Chairman of the Bored

I needed to buy some chairs.

It always starts out so simple doesn’t it?

I needed to buy some chairs because I have been living in this apartment for 2 years now and I have been sitting on folding chairs at my kitchen table.

I use that term “kitchen table” lightly because my kitchen is so tiny that I can’t open the fridge and have a thought at the same time.

My kitchen table actually sits in my living room.

Whatever.

So anyway folding chairs are extremely uncomfortable. I am a fidgety human as it is, but sitting in a folding chair is awful. I have to shift around every 3 minutes until I finally get comfortable with my feet on the lamp and my head under the couch… and then my butt goes numb.

I was getting so angry, not at myself for having not purchased chairs, no, I was mad at my chairs. I was starting to yell at them.

Rich: Man you suck, you know that? You just suck so bad. You are so awful I hate you.

Chair: (Blank stare)

So I decided to buy some nice, new, comfortable chairs.

Having no car and not really wanting to bring chairs on the subway (though that would solve the challenge of finding a seat), I decided to do it online and have them delivered to me thereby saving myself time, stress, and inconvenience.

What I didn’t realize was that I probably could have built my own chairs in the time it was going to take for me to get them in the mail.

I get online and I do my normal dance where I over research something, then order it, then have second thoughts, then cancel it and buy something else.

So by the time all that dust settled I had ordered a pair of this chair.

Exciting right? Yes quite.

Click, buy, confirm, woohoo.

I received an email telling me that the chairs had been shipped from Stockton, California. Hooray! My chairs were on the way!

On March 5^th I checked the tracking website and saw that my chairs were “In Transit” in Reno.

And that is when the communication stopped. I went a whole week without hearing about the status of my chairs. I started to worry.

Had my chairs gotten off the truck in Reno to stretch their legs? (Rim shot!)

Thank you, thank you, you’ve been a lovely audience!

But back to my chairs.

Had they stumbled into a casino and lost all of their money? Were they sitting at a craps table with a couple of rough necked barcaloungers with cash to burn? What the hell were my chairs doing in Reno that they couldn’t’ be reached?!

Or maybe the delivery truck driver had lost his mind and decided to keep all of the furniture on the truck for himself. I could see him driving across the country on Route 66 blasting Lynard Skynard with his head out the window laughing like a maniac as he chomped on a cigar.

Sometimes my brain runs wild.

I pictured my chairs sitting on the back of a truck writing me a tear stained letter,

Dear Richard,

We left Reno days ago. I’m so scared. This truck is so dark. I haven’t been sat on in days. I can’t see anything and there is some ottoman in the truck somewhere that keeps screaming in the night. It is so lonely. Help me!

Sincerely,

2 Red Chairs

But then good news my chairs had arrived in Jersey. And then Long Island! And then while I was at work one day I saw my chairs were out on the truck for delivery! And then I got home and… I still had no chairs.

What?

I checked the tracking website to find this awesome tidbit.

Wait why?

What did they mean by undeliverable?

I watched as my chairs went back to Long Island, and then Jersey, and then California (curiously skipping Reno on the way back.)

So now I am seething. I am angry. My blood is boiling, I am red. Red like my chairs, which I don’t have because they have been sent, back to California.

So I call the shipper. The conversation went something like this;

Rich: Yo fool! Why you send my chairs away?!

Shipper: Chill playa, the vendor requested them back.

Rich: Word?

Shipper: Word.

So I call the vendor who sold me my chairs. Now I am really really red and trying to control my voice because despite my best efforts, when I get angry my voice doesn’t sound scary, it just gets higher and sounds like I am about to cry.

So I call customer service and I meet my undoing;

A syrupy sweet lady with some southern drawl who is just a pleasant as a peach. And apologizing her head off for the transgressions enacted upon me.

So instantly I feel all bad, but only for a minute because then she asks me;

Well we can have them resent to you or would you rather just cancel the order?

What do you mean would I rather just cancel the order? What kind of logic is that? Well ya know, I really wanted to start sitting on these chairs in early March, and since I’m not going to be able to sit on them until late March, well, jeez, I mean I just don’t know if I can use them then.

OF COURSE I STILL WANT MY CHAIRS! It’s not like these chairs are going to be stale when they get to me. Unless these chairs are made out of bread… are these bread chairs?! Did I accidentally order the Sourdough Dining Set, because if so, let me know and I will cancel.

But as it turns out my chairs were made out of wood, not bread. And they were resent. And they arrived. And they are beautiful. And I am sitting in them as I write this.


They are comfortable too! So comfortable that I don't have to rearrange my existence every 3rd minute. And my butt hasn't fallen asleep either... yet.

Old Enough To...

Raise your hand if you’re a grown up.

I am serious. If you feel like you’re a grown up, put your hand in the air. Ok, now when did you start feeling like that? Was it when you got engaged? Married? After the birth of your first child? What made you feel like a grown up and can you please tell me how I can feel like one too?

Growing up is taking a toll on my brain. Never mind the fact that I can barely function like a normal human (whatever that is), trying to figure out to behave while constantly adjusting that for the age that I am is becoming more and more difficult.

I always hear people talking about how they feel older than they are. And sometimes I get close to feeling that way. Really close… and then I have a night like I did this past Saturday where I eat 7 Entemann’s Chocolate Frosted Mini Donuts, and 3 Full sized crumb donuts. And I realize once again… I am not yet a man.

In the mental evolution spectrum I think I have JUST figured out how to act like a semi -confident 21 year-old. And that is great. But the catch is, of course, that this is coming about 5 years too late.

Plus I have absolutely no idea how old anybody else is.

I remember the first time I noticed this. I was at camp when I was 11, back when I looked like this:

Unfortunate I know.

Anyway. We went to beautiful Mount Airy Lodge in Pennsylvania for an overnight trip and had a dance party in their “club” with another camp that was there. For the first time in my life I actually walked across the dance floor to ask another 11 year old to dance. And do you know what she said?

She said, “You know I’m the counselor right? I’m 17.”

Pssha, of course.

Long awkward pause.

So um… you don’t want to dance?”

And that was the beginning of me pretending to know what the hell I was talking about when interacting with females. The trend has continued to this day.

If you are between the ages of 18 and 40, chances are I don’t know your age. If you are a woman that spectrum included all those between 16 and 45. I constantly wonder the ages of the people I talk to. I am shocked to find out people I think might be younger than me are in their late 30s with 2 kids. Or somebody who might be a great career mentor for me is really struggling with their sophomore year.

Of high school.

I think it’s genetic. When I was little and my dad would tell us a story about a kid in a store or something and I asked him how old the kid was my dad would say, “Oh you know, 7,8,9,10.”

I mean that’s a 40 percent fluctuation in possible age!

How old was she?

Oh you know, late 20s, early 40s.

Everybody looks the same age to me. Which makes me wonder, how old do I look?

I know I have a baby face, and I shave as infrequently as possible. I do this for several reasons. The main reason being that I am lazy. (This informs most of the decisions in my life) The second reason is that I don’t like scraping blades on myself, but also because I think having a few days scruff makes me look a little older.

When I am cleanly shaven like here I can’t even buy expired grape juice never mind a glass of wine.

Perhaps the intense stare is to confuse people into making them think I am older?

I’m sure I will get to a certain age where I will shave everyday to maintain my youthful exuberance. But how old do I look? At the bar I work at people regularly ask me if I am still in school.

But on the flip side, I have been noticing a strange trend recently. People have been calling me sir. Like, more than one person. Multiple people calling me sir, and one person called me mister.

MISTER!

Like I was buying a newspaper from him on the corner for a nickel.

Does this idiot look like a mister to you?

 

What do you mean what am I doing? I'm changing my socks obviously.

ANYWAY... 

When I didn’t know a woman’s name I used to say, “Excuse me ma’am” until I kept getting yelled at. On more than one occasion I heard;

Do I look old to you?

At which point I froze because I know this is a trick question, and saying yes will probably get me slapped. The only logical response is to immediately fake your own death.

Or even worse they say something like, “How old do you think I am?”

At which point I say, “Old enough to vote?”

I really have no idea how old people are. I bartend, and have for 5 years. I might get into trouble on this but I never check I.D.s. Now I’m probably going to have busloads of 8^th graders coming into the bar next week but I just take it for granted that anybody who orders a drink is of age.

I just don’t want to offend somebody when I ask to see their I.D. I have been to bars where sometimes I get carded and sometimes I don’t, by the same bouncer. I mean it’s not like I’m walking in there with a balloon and a box of animal crackers in my hand. I look pretty much the same most days. At least I think so.

I think going forward my best bet is to avoid all discussions about age. And I think I will stick to my regular regimen of not shaving.

And when it comes to the dance floor, as long as I avoid accidentally asking the campers to dance… I think I should be fine.

The Magic Word

I was trying to buy Lady Gaga tickets last week (don’t judge me) and I noticed something.

The internet in confusing.

I’m not talking about how it is hard to keep up with your favorite Facebook and Twitter and YouTube videos and all that crap. No. I’m talking about how the internet is supposed to make things easier and yet I am spending more and more time doing one specific thing than I do anything else.

I am talking about verifying myself.

Back in the good old days of the internet (in like… 1996) everything was simple. There was AOL, there were websites, and there was chatting. Boom, end of story.

But most importantly, you could do anything and surf anywhere without verification. Now you need to verify that you are in fact a real live human and not some sort of droid or cyborg or… other bot type thing.

Even though it’s only a matter of time before scientists create a robot that can type in passwords they see on a screen. I mean just this week I saw a news blurb that scientists had built a robot that could balance a book on its head.

And it’s about damn time isn't it? For years I have been waiting for a robot to pass a posture class, and now, finally my dream has come true!

But I digress.

I appreciate websites beefing up protective measures for our safety; lord knows I am not looking to have my identity stolen. But the kinds of websites using this beefed up level of security doesn’t seem to make sense.

For example, I can go on my grocery delivery website, find all of my items, pick a delivery date, order, and confirm it, in less time than it takes me to actually figure out the security word on the ticket buying websites.

Before I even get the chance to purchase my tickets I have to figure this crap out.

What?! And also why? I’m not even sure the tickets you are going to show me are the ones I want. Just take me to the Lady Gaga tickets damn it. You are wasting valuable time! And yet you insist on making me try to figure out this nonsense to even have a chance at that.

Crayoned some? Crayoned? As in did you use your crayons today? Yes, I certainly crayoned today good sir.

Is this 600 or Goo? And one might think there would be a more rational pairing of words than goo and diaspora? Goo is more 5 year olds and diaspora is a bit more college diploma. So if I’m not a robot I’m either a toddler or an anthropologist.

It’s not jus the ticket buying websites, it’s also blogs. I might be opening a can of worms here but how come I can spend limitless amounts of money on my credit card without a verification word, but if I want to write “Ha, that was funny” on someone else’s blog I have to decode and rewrite a password. I feel like our prerogatives might be just the tiniest bit askew.

To me it’s like leaving the door to Fort Knox wide open while we have the Marines guard our Pogs.

I’m not sure how the people behind ticket vendors and blogs became the staunchest advocates of internet security but they are really taking their job seriously.

People talk about the “language of the internet” and I always thought it was ya know, a metaphor. Until I tried to buy these Lady Gaga (seriously, shut up) tickets.

At first I thought it was just another case of the internet being smarter than me. I thought these were words my average brain had not yet learned. But then I started looking them up and realized that wasn’t the case at all.

These words are MADE UP!

I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve commented on this blog before you’ve noticed that the site gives you a word that you have to type in to make sure you are a real person.

I mean robots still must be getting through, because several weeks ago when I wrote about grooming myself I got this tasty comment.

Jimmy has left a new comment on your post "Second Puberty":

You have a nice blog. Nose hair clipper is in fact a personality grooming tool utilized to
trim down excess hairs in the ears and nostrils. You can get cheap nose hair clippers here
http://www.cheapnosehairclipper.com.


Thanks,
Chris - nose hair clipper 

Personality grooming tool you say? Hrmm, I never realized that.

Whatever.

But if the words aren’t made up than they must be words from somebody with poor knowledge of grammar or perhaps a speech impediment. And I guess by this knowledge, robots can’t have speech impediments so they can’t sound it out.

These words might not make sense to you. So I am trying to think of new ways to use them. What follows are actual words I have had to type in for verification purposes. And I have selected some of my favorite words and turned them into a glossary of sorts.

Abbeamin - As in when you walk out side and the sun is out and the sun is abbeamin!

Endazoo - As in when you want to go to the Aquarium endazoo.

Hydrove - As in when you are out of breath and you tell somebody, “Hoh my god! Hydrove all night to get here!

Inessect - As in you gotta meet me where da street inessect with da otha street.

Ovedder - As in whaddaya mean where do you get da free ice cream? It’s ovedder!

Pedder - As in this cat really gets nasty when you try and pedder.

Wadvi - As in wadvi going to do tonight? (This appears to be more of a Russian accident than poor grammar, but for our current purposes it will stay)

Who is coming up with these words? Logic would say they are randomly generated by a computer, but they are just a little too close to actual words to count. I mean, they wouldn’t win you any points in scrabble that is for sure.

I could try and win with a word like "blegemb" but I have a feeling some jerk with a dictionary would call me out.

I suppose I’m just mad because by the time I could finally figure out the passwords on the concert ticket website, Lady Gaga had already sold out.

Frigging internet.

Dial 1 for Confusion

Cell phones have allowed us a tremendous amount of freedom. We can talk to our friends wherever we may be, make dinner plans, chat with our relatives, and yell at our cable provider from any place in the world. They have freed us from the bondage of land lines and the tyranny of the corded telephone. But there is something cell phones have not been able to free us from.

And that is the wrong number phone call.

I got my first cell phone in college. I was actually studying in Italy and it was more for emergency purposes than anything else. Nobody except a couple of friends back home and my parents knew I had one. I didn’t really get many wrong numbers. And if I did, they were in Italian and I couldn’t understand them anyway.

When I got back to the states I got my first brand spanking new cell American cell phone with what I thought was a pretty random Arizona cell phone number. Little did I know that number was 1 digit off from the Sunburst Resort.

People would call me and the conversation would go like this.

Hello?

Hi I’d like to make a reservation.

What?

I’d like to make a reservation for the 26 through the 30^th of next month.

Um…. What?

Is this the Sunburst resort?

Oh. No.

And then they’d hang up on me all frustrated. Like I was the idiot. Like I’m running around town scratching the last digit off the phone number on the printed materials of hotels through the Phoenix metropolitan area. Some nerve I had, not taking their reservation over the phone for the hotel they didn’t call that I don’t work at.

It started happening so frequently that I thought about actually just taking the reservations and letting them fend for themselves. Hey, it’s not my fault they screwed up. But by the time I came to that resolution they stopped calling.

I also used to get calls for somebody whose nickname was “Golden Boy.” This would not have been nearly as confusing had his real first name not been Rich.

Hello?

What’s up Golden boy?

What?

Is this golden boy?

I don’t think so?

Is this Rich?

Yes.

Rich Gulden?

Oh. No.

My dad’s cell phone number used to be 1 off from the towel department at Bed Bath and Beyond. People called him on more than one occasion to get a conversation that went like this.

Hi this is Fred.

Hi can I have towels please?

What?

Can you transfer me to towels please?

You have the wrong number.

This isn’t Bed Bath and Beyond?

No you idiot face, I’m playing a prank on you. You know us folk in the bedding department, always screwing with the guys in towels. What the hell do you think?!

Did they think my dad misheard them?

Oh TOWELS. I thought you said trowels, and I was thinking to myself, man, we don’t sell any shovels.

You’d think the wrong number would result in more hilarity and less anger and frustration. People always end the calls so abruptly. As though I am going to keep them on the phone just to make fun of them.

Like my friend Julie who got a call from some guy freshman year looking to rectify problems with his girlfriend. Julie was not his girlfriend but after hanging up and trying to call his actual girlfriend only to get her voicemail, he called Julie back to ask for her advice.

Perhaps he was a womanizer of wrong misdials; perhaps he liked the sound of her voice. We all found it quite strange that he called her back for relationship advice. Perhaps he didn’t have any friends of his own. Maybe he really needed a (very) impartial third party to help solve his problem. Maybe he was really in a bind.

This must have been the thing because he called her back a third time to ask some follow up questions. And Julie, bless her heart, stayed on to chat with him to humor him and engage in a story. She really commits to the fun. And it was her thought process that I channeled recently when I had a similar scenario pop up in my own life.

Last week I was out with my good friends Josh and Marissa whose wedding I attended 2 years ago. After a dinner full of delicisiousness and more than our fair share of wine, we headed out to a pub to keep the night going. Well a couple drinks later Josh’s phone rang with an unknown number. He wasn’t going to answer it so I asked if I could. The following conversation is not exaggerated or made up.

“This is Ramon” I said as I picked up the phone.

“Oh I’m sorry I think I have the wrong number.

What number were you looking for?

(She gives some number that is not Josh’s)
Oh no that is not this number, who were you looking for?

Oh I was looking for my daughter.

It was at this point that I wondered about this woman. A. Why is she still talking to me? B. How much does she really care about her daughter if she can’t even take the time to put her on speed dial?

Where is your daughter?

She’s in her room.

Where are you?

I’m in my room.

Are you in the same house?

Yes.

You are calling your daughter from inside the house?

Yes, her music is too loud and I was going to ask her to turn it down.

It was at this point that I realized this woman must really not like her daughter if she doesn’t even want to see her face to tell her to turn off her music! How far could she be away from her? Close enough to hear the music but not far enough away to need to call her?

Oh, do you usually call your daughter from inside the house?

Sometimes.

Oh OK, well, I hope she turns down the music.

Yes me too.

Take care have a good night.

Thanks you too.

And that was it. We will never know if her daughter turned down the music. Perhaps I could have been more helpful, given her more guidance, suggested more solutions.

Or maybe I could have just transferred her to towels.

M as in Monkey

Boehmcke.

If you are like most human beings on the planet you have no idea how to pronounce my last name. I understand. Trust me. Listening to people butcher my last name for the last 26 years has not been a pleasant experience.

I admit having 4 consonants in a row really isn’t the best way to make a word. Hmck. I don’t know how you would even tell someone to pronounce that by itself. Saying it aloud sounds like you are trying to dislodge a hot dog from your esophagus.

Hmck.

HMCK!

So let me be clear, it is pronounced Bem-Key. Not Bomk. Not Boeemick. Not Bombchek

Don’t try to interpret what the letters might say. Don’t try and figure it out. Just trust me; it is pronounced Bem-Key.

My whole life people trying to pronounce my last name have failed to do so successfully. I can count on 2 hands how many times a stranger got it right on the first try.

In fact I have come to expect people to misspell my last name as well. Like when I have to visit my corporate partners for work. I will have to show my I.D. at the front desk to get a visitor pass which will usually have a letter or two out of place. So you can imagine my surprise when I handed my license to the guy last week, my license that says RICHARD BOEHMCKE on it and got back this pass:

Really? I mean that’s kind of like running a whole marathon and then tripping over your own feet at the finish line. I actually had a flashback to another incident of being called Robert. Did this guy actually think Robert just sounded better?

If I hand people a business card or something with my last name on it, they ask me how it’s pronounced. And I will tell them. But I can only imagine what they are thinking as they try to reconcile what I’ve told them with the letters they see in front of their face.

Where the hell are the vowels?

It is like telling somebody to drive a car where turning the wheel right makes the car go left and stepping on the gas makes the car stop. People seem to want to believe me but they struggle to make it work.

Growing up in my house my family knew if the person calling the house for my Dad was a telemarketer,

Hi is Fred Bocheckey home.

Or even better

Hi is Fred Boe… Fred Bohe… Hi is Fred home?

For as long as I can remember, my mother spelled out our last name over the phone like this:

B as in boy, O-E-H, M as in Mary, C-K-E.

I repeated the same format when reciting my name over the phone to people collecting my information. But when I got out of college I realized I didn’t want people equating “M as in Mary” with myself. My personal emasculating misgivings aside I thought I could come up with a better word.

So at my last job with my 26 letter email address I started saying “M as in Monkey.”

I think its funny because ya know, who doesn’t like a Monkey? Who doesn’t like a Boehmcke?

Don’t answer that.

When I was in Kindergarten I remember thinking about marriage (I was a romantic 5 year old) and trying to figure out which girls’ first name would go well with Boehmcke. I didn’t think anything sounded good with Boehmcke.

Melissa Boehmcke? Nah.

Jessica Boehmcke? Don’t think so.

Finally my 5 year old self settled on the idea that I would have to take my wife’s last name. As far as I was concerned, no woman was going to want to take Boehmcke. It just wasn’t cool. And if I wanted to get married; I would have to change my last name.

These days, it has become a running joke amongst my friends that in order to have a woman take my last name upon marriage (assuming my fiancé wants to marry me, assuming I find a fiancé, assuming… well, you get the point) that this woman would have to have a last name way more challenging than mine, a name she really had to change. Somebody like

Ellen Poocrapskie

Or

Katie Racist

I mean the only names that seem to work with Boehmcke are the ones of my mother, sister and aunt. So unless I find a Dana, Felice, or Grace who wants to marry me it’s going to be tough.

And there just aren’t very many girls named Fred.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like my last name as a kid, I liked it fine. I just knew it was a burden for some people. And hearing your “friends” refer to you as Bojaflemkey doesn’t necessarily make you feel good about yourself.

I thought it was just because at that age people weren’t worldly enough to learn how to pronounce my last name, or hadn’t yet perfected speaking English. I thought this would change later in life.

But no, people have really just given up entirely. Like the office visit I went on last year. I received this gem of a nametag.

Bighard? BIGHARD? What the heck is that? It sounds like the name of an adult film star. I understand I don’t talk about my job very much, but I think it’s unfair to just assume… well, ya know?

And as for Boemivigre I mean, I don’t know what to say. It sounds like it could mean a vigorous lifestyle of being bohemian maybe?

It almost looked like one of those instances when you start typing but you don’t realize all of your fingers are just one off to the right and you type a sentence that looks like this

O fpn’y yhink hr voulf hsbr

And then you spend the next 5 minutes trying to figure out how the hell you typed something so strange.

The guy probably just thought, ya know what, I can’t pronounce this, so it doesn’t matter what the hell it says.

But I learned at some point in high school that the German pronunciation of my last name sounded like Boomka. And so Boomka was born.

Some of my very close friends call me that, and had it not been taken, that was going to be the original name of my website.

So I’ve become resigned to the fact that nobody will say my name right. And it doesn’t bother me anymore because I love my name. And one day I plan to be so successful that people will equate the name Boehmcke with brilliance and hilarity instead of just, pale skin and poor decision making.

One day people will look at my name and say, “Now THAT is a man of charm and class. He is a man of the highest caliber. His name brings to mind the utopian ideals of a society we wish to achieve. His name represents all we aspire to and all that we love. His name is the name by which we all wish to be known. His name is truly fantastic!”

And if all that doesn’t happen? Well… I guess I’ll just keep my eye out for Katie Racist.

I'm Getting Not Smarter

I didn’t want this to happen. I mean, I don’t think anybody wants this to happen. I remember hearing that your IQ peaks somewhere around 6^th grade, which I believe was also the last time I handed in my math homework on time.

But I had always thought that as I got older it would be an upward climb to a feeling of confidence, security, and wisdom.

Not so much.

I appear to be on the road to confusion, disarray, and… dumbness.

The more I strive for wisdom the closer I feel myself getting closer to the time when I was a kid and I got a bead stuck in my nose.

Twice.

I don’t know if my own stupidity is rubbing off on other people, or if theirs has rubbed off on me. But the more I think about it, the more I worry about it, and the more likely I am to make stupid mistakes. As with most problems in my life, it started when I made fun of somebody else.

After I moved out of my parents’ house I had to change my address on all of my bank statements, credit cards, etc. Well shortly after I did so I received a letter in the mail from my bank. It said:

Dear Valued Customer,

The security of your personal information is very important to us. This letter confirms receipt of your recent address change.

We have updated our records with your new information. If you had not requested an address change, please contact our customer service department.

We value your relationship with us and look forward to being of service to you for many years to come.

Sincerely,

Your Bank

This letter had to be forwarded to me at my new address because the bank sent it to my house.

The house I moved out of.

The house I told them I no longer lived in.

I can’t even wrap my brain around the logic that did not go into sending this letter. Shouldn’t they be organized? You are a BANK! I give you people my money because you are SUPPOSED to know what you are doing!

Looking back now I think that should have been my first clue that banks weren’t as on top of their stuff as they should have been, but that is neither here nor there.

As I was ranting against the bank I was thinking about how they should keep better track of the important information like I do.

Well, kind of.

I did my taxes recently. Well, I mean, I didn’t really do them I just did what Turbo Tax told me to do like I did last year. And after being fortunate enough to get money back AND not go to jail last year, I thought I would be more diligent this year to ensure I could get even more money back.

But when I went into my drawer of files I found out something.

I had not done that. In fact I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I completely took for granted that I would remember how to do my taxes. In my drawer of pay stubs, credit card statements, and 1098 forms I found… Magazine articles, script pages, and a takeout menu.

Not exactly tax material. Somehow my “Tax and Important Document” drawer had turned into my “Shove crap in this drawer because somebody is coming over and you don’t want to look like a slob” drawer.

And then I realized I wasn’t the only one who appeared to be disorganized.

I take the train at least 2 different times a day. And since the NY subway system is so old there is construction, all the time, always, ever. They will usually post the change for a particular train on an orange sign and hang it on the walls of that station. But some times, like this weekend, it gets out of hand.

Just because there is a giant orange F on the outside of the train does not make it an F train. It could be an E train, or a Volkswagen, or a rocket ship. Even though he sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher, you really have to pay attention to the announcement from the conductor on the train.

So one of those crazy construction weekends, a train pulled into the Herald square station with an F on the side of it and I asked the conductor, “Is this an F train?”

He looked at me as if I had asked him what kind of Camembert would go well with a ’97 Beaujolais. So I leveled with him and said “Hey man, I know it says F on the side but it wouldn’t be the first time the letter didn’t mean anything.”

The conductor laughed and bowed his head as if to acknowledge my point. He said, “That’s a good one man.” He even gave me a little wave as he pulled away on the train that was apparently exactly what it claimed to be.

I thought the same kind of logic would endear me to a city bus driver on a recent weekend.

Not so much.

He had parked his bus and was getting off and I was worried I had missed the bus I wanted, the bus that went to the train station. I wanted to ask him if this bus went to this train station, but in my haste I walked up to him and said, “Where does this bus stop?”

He looked at me without a trace of emotion pointed to the ground, said, “Right here.”

Damn it.

Perhaps if I just took the time to think out my questions, and maybe organize my life a little bit, I wouldn’t make myself look like such a goof.

After all, they say there are no stupid questions, only stupid people. So does that make ME a stupid people? And if a stupid person asks a stupid question, does that make it smart?

Never mind, my brain just exploded.

26 Looking at 30

Whenever I tell people I have a sister they always ask me two questions. The first question is if she is like me. “No” I tell them, “we are very different.”

“Thank god” they say.

Then they ask if my sister and I are close. I always say yes but I’ve been thinking about that question a lot lately. At the time I am writing this my sister Dana is hours away from turning 30. An event so surreal I can hardly wrap my head around it. I have a 30 year old sister and we are close. What does that really mean?

Are we close in age? Not really. We are 3 and a half years apart. Our Junior High and High School were in the same building so we got to share a couple school years together.

Are we close in location? Well we both live in Queens though we are still 2 trains away from each other. We both work in Manhattan but she’s on west side and I am on the east.

Are we close in looks?

Well I think we look like brother and sister. We both have brown hair though hers is a little lighter and mine is a little thicker. And of course she was blessed with skin that actually tans while my skin color only comes in 2 options, white and red.

More than once people have thought we were boyfriend and girlfriend.

Nothing in this life will make you feel more cosmically uncomfortable than having somebody infer that you are dating your sister. Don’t get me wrong, I love my sister, but ya know… gross.

We both lead busy lives and she has a job that sends her around the world several times a year. So while we talk regularly we only see each other a couple times a month if we’re lucky.

So how are we close? What makes us close? If I had to stand before a court of law and proclaim that my sister and I were close and the judge said to me, “What proof do you have?” What evidence could I offer him?

Well as a child being close to my sister was very much a spatial thing. While we had our fights and frustrations with each other, I just liked being around her. She was older, and wiser, and just knew more things. I felt like she had a better knowledge of the world around us and I just wanted to be a part of it. I just wanted to be in her orbit.

Perhaps that is why I spent so much time sitting on the floor of her bedroom reading old issues of her Seventeen Magazine while she sat on her bed sketching dresses. We may not have been having a conversation, or learning every single word to every single Boyz II Men song at that point in time, but I didn’t need an activity. It just felt good to be around her.

The same thing goes for when we would watch TV together late on Friday or Saturday nights. Our parents having gone to bed we’d stay up watching Saturday Night Live or a crappy TV movie.

Sometimes I’d go to bed before she did, but often when she would say she was going to go to bed first, I no longer wanted to stay up either. Even though we were doing nothing on the couch, it didn’t feel like nothing until she wasn’t there any more.

Maybe what has made us close are our shared experiences.

There have been difficult ones, like our ill fated decision early in childhood to splatter paint the basement ceiling one afternoon before my mother came home from work. While history has blurred the fog of truth on whose idea it really was, by the end of that day it didn’t matter as we all ended up in tears on the floor of my bedroom with my mother swearing none of us would tell Dad.

But there have been great ones as well, like stumbling around Rome late one night after a huge dinner and copious drinks. We ran to catch a train to France while my sister insisted on stopping to take pictures of every single Roman ruin… without a flash.

Amazingly we did make that train.

But maybe there is more to that trip she made to Italy than just a funny story. I was in Italy studying abroad and she used up her vacation days and airline miles to spend a week with me bouncing between Rome, Florence, and the south of France on my spring break.

Perhaps it is that willingness and desire to be part of each other’s lives that has defined our relationship the most. A precedent that she has set and I have attempted to emulate in the 26 and a half years I have known her.

While we are very different people we also have very similar interests. Be it food and restaurants (though I will never forgive my sister for deciding to start liking ketchup. I can’t believe she abandoned me on that one) music, or just a unique activity, there are so many things that we both enjoy.

So many of our conversations with each other start out, "I found this awesome thing you'll love." And we both know that we’d rather have the other join us in doing something fun than not. Something I have always appreciated, especially in those first few months after I graduated college. I had arrived back home completely naked of confidence, security, or the knowledge of what was to come next.

I found myself mulling the aftertaste of a formerly exciting life from the confines of my childhood bedroom. But Dana would invite me out with her friends, helping me experience a sampling of a life I’d hopefully be able to create for myself soon enough.

So what is it that makes me sister and I so close? What proof do I really have?

I really don’t know. I just know that I love her. And if a couple of times a year I find myself watching TV at midnight and I can look over to my left and see my sister sitting on the same couch as me, well…

That is all the proof I’ll ever need.