfect 12 foot Christmas tree specimens suitable for display in any palatial home.

Easter? Gather fresh eggs from the chickens you raise in your backyard chicken coop, extract dyes in various colors from indigenous plants that grow on your property, and create unique one-of-a-kind masterpiece orbs that rival the renowned Faberge eggs.

Now, of course, Halloween is nearly upon us and Martha has once again fired up her creativity to come up with some very special ideas, which she kindly demonstrated for us on a recent Today Show. It starts with little orange treat bags, stamped with bats, spiders or other Halloweenish images, and stuffed with the candy of your choice. (Personally, I was shocked that Martha used store bought candy and neglected to show us how to make Milky Way bars at home. Appalling.) Next, use thumb tacks to attach the filled bags to something round, which I’m guessing was a Styrofoam ball or perhaps a real pumpkin, but I missed that part. The little trick-or-treaters can come up onto your porch and yank a bag off the pumpkin.

Okay, cute idea, but Martha had special treats for the parents of the trick-or-treaters too because they get tired of schlepping around the neighborhood in the dark with a flashlight and deserve a little mid-trick-or-treat pick-me-up. That’s why Martha was making them martinis, special Halloween martinis, because on Halloween it would be wrong to just stick an olive in the martini, right?

Special Halloween martinis come with a creepy eyeball instead of a boring olive. And, since I KNOW you want to make your own Halloween martinis, here’s how to make the creepy eyeballs, courtesy of Martha. Take a radish and peel off most of the red skin, but leave a few streaks of red so it looks like a veiny bloodshot eyeball. Hollow out an indention in one end and stick an olive (with pimento) in it. Voila, instant creepy eyeball!

I suppose some parents bring their own beverages along for the candy pilgrimage, but never have I lived in a neighborhood where trick or treating included a progressive neighborhood happy hour. Then again, few of us have the privilege of living down the block from Martha.

However your neighborhood celebrates Halloween, please remember that mixing alcohol and large quantities of chocolate can be dangerous. Please trick or treat responsibly.

 

You Can Take the Girl Out of Jersey …

 

Autumn Leaves 2012 – those are the Blue Ridge Mountains off in the distance.

Don’t be frightened – this is not a post about the Jersey Shore or The Real Housewives of New Jersey.  It’s about me, and food, and how my taste buds have stubbornly refused to adapt to life in the south even though it’s been 3 DECADES since I’ve called Jersey home.

Nowhere has my gustatory ineptitude been more apparent than it was this weekend during the Autumn Leaves Festival here in my adopted home town of Mount Airy, North Carolina. It’s an event that attracts several hundred thousand people to our little Main Street to enjoy dozens of craft and food booths, along with live music and plenty of people-watching opportunities. People come from hundreds of miles away and eagerly anticipate this annual event, in large part because of the food.

There are the usual fair/festival staples, like hot dogs, hamburgers, kettle corn, colossal turkey legs and funnel cakes. Also popular are the deep fried Oreos and apple pies, and ground steak sandwiches (“come get yer heaven on a bun, right here, folks!”), but by far THE biggest draw is the collard green and fatback sandwich, which attracted a steady line of people about a block long for the entire 3 day event.

I suppose this menu of offerings explains why there were several ambulances parked on a side street, apparently standing by for the inevitable grease induced heart attacks, though fortunately, I did not personally witness any medical emergencies.

No offense to my southern friends, but the aroma of deep fried southern goodness sent me scurrying rapidly in the opposite direction. Trust me, I’m no food snob. Had there been booths selling New York bagels and lox or Mallomars on a stick, I would’ve been joyously stuffing my face.

Food or no food, Autumn Leaves is one of the Southeast’s top fall festivals for good reason. The weather was spectacular, the people are friendly, and my daughter and I bought some stunning photographs from Winston-Salem photographer, Jerald Winter. Y’all come join us next year!