No Piggybacking

I work for a financial services firm, and as you might expect, they are very security conscious. We’re blocked from all social media on the company network; we can’t get to Yahoo Mail, or Gmail, or any other mail outside of the company’s corporate email; and there are about 27 layers of security when you use your laptop outside the office. Okay, I exaggerated a bit with the layers of security, but they take security seriously.

There is one security issue that I think takes things a little too far. Basically, you are to NEVER hold the door open for someone coming in to the building behind you, or to any other space that requires your security badge. They call this “Piggybacking” and we are to be ever vigilant about Piggybacking. I understand that if someone is coming behind you in full camouflage you may want to think twice before letting them in, especially if they’re carrying an assault rifle. Of if someone is not meeting the dress code, which is office casual, you may be wondering if they work with you. However, I take exception to letting the door slam in someone’s face.

In my family, we were taught to hold the door for people and not let it slam in their face, even open it and let them pass through, especially if they are carrying stuff. Back in the day, that was called being kind, considerate, dare I say, a gentleman! To be clear, if someone is 50 feet behind me, I’m probably not going to hold the door and wait for them unless there are extenuating circumstances. Like, they’re carrying 20 pizzas, or they’re on crutches, or in a wheelchair. Then, yeah, I’m going to hold that door for them. If it turns out the guy in the wheelchair is looking to get some secret information, he’s not going to get far – security is sitting just inside the door at all of our buildings. There have been multiple occasions where multiple people Piggybacked coming into work in the morning and guess who was asked to show their badge? Yup, it was me. I must just look like a security risk.

I have to admit that my parents were against Piggybacking, too, though of a different kind. I’m talking about the usual, kid version, especially when it was in the house. If we jumped on somebody’s back, invited or not, we were told pretty quickly to stop. This was a good thing because either something would get knocked over and occasionally broken, or someone would get knocked over and occasionally hurt. We weren’t supposed to be doing stuff like that in the house anyway, so it only made matters worse if there was any breakage or tears. We were supposed to know better.

I haven’t given anybody a physical Piggyback in years, not since my kids were small, but I still do it at work. Corporate anti-Piggybacking Policy or not, I hold the door for everybody! I don’t know why, but I get some strange looks from some people, like it’s annoying them. However, I also get some big smiles and nice Thank You’s from people, especially those with their hands full. Holding the door open for others is ingrained in my character, courtesy of my parents, who taught me that treating others kindly was more important than following a silly rule. If they were still here, I’m sure they would be okay with my indoor Piggybacking and would have big smiles, too.

Pranks

The other day at work we were discussing some pranks that have occurred there. In one of them, a stuffed moose from the Holiday Party Yankee Swap was kidnapped and held for ransom. In another, the Manager of Development came in to work to find his office filled with white and pink balloons, wall-to-wall and almost floor-to-ceiling. He could barely even get in the door to his office. In the most recent prank, everything at one guy’s desk was covered with plastic wrap. His chair, his laptop, his monitor, his pens and even his sticky notes were all individually wrapped in plastic cling wrap. Though there were suspects for all these pranks, no one took credit for them.

I’m not against pranks as long as no one gets hurt and nothing is broken. Growing up in a family with nine kids, including seven boys, you either have fun with pranks or you cry and whine all the time. My older brothers played a great prank on my younger brother and I. Three of them would be in their room and they would have us wait in the hall outside of it, then they’d let us back in and one of them would be gone! We’d look under the beds, under the blankets of the top bunk bed, in the closet, and out the windows in case he was hiding outside. He was nowhere to be found. Then they’d have us go back to the hallway for a minute and when we returned to their room, there he was! They did this multiple times and every time one of them was gone. It took us a few years before we realized that there was a trap door to storage space in their closet and that’s where the “missing” brother was going.

Being taught well by my older brothers and being a bit of a wise guy myself, I participated in far too many pranks over the years to detail here, but here are a couple that I remember like they happened last week. 

I used to have an obsession with throwing things up on the ceiling that I think came from The Three Stooges episode where Moe throws a pie up on the ceiling, which then falls onto the face of a rich woman when she looks up. In the fourth grade, Ms. Silverstein, my teacher, stepped out of the room for a moment and I promptly took a Fudgie (a piece of chocolate candy for those who don’t know what I’m talking about), rolled it in a ball and threw it up at the ceiling, where it stuck – just above the door. Most of the kids thought it was funny, so I did the same thing with another, which was followed by more laughter. Ms. Silverstein, sensing something was wrong, came back in and looked around the room trying to figure out what was going on. Meanwhile, the first piece of chocolate was loosening up and barely hanging on to the ceiling right above her head. Just after she turned to go back to her desk, it fell to the ground, missing her by about an inch and landing on the floor. Luckily for me she never did figure out what happened.

You think I would have learned from that near miss, but no, I did something similar in eighth grade. We were doing an “International Week” in Social Studies where each student gave a report on a different country. Someone’s choice was Italy and the person brought in some cheese to share with everybody. While most of my classmates tasted their cheese, I rolled mine into a ball and threw it at the ceiling where it stuck just above my desk. Too many of my classmates were looking up at it so I thought I better get it down before the teacher, Mr. Lown, saw it and gave me detention. I hit it with my pen, but it didn’t move. I waited a minute, so as to not draw attention to myself, and threw my notebook at it, but it held on tight. I figured I needed something bigger, so after another minute I threw my text book up at it and knocked it down – along with the whole ceiling panel that was then all over me, my desk and the floor around me in about a hundred pieces! Needless to say, I got caught.

Looking back all these years later, the pranks I did in school were stupid, as was shutting the classroom closet door on my friend Smitty. Many pranks are kind of stupid. They’re fun at the time, but not so much later. Thankfully no one got hurt in any of the pranks I was involved in, although I did have to sit below a gaping hole in the ceiling of my Social Studies class for about a month. That was painful.

Pains

I work for a software company and work in an office so I don’t do any physical work, unless you call carrying my laptop to a meeting physical work. I can also work from home and connect to the office, so if I’m not feeling so great, I can still work. I don’t get sick too often anyway, so I don’t miss many days from work. Add to all that the fact that no one in the media is following me around or analyzing every move I make and I’d say I have a pretty cushy work life. 

Sometimes I feel bad for professional athletes, especially in sports-obsessed cities like Boston. As a former wannabe athlete, I can tell you that no one wants to get hurt and they don’t want anyone to know they got hurt. So these guys play when they’re hurt (hello Patrice Bergeron of the Boston Bruins) and don’t let on as to how bad they really are. At times, they’re not playing well and we find out later that they’ve been battling a serious injury for days or weeks. Then in cases where someone is hurt and they’re perceived as not toughing it out and still playing, they’re ripped in the media and on every sports talk show by every know-it-all “expert” alive (hello pretty much all the major league baseball players).

When I was in high school I hurt my throwing arm at the beginning of the baseball season but I didn’t tell the coach because I wanted to play. When I couldn’t throw the ball from shortstop to first base anymore the coach finally asked me what the heck was wrong with me. When I told him my arm was killing me he wanted to know why I hadn’t told him earlier. I told him that it hadn’t been that bad until the last couple of days and that I wanted to play. What I didn’t tell him was that I had a childhood incident that haunted me and wouldn’t let me say I was hurt.

We were having one of our neighborhood softball games in our backyard on a nice sunny day. We had about five guys on each team, including three of my older brothers. We had been playing for a while and we took a break to get some water. In those days we didn’t go in the house to get a drink of water, we drank the water right out of the hose. There was nothing like a cold drink out of the hose on a hot summer day. Plus, you could soak your hat or your shirt and stay cooler longer. Mom wouldn’t have let us do that at the kitchen sink.

We all got our drinks and went back to the game. However, I think that I drank too much water because when I started running around again I got a really bad stomach ache. When it was my team’s turn in the field, I couldn’t even stand up straight so I lay down on a picnic bench. I guess no one on my team noticed because the inning started and the first batter hit an easy ground ball right to the spot I should have been in. Needless to say, my brother that was pitching was not happy when he saw me laying on the bench.

When he asked me what I was doing over there laying on the bench, I didn’t quite know what to say so I responded in a pitiful voice “I’ve got pains!” When everyone stopped laughing five minutes later, the mocking began. For the next few minutes after that, I was treated to “I’ve got pains” being said in high pitched voices or like a 3-year old. I was just a kid myself, but I was humiliated. I think I heard that wonderful phrase from my brothers for the next five years whenever I felt sick or got hurt doing something.

So when my coach asked me why I hadn’t told him I was hurt it was kind of a matter of pride. I guess in some small way, I didn’t want him to make fun of me for having a sore arm. In retrospect, I probably humiliated myself by not being able to reach first base from shortstop. I don’t know, maybe some professional athletes had similar situations to mine when they were kids and as adults their pride kicks in, too, and they play hurt.

I’m glad that I don’t get sick much and I can take a day off when I need to without being made fun of or mocked. I just hope that as I head into my senior years I don’t have to lie down on a bench somewhere because “I’ve got pains.” 

Paraprosdokians

A friend of mine at work, whose sense of humor is very similar to mine, sent me an email last week with the title, Paraprosdokian. I had no clue what that meant, but was in need of a bit of humor (as usual at work) so I read it. The email started with the definition of paraprosdokian: "Figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently used in a humorous situation." For example, “Where there's a will, I want to be in it.”

Well, I guess my brain is wired for paraprosdokians, because there are a lot of times that somebody says something or does something, or situations occur, that make me think of things like these. Thankfully, I don’t have Tourette’s Syndrome, so I don’t just blurt them out, but there are times I need to bite my tongue and stifle a laugh. There have been many times that I could have messed up my life more than it is by simply saying a few words, a paraprosdokian. 

Here are some of my favorites from the email:

Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

Maybe this is why my parents always told us to walk away from a fight if at all possible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen intelligent people end up looking like a fool because they were goaded into temporary insanity by a master button pusher. Or a younger brother.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.

Well, at least it’s the “last thing” they want to do, but you definitely need to be open-minded and keep all options on the table. Just the threat of being hurt, maybe by an older brother, can keep you in line sometimes. You know the famous quote, “The only thing we need to fear, is fear itself”? Well, I can tell you from experience that you need to fear an older brother that you just goaded into an argument and who was then punished.

If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

Contrary to popular belief today, there is right and wrong. We are all wrong at one time or another– all of us. My parents taught me to stand up for what I believed and to not just go along with what someone else said, thought, or did. There are just times I cannot agree with something, especially if that would be the “politically correct” thing to do. Funny, though, that my older brothers thought our parents’ teaching in regard to not just going along with something should be suspended where they were involved. 

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

How true. Watch little kids; they say and do whatever in public. Have an itch in a place that shouldn’t be scratched in public? No problem for a kid. Is that little booger just barely hanging on to your nose bugging you? They just pick it out…and then eat it. We, as adults, do some things, too, but first we make sure no one is looking. Or we make sure that we have enough time to escape without being identified after we pass some gas.

I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.

Back in the days when I was young and ambitious, I wanted to be the big guy. I wanted to be a leader, to manage people and processes, to be one of the few that the many looked to for direction, guidance and information. However, two things happened that changed my mind; I had kids and I actually became a manager. The kids helped me realize that my job was not as important as I thought it was. In the grand scheme of things it meant very little, especially compared to how much they loved me. Becoming a manager, and the extra hours at work that came with it, just reinforced that realization. Just give me a regular paycheck with enough money to take care of my family.

I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

Some people are fault-finders. They need to figure out whose fault it was that something did or did not happen. It can be a long, laborious process that can make you half crazy, trying to tie events together to make your case. I prefer to simply blame someone else. There’s no research, no investigation, no logical thinking. Blame-shifters live happier, less complicated lives than fault-finders.

A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.

We didn’t get away with much in my house. Somehow my parents usually knew when we were up to something. If we did happen to pull off a caper, they found out about it later. They could probably tell just by looking at us – we had the face of a guilty conscience. However, these days I realize that a fuzzy memory has nothing to do with my conscience and everything to do with getting older and the associated senior moments.

I love surprises, unexpected endings and humor – all the ingredients of a paraprosdokian. Life would just be too boring without them. Something small, like a humorous email at work, can change my day. A little laughter to break up the monotony is always welcome in my view. Besides, why do now what you can put off ‘til later?

Open Your Eyes

I recently had to have my pupils dilated for a test with the eye doctor. It is a relatively simple process; they put some drops in your eyes, you wait 20 – 30 minutes and then your pupils are dilated enough that they can take snapshots of the back of your eyes so they can see all the blood vessels and veins and such. While it doesn’t hurt, it was a little uncomfortable for me because…well, your pupils aren’t supposed to let in that much light.

While this was going on it got the wheels turning in my brain and I was thinking about how cool it would be if there were some drops you could put in your eyes and you would see things more clearly. Not just more light would be let in, but everything would be seen like it was in HD. Imagine the possibilities:

·     If you misplaced something, you’d be able to see it quicker. No more lost keys, cell phones, or kids.

·     When you went shopping and tried on that outfit you “just have to get”, you would see that although it looks great on other people, it just doesn’t look so good on you.

·     When your kids came to ask for something, you’d know right away if they were up to something. You’d see it in their eyes.

·     When you asked your kids a question about a test at school, or if they had any homework, they wouldn’t be able to lie. Again, you’d see it in their eyes.

·     When you got lost driving and didn’t have a GPS, you’d clearly see the way you needed to go to get back on track.

·     Before you put any junk food into your mouth, you’d see what it was going to do to you – both now and in the future.

·     You would be able to see what is important in life.

That would be awesome, wouldn’t it? Or would it? I started thinking some more and realized that in addition to seeing all those things, you’d see a lot of other things, too, because those drops would allow you to see much clearer than you do now, such as:

·     When you asked someone how they’re doing and they said they were doing fine, you’d see that they’re actually not doing very well and maybe even in a lot of pain.

·     You would also see that many people that have a big smile on their face are actually crying on the inside.

·     You would see that some people that seem to have it all together are hiding something that would tear their world apart if it ever got out.

·     You wouldn’t be able to fool yourself any more and you’d see that maybe your own life wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.

·     You would be able to see that some of the things you thought were so important in life really aren’t important at all.

I like to think that I have good insight into people, but I definitely don’t pick up on a lot of things. I’m not sure I’d really, truly like to see everybody exactly as they are and everything exactly as it is – the good, the bad and the ugly. I wouldn’t mind the good, but I’m not sure I’d want to see the bad and the ugly, especially in myself. As with the amount of light being let in by my pupils in the dilation test, I don’t think I could handle that much.