Author: scribe702

At the grocery store I shop at, there’s this gigantic lot with tons of parking spots, including the usual prime real estate reserved for the handicapped. You know the spots I’m talking about, the ones that always seem to be empty…or occupied by expensive convertibles that are far too low to the ground for an actual handicapped person to get in and out of.

They are the parking spots that first tantalize you by being there, big and empty right up by the front door of the store; but then rip your heart out once you start nosing into them and see the faded blue box on the pavement that screams “Gotcha!” followed by a maniacal laugh.

When I was younger I would often times consider saying “Fuck it, I’m parking here. That Mercedes and its obnoxious, self-centered owner is parked right there in one, so why shouldn’t me and my vintage Honda Civic get the same privilege?”

I’ll drag one foot behind me, walk real slow, and lunge myself forward with my arms swinging wildly.

But then I’d remember that the owner of the Mercedes could afford the $500 ticket, whereas I couldn’t afford the threat of a $500 ticket. Five hundred bucks was more than my car was worth and I didn’t want it to get impounded because, well it actually ran, and I needed to get around. So I never did.

But never once was the possibility of parking in a handicapped spot deterred by the fact that if I did park there I would be taking away a space that an actual handicapped person might need. Sure, having space for a paraplegic to unload a wheelchair or providing proximity for a 90-year-old great grandmother to drag herself into the store to fill her prescription was a possibility, “but there’s plenty of empty spaces to go around” I would have argued with the cop.

Especially at Walmart.

Not only is the parking lot of every Walmart in America the most likely place in America to squish your heel into a half-eaten hamburger as you step out of your car, but it’s also the most likely place to find an entire acre of handicapped spots.

“You guys ever run out?” I asked the guy collecting carts.

“Run out? Sure. Sometimes around Christmas time there’s none left,” he said. “But we just pull out the really broken ones from storage.”

True that my question was somewhat vague and could have been referencing shopping carts and not parking spots. But I decide a follow up is not necessary.

“Never mind.”

The other thing about Walmart that is really amazing is those couple of extra-awesome spots that are perpendicular to all the others. It doesn’t matter what city you’re in, there they are, pointing the opposite direction of all the other spots, just crying out for attention.

Oddly, they seem to attract an unusual amount of flashy cars with spinning 19s and totally legit handicap parking passes dangling from their rear view mirrors. (My very first trip to Walmart after writing this reconfirmed it. Sure as shit, a red convertible Camaro with a buff twenty-something guy walking with strength, dexterity and nimbleness, boldly parked there without an ounce of hesitation or remorse. It’s as if that spot was his God given right. What God should give him is my old Honda.)

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind all those spots being there, and I get it. They are quite necessary, and once you are in Walmart and look around, it’s understandable. The place has more “limited mobility” persons meandering around on those motorized shopping scooters than any other place I’ve ever seen. It’s virtually a bumper car ride if you are there during rush hour.

I do find it a bit ironic that many of those limited mobility persons appear to be the way they are because they don’t get enough exercise. With that being said, maybe there should be a whole new category of parking spots created with them in mind. The politically correct name would be Limited Mobility Parking, or LiMP for short. Instead of being up front, as close to the oh-so-tempting McDonald’s as possible, LiMP spots would an acre at the far end of the parking lot alongside the cars of owners who take car ownership too serious, parking diagonal across two spots 100 yards from any other car in order to protect their paint job. LiMPs could drag their legs and swing their arms for real…and the trek would do them some good.

That would leave me with a medium-range spot, which is just fine. I don’t mind the exercise. My sagging, middle aged body wouldn’t mind either.

My wife on the other hand…

“Wait, there’s a closer spot over there!” she says every single time we pull into any parking lot no matter what city, state or country we are in.

I’m thinking, “Wow, that’s like 12, maybe 15 feet closer than the spot I’m already fully committed to and all I have to do is back out, swing around again, dodge the myriad of LiMP scooters zig-zagging the lot, and then probably lose both spots in order to save those four precious steps.

“Okay,” I dutifully say as I back out.

As much pride as I must swallow in order to admit it on this page, sometimes she’s actually right. Especially in the summer when a shaded spot or the direction you park your car dictates the degree of misery you must suffer upon returning to a car baking in the Las Vegas sun.

I’ll never admit it directly to her, especially after I huff and puff and rant on about how she’s always telling me where to park. That would take the air out of my favorite counter move…the one where I slam on the brakes, fling off my seatbelt, and tell her to drive if she’s so good at picking out parking spots. That would just be wrong. It’s my favorite move.

It’s not just my wife that makes parking difficult either. If you go to the wrong kind of store – one that carries an altruistic front, like my local bike shop for instance – it’s nearly impossible to park your damn car. The first couple of spots are for the abundant number of handicapped people shopping at the bike shop at any given moment.

The next three are for hybrid or electric vehicles. The next ones down after that are for carpools. And then there’s another four for motorcycles and motor scooters. I was halfway expecting to find spots reserved for skateboards and roller blades, but then I realized you could take those with you and they don’t need a spot. By the time I worked my way down the line of spots I wasn’t allowed to park my SUV in, I was half way home. I should have just walked. Or ridden my bike if the tires weren’t flat.

Later, back at my office, which happens to be a LEED Certified building that adheres to mountains of environmental guidelines- all written and stored on paper culled from now deceased trees that have left behind a muddy bog somewhere in the Amazon mind you – I pull into a “Hyrbrid Only” spot and don’t give a crap that I’m breaking the rules.

This time, screw it, I’m going to go for it. For real.

Using the kind of rationalization that earned me no notoriety whatsoever in both my ninth grade and college sophomore speech classes, I convince myself that my SUV is in fact a hybrid.

“It’s half station wagon, half truck,” I say loud enough for others around me to hear if my windows were rolled down, while attempting to flash a menacing yet intelligent look that I somehow created on the spot to fit the phrase and complete the communication objective that only I received.

I further rationalize that the electricity that is used to power “green” cars is largely generated by fossil fuels, not much different than the gas I’m burning in my SUV, and I suddenly don’t even feel like I’m breaking any rules at all.

Hybrid owners are just taking advantage of their moment in the sun to steal all the good parking spots and I’m not playing that game any more.

Plus I know that I can’t get a ticket and the threat of getting a ticket doesn’t bother me any more, even though there is no threat. I’m on private property and “Hybrid Only,” “Expectant Mothers,” “Dine Out,” “Employee of the Month,” and any other such proclamations are really only suggestions, not laws. The only risk is the scorn of an expectant mother who thinks she and her unborn deserve an up-front spot more than I do. An employee of the month should be glad to give up his spot to a customer, because he’s the friggin’ Employee of the Month and I’m the Customer of the Month, and I’m always right! Right?

Of course when I leave work that night, the nasty note on my windshield from some do-good, tree-hugging hybrid owner from my building doesn’t effect me at all. I remember they are the bad guy and curse them under my breath for killing a small branch of a tree in order to convey their unwelcome opinion as I back my station-wagon-truck out and drive off into the night … in search of my next parking spot.

Flipping through the channels the other night, somewhere between a Mexican novella and a rerun of Antique Roadshow, one of those inane direct response TV spots came on. The right thumb I’ve spent a lifetime training to avoid such encounters somehow didn’t respond in its usual fast-twitch fashion and I got caught watching the first five seconds.

It was about four seconds too many.

I was hooked. My thumb drifted from the down arrow on the remote to its usual resting spot just to the right where oil and dirt collects.

The barking voiceover that’s oh so familiar on late night TV always sets the stage at the beginning of these types of commercials with the usual questions that attempt to immediately qualify and engage the people watching:

“Can your kitchen knife cut through sheet metal?”

“Does your back hair make you look fat?”

“How many light bulbs can you change in 10 minutes?”

The over-the-top pitch person for the particular spot that caught my attention burst out in rhyme with “Does bathroom relief…make you act like a thief. Do you go to great lengths to hide the tell-tell scent…so no one knows you just went? Then you need Sneak A Poo!”

Sneak A What?

“Honey, come in here fast. You’ve got to see this commercial,” I yelled to my wife.

“I can’t. I’m in the bathroom,” she yelled back.

“I know. That’s why you’ve got to see this.”

I went on to yell the details as they were coming in.

“It’s Sneak A Poo. You spray it before you go and then nobody can tell what you’ve been doing in the bathroom during the 10 minutes you were in there. It’s brilliant.

“I think you can even use it on airplanes!” I screamed.

How could I not watch further? I absolutely had to find out what the product “Sneak A Poo” was all about … and what other unique selling propositions it possessed.  As a lifelong ad guy, I had to pinch myself. It was raw, compelling advertising in its purest form.

First demonstrate a need. Then satisfy it.

“No one needs to know…when you gotta go,” the announcer chirped poetically.

I closed my eyes and envisioned the meeting where the concept for this life changing invention was first explained to the ad agency. There’s a long conference table with coffee cups, note pads, laptops and dozens of small bottles of a still unnamed product scattered about. There’s both men and women inquisitively looking on. And on a large screen at the end of the table, a Power Point slide featuring a photograph of a woman fanning her nose in disgust.

(Ad Guy) “OK. I just want to make sure I completely understand what you are saying. So before you have to go (finger quote) No. 2 (finger quote), you spray the toilet bowl with your product, and it somehow creates an impenetrable force field that holds the smell underwater so it can be flushed away with, well, everything else, right?”

(Inventor) “Yep. People will be able to go (finger quote) No. 2 (finger quote) without leaving a trace. Sneaky, eh?”

(Ad Guy) “Yeah, snea….what a minute, I’ve got it!”

“Sneak A Poo!”

After  an executive decision to change the spelling to “Sneek (with double ee) A Poo” was inexplicably executed , marketing magic – and a TV spot that is an instant classic – was born.

As determined as I was to avoid attending The Nutcracker this holiday season, once again on a recent mid-December afternoon I found myself sitting at the theatre with my wife, daughter and mother-in-law ringing in the season with everyone’s favorite ballet.

There were four tickets and I drew the short straw, so my son and father-in-law were at home watching football, while I on the other hand was suddenly awash in moms, grandmas and little girls in frilly dresses, each immersed in her own little dreamworld of leaping, spinning ballerinas and ballerinos frolicking about the stage to the Tchaikovsky masterpiece.

I sat quietly, taking in my surroundings, imagining the moms were dreaming of their little girls growing up to be graceful, beautiful ballerinas, the grandmas dreaming of their granddaughters becoming what their daughters never did, and the little girls wondering what on earth the little boys were doing up there dancing around like little girls.

As the lights dimmed and the first act began its monotonous march forward, I too drifted off into a dreamland of my own, only I veered toward a mental state that’s sole purpose was to keep me from dozing off. I figured I’d have to look at and analyze everything in order to keep my mind sharp enough to keep my chin from bruising my chest or avoid slipping into a coma.

The first thing that grabbed my attention was the little ballerinos, the boys. There were a dozen or so them marching around with faux instruments pretending to be a marching band at the big holiday party that opens The Nutcracker. Cute. But all I could think of was “what on earth will little Johnny say when his teacher asks the class the requisite ‘So what did you do on your Christmas vacation?’ upon his return to school in a few weeks?”

“Can we write an essay about it instead?” Johnny will undoubtedly ask.

“No Johnny, just tell the class what you did?”

“Well……”

I imagined that Johnny would probably leave the part about prancing around in tights with 11 other boys out of the story. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but Max and his buddies from the football team might find the story interesting enough to bring up for the next 10 to 15 years, usually at the least advantageous moments for Johnny.

“…I just went to the movies,” is how I imagine Johnny would respond.

“Ah. The movies. Yet another place I could be,” I thought to myself. I could be watching car chases, gun fights, and giant explosions. But instead I’m delighting in light, airy, paper snow that is dancing its way down to the floor, frilly costumes attached to flying and spinning dancers, and a creepy Rat King that is hellbent on having a fake sword fight with the ballet’s protagonist…the Nutcracker himself.

“If I were up there fighting the Rat King, could I take him?” I wondered, remembering how dominating I was at fake sword fights as a child. The inner roll of Christmas wrapping paper always made for a good weapon…at least for a few minutes. When it would finally fold over and go limp, I’d swing harder, and then declare victory over my younger brother as it unraveled. But I never did this in tights, so I quickly dismissed the idea of fighting the life-size rodent ballerino.

I was ready, though, to stand up and start a fight with the person sitting right behind me. If I’m going to be there, I might as well experience the show as the show’s producer intended. And I’m pretty sure the producer did not script people eating candy from a crinkly wrapper so loud and obtrusive, it overwhelmed the music coming from the orchestra pit. Like the woman next to me, who had thin eyeglasses hanging on a chain and was thus an obvious patron of the arts, I did a quick glance over my shoulder to hint that there was a problem with the noise. Then it came again, and me and my new patron friend glanced over again, this time holding our poignant positions just a fraction longer, hoping that the hesitation would be the signal that would end the outrage. It didn’t.

After a third and then a fourth episode, I turned and finally spoke.

“Can you please be quiet?” I said through my teeth with hushed authority.

The shaken look on the poor seven-year-old girl in the frilly dress caught me by surprise. I was expecting an adult, so I quickly shifted my gaze and question to the adult next to her. The clueless look on her face made me suddenly realize not all in attendance were seasoned theatre goers like me and my new compadre.

With the candy wrapper issue finally resolved, I could refocus on the performance. The music from the pit immediately caught my attention. I must have heard if before, because it sounded so familiar. But where?

Then it dawned on me, I probably heard it where all Baby Boomers and early Gen Xers (like myself) first heard classical music. Cartoons, of course.

Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, Popeye, and a host of other cartoons used classical music as audio backdrops. Like many of my fellow middle agers, I spent prepubescent Saturday mornings in front of the TV getting in as much as I possibly could before my parents emerged from their bedroom to ruin my weekend with demands of chores, homework and whatnot. I had watched them all. So I know my classical music. Or at least the classics that were once matched with animation.

My foot started to tap along in rhythm while my mind – trying desperately to keep my bottom and top eyelids from going back to the tryst they had had early that very morning – began releasing long-stored Looney Tunes memories.

I haven’t been able to hear “Flight of the Valkyries” since without hearing Elmer Fudd sing, “Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit!”

“In the cartoons when we were kids, wasn’t there a frog who could sing?” I started whispering in my wife’s ear.

The now-righteous mother of the seven-year-old behind me took full advantage of the situation and overtly “shushed” me. The sarcasm was as thick as the fallen snow on stage. Of course she was right, so I did shush.

A seemingly endless parade of new scenarios that are part of young girl’s dream sequence filled the stage for another 45 minutes.

The sequence in my mind was not the same. Instead of following the storyline, I wondered how much a ballerina makes in a year. Aren’t the dancers going to slip on the paper snow? If they sold 2000 tickets at $125 each, less the cost of the production, how much would the ballet actually make off this show? Where do I know the conductor of the orchestra from? Do they turn on the air conditioner to make it cold in here so it feels like winter? Why am I here again?

Then the curtain drops, the lights go up, and I see the shear delight on the face of the seven-year-old candy-eating girl, and I know exactly why we are all here. Tis the season for Nutcracker.